A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Epidemic of Celebrity Cowardice (with Gianmarco Soresi and Caroline Kwan)

00:00:00.000 so i wanted to start with a joke i'm so excited let's hear it let's hear it so a gay man in germany

00:00:08.720 identifies as apolitical i was wondering if you guys consider your art political

00:00:15.760 and if so how can movies these days help fight the rise of fascism in europe and america well

00:00:22.960 i think we live in the in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now and so as artists i'm

00:00:30.960 always interested in doing things that are apolitical that's a joke that's a joke yeah

00:00:37.840 yeah no it's a good one not a comedy podcast guys sorry hello hello and welcome back to

00:00:50.000 a bit fruity. It feels like every week for the last several months, a new celebrity has stepped

00:00:55.180 forward to bravely tell us one thing. They are not political. After flirting with MAGA alignment

00:01:02.440 for the better part of a year and gleefully becoming the object of Donald Trump's admiration.

00:01:07.280 The president tweeted about the jeans ad and I wondered what that was like. It was surreal.

00:01:12.860 It was surreal. Sydney Sweeney declared herself, quote, not a political person.

00:01:18.520 Jelly Roll, who shook hands with Trump at a UFC rally not long ago, told journalists at the Grammys that

00:01:25.320 People shouldn't care to hear my opinion, man. You know, I'm a dumb redneck. I haven't watched enough. 0.99

00:01:29.240 At the Berlin Film Festival, which is still going on, a number of celebrities and filmmakers have continued to excuse themselves from questions about politics and how their work relates to it.

00:01:39.800 Ethan Hawke told a journalist who asked about the genocide in Gaza, quote,

00:01:43.700 The last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual council is a bunch of jet-lagged, drunk artists talking about their film. 0.99

00:01:52.840 Maybe that's true.

00:01:54.080 But this all feels so far away from the pop culture of 10 years ago,

00:01:57.960 when it felt like virtually every celebrity was chomping at the bit to espouse progressive politics,

00:02:02.780 especially when it came to anti-Trump sentiment during his first administration,

00:02:06.620 or on specific issues like the legalization of gay marriage,

00:02:10.340 or the brief collective reckoning over structural racism in 2020.

00:02:14.460 Hashtag Blackout Tuesday.

00:02:15.900 And while there are certainly some celebrities who didn't speak out then,

00:02:19.120 and there are some who do speak out very loudly now,

00:02:21.780 shout out Bad Bunny, shout out Billie Eilish,

00:02:23.800 I think it's undeniable that the median entertainer's willingness

00:02:27.140 to speak out against anything really has plummeted significantly.

00:02:33.020 And so today I want to interrogate why that is.

00:02:35.360 I have some theses about some specific turning points,

00:02:39.340 in, I don't know, in the year 2023, but we will all throw our hat in the ring and see what happens.

00:02:46.800 Today, I am so excited to be joined once again, two episodes in a row, by our friend,

00:02:51.720 Twitch pop culture streamer, Caroline Kwan.

00:02:54.360 Hi, I can't believe we're two weeks in a row. This is so exciting. This is my life now.

00:02:59.540 I really have you on retainer. And we are also joined by a new friend of the show,

00:03:05.060 John Marco Soresi is another anti-Zionist Jewish gay guy. 0.69

00:03:10.620 And a big Jelly Roll fan. 0.87

00:03:15.300 John Marco isn't gay, but if you're not familiar with John Marco lore,

00:03:19.560 I mean, where do you stand on being gay?

00:03:22.140 Yeah, I'm not gay, but it's how I was raised.

00:03:25.720 So it's just a musical theater kid.

00:03:28.640 So I would say that my social life was mostly gay growing up.

00:03:35.060 I often feel like a middle-aged gay man, spiritually.

00:03:39.920 I look for those types of people to come on this show.

00:03:43.280 I went on Gianmarco's podcast, The Downside, last year.

00:03:47.120 It was where we met for the first time in person. 0.55

00:03:49.340 And I will insert the clip here of me learning in real time that Gianmarco is not gay.

00:03:55.320 Can I say something? 0.98

00:03:57.660 You can say it.

00:03:58.500 So we walked in, I walked in just now, and I asked if you lived here.

00:04:03.800 And he said, no, my girlfriend used to live here.

00:04:05.060 and amazing i didn't i didn't know you were heterosexual oh oh yeah wait you learned on

00:04:14.980 the podcast yeah and by the way not the first person to do so we have we made a compilation

00:04:21.920 a compilation video of people finding out he mentioned his girlfriend and i was like i don't

00:04:27.780 know if you've ever seen the clip of britney spears sitting next to ryan seacrest when ryan

00:04:32.260 Seacrest mentions a woman that he spent a night with and Britney Spears looks into the camera and

00:04:37.000 she mouths the word. She's like woman because she thought Ryan Seacrest was gay. And that's the 0.55

00:04:41.840 exact experience that I had with John Marco where he was like, oh, yeah, like my girlfriend and I

00:04:46.460 used to have this place as our apartment, but now it's our studio. And I was like, it's nice to be

00:04:51.400 able to break barriers as a straight white man. Can I just say, too, since we've mentioned

00:04:55.820 Jelly Roll, one thing that has felt really ominous is a bunch of these celebrities haven't just said,

00:05:02.080 you know i'm apolitical whatnot there's there's also been almost a threat of well you'll find out

00:05:09.480 you know i'm not gonna say anything right now but you'll find out soon i'm like i'm preparing a

00:05:15.000 statement i'm preparing a statement yes i have a lot to say about it and i'm going to in the next

00:05:20.520 week and everybody's going to hear exactly what i have to say about it in the most loud and clear

00:05:24.260 way i've ever spoken my life all will become clear it's this very like riddler type speak

00:05:29.320 i actually forgot to include this in my outline i don't know if you guys saw the quote from

00:05:33.960 rupert grint yes yes yes formerly ron weasley he he's at the berlin film festival right now

00:05:39.580 and he was asked like many of the celebrities we we will talk about in this episode how he

00:05:43.720 feels about like the rise of fascism and he was like you'll be hearing from me will we i don't

00:05:51.640 know why does it feel like some ominous vibe to it the actors are constantly proving the importance

00:05:59.600 of writers and and that's what you got to remember a lot of these actors they're you you like them

00:06:04.340 but you're not hearing that it's writers and then they get asked to say something he's he's like i'm

00:06:09.080 gonna could if he said i'm gonna consult a screenwriter to prepare a statement and i'm

00:06:13.540 gonna deliver the fuck out of it i go okay that makes sense also someone says how do you feel 0.99

00:06:17.880 about the rise of fascism it's a pretty broad like you can just go yeah fuck that that's all 0.99

00:06:23.720 you have to say my statement on fascism is dropping i think it was juliette binoche last

00:06:28.860 year at can film festival she did something similarly she was asked so she was the film

00:06:33.940 festival jury president she was asked about why she had not signed this one of the letters one

00:06:39.720 of the global letters that was condemning the industry silence over uh the crimes being

00:06:44.820 committed in Gaza and she goes I cannot answer you you will maybe understand a little later

00:06:53.020 I mean in her French accent so but you maybe will understand it a little later I thought we could

00:07:00.220 get sort of a soft intro here with Sidney Sweeney who you know I think is a less complicated case

00:07:08.320 than some of these figures but still reveals some of the same like structural rot within Hollywood 0.99

00:07:13.980 that leads people to do this shit. 0.99

00:07:16.420 I think most people know that Sidney Sweeney 1.00

00:07:18.920 has sort of just become this like political lightning rod

00:07:23.100 over the last year.

00:07:24.640 You know, at the beginning, I was like,

00:07:27.260 oh, she's, I don't think she's in on it.

00:07:29.440 You know, I was willing to entertain the idea that,

00:07:33.500 you know, and it's true.

00:07:34.680 I think at the very beginning,

00:07:36.160 there were a lot of like right-wing men online

00:07:38.540 who were attributing, you know, 0.97

00:07:40.860 the death of wokeness to Sidney Sweeney's boobs. 0.77

00:07:43.160 Like that was a real thing that was happening. And at the beginning, I felt kind of badly for her because I was like, you're just up there doing SNL in a dress. And there are suddenly there are think pieces about how wokeness is dead.

00:07:56.280 And then it seemed to me, and you guys are more inside the entertainment industry than I am, but it seemed to me like a PR strategy was acknowledged at a certain point where, you know, the president is tweeting about how Sidney Sweeney has the hottest ad.

00:08:13.420 And she really gets like consumed by the right in this culture war over the American Eagle advertisement.

00:08:20.460 And then she, you know, she's asked about it in interviews and she gives these coy answers like it's surreal.

00:08:25.560 And it felt like she was feeding into it because, and again, tell me what you think, but it's felt like her PR team had decided we're going to cash in on this audience a little bit.

00:08:36.380 Maybe cash in or I think more the opposite.

00:08:39.420 It's like, OK, you're avoiding being talked about politically.

00:08:43.580 People just wanted your soap of your bathwater and you're raking in money, raking in money.

00:08:49.940 And then the president does this and it's like, OK, if you respond negatively, you're going to just lose money.

00:08:56.760 I think just so much of this is the true defense would be I'm going to lose a lot of money if I say anything.

00:09:03.060 And I mean a lot.

00:09:04.040 And it's like, yeah, and that's why you're being criticized, because ultimately you're saying like, I don't want to give up all this money. And yeah, you're right. You're right. You have to sacrifice money for values. And so I don't even know if it's your PR team necessarily going like, oh, we're going to cash in per se. I just think that the president tweet, he's a fan of you. What's your options?

00:09:28.400 you either are silent you either are coy which same thing or you go oh fuck the fuck the president 1.00

00:09:34.720 and then you lose a couple million dollars and you know it's tough but that's that's what you're 0.99

00:09:41.780 faced with as a mega celebrity the one reason i think there is strategy here though is i don't

00:09:47.260 know if you guys remember but a couple years ago sydney she had posted a video online you know

00:09:54.440 she was crying and she was talking about how exhausted and frustrated she was by being 0.97

00:10:00.060 constantly sexualized. And again, this is before she really then leaned into the hyper sexualization,

00:10:09.900 the, you know, campaigns that were very clearly directed at horny young men. But she had posted

00:10:16.140 this video where she was she was very upset. And I remember feeling empathetic for her. I said,

00:10:22.460 that's you know she she's just a woman who is trying to succeed in this industry she has boobs 1.00

00:10:29.660 wow okay let's you know let's let's consider more than her boobs here as she became more famous she

00:10:36.200 seemed to you know whether this was her team or or her i don't know where it's coming from 1.00

00:10:40.620 really embrace the hyper sexualization in order to sell these products i i don't think she went 0.94

00:10:48.700 into that jean commercial and again maybe i'm wrong i think she probably showed up on set this

00:10:53.600 is the campaign i have good jeans they came out and then you hear all this news and you go oh 0.94

00:10:59.260 fuck dude what what are they doing and unfortunately that's when you have to make the 0.95

00:11:04.800 decision you have to go even if you you had no intention you just made a jean ad you should make 0.99

00:11:10.440 10 ads an hour and you find out this one's being reappropriated and it's it's probably really 0.65

00:11:16.580 annoying it probably sucks to wake up and find out you're trending on white supremacist twitter 0.99

00:11:21.760 and you go oh fuck now i now i got to figure this shit out but that's what you have to do 1.00

00:11:27.900 if you want to continue to participate in selling yourself as a human being that's the marketplace 0.99

00:11:33.440 that you've entered yeah well needless to say sydney sweeney is now on the cover of cosmopolitan

00:11:40.420 currently it's on every newsstand in new york this is her when she is advertising for her new

00:11:45.600 lingerie line the new lingerie line she's promoting which jeff bezos and michael dell

00:11:50.600 put a billion dollars into one billion dollars which is okay then that's why she was at jeff

00:11:56.100 bezos's wedding i digress it's uh it's called siren but it's s-y-r-n this is not at all relevant

00:12:03.340 to the theme of the episode but i want to campaign for startups to bring back vowels

00:12:09.080 into the names s-y-r-n cern it feels like i feel like that's an old i feel like we moved past that

00:12:16.600 like we were doing that for so long grinder crumble like let's just bring back the vowels

00:12:21.240 it's fine it's actually okay that's my that's my party platform but you know why it's because

00:12:25.980 it's copyright that's where like copyright is actually motivating aesthetic where it's like

00:12:30.520 they probably siren was taken so they just had to misspell it so you just had to make it cern

00:12:36.340 yeah the next phase is the ad vowels the next phase is it's side two eyes a silent h they

00:12:45.040 totally could have done the thing where have you ever been on like r slash white people baby names

00:12:50.260 or whatever that is where they'll take a name you know no i haven't i'm not subscribed to that

00:12:57.140 particular subreddit technically r slash tragedy spelled t-r-a-g-e-d-e-i-g-h they could have done

00:13:05.540 like s-e-i-g-h-r-y-n right you add you go the opposite direction where you add the most letters

00:13:13.060 sure sure regardless she's on the she's on the cover of cosmo and she said quote i'm not a

00:13:18.900 political person i'm in the arts i'm not here to speak on politics that's not an area i've ever

00:13:24.740 imagined getting into it's not why i became who i am just say you want money just say you want

00:13:32.280 money i just would respect honesty yeah at least at this point instead of being like i i'm an artist

00:13:37.580 i want i want to be as rich as humanly possible because because the problem is again it's it's

00:13:44.240 the division it's talking about the arts as some kind of ethereal concept that you participate in

00:13:48.400 in the same way politics is some ethereal thing of course we all know we all agree here politics

00:13:53.920 is everything politics is engaging in the world so you want to engage in the marketplace but not

00:13:59.740 the not the world you want to sell yourself as a human being but not talk about what you actually

00:14:05.960 think and feel and believe that's the hypocrisy of of all this it's like if you don't want to

00:14:10.980 engage in politics go go become i guess a mathematician or a physicist or an accountant

00:14:16.520 or just sell sell you know wood i don't know but you're selling yourself and then you want to say

00:14:23.640 oh, actually, I don't have any thoughts.

00:14:26.640 Okay.

00:14:27.660 I also just think that it's like

00:14:29.180 we're going to see more probably interesting revelations

00:14:33.120 that come out of the relationship she has with Scooter Braun.

00:14:36.840 A lot of people don't know Scooter Braun's influence

00:14:41.700 in like the whole sort of like Zionist activism

00:14:45.040 within Hollywood scene.

00:14:46.800 First of all, Scooter Braun has like a gazillion dollars

00:14:49.380 from managing and exploiting a lot of very famous artists, music artists, and he is intimately

00:14:57.340 tied in with all sorts of pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us, which is why, I don't

00:15:03.940 know if you guys saw this, Sidney Sweeney posed for a photo in the backyard of Scooter

00:15:09.920 Braun's $65 million home in LA with two former Israeli hostages turned, you know, sort of

00:15:17.740 like activists slash like poster children for Israel that got posted to the Stand With Us

00:15:23.880 Twitter page. If you don't know what Stand With Us is, it's just a right wing pro-Israel

00:15:29.080 advocacy organization. And obviously that was the work of Scooter Braun being like, babe,

00:15:34.900 like, I don't think, do I think Sydney in earnest knows what the fuck is going on 0.99

00:15:38.780 in the Middle East? No, that's Scooter being like, babe, I have this photo op, just do it. 0.94

00:15:43.400 It's fine. And then we'll like go get lunch after. You know what I mean?

00:15:45.620 yeah how many how many dates do you wait for until you ask your partner to help with israeli

00:15:51.620 propaganda like what's appropriate is it a third day six six day it just it just makes this whole

00:15:58.780 song and dance she's attempting to do to me more egregious you were saying that this is about not

00:16:05.220 bleeding money but now it seems like she's trying to walk back from it so do you think that's still 0.92

00:16:09.720 the same calculus of just trying not to bleed money and eventually the right-wing thing became

00:16:14.080 too toxic yeah i think so for sure or or maybe for all i know she's uh she's saying i really

00:16:21.320 don't like this i feel like i'm on the bad side of things can i can i can i go up and say like i

00:16:27.140 think people should be treated well and the team's like i don't know i don't know if you can say that

00:16:31.920 and it reminds me a lot i'm not a taylor swift person just no reason at all but but i remember

00:16:38.460 that documentary where you really got to watch i felt like it was an honest portrayal of her team

00:16:43.180 being like if you make this statement it really is gonna fuck sales up and that was kind of a look

00:16:49.940 where you know and of course this is the part that they presented i i'll never trust a documentary

00:16:54.720 produced by the people it's about but it was her kind of with the money people being like we should

00:17:00.400 do something they're like we really shouldn't can we do anything else and we don't really know

00:17:06.120 internally what those negotiations are however you when she's with scuda brawn and doing this

00:17:12.080 picture there there's a there's an overall picture that you do start to see emerge in terms of what

00:17:16.580 she's concerned about so yeah maybe it was a shift financially maybe she felt a little bit bad sure

00:17:22.400 sure well the one thing with the taylor swift doc too is that she specifically mentioned the

00:17:27.220 dixie chicks she talked about in 2003 when famously the dixie chicks spoke out against

00:17:33.000 george bush and the iraq war and were one of the actual and first instances of a cancellation

00:17:41.800 And that was what Taylor was referencing as far as this is what happens when you challenge power. This is what happens when you speak out.

00:17:49.980 And look at the Dixie Chicks. They suffered for it. 1.00

00:17:53.040 Can I just say about that, too? It's so interesting that Taylor Swift has cited the Dixie Chicks as an example of good activism and sacrifice for good. 0.85

00:18:02.920 We're going to talk later about like LeBron James having the same sort of admiration for Muhammad Ali, but also Taylor Swift and LeBron James both being billionaires now name dropping these people as influences only to not follow in their footsteps in truly any meaningful way.

00:18:19.980 sorry like it's it's it's a little uh wild to me yeah well they're billionaires and that's i think

00:18:26.460 the that's on the story i do feel bad for for some of the the country singers because like

00:18:30.880 listen even if if jelly roll suddenly became very progressive and spoke out against ice

00:18:36.600 i still wouldn't listen to him sure and that's that's tough i i can't i can't get behind it but 0.94

00:18:45.100 yeah the dixie chicks their whole career got fucked because of it and so i just you can't 0.89

00:18:49.620 have sympathy for someone who goes i really want to be a good person and a billionaire 0.98

00:18:53.580 until you realize that those two things are at odds with each other yes you're not going to get

00:18:59.240 respect from the progressive side of things also to anyone in who might be like it's the chicks now

00:19:06.040 yes the dixie chicks changed the chicks just talking about the dixie chicks as they were

00:19:10.220 as they were in 2003 yeah one point before i forget it on sydney sweeney in this cosmo article

00:19:15.680 what she says in the article about siren aka shren is that i want to show women that we can

00:19:23.640 take back our power and fully free ourselves like this is this was a quote from the article

00:19:29.500 and then she went on to talk about how siren stands for the power of choice women can take

00:19:36.560 back their power through a fast fashion lingerie line funded by jeff bezos okay okay i mentioned in

00:19:43.160 the intro how everything we're seeing now with like celebrities taking or i should say refusing

00:19:48.780 to take stances on anything feels like such a far cry from a decade ago even with some of the very

00:19:54.360 people we've been talking about including taylor swift and so i want to just revisit that era for

00:19:59.900 people who've forgotten it people who are extremely young listening to this podcast and don't really

00:20:05.860 remember what that was like. My real pop awakening that coincided with my gay awakening was 2009,

00:20:14.000 2010, which is when Lady Gaga released Born This Way. Gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgender

00:20:19.860 life, like saying the word transgender in a pop song that was on the radio. Wow. Woke really was 0.73

00:20:26.800 alive and well. That like had a real impact on me. That really, to me, kicked off the decade of like

00:20:33.260 so much sort of like political celebrity activism type stuff. And I do think for a lot of them,

00:20:38.400 it started in earnest. You know, there were multiple global social justice campaigns and

00:20:46.400 movements that were taking place in the 2010s. And because the support was so huge, it was

00:20:55.080 something that became safe for a lot of these celebrities to adopt it into their brands,

00:21:02.020 because that's really what it is so it was black lives matter it was you know support for victims

00:21:09.880 of uh sexual abuse through movements like me too other movements like time's up i mean there was a

00:21:16.160 lot that was happening in the 2010s gay marriage occupy i think what can be really tough to know

00:21:23.160 is like okay so let's say people are obviously capitalizing they go oh gay is in or wow gay fans

00:21:29.880 really participate they see shows and they buy tickets and and there's a there's a part where

00:21:35.060 it's like okay even if it's cynical if it's for a good cause if it's if it's for like being more

00:21:41.040 accepting is it a good thing ultimately and then when the tides turn economically you go

00:21:47.320 did we get any progress that lasts when the money's not there and i don't i don't know the

00:21:53.880 answer to that because part of me is like it is good i remember my gay roommate in college from

00:21:59.560 musical theater playing born this way and they were moved and it was a beautiful thing absolutely

00:22:05.320 i do think nuance can be held in the conversation of like a lot of the work that these people put

00:22:11.120 out when it's economically viable to do so has a positive impact like firework by katie perry

00:22:18.120 that music video showed two young gay guys kissing and i sat in my bedroom in middle school

00:22:27.080 and I would the one second one second where they kissed I replayed it over and over and over and

00:22:33.460 over and over again and I was like this is like baby you're a firework yeah I was like I was like

00:22:39.020 I want that like that's real to me so so I think like the net effect of that stuff can be good

00:22:44.480 and then also we have to ask these questions relating to capitalism which is like why did

00:22:51.600 all of this stuff come out at a very specific time in pop culture and why isn't really happening now

00:22:55.900 in the same way you know what i mean just so you know matt the experience that you had watching

00:23:00.540 firework with katie perry is the same experience young straight guys now have watching the sydney

00:23:06.140 sweeney eagles at they go oh oh my god that means so much to me oh my god it's finally a safe time

00:23:15.640 to be young straight men in america wow it really is i mean look i think there are we have to make

00:23:20.540 a difference too uh in social issues that are still a lot safer safer you know as far as you're

00:23:29.480 not going to get as much backlash or you won't worry about as much controversy and i think

00:23:33.920 supporting you know supporting the lgbtq community uh is one that a lot of artists will still kind of

00:23:42.560 hide behind i think when they don't want to talk about palestine when they don't want to talk about

00:23:47.900 Palestine. I mean, this all comes down, I think this conversation today to talking about how

00:23:53.580 Palestine is the litmus test for a lot of these artists, for a lot of these celebrities who have

00:23:59.260 built these brands out of championing equality, championing acceptance, you know, appealing to

00:24:05.000 marginalized groups who they have profited from that. Like these are social issues that have

00:24:09.800 helped further their careers that have helped increase their, their net worth, um, have grown

00:24:14.080 their audiences. But at the end of the day, there is still safety in, say, going, I love gay people,

00:24:22.100 you know, let's all be gay versus talking about support for Palestinian liberation.

00:24:28.480 Yes. There's a lot of homophobia in Hollywood, undeniably. But there is also a tradition in 0.91

00:24:32.700 Hollywood of celebrities, but also executives and people high up in industry who are conservative,

00:24:39.700 but are friendly to issues like gay marriage or like the legalization of weed and this is to me

00:24:47.980 the lie of I'm a social liberal but I'm a fiscal conservative because when you are a fiscal

00:24:53.080 conservative and that means requiring you to appeal to power so that you can continue your

00:24:59.100 income and that means you know sacrificing for example Palestinians because standing up for the

00:25:04.820 most oppressed people among us in society right now becomes an issue to your bottom line well

00:25:09.980 suddenly you're not so socially liberal anymore because it's like socially liberal for who does

00:25:13.440 that make sense i guess sometimes i i get curious matt i feel like whether it's neil patrick harris

00:25:20.140 of it all i wonder what it's like as as a gay person to look at israel and i think one of the

00:25:27.220 defenses that they go is they go hey this place is more friendly towards gay rights than other

00:25:35.600 places in the world and that is the hook of like that's why i support this thing we will put a pin

00:25:44.320 in neil patrick harris that we will take out later in the episode but i do think just as a quick

00:25:50.300 note like it's about realizing that like liberation for people is most certainly not a zero-sum game

00:25:56.980 and that like you as a white gay man are not the last frontier of liberation.

00:26:03.260 That's what it means to me. 0.69

00:26:05.700 And this is like such a syndrome that a lot of like white gay men have, frankly. 0.62

00:26:10.460 I mean, a lot of people have it, but it's like white gay men have it in their own way 0.58

00:26:13.080 where they are just so invested in like LGBT pride causes or AIDS related causes

00:26:19.780 and that stuff is all good.

00:26:21.200 But they think that it's like where it stops, you know,

00:26:24.760 and that if you have freedom to walk down the street in Tel Aviv as a gay man,

00:26:32.320 then that's sort of like the moral endgame for you as a human being on this planet.

00:26:37.080 And it's like, well, I mean, it's just not.

00:26:39.260 Like there's just other people who have it worse than us right now.

00:26:42.660 And that's not about making a competition of suffering.

00:26:45.000 It's just like, okay, but I can understand my suffering

00:26:48.060 and I am willing to fight back on it.

00:26:50.220 So we should be able to do the same for other people.

00:26:52.660 I always think about, like, Emil Joaquin, who was on SNL for one season, should have been renewed, but wasn't. And he did this very brave moment on Weekend Update, where he was basically like, you know, if you stop bombing Gaza, like, they'll say, oh, you can't have gay rights in Gaza, like, stop bombing them, they'll get to gay. 0.94

00:27:11.040 yeah but you have to stop bombing them first and i i think about it that way it's not a zero-sum 0.57

00:27:17.720 game where like i get my gay rights or neil patrick harris gets his gay rights and then

00:27:21.340 you know so gaza can't have or they get their rights in gaza so i can't have my rights as a

00:27:24.960 gay man it's just you have to think bigger than that you know yeah it's it's really like a thing

00:27:29.440 like not realizing like yeah there's gay palestinians it's just not seeing obviously a group

00:27:35.720 of people as as people and it's like it's like yeah it's it's if we're talking about gay rights

00:27:41.640 it's not just gay rights of the people on this border that keeps expanding it it is it's global

00:27:49.440 anyway not to zoom through a decade too quickly and not to simplify it but this was sort of a

00:27:55.960 theme throughout the 2010s where like beyonce taylor swift katie perry gaga kesha i mean i

00:28:01.660 just named women because that's who I think about as a gay guy who loves pop music. But everyone

00:28:06.020 sort of like did this political pop. To me, this reached a saturation point with Taylor Swift's

00:28:12.160 You Need to Calm Down music video, which sort of just represented homophobia as this like Westboro

00:28:18.760 Baptist Church style, like incoherent hatred, which is not typically how homophobia I think

00:28:24.660 shows up for a lot of people. And it just seems like a really cynical weaponization, I think,

00:28:31.260 to a lot of gay people of like LGBT culture and celebrities.

00:28:34.600 I also think about this decade through the lens of The Prom,

00:28:38.540 which was a, it was a musical

00:28:40.600 and then adapted by Ryan Murphy into a movie

00:28:42.700 that was not good, but the premise is funny

00:28:45.640 because The Prom is about a group of flailing celebrities

00:28:49.820 who feel like they need to attach themselves

00:28:52.920 to like a safe cause to revive their careers.

00:28:56.280 So one of them goes on Twitter and learns

00:28:57.920 that a high school in Indiana has canceled their prom

00:29:00.760 because a lesbian student wanted to bring her girlfriend.

00:29:03.460 So the celebrities then go to that town in Indiana

00:29:06.460 and like cynically attach themselves

00:29:08.780 to this girl's cause for their own benefit.

00:29:11.740 And then of course it becomes like a heartwarming thing,

00:29:13.600 but that's the premise.

00:29:15.660 That's to me, like a lot of the 2010s

00:29:18.260 was celebrities being like,

00:29:19.420 what's a brand safe cause to utilize for my career?

00:29:23.380 Well, I think what also needs to be mentioned

00:29:25.760 is Beyonce's Superbowl halftime show

00:29:28.600 when she had the, you know, revolutionary Black Panther aesthetics. It was very explicit

00:29:35.960 in the symbolism. And there are still Beyonce fans who just like other, you know, stands of

00:29:45.300 any major, major pop star who try and do the whole, no, no, no, Beyonce is actually, you know,

00:29:52.980 She's she's not just a billionaire. She's not just a massive brand and everything she does is in service of that, who will still point to that Super Bowl performance as in. 0.53

00:30:05.360 No, no, no. But that was that's Beyonce. You know, don't focus on the fact that as Beyonce has become a billionaire, she and Jay-Z have only, you know, quadrupled their wealth, 0.98

00:30:15.960 that they have become less and less even participating in this display of political

00:30:24.840 aesthetics. Was there a picture of the two of them? They were like getting dinner with

00:30:28.360 the Kushners, weren't they? Yes. Yes. A few months ago, Beyonce and Jay-Z were at some 1.00

00:30:35.660 like fundraising gala or something with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner sitting at a table with

00:30:41.100 them. I mean, look, I know Beyonce has shooters, you know, as do Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and

00:30:49.660 all these people. Obviously, I'm on Twitter. I know that they exist. You can love these people's

00:30:54.820 work. I have loved a lot of these people's work. And you should be able to criticize them. You

00:31:00.460 know, like, please just know that before you come into the comment section. It's kind of the opposite

00:31:05.600 of separating the art from the artist

00:31:07.620 where it's like just because

00:31:09.680 someone's art is good

00:31:11.200 doesn't mean that the artist is good

00:31:13.800 as well. If you're

00:31:15.760 a fucking billionaire, that speaks a lot 1.00

00:31:17.920 to who you are as 1.00

00:31:19.740 a human being and you

00:31:21.460 don't have to go, oh, their art is bad or

00:31:23.720 their art doesn't even present

00:31:25.180 as revolutionary or their art

00:31:27.600 doesn't say something good

00:31:29.280 but that doesn't mean the artist themselves

00:31:31.320 is a good person

00:31:33.260 and I don't think they should be allowed to like

00:31:35.580 ride on the image that they are a good person while they participate in bad things yeah this

00:31:42.200 is a quote from an essay from jason king in 2019 and pitchfork called activism identity politics

00:31:48.520 and pop's great awokening only a small handful of moneyed elite superstars have enough of a

00:31:54.600 platform and budget to be able to make certain kinds of highly charged political statements

00:31:58.700 even in a diminished music economy but the flip side is that those same artists are not likely to

00:32:04.740 upset, disrupt or criticize the capitalist system that has facilitated their success. And I think

00:32:12.000 that's ultimately like what you saw happen with this decade. Times and presidents changed. The

00:32:17.740 political landscape became less conducive to celebrity branding. And the vast majority of them,

00:32:22.760 I think, dropped that part of their brand as quickly as they had adopted it. And I want to

00:32:27.120 note here that Taylor Swift and Beyonce both recently showed their tour films in Israel.

00:32:34.740 Now, anyone who knows about, you know, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement knows that cultural boycott is a key component of that.

00:32:42.820 You are not supposed to show your tour film in Israel.

00:32:46.740 That's, you know, part of a peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza.

00:32:52.060 And I just remember specifically there was a video that came out of a theater, a movie theater in Israel.

00:32:58.540 I don't know if you guys saw this.

00:32:59.960 I was at the screening.

00:33:01.660 OK.

00:33:03.240 All right, funny guy.

00:33:04.740 pack it up they were in the theater and they were waving israeli flags singing you won't break my

00:33:13.280 soul yes and all of that is part of reputational whitewashing that is normalizing these unbelievable 0.62

00:33:22.280 crimes against humanity that are committed on a every single day basis and of course and it's

00:33:26.720 like the reason they're doing it is because the it's it's the bottom line is they they want money

00:33:31.760 And it's the same way that a company, if they found out that they could dispose of their waste in the local lake and it saved them money, they would do it.

00:33:40.040 But we have laws, hopefully, that are all going away, laws that say you can't.

00:33:44.080 And when it comes to art, unfortunately, you might not have laws that govern where the art can be spent.

00:33:49.960 And it's up to the fans to make economic decisions that put pressure on these – because Beyoncé is not a person. 0.98

00:33:58.560 She's a company.

00:33:59.300 it's it's about the consumers to enforce the social laws and pressures that that force them

00:34:06.540 navigate things i don't think they made the decision and i could be wrong i don't think

00:34:10.460 they made the decision about israel because it was like well i i believe i believe in in the

00:34:15.780 right for israel to exist they they go it's a lot of money it's a lot of money and it's like

00:34:21.520 yeah it's it's up to the the fans as annoying or as they'll be painted as annoying or woke or 0.70

00:34:27.880 whatever the fuck that's the only guardrails that these corporate entities of artists have

00:34:34.220 to to guide them because there's no laws people are the laws they are the rules they are the guides 0.97

00:34:40.980 and it's it's tough if you love an artist but that's that's your role as a consumer exactly

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00:36:21.240 So I know that a lot of things have changed in the world since Trump won, since the 2010s,

00:36:28.100 since this like sort of woke era of pop culture as we've been describing it. However, my personal

00:36:33.880 thesis around all of this that we circled around a little bit is that October 7th fundamentally

00:36:39.320 changed the way that celebrities think of themselves as like having roles in political

00:36:45.820 discourse and their willingness to say anything about anything. Do you think that is a fair thesis?

00:36:51.760 Yeah, it made it way more complicated than I think it had been in the past. Even when I think about

00:36:58.180 when I was younger, it was so easy to be like, oh, I'm a Democrat because it was centered around

00:37:03.140 gay rights, which again, Democrats were never spotless in that record. But it was like, oh, 0.60

00:37:08.400 this is an easy thing it's like this side is against gay people getting married this side is

00:37:13.960 for it and i think that childish view of the world it was the celebrity view with a lot of issues

00:37:21.120 and suddenly they were like oh the world's more complex than this and all you know it's not easy

00:37:27.740 to make a statement and just rake in money do do any of you want to talk about your experience in

00:37:33.760 the entertainment industry around and in the aftermath of October 7th because like I'll start

00:37:39.920 like does anyone want to talk about it I do but like I had representation as like an as like an

00:37:50.100 influencer at at a big talent agency before October 7th and um I you know I've told this

00:37:56.460 story to my friends but I started speaking out about Palestine because I thought it was the

00:38:02.540 morally correct thing to do not long after October 7th because the genocide started and

00:38:07.980 ramped up very quickly. It did not go over well at that talent agency. And there were lots of

00:38:14.400 headlines coming out at the time about all sorts of people like more famous and in traditional

00:38:18.900 media than I was being punished by these similar talent agencies like Susan Sarandon, like Melissa

00:38:24.640 Barrera. I remember before I was officially dropped by that talent agency, I at one point was

00:38:31.940 um in a zoom call with celebrities like real celebrities who were all kind of like you know

00:38:39.420 getting from their fans online like what do you think about israel what do you think about

00:38:42.540 palestine what do you think october 7th october 7th say something say something say something

00:38:45.800 and for the first time like you said john marco because a lot of these people had simplified

00:38:51.300 ideas of just like well we're anti-trump so we define our politics as being anti-trump they were

00:38:56.500 like, we don't know what to say because we don't know a lot about this. And the sort of like

00:39:02.020 institutional messaging around what you could and couldn't say was very explicit. And that I think

00:39:10.380 is why I did not last at that talent agency. And that was totally fine because now I do, you know,

00:39:15.360 everything by myself and I'm very happy that way. But there was, and I think we all remember this,

00:39:20.140 but especially if you were sort of inside of the entertainment industry around that point,

00:39:24.460 there was a real silencing of dissent. I mean, like Melissa Barrera dropped from Scream. I think

00:39:32.100 the chilling effect was just undeniable. And to me, that is the turning point because as the

00:39:39.980 genocide got worse and as public opinion changed and as it sort of just became undeniable, you

00:39:45.020 couldn't deny what was in front of your eyes, a lot of people in entertainment were forced to do

00:39:51.560 so and look at what happened to rachel zegler right and just the constant harassment from 1.00

00:39:57.100 entertainment media from fans from her own bosses that muddied the waters in terms of celebrities 0.99

00:40:04.000 feeling like they knew anything about anything or had a place in saying anything political about

00:40:08.500 anything i just think the chilling effect was so large and so like am i gonna ever be hired again

00:40:15.960 if i step into politics meanwhile three years ago you were talking about blm you were talking about

00:40:21.460 gay marriage you were talking about all of this stuff but now it's all just too complicated because

00:40:26.100 Palestine like I really do think it it's not all that simple but I think that's a huge part of it

00:40:32.320 I mean it's it's stressful in a way like you and I uh just speaking in terms of like what are

00:40:38.560 what our businesses are we have a very direct one-to-one relationship with people that

00:40:44.460 ultimately result in us making a living and I do think a lot of these these actors some of them

00:40:50.460 It's like they really are in this system that they – for some of them, they didn't realize how Zionist it was.

00:40:56.180 And there's so many powerful people that have a firm line about this one thing.

00:41:01.980 And they'll – listen, agents are not known for having kind of a strict moral backbone.

00:41:06.860 They'll represent Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon on the same agency.

00:41:11.900 If people understood who these agencies represented and how these three major agencies represent people across the spectrum, and in a way there was a freedom in that as a performer, you said, well, I didn't have to bend the knee to anything because they don't have any conscience.

00:41:27.840 And then there was this one thing. There was this one thing where it was like, actually, we do care about that. And in a way, I didn't feel an effect because frankly, I wasn't successful enough that it mattered. I wasn't in a movie to be kicked off of. My business is a one-to-one with people buying tickets or not.

00:41:50.580 And I got the benefit, of course, of being a Jewish person, a Jewish man. Let's do the full of straight Jewish man. Let's do the full spectrum of all the privileges I had to speak out and be honest with whatever. But but I think a lot of these actors were terrified, were terrified because I think for some of them, it did threaten their whole livelihood and they didn't realize it. 0.91

00:42:11.760 and unfortunately they had benefited off the social causes that that were easy to speak on

00:42:17.680 and were confronted with something new it's like yeah you you made a you made a deal with

00:42:22.480 with the devil to a degree and now you have to face it one thousand percent there was and still

00:42:29.760 is blacklisting that's happening uh when melissa barrera's firing was so public and caused a huge 0.93

00:42:37.720 backlash. And I think that that was not anticipated because again, for the most part in the entire

00:42:44.400 history here, people have been kept in the dark about Israel's behavior. They have been largely

00:42:50.340 like, oh yeah, Israel, democracy, ally in the Middle East, great friend to the US. And so when

00:42:55.720 things started to switch, there was a backlash to these firings. And so what they did instead was

00:43:02.860 they kept blacklisting, but they did it behind closed doors. They did not make it as obvious.

00:43:08.940 And I remember, I mean, I covered this on stream on October 7th. And looking back on that, that was

00:43:15.620 wild because I did not anticipate what would happen afterwards. So my career, I was working

00:43:23.860 in the entertainment industry, COVID happened, and then I switched to being a digital content

00:43:27.820 creator. And I covered the events as they were unfolding on October 7th. And that led to crazy

00:43:35.820 smear campaign, just the worst harassment I've ever experienced in my life. I was thinking to myself,

00:43:40.680 if I were still trying to pursue a career in Hollywood, I'm fucked. Like if I ever try to go 0.99

00:43:46.300 back, you know, if I ever try to go back and be a screenwriter, um, you know, I still have some,

00:43:50.280 some scripts floating around. Like I still have a script at this one, uh, production company.

00:43:54.200 I am fucked because of how obviously the blacklisting of people who have this perspective 0.97

00:44:03.920 have been taking this stance is. And I know we've mentioned talent, high profile talent who got 0.99

00:44:09.140 fired. But do you all remember Maha Dakhil? I think her name is. Maha Dakhil. Yes. She was

00:44:15.640 head of co-film at CAA, I think. Yes. And they came for her. And you know what's fascinating

00:44:22.880 about the Maha Dakhil story.

00:44:24.840 So she is one of the biggest agents at CAA,

00:44:27.280 which is one of the biggest talent agencies

00:44:28.920 in entertainment.

00:44:30.460 She represents Tom Cruise, Madonna,

00:44:34.080 Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman,

00:44:36.420 these enormous blockbuster artists.

00:44:39.460 What happened, because what she posted

00:44:41.780 on her Instagram story shortly after the genocide began

00:44:44.680 was a graphic that said,

00:44:47.140 if you're ever wondering what you'd be doing

00:44:48.720 during a genocide, this is it.

00:44:50.940 Which by today's standards

00:44:52.320 is a sort of run-of-the-mill take.

00:44:55.280 But at the time, you could not say that.

00:44:58.140 But did they fire her? 1.00

00:45:00.240 No, because she brought in too much money. 1.00

00:45:04.780 What they did was they punished her within CAA. 1.00

00:45:07.580 They took her off of some board that she was on,

00:45:12.080 I think temporarily.

00:45:13.780 And to me, the hope in that story

00:45:16.880 is that we need our own structures

00:45:19.920 that have moral clarity.

00:45:21.460 And that's why, I mean, that's why we live in a capitalist country. And so part of it is like, you have to decide financially to support the things that you want. I don't think we're ever going to have a major agency. America will crumble before there is a major agency that competes with the big three that is not a very Zionist leading industry. It's not going to happen.

00:45:47.360 That's why you got to support completely non-problematic celebrities like Tom Cruise, because so many people, they're there.

00:45:57.140 But but listen, the world's complicated.

00:46:00.120 It's a good thing what Tom Cruise did.

00:46:02.500 To be clear, Tom Cruise stood up for Maha Tequila, and that's part of why they did not fire her completely.

00:46:07.700 Yes. And Tom Cruise is he kills me because he's done a lot of great things.

00:46:11.820 You know how he protects people on sets, make sure people are compensated.

00:46:15.020 But then at the same time, it's just a little Scientology thing.

00:46:17.660 But yes, you're right. 0.75

00:46:18.520 It's like what needed to happen and then what did happen was people with real power who Tom Cruise himself might not be, you know, out there educating around what it means to be anti-Zionist. 0.87

00:46:31.080 But he stepped in to use his power in the industry to stop them from completely throwing Maha Dakil in the trash. 0.73

00:46:41.320 And that's why it can sometimes feel exhausting.

00:46:43.360 I do understand when people get kind of tired of celebrities choosing what pin to wear at whatever festival and as if that's worthy of applause.

00:46:52.640 But I will say that when you have powerful celebrities who, you know, like a Mark Ruffalo who's going to continue working no matter what, they end up clearing a path to a degree of saying like, look, your people can express this opinion without you blacklisting them.

00:47:09.280 They become a coalition of you can't get rid of, you know, 50 of these top earning actors.

00:47:14.540 They use their money and their power to give head clearance for people beneath it.

00:47:19.860 Because ultimately, sometimes these conversations we talk about Susan Sarandon, who, again, I admire what she does, but she's also OK.

00:47:28.180 She's got money. There's people I know.

00:47:31.220 I know a comedian where it's like they were fired from the agency and they don't have money.

00:47:35.860 They're not going to get scooped up by UTA because this other agency dropped them.

00:47:41.500 And those are the ones that we're not even talking about because we don't even know who they are because they really took a hit.

00:47:48.280 That's why it's not worthy.

00:47:50.360 Oh, Beyonce kind of had a lyric that was cool 10 years ago. 1.00

00:47:55.480 It is the chicks. 0.99

00:47:56.940 They lost their career.

00:47:58.180 And thus, we don't even talk about them as much anymore. 1.00

00:48:01.420 Well, that's how fucked. 0.99

00:48:02.720 Speak for yourself. 1.00

00:48:03.640 I'm talking about them all the time.

00:48:05.860 And good. And good. And that's that's putting your, you know, putting your money where where where your heart is.

00:48:11.880 And I'm never going to go in here like, oh, don't ever support or don't ever listen to the music.

00:48:17.560 We can't deny what we want artistically sometimes.

00:48:20.740 But you can go out of your way to financially support people whose views you you admire because the industry is not going to look out for the ethics.

00:48:29.020 Tom Cruise, listen, he may have stood up for that agent, but I promise you when he wants L. Ron Hubbard's great granddaughter to become a movie star, he's going to come knocking in and get that favor back.

00:48:39.820 This is not an ethical industry.

00:48:42.300 I will say I still have, you know, I have a lot of a lot of empathy and sympathy for people who are caught between a rock and a hard place because they don't have money and power like a Mark Ruffalo.

00:48:54.320 But there are still a lot of people who don't have those protections. And yet you do have Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo and Hannah Einbinder and just a lot of big talent in the industry who have expressed publicly support for Palestinian liberation, have called the genocide a genocide.

00:49:15.840 So when you have other famous names that are refusing to join them, it's like, I don't know anymore if this is working for you as far as the, oh, if I say anything, I'm screwed.

00:49:31.360 The last thing I want to say before we talk about the film festival that is still going on and the Shakespearean drama that is unfolding there. I just want to say, John Marco, when I went on your podcast a little while ago, it was still earlier in the genocide. And I have receipts of the chilling effect around free speech and entertainment affecting me in my own psyche.

00:49:52.900 It's nobody was telling me what to do. I had internalized the censorship and I was self-censoring because after I got home from doing our recording, I messaged you on Twitter. Hi, babe. Thank you for having me today. I had fun. Quick edit request for you. Could you cut the part at the beginning where I'm like, is this a safe space to say fuck Israel? LOL. The message is true, but the tone didn't land how I like to. LOL heart.

00:50:20.540 who who who was i censoring myself for like this is the thing this is the thing this is the thing

00:50:29.200 i know that there are maybe a few celebrities who listen to this podcast i don't say that to

00:50:34.880 have a big head i just have i just know that that's true and it's like listen as a podcaster

00:50:40.580 i know i'm not a movie star or a pop star or whatever but like as a podcaster i am in the

00:50:46.660 rare privileged position to be financially supported through patreon through advertisers

00:50:52.680 i'm good who am i censoring myself for that's the message that if you not that this is just like

00:51:00.700 a podcast for like the three celebrities who might be listening to this but it's like

00:51:05.640 you're fine financially neil patrick harris michelle yo like we're going to talk about them

00:51:10.560 but like who who is this for is this for you can have a second beach house i don't know i listen

00:51:16.560 I'm not Mother Teresa like I'm not an infallible perfect person I'm just like in hindsight I look

00:51:22.180 at that self-censorship that I was doing that I know a lot of these people with frankly a lot

00:51:26.560 more money than me are doing and I'm just like for what you know that's my impassioned rant

00:51:32.580 I just think like listen when you look at what a movie costs to make there's a little bit of a

00:51:38.840 tangent but there's someone who's been very much talking about Broadway is the sweaty Oracle is

00:51:45.360 his name and he like does kind of you know rants about broadway and theater and he's very very

00:51:49.400 funny and but he he's been reflecting pretty harshly on how many broadway producers and whatnot

00:51:56.040 are in the epstein emails and i think the cynical part of me goes like yep what did you think

00:52:03.240 broadway shows cost if something cost 20 million to make and that's the money that you need to fund

00:52:09.620 it's gonna be connected towards rich people rich people are connected to bad things because to get 0.98

00:52:16.720 that fucking rich oftentimes you have to be a little bit of a sociopath and it's the same with 0.91

00:52:21.360 movies where like there's a degree where i think you you get to this point you don't know you're 0.99

00:52:26.200 being constrained in your views because you haven't had to confront it or it's been easy

00:52:29.960 and you get to this certain level where you're working in movies and you're you're you get to

00:52:34.140 work with cool people and fun projects you're famous and you're making you're not just rich

00:52:38.220 you're filthy rich and then you find out oh there is this one thing you should not you can't talk

00:52:45.100 about and you're already here and you're you're these movies cost a lot of money and they are

00:52:50.720 tied to a lot of people that that will not put you in that big movie anymore and you are going

00:52:55.380 to be in pain and you haven't been honest on the way up you haven't necessarily expressed your

00:53:00.320 views on the way up you know rachel zegler she's expressed herself she can now kind of with a more

00:53:06.420 clear conscience continue to be a movie star and anyone who works with her producers directors

00:53:12.200 they will have had to deal with the fact that she's been outspoken and she's expressed these

00:53:16.640 things some of these celebrities they never did they never talked about anything and it's true

00:53:22.200 their careers might change there might be some movies they lose if they speak out and they can't 0.98

00:53:29.740 expect people to not give them shit for it that's the bargain you made and and yeah it sucks it 0.96

00:53:36.040 sucks for you that if you speak out it's going to affect some of the movies you get to do 0.99

00:53:40.820 that's that's life that's life it's also like there are people who are speaking out who are

00:53:48.640 who are students on visas yes exactly you you have infinitely still infinitely more protections

00:53:57.760 and, and privileges than people who are getting yanked off the streets. Like I, a couple of years

00:54:06.640 ago, this environment of fear and, and chilling speech, I get more people who were in a position

00:54:17.000 to, and, and, and didn't say anything, but now it's, it doesn't, it doesn't work. It doesn't

00:54:22.960 work because the other thing is that they're not just asking them about Palestine. It's like,

00:54:26.220 they're asking them about fascism in the united states yet they can't even they're so afraid to

00:54:33.180 say anything about fascism and the beautiful art that they make sorry the beautiful art that they

00:54:39.600 make the movies or whatever having just recently i just did kind of a tour of of some countries in

00:54:45.240 asia and you know i'm i'm going to hong kong and i'm going to i'm going to places where

00:54:50.220 the art you can make is a lot more limited than it is in in america or other parts of europe or

00:54:57.260 other other parts in asia too but like the rise of fascism will affect the art you're able to make

00:55:06.320 and maybe right now you're able to make that period piece where you get to talk about you know

00:55:12.140 like a a gay person in the holocaust you get to talk about the struggle that they had and you get

00:55:17.020 to dive into humanity for now. But that was earned. That freedom was earned. And the things 0.52

00:55:24.260 that we're talking about now will encroach on the movies that you get to make and the stories you get

00:55:31.620 to tell. And that's the disconnect where you go like, don't you understand the movies that you're

00:55:38.740 allowed to make were hard won by people who sacrificed money for humanity. And if you don't

00:55:47.040 have power, if you don't have power, let's say, I don't think anyone's asking, they're asking the

00:55:52.240 big celebrities some of these questions, but let's say you're an actor and you're like, you're broke,

00:55:56.840 you got a movie, it's shocking, it's in a festival, but you were paid SAG rates, so you don't have any

00:56:01.200 money from this. You could go, I'm scared to say what I think because I'm worried it's going to

00:56:07.160 have an impact like at least say that even that is better than going like oh i got a lot of thoughts

00:56:17.280 and you'll be hearing from me at some point just say say be honest about it especially when you

00:56:25.620 have you have athletes at the olympics who are speaking out more than these artists who have in

00:56:33.580 the past you know proudly talked about how political these film festivals are and how

00:56:39.280 important the you know the role of art can play inspiring conversation and fostering human

00:56:45.720 connection and like just the fact that the silence from these artists this this attempt to claim a 0.91

00:56:51.660 political status when you got goddamn uh skiers pissing in or sorry if what is this gus kenworthy 0.99

00:56:58.860 skier gus kenworthy who peed and who peed fuck ice skier snowboard skier snowboard you got 0.99

00:57:08.480 skiers pissing fuck ice into the snow i love that the one sports question was like the only time in 0.99

00:57:15.480 the last hour and a half that there's been total silence but but per your point about money like 0.99

00:57:22.260 people with a lot of money and power you know speaking out like it's the same with athletes

00:57:26.860 Like, if you're brutally talented, like, you know, Muhammad Ali, it was a degree of like, what are you going to do?

00:57:33.600 Take him out of boxing.

00:57:35.160 And this is the marketplace.

00:57:36.680 People are going to fill up Madison Square Garden to see this guy throw a punch.

00:57:40.960 And it's like, that's a lot of power.

00:57:42.500 And he used that power to speak honestly in a way where no one could be like, hey, you talk like that again.

00:57:49.440 We're not going to let you in the ring.

00:57:50.860 In Hollywood, that is true a lot. 0.98

00:57:52.500 But with athletes, especially, it's like if you're fucking the best, nothing anyone can do to shut you up. 0.99

00:57:58.520 But also what I want to say is like when Muhammad Ali spoke out, when he said, I'm not going to I'm not going to go fight over in Vietnam in this bullshit war. 0.95

00:58:06.660 That was at a time when he really was one of the few prominent superstars that was saying that in the same way that the chicks in 2003, especially as country artists, you know, they really were on an island.

00:58:21.940 And so right now there is so there's such an outcry.

00:58:27.040 You got people in Minnesota who are like, I have never protested a day in my life. 1.00

00:58:31.020 You know, they're on the news saying this, but fuck this shit. 1.00

00:58:33.880 I am going out because I can't, you know, I will not sit here and do nothing. 1.00

00:58:39.500 And so this is not even a time period that, oh, if you say something, then, you know,

00:58:46.060 you're going to be by yourself and you have to shoulder all of that backlash.

00:58:50.660 Yeah.

00:58:50.860 Yeah. 0.87

00:58:51.940 I want to shout out Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode.

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01:00:01.700 over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That is rocketmoney.com slash fruity. Now it is time to

01:00:10.120 get back to the show. So in speaking about genocide, now let's shift focus to the site of

01:00:19.980 one of the worst genocides in history, Germany, where a certain film festival has been taking

01:00:25.900 place and it has not been going well. So the Berlin Film Festival has been going on for the

01:00:32.980 last week or so, the drama that has been unfolding there with regard to what celebrity is willing to

01:00:40.940 say or not say anything about what is going on in the world has just been reaching Shakespearean

01:00:47.000 levels. And I want to walk through it. I want to walk through this drama and see what we learn

01:00:52.780 from it. So the film festival opened last Thursday, I believe, with a press conference with the

01:00:59.340 festival's voting jury where a journalist asked about the role of film in politics and specifically

01:01:05.620 about Germany's ongoing support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. I also have a political

01:01:11.800 question. I was hoping to get a quick answer from everyone because since Eva said, you know,

01:01:17.740 change the world, this festival does not happen in a vacuum. The Berlinale as an institution has

01:01:24.200 famously shown solidarity with the people in Iran and Ukraine, but never with Palestine,

01:01:30.880 even today. So my question is in light of the German government's support of the genocide in

01:01:35.980 Gaza and its role as the main fund of the Berlinale, do you as a member of the jury support

01:01:43.540 this selective treatment of human rights? It should be mentioned here that the festival has

01:01:49.220 previously taken hard stances on other global events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

01:01:54.640 First, the Polish producer Ewa Puzinska, apologies if I pronounced that wrong, said this.

01:02:02.480 Oh, not just the Polish producer, producer of Zone of Interest.

01:02:05.640 She produced Zone of Interest?

01:02:07.380 She produced Zone of Interest.

01:02:10.340 All right, here we go.

01:02:13.260 Does the jury want to answer?

01:02:14.500 I mean, I think we also want to talk about films in the festival, but.

01:02:18.540 Well, films are political, as you just said.

01:02:20.900 You know, the films are not political in the meaning of the world.

01:02:25.620 I think you think of the meaning of the world.

01:02:28.240 Asking us this question is a little bit unfair because, you know,

01:02:33.160 this is we are trying to not, you know, we use the word change the world,

01:02:37.460 but of course we are trying to talk to people, every single of the viewer,

01:02:42.800 and to make them think.

01:02:44.840 but we cannot be responsible for what their decision would be.

01:02:49.500 Would it be the decision to support Israel

01:02:52.780 or would it be the decision to support Palestine? 0.55

01:02:57.580 We can talk about Senegal and all the other wars.

01:03:00.960 You just pointed the most, the biggest,

01:03:04.460 but there are many other wars where genocide is committed

01:03:08.940 and we do not talk about that.

01:03:11.600 So this is very complicated questions

01:03:13.600 And I think, as I said, it's a bit unfair asking us.

01:03:17.920 That's real. All genocides matter.

01:03:21.180 All genocides matter. But you know what? We won't even talk about any of them.

01:03:25.440 We always say that this film festival, we want to change the world, but we didn't really mean that.

01:03:30.820 How dare you ask us such a question?

01:03:32.740 Yeah, I also can't get over her saying this is not a fair question.

01:03:35.600 And something that has really left me quite flummoxed is these jury presidents and members

01:03:42.460 of juries at these international film festivals getting caught off guard or going, well, hold on

01:03:47.080 a sec, this isn't fair. As if they don't expect that these questions are going to be asked when

01:03:51.680 these questions have been asked over the last couple of years, when the question arises of,

01:03:57.440 hey, these institutions are complicit, especially Berlin Film Festival, because of Germany.

01:04:04.060 like Germany is aiding and abetting Israel's actions in Gaza and in the West Bank. And this

01:04:10.800 was the same thing when Alexander Payne, who was the jury president at Venice, he was asked about

01:04:16.520 Palestine. He was asked about, you know, are these institutions remaining silent, these film

01:04:22.560 institutions complicit then? He said he was unprepared. He's like, I'm unprepared to answer

01:04:28.180 this question. I go, how the fuck are you unprepared? You're not unprepared. You don't 0.99

01:04:33.180 want to answer the question and when it comes to the matter of fairness i i apologize it's it's

01:04:39.180 like you participated in an industry that's about society and per per what you said politics like

01:04:48.140 like if you wanted to open a bakery and it's it's in your back your small bakery and you're you're

01:04:58.900 trying to do an interview about your croissants and the first question they ask you about is like

01:05:04.160 make a statement on israel i could under i could understand a little more so being like 0.78

01:05:09.200 oh fuck man i'm i'm i really there's a lot of there's this is in brooklyn i was hoping to get

01:05:15.740 some of these sales can we figure this out later but this is the movie festival in germany that 0.99

01:05:21.880 involves political movies like that's the industry you chose yes sorry sorry it's

01:05:28.680 inconvenient right this moment it benefits you in other times you don't just get to pick and choose

01:05:34.700 i love the idea of being interviewed about your croissants anyway so then vim vendors who is this

01:05:41.720 famous for decades uh filmmaker and who is the head of the jury at this film festival

01:05:46.900 takes the mic and says we cannot really enter the field of politics

01:05:51.340 we have to stay out of politics because if we made movies that are dedicatedly

01:06:00.640 politician political we enter the field of politics but we are the counterweight to politics

01:06:07.340 we are the opposite of politics we have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians

01:06:13.940 Boo!

01:06:15.620 So I want to read to you a quote from this man's book from 1988 that he published called The Logic of Images.

01:06:23.380 Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be. Entertainment move-me's.

01:06:33.260 They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change.

01:06:38.540 In every frame, they tell you everything's fine the way it is.

01:06:41.720 they are a continual advertisement for things as they are so what changed

01:06:48.500 palestine it's palestine it's always palestine because vim vendors just last year made a short

01:06:57.920 film in conjunction with uh germans cultural ministry that addresses the current insecurity

01:07:06.400 in Europe due to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, their illegal invasion, and tying that, you know,

01:07:15.380 making the parallels between the end of World War II and the current environment in Russia.

01:07:21.640 And he has spoken about how it is important to speak on these matters. It is important to create

01:07:28.720 art that is reflective of this reality. So it's Palestine. That's what it is. Palestine is the 0.98

01:07:36.160 litmus test. Palestine is the the line that they refuse to cross and it puts their hypocrisy on 1.00

01:07:43.060 full display. And Vim Vendors knows he he knows he knows that this is hypocritical. I know he 0.99

01:07:51.060 knows this because I know his work, because I know, you know, what he has said his entire life

01:07:56.900 as a creative. It's also just like the world that they envision or the world that they seem to want

01:08:01.620 where it's not fair to bring this up.

01:08:03.760 It's like, okay, so is the world that you imagine

01:08:06.040 is that all governments function

01:08:08.140 without any kind of public discussion.

01:08:10.820 And then outside of that, we have an arts industry

01:08:12.740 that just talks about the past

01:08:14.360 and theoretical versions of like feelings.

01:08:17.340 That's not a world we'd wanna live in.

01:08:20.380 And the world of like confronting things

01:08:22.900 involves uncomfortable conversations,

01:08:26.160 especially if you're gonna use a forum

01:08:27.600 where you open it up to questions from the general public.

01:08:30.460 otherwise what do you want you want just everything to go on as it is and you get to put on a movie

01:08:34.820 festival and no one ever talks about things it's it's just nonsense it's it's not fair this sets

01:08:41.360 off a string of journalists asking celebrities at this film festival about politics about palestine

01:08:47.920 about ice etc etc so neil patrick harris uh is at the berlin film festival promoting his new movie

01:08:55.220 journalist asks him a similar question i want to play his response this clip is so surreal

01:09:01.120 when i first watched it i felt my body like levitating i have a question to the director

01:09:06.380 george and maybe neil or bella i was wondering if you guys consider your art political and if so

01:09:13.220 how can movies these days help fight the rise of fascism in europe and america well i think

01:09:19.520 we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now.

01:09:25.880 And so as artists, I'm always interested in doing things

01:09:28.940 that are apolitical because we're all as humans

01:09:32.560 wanting to connect in some way.

01:09:34.700 That's why we experience things together.

01:09:38.200 And so when you get to go to a film where you're caring about the people,

01:09:41.860 you're caring about the heart of what's happening,

01:09:44.620 you know, you're watching this film of these young adults growing up

01:09:49.320 under the umbrella of a world where some of them won't.

01:09:53.000 And I think that is so touching and also kind of exciting

01:09:57.800 and rebellious and horny.

01:09:59.540 And it's fun to be able to witness that without having

01:10:02.940 to process it through a contemporary lens, right?

01:10:08.140 It is so current and yet timeless.

01:10:12.620 So, getting to spend time in strangely sunny Glasgow,

01:10:18.080 Scotland. It didn't rain once, like, for the entirety of the time we were together.

01:10:22.680 It cost us a fortune turning off the air, right?

01:10:25.980 And then getting to just hang out with these amazing people who've had illustrious careers

01:10:32.580 and who are sort of starting their careers as a little group of artists outside of the world conversation was quite unique. Loved doing it.

01:10:47.480 The weather. He gets asked about the rise of fascism, and he, in the short, sweet 80 seconds, dilutes the conversation from fascism to, it's so sunny out right now.

01:11:00.460 The part where I question my own kind of brashness is like, do you go, okay, if everyone knows my political views as an artist, maybe a bunch, a huge swath of the population in whatever, as he said, the divided algorithmic world that we live in, they won't even engage in my art. 0.98

01:11:21.960 And here's where I think it's a little bit bullshit. If they engage in my art, which is about humanity and understanding other perspectives, maybe that will bring out their own humanity. That's what I think the most good faith interpretation of some of these things is, is like, well, how can I persuade a Zionist to see people as human beings if I can't even get them into the movie theater?

01:11:45.860 But the bottom line is, if they never have to confront their own views, they can go see a movie and go like, yeah, you should treat others like you want to be treated and still endorse a genocide because human beings are able to be hypocritical in that way. 0.81

01:12:01.140 But that's the part that I think like what some artists I think probably think or want to project those that aren't fully financially motivated.

01:12:09.680 That's my thought.

01:12:10.320 When I saw this, I was just thinking like Neil Patrick Harris is a gay man who came out as an already famous person in the mid 2000s.

01:12:19.300 He knew what his being in entertainment meant then politically and to have become so privileged that you just drop the act.

01:12:29.000 And this is what I mean.

01:12:29.920 It's like this syndrome that a certain type of oftentimes privileged white gay man has about like thinking their own suffering is the final frontier.

01:12:37.560 You know what I mean?

01:12:38.240 Neil Patrick Harris also was the grand marshal for Tel Aviv Pride in 2019. So I don't know,

01:12:46.920 I guess that wasn't political. Of course. He's not even being asked specifically about Palestine.

01:12:52.900 He's being asked about, you know, as a lot of artists were about the rise of fascism.

01:12:56.800 And I think this decision to say, I'm just interested in the apolitical, to go back to

01:13:03.140 Gianmarco's point earlier of, do you understand what fascism does to art and culture and freedom

01:13:08.080 Do you get that some of the first things to go are art and culture and fascism? It devours

01:13:17.240 everything and then eventually devours itself. So your film might not explicitly be about the

01:13:24.940 rise of fascism, be about any particular political messaging. However, you are creating a film that

01:13:34.140 it has political elements. You have a gay character talking about cancer, etc. I know 0.64

01:13:40.780 it's a lighthearted, you know, it's lighthearted fare, but it is still being created in our current

01:13:48.140 world. They are acting as if this is a world that is completely separate from this other world where

01:13:57.100 all these things are going on. So Michelle Yeoh, who is also at the film festival, was asked in a

01:14:05.700 press conference she did if she had, quote, any comment as an international actress on the current

01:14:10.980 state of the US, which is obviously pointing to Trump, fascism, ICE, etc. Palestine was not

01:14:18.620 mentioned because as I'm trying to make the case, I think the chilling effect is bigger than just

01:14:24.200 Palestine she said quote I don't think I'm in the position to really talk about the political

01:14:29.680 situation in the U.S. and also I cannot presume to say I understand how it is so best not to talk

01:14:36.740 about something I don't know about I think I want to concentrate on what is important for us

01:14:41.780 which is cinema she's like I want to concentrate on what's important to know which is that

01:14:48.040 mad and morrible flip it around wicked witch can i say i actually liked michelle yo and wicked

01:14:56.540 uh so oh kind of a hot take what i'm about to say is not about that a lot of people responded

01:15:03.960 to this statement by michelle yo saying well she's malaysian how could she know about american

01:15:09.320 politics if she was like just some person i could be sympathetic to that like i don't know what's

01:15:17.580 going on, you know, in the political world of Malaysia. I really am sympathetic to that

01:15:21.440 argument. However, there's a number of things that make me question the legitimacy of that

01:15:27.160 argument. First, Michelle Yeoh has a home in Beverly Hills and has for years and also spends

01:15:32.880 a ton of time working here for the last many years. Yeah. Michelle Yeoh is a goodwill ambassador 0.92

01:15:37.620 to the United Nations. Did you know that? Yes. Also, I'm sorry, but we're talking about the

01:15:42.820 United States, it isn't the same thing for you to understand Malaysian politics, because Malaysia 0.97

01:15:49.860 does not have the power in this world, and therefore the influence and global reach that

01:15:56.580 the U.S. has. So all the things that you just listed, yes, absolutely, are reasons why this

01:16:03.780 is totally bullshit, but also because we are talking about the United States. So like there 0.95

01:16:09.200 are people who are not Michelle Yeoh, who are not global superstars who have lived in, you know,

01:16:14.400 have homes in Los Angeles. There are regular people all around the world who have an awareness

01:16:21.360 of the United States because of the impact that it has on their own country. Michelle Yeoh is a

01:16:26.620 full human being with a very long career and complicated integration into actually Malaysian

01:16:32.320 politics. Interestingly, there's sort of just a lot that we don't have time to get to today.

01:16:36.520 But my thesis around Michelle Yeoh skating around what I thought was a very softball question is that she is really tied in to the sort of global elite class.

01:16:48.620 I think nothing represents that better than the fact that her husband is the former CEO of Ferrari, among a lot of other things.

01:16:57.600 He is an extraordinarily wealthy man.

01:17:00.320 Another billionaire.

01:17:01.420 Who is in the Epstein files.

01:17:04.240 Yeah.

01:17:04.420 He was having friendly email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein in 2017.

01:17:09.960 2017! This was not 1999. This is post-conviction.

01:17:15.420 Yeah.

01:17:16.080 You know, I'm not trying to point that, oh, Michelle Yeoh's husband was involved in nefarious activity with minors.

01:17:21.700 But I am saying like the thing that we have learned from the Epstein files is the way that this sort of global elite protects each other and is involved with each other on a level that sort of like ascends morality and law.

01:17:37.420 And to me, Michelle Yeoh's skating around this question has much less to do with like her being a Malaysian, which, by the way, her primary residence for the last seven years has been in Geneva, Switzerland.

01:17:46.640 It is more to me, I think, about her being deeply enmeshed in this global elite.

01:17:52.420 Just my opinion.

01:17:53.320 Feel free to disagree. 0.99

01:17:54.280 I think also, similarly with Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle Yeoh will get political.

01:18:00.820 She will speak on politics when it affects her personally.

01:18:04.940 So she is always talking about representation.

01:18:07.780 She just talked about it when she got her Hollywood Walk of Fame star this week.

01:18:12.100 She talked about it when she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award,

01:18:14.680 the first Asian person, maybe Asian woman to get that at Berlin Film Festival. She got into,

01:18:21.860 you know, cause cause some tea, cause some drama when she was up for an Oscar for everything ever

01:18:26.860 all at once. Cause she had reposted a piece that someone had written. Oh my God. This was like,

01:18:32.120 this was like gay guy civil war. Yes, it was because it was about Cate Blanchett. It's like 0.90

01:18:37.300 you had these two mothers going up against each other. Cate Blanchett for tar Michelle, yo for 0.90

01:18:41.720 everything everywhere all at once. And she had reposted this piece about how a win for Michelle

01:18:47.500 Yeoh would be much more significant because of all the barriers in Hollywood, because, you know,

01:18:52.040 we've only had one other actress of color, Halle Berry, who had won Best Actress. So Michelle Yeoh

01:18:58.280 absolutely gets political when it is pertinent to her own self, when it is to her benefit.

01:19:06.040 and and and like we're all about representation in film like i i think she makes some valid

01:19:14.780 arguments of course when it comes to that of course i'm an asian woman who you know was in

01:19:18.960 the entertainment industry of course representation is so important it's something i've talked about

01:19:23.240 but i think it's and this really ties back into the 2010s when i feel like the dominant

01:19:27.780 form of progressive politics espoused by people was relegated to identity politics yes and identity

01:19:35.440 politics without class analysis doesn't take you very far. As we've seen, it really set the stage

01:19:42.940 for, I think in a lot of ways, where we are now. So over the course of the film festival,

01:19:48.280 these repeated answers from film stars, from the people working in the film jury for the festival,

01:19:54.040 they started to get a lot of significant negative attention online. This led festival head Trisha

01:19:59.460 Tuttle to release the following statement. Increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer

01:20:04.220 any question put to them. They are criticized if they do not answer. They are criticized if they

01:20:09.000 answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticized if they cannot compress complex

01:20:14.460 thoughts into a brief soundbite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they

01:20:19.680 were speaking about something else. This just come on. Listen, it would be one thing if these

01:20:30.240 journalists were like can you weigh in on the texas senate race and the democratic primary

01:20:36.100 between james tallarico and jasmine crockett michelle yo neil patrick harris vim vendors can

01:20:41.520 you are you supporting tallarico they're asking the basic softball questions of like what do you

01:20:48.740 think about genocide what do you think about ice kidnapping like these aren't even these are like

01:20:54.140 majority held positions by people that all of this stuff is bad these are these are really vague and

01:21:00.500 easy questions to answer especially for a festival that's bragged about being the most political

01:21:05.860 well so that's the other thing is amidst all of this i was like what's the tea on the berlin film

01:21:10.740 festival because like i'm not i can't pretend to be a film guy uh so i went to their website and

01:21:15.660 was reading the about us section where they say the berlin festival enjoys an eventful history

01:21:20.360 to this day it is considered the most political of all major film festivals that is on their own

01:21:29.240 website following this statement 81 artists including mark ruffalo tilda swinton javier

01:21:36.460 bardim adam mckay release an open letter criticizing the berlin film festival's silence

01:21:42.720 on gaza and i clipped part of it here we write as film workers all of us past and current berlin

01:21:48.240 participants who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity in the terrible

01:21:53.140 violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians. We are dismayed at the Berlin

01:21:57.420 Hall's involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians

01:22:01.940 in Gaza and the German state's key role in enabling it. Last year, filmmakers who spoke

01:22:07.600 out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlin Hall stage reported being aggressively

01:22:12.260 reprimanded by senior festival programmers. We fervently disagree with the statement made by

01:22:17.540 Berlinald 2026 jury president

01:22:19.560 Vim Vendors that filmmaking is

01:22:21.560 the opposite of politics

01:22:23.100 you cannot separate one from

01:22:25.720 the other

01:22:26.880 then then 0.99

01:22:29.360 Trisha Tuttle god bless this 0.66

01:22:31.700 woman imagine this being your job 1.00

01:22:33.300 she's out here tuddling 1.00

01:22:34.480 she is tuddling

01:22:37.000 imagine being Trisha Tuttle and this

01:22:41.640 is your job every week to just be like

01:22:43.420 it's just hard to condemn genocide

01:22:45.660 You're forcing us into an impossible position.

01:22:48.640 She releases another statement about, quote, holding space for that complexity of the conversation around Israel's genocide.

01:22:57.580 She wrote, not everyone wants to talk about this issue as serious as it may be in their own lives.

01:23:04.340 Some people want to come to the festival for other reasons.

01:23:07.180 The festival needs to provide space for filmmakers to talk about their work, but not necessarily always be the story themselves.

01:23:13.720 this clearly hasn't worked for the activist campaign who want us to say what they want us

01:23:19.080 to say and anything less than that is going to result in continued harassment and misinformation

01:23:24.240 we're in the process of reaching out to some of the people we know who have signed the letter

01:23:28.780 to make sure they really understand what they've signed and that what they've signed is not fair

01:23:34.740 or accurate okay so this actually sounds like y'all are going to be engaging in this harassment

01:23:39.380 that you claim you have been victim to my God. I enough, enough, shut up. And Matt, I texted you 0.98

01:23:48.500 this, but I used to put together, you know, I worked on putting together our slate when I was

01:23:53.520 at Sony and worked in international production. I would prepare my boss to go to Berlin and all of

01:23:59.260 these major festivals. I have never seen this much conversation, media reporting, et cetera,

01:24:08.020 around Berlin Film Festival that has not to do with the films, but these asinine statements that

01:24:15.120 are coming from filmmakers, jury members and the heads of Berlin. So actually, this has really

01:24:22.280 backfired on them. The decision to try and wave this away and then dig their feet in even harder

01:24:30.100 and then release these condescending, ridiculous statements 0.76

01:24:35.580 is unfortunately taking the attention away from the films 0.93

01:24:40.420 that they have so desperately tried to insist upon

01:24:43.380 that that's what it's about.

01:24:44.600 It's about the movies.

01:24:46.320 I feel like for me, you know,

01:24:49.060 it's easy to like look at this wild back and forth

01:24:52.320 that's happening between like Neil Patrick Harris

01:24:54.500 and Vim Vendors and Trisha Tuttle

01:24:56.640 and just be like, wow, this is just the level of drama.

01:25:00.100 But this is what it's really about for me. So the film No Other Land, which is about the Israeli sort of ongoing attacks in illegal settler expansion in the West Bank of Palestine.

01:25:13.180 This was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024. It won the Documentary Film Award there. It also won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

01:25:24.100 In March 2025, months after it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won all these awards and sort of made the film industry feel good about itself, I would say, is the role of a lot of these films and the festival's decision to show it.

01:25:39.760 Hamdan Bilal, who is one of the film's directors and writers, he went back home to Palestine.

01:25:45.420 He lives in the West Bank and was attacked by Israeli settlers at his home and then kidnapped from his ambulance by the IDF.

01:25:53.580 The Academy did not immediately support him in any capacity when this happened.

01:25:59.800 This is a man who stood on the Oscar stage with an Oscar in his hands.

01:26:05.240 Yeah, like two weeks prior, no other land had won.

01:26:09.100 And the Academy had refused to put out a statement until they faced pressure from major A-listers.

01:26:15.220 And another year later, just a couple weeks ago, Hamdan's small concrete house in the West Bank,

01:26:21.900 where he went back to after winning an Oscar, was attacked again by settlers while he wasn't

01:26:28.520 home. But his brother was home. And this just happened. The settlers knocked his brother to

01:26:34.340 the ground. His name is Mohammed. And they choked him until he turned blue in the face.

01:26:38.660 And Mohammed's children had to take him to the hospital afterwards. This is from The Guardian.

01:26:43.920 Quote, relatives in a nearby village who got news of the attack made their way to the Bilal's house

01:26:50.360 and were intercepted by the army, the Israeli army.

01:26:54.140 Two of the director's brothers, a nephew and a cousin,

01:26:57.600 were held in handcuffs and blindfolded for three hours

01:27:00.960 at a nearby army base before being released at night

01:27:04.220 on a road used by settlers, putting them at further risk.

01:27:09.080 The IDF released a statement confirming the detention of his family members.

01:27:15.320 And, you know, their statement said,

01:27:16.520 oh, well, we didn't attack them.

01:27:17.940 It was more peaceful than he's... 1.00

01:27:19.580 Bull fucking shit. 1.00

01:27:21.200 We know that they don't just come and peacefully arrest people for living in their homes, you 1.00

01:27:25.920 know?

01:27:26.420 And so this is the reality, right?

01:27:29.160 Is these institutions show this man's movie.

01:27:32.980 They get all the praise, all the standing ovations for saying, look, two years late,

01:27:38.040 hundreds of thousands of potential deaths later, we're going to show a Palestinian movie

01:27:43.200 and use that to sort of, I think, cleanse the industry's image a little bit after doing 0.76

01:27:49.180 so much silencing of speech. And then when those Palestinians go back home and are continually 1.00

01:27:55.680 attacked by Israeli thugs because this issue has not been solved and because the international

01:28:02.560 community hasn't put pressure on Israel to change its behavior at all, then the very same week that

01:28:08.800 this man continues to get attacked, Berlin says, oh, we're apolitical. And that's what it's about

01:28:15.140 to me. It's like the closest thing that these festivals get to doing something good right now

01:28:21.580 turns out to just be an exploitation. And I think the twisted aspect here is that Hamdan

01:28:26.900 Bilal has not just been repeatedly targeted because he's a Palestinian living in the West

01:28:32.580 Bank. And for decades, it's been under military, illegal military occupation. And these illegal

01:28:38.620 settlers who brutalize Palestinians in their own homes, on their own lands. It's not just because

01:28:44.400 of that it is because he was a part of making this film because he won these awards and the

01:28:52.040 first time that he was attacked right after the oscars that was an element of why they went after

01:28:57.960 him because he had that oscar and the message was you might have a a shiny trophy you know you might

01:29:06.160 have uh won fancy awards for this film but you do not have the power here we will still come into

01:29:13.280 your home and do whatever we want. And that Oscar isn't going to stop anything. And that is exactly

01:29:20.460 what you said, how these institutions will will pat themselves on the back. They will try and

01:29:26.320 pretend like they are not complicit because, look, we have Palestinian we have Palestinian

01:29:32.600 films and these Palestinian films are getting awarded. And so our job here is done. The other 0.96

01:29:40.420 part of this is that for these artists who want to separate politics from art, that is a complete

01:29:48.600 sign of privilege. Hamdan Balal does not have that luxury because his entire existence is

01:29:54.420 political. To him, politics is a matter of life and death. Politics is what strips him of his

01:30:04.160 humanity politics is what allows these thugs to come in and brutalize him and his family 0.98

01:30:12.060 yeah and i mean for neil fucking look i'm not gonna like scapegoat neil patrick harris as like 0.97

01:30:18.800 if neil patrick harris had alone said something then all the world's issues would be fake i know 0.96

01:30:23.060 that's not the case but it's just this evading of responsibility that i find so disgusting because

01:30:27.600 you know what neil patrick harris was sitting in that chair in berlin germany 80 years ago

01:30:32.780 he would have been arrested taken to a concentration camp and had a pink triangle sewn to his vest

01:30:39.500 you know yeah and and so it's just my god and i think the point that's trying to be made is that

01:30:47.980 it's not the responsibility of these artists of these actors to speak on these issues like it's

01:30:54.660 not their responsibility as artists which i don't agree with but i think we should look at it in

01:31:01.540 terms of, well, what about your responsibility as a human being? I also just want to mention that

01:31:06.680 Arantadi Roy boycotted Berlinald. She put out a statement that was condemning Vim Vendors and

01:31:14.560 Berlinald's complicity here and their attempts to deflect away from talking about Palestine.

01:31:23.140 Also, the director of Voice of Hin Rajab, Kauther Ben-Hania, she rejected her award that she won 0.58

01:31:31.140 at Berlin all because of the political cover that they have provided for Israel's crimes. 0.52

01:31:37.660 So not everybody. Yeah, not not everybody is doing this apolitical song and dance. Oh, sorry. 0.63

01:31:43.920 We're just here to talk about the movies. That's it. That's all. La la la la la.

01:31:47.100 To cap out, cap out, to cap off, cap off, to cap this conversation.

01:31:54.180 she's losing it i uh i want to bring up another celebrity not totally in the enter well i guess

01:32:02.860 professional sports is ultimately entertainment space jam that's true lebron james uh made waves

01:32:09.940 the other night when at the press conference for the nba all-star game didn't think you were coming

01:32:15.460 to the bit fruity podcast to talk about the nba all-star game you thought wrong he was asked about

01:32:21.480 the Israeli player who was playing in the game and more generally what he had to say to his fans in

01:32:28.640 Israel. What message would you like to send for Israel? If I have fans over there, I've never been

01:32:34.360 there. If I have fans over there, then, you know, I hope you've been following my career. I hope I

01:32:40.220 aspire to people over there to not only want to be great in sports, but I want you to be better

01:32:45.280 in general in life. So hopefully someday I can make it over there. Like I said, I've never been

01:32:50.880 over there but i've heard nothing but great things and uh i appreciate the question you never heard

01:32:57.040 a bad thing about israel lebron i know you're on twitter i know you're on twitter i see your tweets

01:33:02.660 you've never heard a bad thing about israel get out of here get out of here lebron no one's buying 0.99

01:33:09.480 that bullshit even in israel they're like okay don't pander please get out of here you you have 0.96

01:33:17.500 you have you have so much money just just say it just go oh i i i would love i i oh if i fans in 0.98

01:33:25.740 israel i'd love if they gave me some of their money that's what you're saying just say it 0.99

01:33:29.800 just fucking say it enough with this bullshit we're all tired of it and and i i hope i hope 1.00

01:33:35.520 as a society we just more and more people go shut up shut up stop talking in that fake bullshit way 1.00

01:33:41.600 never heard a bad thing get the fuck out of here i i mean this is the thing with with lebron james 1.00

01:33:50.780 who i won't pretend to be a scholar of but i do know that lebron james has long-sighted muhammad 0.83

01:33:55.600 ali that's like me saying that's like me saying i've never heard a bad thing about your son's 0.74

01:34:01.400 uh ball skills on the court and i don't fucking know anything about basketball but i've heard 0.83

01:34:07.580 i've heard you're telling me i've heard more about your son and not being as good as basketball as 0.95

01:34:13.260 you but but you haven't heard a single bad thing about israel get out of here sorry no it is

01:34:19.480 are you done you don't have to be yeah i'm done no no no that's i mean i know and that's all i know

01:34:24.880 i'm it's just you know he's cited muhammad ali as one of his greatest influences specifically the

01:34:31.440 way that you know if you don't know anything about muhammad ali he's widely considered the

01:34:36.080 best athlete of all time and as a 25 year old in 1967 at the height of his physical ability

01:34:41.520 he refused to be drafted to the vietnam war due to his ethical opposition to it was convicted of

01:34:47.840 draft evasion by the government stripped of his titles and banned from boxing for three years

01:34:53.820 which i think is just like it's a level of moral clarity from a public figure of that stature that

01:35:00.260 is almost unthinkable today but especially from lebron james like lebron james he's a billionaire

01:35:05.900 You know, we're sensing a theme here.

01:35:09.840 I'm just going to read a passage from an article that Dave Zirin, who is the sports editor for The Nation, and who's also Jewish, he wrote this about LeBron James.

01:35:20.920 James has said he has two goals in his life.

01:35:23.200 One is to be, quote, a global icon like Muhammad Ali, and the other is to be the richest athlete in the history of the world.

01:35:29.700 And while these may be two great goals, they don't exactly go together.

01:35:33.620 That's because people like Muhammad Ali didn't become global icons because they were rich,

01:35:38.080 but because they were willing to sacrifice everything, including sponsorship deals,

01:35:41.520 to stand up for what they believed in.

01:35:43.420 This week, the effort to balance the spirit of Muhammad Ali with his life as a 41-year-old billionaire

01:35:49.520 tipped away from Ali.

01:35:51.600 Actually, it didn't just tip.

01:35:53.120 It crashed to the ground.

01:35:55.100 James knows what's been going on in Gaza,

01:35:57.060 and it's ludicrous to think he's heard nothing but great things about Israel.

01:36:00.940 He certainly hasn't heard great things from his old Cavaliers running buddy, Kyrie Irving,

01:36:05.520 who has not been shy about showing his solidarity with the Palestinian people.

01:36:09.140 He hasn't heard great things from current and former NBA players,

01:36:12.960 like former teammate Dwight Howard or Tarek Abdul-Wahad or Eitan Thomas and more,

01:36:18.060 who have spoken out against genocide and for a free Palestine.

01:36:21.620 Hell, during this past weekend's All-Star Game, Irving wore a press shirt in solidarity

01:36:25.840 with the journalists in Gaza killed by the Israeli army.

01:36:28.480 and Spike Lee were the colors of the Palestinian flag courtside.

01:36:32.420 James knows what's going on.

01:36:33.860 Instead of fulfilling his teenage dream of being a hero to the downtrodden,

01:36:37.640 he has chosen to turn his back on war crimes, permitting his fans to do the same.

01:36:42.000 Perhaps he fears what a backlash will do to that other youthful dream of unfathomable wealth.

01:36:47.160 Or maybe he just doesn't care. 0.97

01:36:48.900 The only way to be a billionaire in this world is to be a sociopath. 0.99

01:36:53.500 That's the bottom line.

01:36:54.520 And until culturally, like in a deep way, every person understands that, that having that much money is not a sign of like brilliance or even if it really is more deeper than anything else, a sign that you do not value other human beings and are thus not worthy of people's respect, you're going to get away with that.

01:37:14.680 and so i i just think i just think when you have this much money it's it's it's a warning sign 0.92

01:37:19.420 automatically and and before you know you're gonna start saying some crazy shit like you've 0.92

01:37:24.020 never heard a bad thing about israel i don't know i don't think i could find a world if we were 0.94

01:37:28.640 trying to make a jury and go does anyone have any thought who hasn't heard a bad thing about

01:37:32.940 shut up yeah maybe somebody who's been in a coma for 50 for the last 75 plus yeah exactly

01:37:41.860 exactly exactly caroline and john marco thank you so much for joining me on this episode today

01:37:50.920 it's it's weird and often frustrating times but you know i just personally get through it

01:37:56.900 by trying to make sense of it so thank you for helping me do that where can people find more of

01:38:02.940 you uh you can find me on all social media platforms john marco cerezi spelled with a g

01:38:07.780 a lot of stand up on youtube i tour and i have a podcast that that matt has been on give it a good

01:38:13.120 listen it was a great episode we talked about uh jubilee we we got deep into the weeds of that so

01:38:18.420 it's a lot of fun and that's called the downside available on youtube and anywhere else you get 0.74

01:38:22.440 your podcasts and i said fuck israel and for some ungodly reason ask you to edit it out so i'll have 0.76

01:38:27.620 to return to your podcast and we'll rectify it that'll be the title caroline oh i cannot answer 0.98

01:38:34.140 For you, you maybe will understand a little later where you can find me.

01:38:40.300 You can find me at Caroline Kwan.

01:38:44.120 Some variation of it, though, unfortunately, on certain social media platforms.

01:38:49.180 Caroline Kwan was already taken, but mostly I'm on Twitch streaming just about every night.

01:38:55.040 I love you so much.

01:38:56.420 Thank you for listening to today's episode.

01:38:58.600 I will see you on the next one.

01:39:00.520 And until then, stay political.

01:39:04.140 And stay fruity.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - February 20, 2026

The Epidemic of Celebrity Cowardice (with Gianmarco Soresi and Caroline Kwan)

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