The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Devindra: 00:00

I think for some people, they just want the slop. They want the slop and they're happy with it, and that makes me sad as somebody who's been reviewing movies and, you know, games and art for so long. Hello,

Emanuel: 00:14

and welcome to the Four Four Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 44media.co, as well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments, and they get early access to our interview series too. Gain access to that content at 44media.co. This week, we're joined by Devindra Hardawar.

Emanuel: 00:44

Devindra is a senior editor at nGadget and a cohost of the Filmcast, a podcast about film I've been listening to for about fifteen years. How's that possible? We've covered the intersection of the movie industry and AI here, but Devindra lives at the intersection of AI and film. So I'm very excited to have him on. Devindra, thanks for coming on the show.

Devindra: 01:07

Hello. So happy to be here. Been a four zero four supporter forever, and have loved you guys since motherboard. So this is great. Awesome to chat.

Emanuel: 01:15

Thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate it. And again, as I said, a big big fan of your work. Thank you.

Emanuel: 01:22

I'm a recovering film student or I was at least in studying film for two years before I realized that I don't have what it takes and decided to go and hide behind a keyboard and go go into writing. But really love movies. Try to keep up with it. Can't as much as I used to, but like one way I keep up with it is listening to the film cast, picking my my shots based on your guys' recommendations.

Devindra: 01:48

We try. That's that's like why we exist. Right? Because there's just so much stuff to watch, and we do try to, like, narrow down to the best stuff.

Emanuel: 01:53

Yeah. Yeah. And we'll and we'll get to that. But I want to start with the AI stuff first, and I want to do that by focusing on a couple of specific examples. The first of them is this series of short I don't know what you would even call them, like historical fiction type AI generated videos from Darren Arnofsky.

Devindra: 02:19

Yeah. Yeah. If you

Emanuel: 02:21

were to go back to Emmanuel in film school and you were to ask him, like, who are the most important new directors of our time? I would definitely put Arnofsky in there. He's my guy.

Devindra: 02:34

I've loved him forever.

Emanuel: 02:35

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think Rec Room for a Dream, obviously, like hugely influential movie that hit film lovers, like, really hard at the time. And then for me, even more than that pie, which is like tech adjacent science fiction stuff that that I was really interested in.

Devindra: 02:52

Pi is such a miracle. Everybody needs to see Pi. I love Pi so much. It just had a four k rerelease. Yeah.

Emanuel: 02:57

Very worth watching Yeah. Still. But I I wanna start by, like, what's your take on him before we get into, like, the AI project, like, what's your take on him as as a filmmaker? Where do you think he fits into, like, the film canon given the whole span of his career, not just this early period that we're talking about?

Devindra: 03:16

I mean, he like, Pie came out, what was it, '99? So like, that was like, I was a teenager, really into movies. The whammy of like Pie and Requiem for a Dream, which is a movie I've grown not to like that much. Like, it's very impressive, but I will not rewatch that movie. It's it's just a miserable experience.

Devindra: 03:33

But the the filmmaking on display there is undeniable. And then he made The Fountain, which is, I think, an incredible film. Just like an incredible, really unique science fiction epic with visuals that are just it's like organic stuff in there. It's just a beautiful film. I thought, you know, coming up, he was one of the more important directors of the nineties and the February.

Devindra: 03:59

And he's had some misses, and now he's doing the AI stuff. And I'm it's just kinda it's just kind of messy. You know? I remember the run up to Noah, which was his first, like, big budget studio film, and that was a complete flop. I But still found that movie kind of interesting.

Devindra: 04:16

Mother, the Jennifer Lawrence movie, I think is astounding. So, like, he's hit or miss for me, but then he also did the whale, which was just like, I don't know what you're doing here, buddy, but it's not good. It's not interesting. And that felt really disappointing. And then the AI stuff is just like the icing on the cake of disappointment right now for me.

Emanuel: 04:37

Yeah. I guess the only thing I would add there is, like, there's this trajectory where we have like a young director. He does a couple of like really original striking films. He gets a bigger budget. He gets a bigger budget.

Emanuel: 04:51

He kind of gets like an Oscar run with is it the wrestler? Right? As as Yeah. And that seems to be the peak. And then there's like, you know, you do you do two or three flops and you you get shuffled into like this, you know, cage in Hollywood where you don't get work with the biggest stars or have the biggest budget or whatever.

Emanuel: 05:10

And I feel like it's on this down slope that he he he does this AI project.

Devindra: 05:16

You know, he also did Caught Stealing, which is like a b level crime movie set in New York. Like, why the hell are you doing this? You you are above this, and yet, it's perfect it's a perfectly fine crime movie, but it felt

Emanuel: 05:28

beneath him, you know? It seems like an attempt to, like, gain momentum again. Right? It's like maybe you can make something, a few stars in it, wide appeal potentially.

Devindra: 05:37

Yep. Low budget potentially. Yeah. Right.

Emanuel: 05:39

And then it's like, oh, maybe it's a hit. Maybe he gets a shot at a bigger thing. And the AI thing, it's like, I think it fits into that in the sense that it is like a business decision, it seems, or I guess what do you make? Do you have you seen it?

Devindra: 05:53

Yeah. I've seen it's called On This Day, and it's a series of like historical AI films, but he's also done like a whole bunch of project with Google DeepMind. And it seems like he's been paid by Google DeepMind to have his film studio, his Primordial Soup is what it's called, to produce a bunch of shorts. It just feels like Google DeepMind paid them a lot of money to do stuff with AI, and this is what we're getting.

Emanuel: 06:19

As a short film, you know, like, what what what's your critique of it? What's your read of it as a short film?

Devindra: 06:25

It is unwatchable. Like, is pure AI garbage. It is literally the stuff that you would expect if you type something into Sora or any of the video generation tools. It is a bunch of random scenes cut together to sort of create a semblance of a of a historical epic, but it's also the sort of thing you can see if you just flip on TikTok right now and see people, like, create AI slop. My daughter likes to watch stuff around fiction, mythology stuff.

Devindra: 06:52

So we look up stories around Greek mythology and Egyptian mythology. And TikTok and YouTube are just filled with, like, AI slop depicting all these stories. Honest Day is not really any different than that. What is interesting about the Eliza McNutt thing is that her live action stuff, like her actual footage of humans is interesting and compelling. And the second that moves over to AI's AI footage or what seems to be some AI stock footage, it loses any semblance of having a soul.

Devindra: 07:19

It is interesting. Like, that is an interesting thing to to watch just to see, like, the difference between actual footage and AI footage, and you can feel it as a viewer how just the less interesting and less compelling it is.

Emanuel: 07:30

Yeah. I think the the Washington stuff is indistinguishable from the stuff you're describing that we see every day on Instagram. And, you know, I can't get in his head, but I find it hard to believe that someone with such a strong visual aesthetic would look at that and be like, yes, I feel good about this. Like, this this is a good project that I put my name on. Yeah.

Emanuel: 07:55

And and frankly, I mean, I don't know. I I always hope that people will make good movies even after they make bad ones. So it's not like I'm condemning him to some jail where he's not allowed to to make movies again, but it it is, I find, to be like a pretty shameful episode for him personally, and I guess just like the industry more broadly. But this brings me to the other example. He's not the only person who is doing this.

Emanuel: 08:21

It's like, we've seen, you know, we've seen some of like Marvel uses of AI. There's some stuff that is probably happening that we don't even know about at Visual Effect Studios and so on. But the the other example that caught my eye is Steven Soderbergh. Mhmm. A very prolific director, works a lot of genres, is kind of able to do comedies, thrillers, horror.

Devindra: 08:44

Another one of those, like, exciting directors out of the nineties too. Right? Like, he's a generation before Aronofsky. He's more like the Tarantino timeline, but he is a hero. Like, he is a hero of mine.

Devindra: 08:55

Like, see, he has made some of the best films ever, and he's always like an inventive and creative director. He's always trying new things. He's one of those guys, one of the first people to, like, make a film with an iPhone. And it didn't always look good, but he did it. He accomplished it, and it was an interesting experiment, you know.

Emanuel: 09:11

Yeah. So so prolific. Right? It's like one of his defining features is that he does so many things in so many different ways, and he's just he's willing to experiment and try, and he's not precious. Right?

Emanuel: 09:20

You say he's from the Tarantino era, and he's like he's like the the polar opposite of Tarantino where he's very, very precious about like, I'm only going to make 10 movies. This is it. They each have to be perfect. He's like, whatever, dude, I'm an artist. I'm doing stuff.

Emanuel: 09:33

It's like, we're going to discover things while while we're making it. And I think it's like arguably in this spirit, right, that he has spoken recently about generative AI and and using it in his projects. So he has a documentary about John Lennon coming out, which he said includes generative AI in it. I believe people probably have already seen cuts of this. It's not like he came away from that experience saying, oh, this was this was terrible and never use it again.

Emanuel: 10:04

He also talked about he's making a movie, I believe, about the Spanish civil war, and he intends to use generative AI in that. I guess, knowing him, seeing the Darren Aronofsky example, how how are you approaching projects like that? Are you are you coming to it with an open mind? Are you are you skeptical? Are you like, I think it's morally reprehensible and I'm not gonna, like, engage with the with movies that use this technology?

Devindra: 10:36

I mean, it's tough, and I feel like we just kind of have to take this on a case by case basis right now. The Aronofsky stuff definitely felt like a paycheck. It felt like he got a lot of money as a big name, and he's also a producer on all sorts of stuff. He's a producer on National Geographic shows. He makes money, like, putting his name on a lot a lot of different things.

Devindra: 10:54

It felt like his heart was not in, like, experimenting with AI. Soderbergh sounds like, hey. This is another tool, just like the way I use the iPhone, just like the way I run and gun and do a lot of gorilla cinematography. He's interested in AI as a tool. I believe around the Lennon documentary, he said it was specifically for, like, trippy imagery that he wanted to use it for, which okay.

Devindra: 11:16

If anybody earned has earned the right to experiment with new technologies and new things, it's Steven Soderbergh. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. I don't know if that's if like, maybe he needs to try to see, like, maybe it's not the best best tool that you could use because that seems like such a weak argument. You know? Like, you can make trippy imagery in all sorts of ways.

Devindra: 11:36

Jim Jarmosch does it with practically no budget. You know? So Soderbergh himself did it. I'm thinking of, like, Solaris, which is, I think, a great film and be like the imagery of that planet. That is an artistic decision that was rendered by somebody, that was created by somebody, and you feel something from that.

Devindra: 11:53

And I do feel like from what we've seen, when you watch AI created imagery, it feels so substance substanceless. I don't know. It's it's like eating cotton candy. It's like you're something is sweet here, but I'm not being nourished by it. It doesn't feel good.

Devindra: 12:07

So I wonder what that's gonna look like and how he's gonna use it moving forward. He strikes me as somebody who would like to dabble with it and not really, you know, lean too much into it because he's very much about being hands on and doing stuff. Like, he's often editing his own stuff. He's often being his own cinematographer. He is not somebody who wants to just, like, give up and let AI take the wheel, which is what I think a lot of creatives wanna do.

Devindra: 12:29

And certainly a lot of what the technology people wanna do, like in the AI industry or studio executives. But like, oh, yeah. This stuff can make producing movies or doing certain scenes so much easier. And for them, it's because they are so far removed from the creative process. They just want the product.

Devindra: 12:44

They want the product done quicker. They don't really care how it's done. Whereas that's not Soderbergh's, like, point of view at all. So I haven't seen this thing yet. I haven't seen, like, what the AI footage is.

Devindra: 12:55

It's not great. It's not a great thing, but I'll I'll have to see it to, like, fully judge it.

Emanuel: 13:00

Yeah. So it sounds like you're open to the possibility of it being good. It's not like you're have some ideological position where you're like, well, it used AI, therefore, it's bad.

Devindra: 13:08

It really depends. Like, I think there is there is usefulness for AI as a tool. Right? Like, as a journalist, like, don't use generative AI for there are all those pieces about, like, the tech journalists using Gen AI for, for, like, ideation and stuff. And Yeah.

Devindra: 13:22

I'm not into any of that. But sometimes I need help with transcription. And the AI models right now can do that, and that helps. That helps with my reporting. But that's a specific tool for that one thing.

Devindra: 13:34

I am very wary of letting GenAI, like, take over our work and our thinking, and to me, that's a major thing moving forward. It's like human centered art, human created art, I think is gonna be a really important thing. So it's great that Slotenberg is getting pushback for this because I think maybe he has not fully thought about what it means to use generative AI in something like this. He could do that imagery in so many other ways. This feels like a, you know, a really easy experiment for him.

Devindra: 14:05

He's not leaning fully into it. I'm more worried about stuff like Natasha Lyonne and some of her, like, her colleagues talking about, like, making something around AI, making a fully AI project where AI is like the centerpiece of why you're making it. To me, that seems inherently soulless rather than just being a tool used in a broader project.

Emanuel: 14:24

Yeah. I have a quote here from Soderbergh in front of me. He says, my job is to deliver a good movie, period, and this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it. And and then he goes on to be like, you know, it's not the solution to everything. I don't think it's the death of everything.

Emanuel: 14:40

It might be a fun phase, quote unquote, which sounds reasonable and I think reflects what you're saying. The part that I'm hung up on is I look at a ton of generative AI for my job. You know what I mean? I'm sure you do as well. It's like, I'm scrolling social media, and it's like, I'm very familiar and have a sense for what is AI generated, and that is because it has an aesthetic.

Emanuel: 15:05

And I think that aesthetic is very bad. Yeah. That's the part that's the part that I'm hung up on, and I'm dying to see the movie in order to figure out what he thought the tool did that showed up at the right time for him. And again, I'm I'm open to it being good, but it's it's just hard to imagine. And then again, it's also sad, I think, for what you said.

Emanuel: 15:23

It reminds me of, like, in Oppenheimer, there's all these abstract visual scenes where he's imagining like quantum physics, and I forgot how they did it exactly, but I read a story about how they did it, and it was kind of like a physical process. Yeah. They they actually shot stuff and then manipulate it, and it it's such a cool ethereal thing, and it just it's hard to imagine beating that.

Devindra: 15:47

There there's so many ways to do it. I mean, the silent filmmakers were doing all sorts of creative things to, like, create trippy visuals. But I'm thinking back to, like, even Aronofsky's The Fountain, where that is a movie where it's depicting images in deep space. It's depicting supernovas. And they use, like, imagery of liquids and chemical reactions to kind of sort of, like, make that spatial imagery seem more trippy.

Devindra: 16:10

Going down to something at a microscopic level to make something at a macroscopic level look interesting, that's a fascinating creative choice, and that's partially why that movie looks so good and so interesting. It's timeless. I imagine if they did that with with AI today, it would just look like slop. It would just look like an overly glossed CG thing where you don't feel the sort of organic nature of how they originally made those special effects. So think it's gonna it's gonna require some flops, some mistakes for these directors to learn.

Devindra: 16:38

Soderbergh is just like a kid in a candy store. He wants to try everything, I think.

Emanuel: 16:42

To pick up of on one of the things that he's saying there about it just being, like, convenient, I suppose. Mhmm. This issue has come up for us in video game development, where, as you know, video game development is, at least the like big budget end of things, requires so much labor and so much of it is I don't know if I would call it rote, but it's just like repetitive in the sense that, like, generating massive amounts of three d assets. And we haven't seen this happen yet, but one could imagine using generative AI, other AI technologies to streamline their work, make that work cheaper, less grueling, right? It's just like video game development, a notoriously difficult job.

Emanuel: 17:40

And a lot of that is also true for special effects studios.

Devindra: 17:44

Sure.

Emanuel: 17:45

Very similar work. A lot of like three d asset creation. And I'm wondering, what do you think about that implementation of AI? Do you think there's, like, a good and ethical way to do it?

Devindra: 18:00

It's I mean, the the criticism, the main criticism I have against generative AI is that it is a technology that's based on stolen works. Like, that's inherently what it is. It is OpenAI and all these companies sucking up anything that they can find. Copyrighted works, whatever. If you produce something online, you are likely in that.

Devindra: 18:19

And they have created this black box that is now spitting content back out of this. And to me, that seems like the ultimate form of, like, big tech hubris. Right? Like, they're reselling stuff that they stole from us at this point. If you can take the idea of an AI model or a transformer model and build it on stuff you are you are personally building.

Devindra: 18:40

Like, if ILM built a model based on its own work, then you're starting to erase some of those ethical considerations, and then you can start having that conversation about, how can we use this AI as a tool to help us work better? But it it involves building that model and making sure that you're only using your content or licensed content and stuff like that. I do think we're kind of getting there. That is more of a conversation a lot of these companies are talking about right now. But just because you can do it easier does not make that content inherently better.

Devindra: 19:09

We've seen a lot of games get in trouble for having, like, AI voices in there. Right? And it's in there until people start noticing. They're like, oh, oh, sorry. That was a stop gap.

Devindra: 19:19

Arc Raiders had that. A whole bunch of games recently had that. I'm looking at that game Crimson Deserts, and I'm like, every conversation around that game is like, it literally is just content. There's like no narrative. It's just like an enormous world that just seems like it's a bunch of stuff put together.

Devindra: 19:36

There's already been traces of AI stuff in there. I feel like that's a game that's so big they probably did some more AI things, which we haven't fully discovered yet. We'll probably see more games like that that kinda sell themselves on how big they are and how massive they are. No Man's Sky kind of had a bit of that effect too, but selling themselves on the breadth of content that they have rather than the quality of it. And for some people, that may be enough.

Devindra: 20:00

What is funny is that No Man's Sky, you know, was a game not built using AI, but it was built on like a procedural formula that essentially gave it like an infinite a very large universe. It was only when the developers were able to spend time with it and years with it and build actual content, not just like send it to an AI magic box. The developers did the work to make that game better. Now No Man's Sky is like one of the best space experiences you can have right now. That took human work and human effort, though.

Emanuel: 20:27

Yeah. A common refrain I see on social media, tell me if you've seen this kind of post, but it's like mostly on Twitter because that is like the more AI boostery social platform. Yeah. But it'll be someone who gets their hands on Seed Dance or Cling AI or something like that, and they'll post a video of like an action scene. Yeah.

Emanuel: 20:54

And they'll say it's over for Hollywood.

Devindra: 20:56

Like the Tom Cruise Brad Pitt thing.

Emanuel: 20:57

Yeah. Perfect example. Yeah. And I think that one is good, especially because there was some sort of reaction from the industry. Right?

Emanuel: 21:03

It wasn't just like the AI people and the AI boosters and people on Twitter being like, wow, this is so cool. Like, there was some sort of ripples in the industry. I guess, what do you think about like, it's over for Hollywood perspective?

Devindra: 21:16

I am my bullshit meter has recently like, I'm just like less afraid to call bullshit on this stuff right now. And I saw that clip and I saw people inherently freaking out. Was first of all, that was just a bad action clip. It was not shot well. It was not edited well.

Devindra: 21:29

It's not choreographed well. And the people saying it's over for Hollywood was like, okay. Based on what? A twelve second clip that looks kinda shitty? To me, that's not over for Hollywood.

Devindra: 21:38

And then it came out later that that was essentially just a scene that was actually shot and actually photographed by humans, and they just, like, map the actors' faces on it. So it wasn't even purely AI there. I don't know what's going on in the AI booster's mind where they're like, this is all over for you. Look at what this generative AI search engine can build for me. Look at what this machine can do for me.

Devindra: 21:57

And maybe that is what people want. I don't I don't quite know. Like, I don't even know what people do with generative AI images. Do you send it to a friend and just laugh at it and be like, isn't that funny? You spent all these resources to create these images and these movies, which have real environmental impacts, to just create a thing that you can laugh at with somebody for five seconds and then you immediately forget about it.

Devindra: 22:20

Mhmm. It it is just so so stupid. But I also don't know what audiences want. Right? Like, the Super Mario Galaxy movie came out.

Devindra: 22:27

Mhmm. I called it a black hole of entertainment. It it is like a nothing movie that tells a nothing story, and very little effort went into that. And I got a lot of hate from people just saying, man, you must not love Mario. You must not understand Mario.

Devindra: 22:40

I'm like, no. I want a good movie. I just want I want a movie that tries to tell a story and not just literally give you all the slop you want from Nintendo. And I think for some people, they just want the slop. They want the slop, they're happy with it.

Devindra: 22:53

And that makes me sad as somebody who's been reviewing movies and, you know, games and art for so long.

Emanuel: 22:59

As bad as you think the the Mario Galaxy movie is, you were in a theatre I assume you watched it in a theater.

Devindra: 23:05

I was in a theater.

Emanuel: 23:06

You were in a theater. You sat there. How long is it? Is it ninety minutes or is it like a grueling?

Devindra: 23:10

It's about ninety minutes, yeah.

Emanuel: 23:11

It's ninety minutes, you sat there, your eyes were open, you absorbed the images. Yep. You were able to enjoy like the audio visual stimuli, and then you walked away and you were like, that was nothing, and it was very low brow and lowest common denominator and all that. I don't think that AI can produce anything comparable to that experience as negative as it was for you. Mhmm.

Emanuel: 23:33

And so I think you would I I don't know if you you would be able to bear two hours right. Of So I Yeah. That just to give cred to, like, Illumination Studios or something where it's just like, at least you're making something. Right?

Devindra: 23:46

At least it's an ethos, you know, which is what's something we like to say. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, there there are bad movies. I would I would watch a bad movie over, like, AI slop repeated for for, you know, two hours or something. And people feel like the AI boosters keep saying like, yeah.

Devindra: 24:01

Movies are dead. You're gonna watch this stuff. You can barely create a thirty second AI clip that is interesting to me. How are you gonna turn this into, like, a an experience where people actually sit down and think about it? A good sort of like opposite reaction to the Mario Galaxy movie, the adaptation of Exit eight just came out.

Devindra: 24:18

And that was an indie game where you're just walking through a Japanese subway, and there's some Japanese film adaptation that just came out. It's incredible. It is a great like, reminds me of old school Aronofsky. It reminds me of, like, Vincenzo Natali's Cube. It reminds me of, like, in the creepy independent movies that have a lot of really interesting ideas, and it builds on the ideals from the game.

Devindra: 24:39

So that is an artist. Genki Kawamura is an artist who was able to synthesize what he loved about the game and bring in other things and turn create this new form of art based on the game. And that that feels so heartening because I saw that the week after the Mario Galaxy movie. I'm like, yeah. We can do good things.

Devindra: 24:56

We can make a good game adaptation. Good art is still possible. I hope people actually go watch those things.

Emanuel: 25:02

Yeah. I mean, to to that last point, think something I love about Filmcast is that it is hard to keep in front of mind that people are making good things. And in fact, they are making so many good things that it's hard to watch it all. You just have to look a little bit out of the mainstream maybe in order to find it. But one reason I would recommend the show is that if you think, like, movies are boring or they're they're not making movies for you, I I guarantee that they are.

Emanuel: 25:26

You just have to, like, look a little bit for them.

Devindra: 25:29

There's there's and good shows too. Like, I think people a lot of people looked at something like DTF St. Louis. I'm like, this is just another, you know, white people in suburbia murder mystery thing. And, no, this is like a special unique creation because Stephen Conrad is a really interesting writer and a director.

Devindra: 25:45

So DTF St. Louis, if you're looking for something else good to watch, it's great.

Emanuel: 25:49

To the it's over for Hollywood mindset, most often that comes from people who are already invested in AI, either literally in a business sense, financially, or I don't know, ideologically, they're just big supporters of AI, and they think that's the way, and you can see the kind of the tunnel vision that would make them say that. There is pickup in the it's like, I think about Runway, which is a company that we cover that is an AI video generator. They partnered with Lionsgate, I believe. Sorry, a bit a bit of a tangent here is, you just mentioned that it would be better or more ethical if these AI video generators were working off their own training data and not stealing it from other people. And Runway, the story that we did is that they massively like, we proved that they massively stole training data from just like nobody, YouTubers that have like a 100 followers, they're using them in the training data.

Emanuel: 26:52

And I believe there was some sort of story where Lionsgate was like, okay, well, we need to not do that. We need to work with our own library of movies, and they realized they don't have enough in their library to provide them with good training data in order to generate videos. So it's not clear how sustainable that business model is unless they, you know, determine legally that it's okay to steal from the Internet. The point is, Lionsgate, which is a real company that makes real movies, they made a deal. Right?

Emanuel: 27:23

It's just like they think that there's something there. Do you think that is just placing a bet that they know that might not work out? Are the executive disconnected from like the Mhmm. The actual movie market in terms of what people want to see? What what do you make of the fact that it's like people are making deals?

Emanuel: 27:40

It's like, we could talk about how much we think this is garbage, but it's happening.

Devindra: 27:45

I mean, I I don't think they know what those deals actually mean. Right? Like, the entire thing around the AI industry right now, it's pure FOMO. It's all FOMO. And especially, it's rich people being like, am am I missing out?

Devindra: 27:55

Am I losing because I'm not investing in AI? It feels similar to the whole Web three and crypto boom and NFT boom from several years ago where Matt Damon was out there selling NFTs, like selling crypto stuff. I don't know how much they care about that right now. They got paid for it. You know?

Devindra: 28:12

But we saw game studios and even, I think, some movie studios, like, consider the idea of crypto stuff and what they could do there. And it just felt like fun. Right? None of that led to anything useful for society or their art. It was just a thing they kind of explored.

Devindra: 28:27

I think have you seen the movie The Congress? It's something I keep coming back to.

Emanuel: 28:32

Isn't that the Israeli director that

Devindra: 28:34

That's Yes.

Emanuel: 28:35

I have not seen that, but I'm a big fan of his, like, earlier work. So, yeah, The

Devindra: 28:39

Congress 2013 movie by Ari Fulman, and it's a really interesting film because it's like a weird, like, partially sci fi thing that becomes, like, partially animated because it's what he does. But it's about this world where artists were the actors essentially sell their faces to this sort of like AI company. And once they license their likeness away, they cannot act anymore. It's illegal for them to act. And something happens, and like this leads to a whole, like, dystopian society.

Devindra: 29:05

But I keep thinking back to that movie and that idea because it seems like that's what we're building towards. Right? Like, we have seen actors sell their likenesses. James Earl Jones, like, licensed his voice to Disney to be used as Darth Vader post you know, after his death. We're gonna see more of that.

Devindra: 29:22

Val Kilmer's likeness is gonna be in a freaking movie, which was approved by his kids. We're gonna see more things like that. Yeah. I I think these studios wanna experiment with it because they they're all afraid of missing out on whatever this is. And, like, the whole thing with Disney and OpenAI was just like wild because it's like, that's the ultimate thing.

Devindra: 29:40

That's where Disney, of all companies, is afraid of missing out on some sort of the on some aspect of the AI boom, that they'll sign a billion dollar deal with this company that is only a few years old? That just seems wild to me.

Emanuel: 29:54

So this is a good segue because it's like the other thing I want to talk about, like, what I think are the two biggest stories in AI and the film industry. One of them is definitely what you mentioned about the deal between OpenAI and Disney. To recap, OpenAI launches Sora. Sora is an AI video generator. It's a good one.

Emanuel: 30:14

Like, it it it it's like the higher quality type of video generation. And then shortly thereafter, Disney announces that they made a deal with OpenAI. I believe the terms of the deal are like Disney is going to give OpenAI a billion dollars, which OpenAI needs every dollar they can get because all this inference costs a ton of money that they have to keep raising money to support. And then the the most baffling part of the deal to me was they, out the gate said, yeah, and we'll have Sora content in Disney plus which is like the app that I opened to like show something to my son, which is I found to be insane. Now, we should say since then, this whole thing fell apart.

Emanuel: 31:00

Sora is gone, OpenAx shut it down because Jason just published a story on the site about how the cost of compute is really reaching a point where the AI companies can't fuck around anymore with like these like little tools that don't generate any revenue. So it's like, they shut down Stora because it costs so much to let people make videos that have no value, and the deal, I didn't even know you could do this. It's like, the deal is gone. It's like, they're not getting the billion dollars and they're not Disney just like, the whole thing is over. And I think

Devindra: 31:31

surprised to Disney too. Like, they were surprised.

Emanuel: 31:33

It's a decision we should yeah. This is important. It's a decision from OpenAI. It's not as if Disney said, like, what are we doing? We need to walk away from this.

Emanuel: 31:39

OpenAI said, like, we actually can't afford this. We can't this is this is a this is a fool's errand to, like, make this video generation profit generating thing for us. So to start with, like, the craziest part, it's like AI generated video in the Disney app. I think there was also some allusion to the fact where it's like, would be able to use our characters. Yeah.

Emanuel: 31:58

Right? So it's like, your own Marvel stuff. What do you what is the mentality do you think at like the biggest media company in the world where they even entertained this as an idea.

Devindra: 32:12

What what came out of Sora and some of the other models is is that people found, I think you guys had noticed some of this too, they could they rendered licensed characters already. They were they were doing gross disgusting things. So I think Disney is just like, hey. They already have our stuff. They have our characters.

Devindra: 32:27

Let's at least, like, have some, like, economic tie to this usage, and maybe it could be a thing that boosts viewership in Disney plus or something. But something I've learned, having covered the technology industry for sixteen years now full time, like, a lot of these people have no idea what they're doing. No clue what they're doing. And that goes doubly for anything around OpenAI, which was the company started from like a sham idea, the sham idea of a nonprofit being created to stop evil AI from Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people, and they just kind of stumbled into this. Right?

Devindra: 33:02

Like, it was the invention of Google's transformer model that kind of spearheaded all of this, like launched all of these things. But before that, OpenAI was like nothing. They had nothing going on. But they were lucky enough to stumble into that idea of the transformer model. They had AI researchers.

Devindra: 33:18

They were able to build a thing that became eventually ChatGPT, and that became a really powerful use of this this particular model. They have no idea how it works. It is a black box. And this whole thing of, like, Microsoft and all these companies, like, just throwing billions of dollars at OpenAI who has no idea really how their technology is working. They're they're still messing around with it.

Devindra: 33:43

It's like when they released GPT five and people were mad that it didn't do some things that the earlier models did. Yeah. They didn't know. They don't know what's actually changing even though they say some aspects of it are improved. I think we're gonna see a reckoning for all these companies that have, like, jumped on to OpenAI and all these other folks.

Devindra: 33:59

So Disney Disney probably got off scot free. Right? It's a deal that just up ultimately died, didn't affect their business. They didn't have to deal with any, like, weird content that appeared on the Disney plus app. Microsoft is fully in bed with OpenAI.

Devindra: 34:13

Like, their investment in OpenAI is, like, practically 50% of, like, whatever the for profit side of OpenAI was. Microsoft's partnership is like they're putting Copilot and everything they're doing. They're doing all this. Satya Nadella is fully on board with it. My conversations with Microsoft executives have gotten really weird over the years, where I'm like, you guys are making Copilot and this AI stuff the centerpiece of Windows 11.

Devindra: 34:38

It's like a calculator that's wrong sometimes. If I had a calculator that was wrong, if I had an employee that just delivered bad answers sometimes, I wouldn't use it. It seems like a bad tool. And the executives just keep saying, oh, it'll get better. It's it'll just get better.

Devindra: 34:53

And it's this weird thing where they're fully invested in something that is they know is broken, and they're starting to feel the pain from that right now. They set to release that. They basically issued an apology for Windows to Windows users for what they've done with Copilot and everything. They're kind of pulling back in Copilot and Windows 11. They say they're gonna be a little more thoughtful about getting those features out there.

Devindra: 35:14

But, yeah, Microsoft is just so desperate. Like, they missed out on so many big tech waves. They're like, we're gonna be First AI. We're gonna bump we're gonna be a partner with OpenAI. We're gonna make it a big thing.

Devindra: 35:25

And it worked out for them for a little while with the initial, like, Bing chat launch and all the Copilot stuff. But I think ultimately, it's gonna hurt them. Like, we're seeing in many ways, this overreliance in as not helping Microsoft at all. So that that is my thing. Disney, Microsoft, all these companies, they're it's all FOMO.

Devindra: 35:43

They just wanna get some AI partnership to suit to feel like they're not actually missing out on this. But the reckoning is coming. Like, the the fact that these tools often don't work well, cost a ton of resources, are turning off users. Like, there there are so many reasons to tread more carefully here. Everyone's talking about Apple being slow to AI and being bad at AI.

Devindra: 36:04

I feel like they have the perfect response here because they're just like they stumble into the fact that they were a little late to it, but also maybe you shouldn't rush into this. Maybe you should be more thoughtful about how you implement these things because it it matters. The minor errors Apple encountered, like, around notification summaries Mhmm. Not a big deal. Copilot producing bad information for Windows users, that could affect lives.

Devindra: 36:25

That could affect people's finances. Like, that's a much more horrible thing to deal with, I think.

Emanuel: 36:30

So I think our regular listeners would know that I pretty much agree with all of that. Mhmm. Mhmm. But when I thought about the Disney OpenAI deal, and I always tried to examine my blind spots and think, okay, well, let's assume these people are not stupid, and it's not just FOMO. What what is going on here?

Emanuel: 36:54

And I guess what really shook me is the idea that you and I look at this Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt scene, and we kind of laugh and mock it, and we consider ourselves movie buffs, we know movie history, and like we whatever. We appreciate the form, and we're like, this is garbage. Obviously, is garbage. But then maybe Disney, which has its tendrils in all parts of the media industry, is looking at the data, and they're like, look, man, we're investing all this energy and paying artists and taking bets, not as much as they used to. Obviously, it's like, you know, it's the the industry is very homogenous and Marvel and Star Wars and all that stuff.

Emanuel: 37:39

But it's like, we're trying to make stuff. Right? Even if it's the Super Mario Galaxy, we're trying to make things. And it's like, we're looking at the data, and it's actually people the way they spend most of their time is they're scrolling TikTok, and TikTok is full of this garbage. So it's like, what are we doing?

Emanuel: 37:53

Like Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, isn't that like a valid business decision? You know what I mean? It's the the kids that are wrong kind of perspective of on things?

Devindra: 38:04

Yeah. For us, like, we think we should think that I don't know. It's I can see the business case. I can see why they did it. Like, listen, I talked to you freaking remember Quibi?

Devindra: 38:13

Yeah. Like, I I talked to Jeff Katzenberg. I sat down. I talked to Jeff Katzenberg around Quibi, and I was grilling. I was like, this seems like a bad idea.

Devindra: 38:22

I don't think people are actually gonna sit down and watch, like, long form content on their phones. I don't think they're gonna be turning their phones. And by that point, they had gotten $2,000,000,000 in funding. Jeff Katz Katzenberg and, was it, Meg Whitman? And they could just be like, well, we are successful.

Devindra: 38:38

Right? Like, we we have made money before. I'm a Hollywood titan. I'm gonna take this investment and just make this bet to make this thing. Because, yeah, kids are just watching stuff on their phones.

Devindra: 38:48

Quibi barely lasted a month. You know? Like, there there are these weird wild bets out there. At least Quibi was like human created content. But if they had survived, I'm sure they would have, like, tried to do the AI stuff.

Devindra: 38:59

But it's like a lot of people are taking the wrong lessons out of things. And I think we see we see that happen time and time again. We see that in Hollywood. We see that in big business and in media and in everything. So I I would not blame these companies for, like, dabbling a bit in the AI stuff and seeing, like, what you can build around that.

Devindra: 39:17

But I also think this is a time for a lot of companies to, like, really look at their strengths and look at what they can do very well and kind of double down on that. Because we're seeing younger viewers like Gen Z folks want to see movies in the theater. We're still seeing people show up for, like, event films in the theater. I don't know how the hell Barbie and Oppenheimer how Barbenheimer happened, But but that was the thing. I didn't even like Oppenheimer that much, and yet somehow that became a hit, a talky movie about the birth of the atomic bomb.

Devindra: 39:47

It's people in rooms talking. It made a shit ton of money. I don't know how that happened. There is hope out there for Hollywood, but they're gonna bet. They're gonna make these bets, and it's gonna look really stupid.

Devindra: 39:57

The key is not to make too big of a bet. I think Disney got us scot free because I could have seen that AI deal going badly so many ways for them.

Emanuel: 40:05

Let's talk about the other huge business story, which is the acquisition of Warner Brothers. Initially, it seemed like Netflix was going to be the buyer. Yeah. Politics, the machinations of the Ellisons and and and the White House and so on, that's not going to happen. Paramount, there was just a story today that the Warner Brothers investors or shareholders agreed to the acquisition, and, yeah, Warner Brothers is gonna at least at the moment, it seems like like Paramount is gonna own it.

Emanuel: 40:37

I think you're a lot more plugged in. Like, I I'm assuming that you notice, like, what movies come out of what studios and which production companies and so on. There was a lot of panic about this. Even pulling the politics of it aside, do you think, like, the average person who, let's say, streams a lot of stuff at home, but maybe goes to the movies like once or twice a year, are they going to notice the impact of this at all? And if so, how?

Devindra: 41:01

I mean, they they probably won't notice. Like, right? I I don't think most people really follow directors or studios or things. They follow franchises. Right?

Devindra: 41:09

They'll follow actors and visible names. I think people may eventually start to notice where less interesting things are making into theaters. This is a really sad situation because when this whole thing was first announced where Netflix seemed like the big thing, I did a lot of research around there, and I talked to people in Hollywood. And I really came to the conclusion where, like, this is bad. Like, this is bad no matter where we go.

Devindra: 41:31

The Netflix thing could have been interesting, at least for the landscape of Hollywood and kind of what they're doing right now. All the Ellisons wanna do is build a media empire and essentially a right leaning conservative media empire, and they don't care about much else. Right? They wanna make money. I don't think they care about the art form.

Devindra: 41:49

I don't think they care about movies. I don't think they care much about Hollywood. It's gonna be a really sad state for these studios, and I don't know what they're gonna do. It's just tremendously sad. At least, like, if it was Netflix getting Warner Brothers Discovery, that's a newer sort of tech focused company that could be doing something interesting.

Devindra: 42:08

I could have seen it like there's a potential where that led Netflix to taking theaters more seriously, which is a problem right now because some great releases are not making it to theaters, and that's a damn shame. The the theatrical stuff around Paramount and Warner Brothers, actual movie releases, it's just gonna lead to, like, more right leading garbage slop. Maybe people will notice that eventually, but I think this is one of those insidious things. These things happen at the top. These mergers happen.

Devindra: 42:33

These deals happen. Most consumers don't understand how this affects their content. So it's up to, like, the the journalists and media to, like, shout it out. It's sad. All I can say is it's sad, and I I'm worried about what this means for, like, the future of Warner Brothers, which is such a storied studio and their whole back catalog and everything.

Devindra: 42:51

It's not going to be in the best of hands.

Emanuel: 42:53

Yeah. I was trying to look at what they've put out because I'm I'm not the kind of person who could tell

Devindra: 42:58

you off the top of

Emanuel: 42:59

my head, but didn't they put up a lot of the Nolan movies? Isn't that them? Yeah. So I'm just thinking it's just like, if you like Christopher Nolan, you know what I mean? It's like, if you like Inception or Oppenheimer or whatever, it's like, that's where he lives.

Emanuel: 43:15

And I don't know, that seems it's like, doesn't bode well for that. I'm sure he can make movies. I'm just saying it's like the type of studio that funds that work that people think is like a pillar of like modern cinema.

Devindra: 43:26

He he had a big falling out with them, I think, because of the whole HBO same day stuff.

Emanuel: 43:30

Mhmm.

Devindra: 43:31

Oppenheimer was Universal. He kinda I see. Okay. Over there. Yeah.

Devindra: 43:34

Yeah. But, again, like, it's it's that sort of thing. Artists are tied to studios. They tend like to work with specific studios. I'm not sure how many people are gonna be excited to work for the Ellisons and, you know, the illicit known Warner Brothers and the illicit known Paramount.

Devindra: 43:48

Yeah.

Emanuel: 43:48

So last couple of things I wanted to talk to you about, and I'm just gonna indulge myself because it's something that I often wonder when I listen to you guys. You guys watch a lot of stuff.

Devindra: 43:57

Mhmm.

Emanuel: 43:58

You have a full time job. You have two kids. I often wonder how you make it happen. It's hard. Let's talk about, like, at home.

Emanuel: 44:07

Right? It's like, what is the setup? Like, where are you watching movies and when?

Devindra: 44:12

It's almost always after the kids are asleep or when I have pockets of time, maybe during the workday, but it's also sometimes I can watch a thing that is both applicable to my work hitting gadget because it's a movie I'll be reviewing there, and the movie will be reviewing on the film cast, and that's that's golden. That's like, oh, man. I am producing so much content from this time. But, yeah, we have a house outside of Atlanta. I'm lucky enough to have like a projector and a big projector screen in my basement, and that is my, like, little personal movie theater.

Devindra: 44:42

It's nothing fancy, but it's it looks good, and I have my surround system there. But we also have, like, you know, a large TV in our family room, and that's where I watch stuff with my kids. I'm sad to say, like, I do like to watch, like, little short form videos with my with my daughter because it's just like a thing we do sometimes to pass the time during bath time or whatever. And, you know, that's that's like the minor thing. But most of what I watch happens after the kids are asleep, and thank goodness we're getting better about sleeping.

Devindra: 45:07

But I am somebody who can, like, drive to the movie theater after 10PM, still make it through a movie, and still make it back home. It was so much easier in New York where I

Emanuel: 45:15

didn't

Devindra: 45:15

have to drive, but that's typically what I do right now. Or I'm watching a movie late at night at home. You know, I've talked about this. Like, sometimes you don't feel like moving if you're a parent. Like, bedtime is done.

Devindra: 45:25

Bathtime is done. You just feel like collapsing in your bed or whatever. I will watch stuff on my phone. I don't typically watch movies on my phone, but I watch TV shows on my phone because it's like, I don't have to move, but I can veg here, and I have a decently large OLED screen inches from my eyes, and I can watch a TV show and still have like a full sense of like how it's made and how it looks. So I watched a lot of the pit that way this year, and it works for the visceral nature of the pit.

Devindra: 45:50

You know? It's not the best viewing experience, but it's one way

Emanuel: 45:53

to do it. I'm surprised you said projector. I assume you would be Projector. OLED Yeah. Guy.

Emanuel: 45:59

I would assume you would look down at projectors.

Devindra: 46:01

I have OLED everywhere. Like, listen, I I understand the differences. I report on, like, TV stuff and projector stuff, but I have a it's a laser short ultra short throw projector. So it's like one of those things that's like sits close to the wall Uh-huh. And spits out a 120 inch image.

Devindra: 46:17

And I'm sorry, but for OLED, if you're if you want over a 100 inches, you're spending tens of thousands of dollars right now. TVs are getting cheaper. I'm seeing some wild deals out there right now. So, like, if you want, like, a mini LED, a not so great mini LED, but at a 100 inches, you can get that between, like, a thousand, $2,000 right now. Older OLED sets are also coming down.

Devindra: 46:38

So right now, we have a 65 inch mini LED in our family room, which I think is perfectly fine. Large enough for the kids. Some of them may be a bit too large, but I'm like, these 77 inch OLEDs are getting down to, like, $1,500, which is insane. I just feel like at some point, we're gonna make that move when I feel comfortable, like, having a TV that large there with the kids. So that'll probably be something right now.

Devindra: 47:00

If anybody's in the market for TV, look at slickdeals.net right now because the deals are insane.

Emanuel: 47:05

I I won't say go to Best Buy. I bought my first new TV in like twenty years. I had a Sony Bravia I bought in 2010. Yeah. And I used it up until this year, and it was totally fine, $10.80 p.

Emanuel: 47:16

And then I went to Best Buy. Because I I very much was like, okay. If I'm gonna get a good TV, I'm gonna get, like, the best quality. That's what I care about. I want the best quality image I can get.

Emanuel: 47:24

I don't care about the size as much.

Devindra: 47:26

You you will. The more you sit with that TV, you will be like, I could actually fit a 77 inch in this in this room. 77 inch TVs are actually not that large anymore.

Emanuel: 47:34

So And they can get one for for, like, $500. Best Buy

Devindra: 47:38

is good if you can fit into your car. The really clutch things are like, there's so many of these deals where it's like, you get free delivery and you get free setup. And that's like the best thing because what you don't wanna do is be a novice handling these massive screens, which can crack really easily if you unbox them badly. When you get the install service, it's super nice. They can even wall mount it sometimes for free as part of these deals too.

Devindra: 48:01

So I would say take advantage of those things because these things are very delicate. So the less you put your hands on it and set it up, sometimes the better.

Emanuel: 48:09

Yeah. The price of everything obviously is going up. Somehow TV is cheaper than ever. I don't understand it.

Devindra: 48:15

They're well, they're getting a new stock. The new stock of the units are coming in. So, like, this may be the cheapest TVs are for a very long time. Who knows what's gonna happen? But yeah, the old stock is being replaced right now.

Devindra: 48:26

So I think LG and a lot of folks are trying to clear things out.

Emanuel: 48:28

Okay. That makes sense. So I guess the other thing is speaking of kids and not having time, I have a two and a half year old, and I came into parenting and screen time extremely blase. Yep. Yep.

Emanuel: 48:44

My opinion on that changed immediately. Like, I grew up and we were allowed to do anything with Syriana that was like, whatever, he can do everything. And then I saw how he reacted to the phone. Yep. I really didn't like that.

Emanuel: 48:55

We curbed that, and now we are trying to like build a healthier relationship. And I think it's working, but I'm wondering, like, how are you approaching it? Like, when did you introduce them to full movies or did Yeah. Did you try? How are you picking stuff?

Emanuel: 49:13

Are you, like, consciously trying to, like, raise film fans? Absolutely. Yeah. So just tell me how what what are doing? It's all it's

Devindra: 49:22

all a conscious effort. I will say for parents, like, there are enough studies out there that screen time before eighteen months, like, definitively not a great thing. So if you can try to avoid that, that's a good thing. Once you get to, like, two years old, then you can start to, like, have a little fun. And around two to three is like, okay.

Devindra: 49:39

What am I gonna introduce to my daughter? What are gonna be her, like, first things when it comes to media? And a lot of that ended up being Miyazaki movies. And I'll say, My Neighbor Totoro is a perfect film for children, like, perhaps the ultimate, the best film kids film ever made. And the dubs are great too.

Devindra: 49:57

So the Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, really fun, really great, really sweet. Ponyo on the Cliff is, like, a little more grating. It's not as good as, like, a Totoro, but it's still still Mizaki. It's still fun. And then you can expand from there, and I try to avoid things that have too much violence and stuff.

Devindra: 50:14

But my daughter has seen a bit of Nausicaa. She's seen Porco Rosso with me. Like, I try to be really careful about how some of that stuff is. Cartoonish violence, I'm not too worried about. Realistic violence, I'm, like, more concerned with.

Devindra: 50:25

But the Miyazaki stuff has been a good thing to lean on. And then from there, it's just like great kids movies, great kids show that I really enjoyed. Bluey came out at the perfect time. Bluey is just like a perfect perfect thing. Short episodes, really inventive, really creative show.

Devindra: 50:44

I am very careful about the media I introduce my kids to. My wife is less careful, so that's how I find like, oh, mom, my son is watching Vlad and somewhat like these Russian kids that live in Dubai or something. Yeah. I'm like, how the hell did this happen? Yeah.

Devindra: 50:59

What are we doing here? I do try to avoid that. Some of that stuff is real bad, but you can be thoughtful, especially if you're a parent who likes to watch shows, likes to watch movies and stuff. You can't be thoughtful about it. You can bring your kids into it.

Devindra: 51:11

My thing right now is, like, I'm very purposeful about, like, the other types of movies I'm showing my kids. So my kids really want to see some Marvel stuff. Right? They want to see more superhero stuff. Like, how do I get into the MCU?

Devindra: 51:23

Iron Man is not a great movie for kids. Mhmm. Maybe not the best. Like, you probably shouldn't go in chronological order. And the best interaction ended up being Spider Man.

Devindra: 51:32

It ended up being the Tom Holland Spider Mans. So Homecoming was like a good one. I fast forward scary bits. I fast forward bloody bits. But my kids love Spider Man.

Devindra: 51:43

But I actually started even before that, I was like, we're gonna get to Raimi. If we're gonna start if we're gonna go down the superhero path, we're gonna it's gonna be Sam Raimi. You're gonna know Sam Raimi's Spider Man before anything else. So we watched Spider Man one, and they love that. And that introduced them introduced them to the idea of, like, sitting down and watching live action stuff more.

Devindra: 52:02

We've watched the princess bride. We've watched, like, a lot of the classics too. I'm being very careful about it. Star Wars is the one where I'm like, how do I introduce this? Because there's so many ways in, and I kinda just wanna do a new hope.

Devindra: 52:13

But I go where the kids are interested, and right now, it's been like superhero stuff. It's been Miyazaki, and it's worked out pretty well.

Emanuel: 52:21

My son was in an all encompassing Pixar's Cars phase. Oh, man. That's rough. I've seen the movie a million times, and I could do a four hour podcast just about the logic of, like, the Cars universe.

Devindra: 52:33

Logic of Cars is insane.

Emanuel: 52:35

Crazy. But it's funny you said, Toro, that is the thing that broke the spell. I put that on Yeah. And I'm not I'm not I've I've watched like the big canonical anime movies, but I'm definitely not that guy, and I did I did not get Totoro.

Devindra: 52:54

It's a movie made for kids. Like, it's kid logic purely throughout. It is. It really is.

Emanuel: 52:59

And when you I really appreciate it. I could not appreciate it until I watched it with with a with a child next to me. Same. It's nice for me because I'm, like, rediscovering Miyazaki through through through this experience. If I may, how do you literally put something on for them?

Emanuel: 53:16

Mhmm. Which by which I mean, what I found to be different from my experience of watching movies as a kid and my kid's experience of watching movies is how malleable the content is. Because it's like, I grew up with like a VHS and lots of movies that I can put on whatever I wanted and all that. Yeah. So it's not like I didn't have access to stuff.

Emanuel: 53:41

I definitely did. But like when he was in the Cars phase, for example, he even at two realized that initially he watched the movies and he just watched them through, and then he was like, you know what? I really I like this part of this movie, and I like that part of that movie, and I know that I can pick and choose what I want because it's all on the screen and it's all you can scroll through the movies and you can pick whichever movie you want, and he doesn't have like an understanding or access to TikTok, but it is kind of a TikTok logic of like Mhmm. I can immediate gratification to whatever I want immediately. Yeah.

Emanuel: 54:20

And I'm wondering, a, if you've noticed that, and b, it's like, have you found a way to bypass that? Like, I've seen some people and it, like, I find the idea a bit twee, but is Yeah. Makes sense to me where people are like, I have a room set up with VHS tapes for my kids. It's like, I understand that now. I understand why you would wanna do that.

Devindra: 54:40

Yeah. Yeah. That's really I mean, that's really cute. What I've noticed is that every kid is different. Like, kid has different demands.

Devindra: 54:46

My son has different demands than my daughter, and my daughter's the one who's seven. Watching stuff with him, a lot of it comes down to being like, hey. Let's sit down. Let's take a look at this. Or if it's they're not listening to me, like, they don't wanna, like, sit down, I just start watching something.

Devindra: 55:00

Like, I just start watching it while they're playing, and they will, like they'll start watch waiting watching whatever you put on the TV, and I kinda get them in and get them distracted from whatever else they're doing. My daughter is an iPad kid, unfortunately, because she's by, like, three to four, like, she just got really into Minecraft. I'm like, you know, of all the things to be into as a kid, Minecraft is kind of a really wonderful thing. I love Minecraft. I I didn't play Minecraft at all.

Devindra: 55:27

When I was like I was not that age for it. I was like an adult by that point. But I am discovering Minecraft through my daughter and learning about it, and we saw the Minecraft movie together. And, like, kid kids are so spoiled. Like, they have they can watch those clips however they want now.

Devindra: 55:43

They have instant access to all this content. Minecraft is like something that's pure creation. My kids don't ask for specific clips, but we certainly and they know we can always just rewatch a movie from the beginning. So I think they kind of treat it like VHS. Right?

Devindra: 55:59

Rather than ask for specific scenes, they're like, okay. We're halfway through the movie now. Let's start back from the beginning. Let's just let's just start again. So that's how I ended up watching, like, the Incredibles and all these other things, like, hundreds of times.

Devindra: 56:11

Like, my kids are big into the Pixar stuff too, for sure.

Emanuel: 56:14

Okay. Devindra, I I could keep talking to you about this for for many hours, but we should wrap it up. Thank you so much for coming on.

Devindra: 56:21

Thank you. This is great.

Emanuel: 56:23

Please go listen to the Filmcast, support their Patreon. Highly, highly recommend it. Thank you. As a reminder, four four Media is a journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to four four Media and directly support our work, please go to 44media.co.

Emanuel: 56:38

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Emanuel: 57:00

This has been four four Media. I'll see you next time.