00:01:13.720I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:36.740How often does a founder get to go buy their baby back and relaunch it?
00:01:45.840There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:49.680i'm bridget todd and this is there are no girls on the internet
00:01:56.800the heyday of movie pass was truly one of those you had to be there moments in tech and culture
00:02:04.620if you were swiping that iconic red movie pass card back then like i was
00:02:09.560you probably found yourself wondering how is this even sustainable turns out you weren't alone
00:02:16.360That very question is at the heart of the HBO Max documentary, Movie Pass, Movie Crash, which just scored an Emmy nomination.
00:02:24.900In many ways, the story of Movie Pass is one of those classic tales of what we call in-shitification, right?
00:02:31.580When something good gets wrecked by private equity, relentless growth chasing, and short-term thinking.0.82
00:02:37.260But it's also a story about race and what it means to be a creative Black founder steering something huge.
00:02:43.660There's also a different story at the heart of this, a genuine love of movies, that magic moment when the lights go down and the screen lights up.
00:02:52.760My name is Stacey Spikes, and I'm the co-founder of MoviePass.
00:02:59.540That deep love of movies is something Stacey and I both share.
00:03:06.580So you love movies, and I've heard you say that your favorite movie from when you were a kid is Blade Runner.
00:03:12.920What was it about Blade Runner that just did it for you?
00:03:15.720I think I was 11 years old when I saw it, and it was a rated R film, and I had to beg
00:03:22.540my parents, and so they wouldn't let me see it alone, so my dad took me one day after
00:03:29.060work, and I remember my father falling asleep completely and snoring in the film, but there
00:03:37.280was something about it i had already seen star wars but this almost seemed like a reality you
00:03:44.860could touch that you believed was not that far away where i think star wars was so far away it
00:03:51.280was fantasy but blade runner felt like you know this is this is gonna happen in a few years kind
00:03:57.600of thing and um when you're that young you don't know the difference between reality and what's
00:04:04.460real and what's not and I remember I want to work in this world or in this business I want to work
00:04:10.180in robotics I want to I want to do this kind of stuff that these people are talking about
00:04:15.420and I just found it a beautiful film and at the time I think it touched me like a lot touched a
00:04:22.760lot of people it wasn't a very big box office success um but it just stole my heart there's
00:04:29.380literally on my wall in my office. I have a poster of Blade Runner still up today.
00:04:35.480Do you think your parents knew the seed that they were planting in you by exposing you to
00:04:39.580movies from such a young age? Well, both of my parents were really big movie lovers. My dad
00:04:46.080was a really big Clint Eastwood fan. And my mom was the type that she's a lot like me, that she
00:04:53.620just goes. It's like part of your culture, right? It's just part of your life. And on Saturdays,
00:05:00.860she used to give me and my brother, I swear, five bucks each. And she would drop us off and come and
00:05:09.220pick us up in the afternoon. And she would run all of her errands. And this is how she had a0.84
00:05:16.560saturday babysitter for her kids and uh today she would be arrested for that behavior0.99
00:05:23.180um but true story so every saturday we were whether it was a double feature or seeing the
00:05:30.680same movie again um and the managers knew us and we got our little hot dog and soda and popcorn and
00:05:38.000and um what was what was quite amazing i think after i saw blade runner i told my parents i
00:05:45.360wanted to take a screenwriting class. And the only one they could find was at Rice University,
00:05:51.300which was a college course. And it was a summer course. And my mom got permission
00:05:57.200because she knew some people at Rice. She got permission for this 11-year-old
00:06:01.460to sit in a movie screenwriting course. And I remember my feet couldn't really touch the floor
00:06:07.480that well. When I was young, I wanted to work in movies or something involving like culture or the
00:06:12.640arts and I remember I would watch movies my parents would take me to go rent a movie and I
00:06:17.620would but ending credits I would pause it and look at different jobs and be like oh a gaffer maybe I
00:06:24.380could do that like the idea of of you know being able to somehow be involved in the creation of
00:06:29.980this thing that was so magical that could transport you to a different world from your like suburban
00:06:35.400town was just all like it really felt like something that was a far away dream and then
00:06:41.340you get older and you're like oh somebody has this job why not me yeah it when you said transport
00:06:47.800you you know I always call it riding the light it's like the lights go down in the theater and
00:06:54.380you have even if you watch the trailer you have no idea where you're about to be transported to
00:07:01.000you can go back in time you can go far off into the future you can go you know metaphysical it's
00:07:07.800like you have, you're, you, you have no idea where you're going to go. And I find that always so
00:07:14.500exciting about that experience. So I, I just this weekend, the last three weekends, each weekend,
00:07:23.080I went to see Sinners. And first time I saw it in the same weekend, I went to a regular screening
00:07:31.300And then I saw it on IMAX and then I went this weekend and each time it's a different movie, right? There's something different. You see something else. There's an added thing. And, and while I've never been a filmmaker, I'm always looking at where the camera sits.
00:07:51.200Why did they choose to come up from below or why are they coming from on high or how are they panning and what they want you to see and how the cinematographer and different lighting, like the way Dune would change its whole color palette, depending upon what world you were on.
00:08:11.340Just all of that stuff, like my mind just geeks out on all of it.
00:08:15.500movie pass launched in 2011 but that shiny red car didn't hit my wallet until a few years later
00:08:22.480by then it was just nine dollars and 95 cents a month for unlimited movies so going to see even
00:08:29.720one movie a month made it totally worth it it kind of feels like a fever dream now but movie
00:08:35.280pass made you feel like a god walking into that theater you could be walking down the street
00:08:40.300spot a theater, walk in, and watch something. No planning, no hesitation. And I did that a lot.
00:08:47.040I saw movies I never would have picked, in theaters I never would have gone to otherwise.
00:08:51.800It made moviegoing feel spontaneous, accessible, and even kind of luxurious. I'm not ashamed to
00:08:57.880admit that a few times I even used a movie pass just to be able to use a bathroom in a movie
00:09:02.260theater while I was out and about. So for me, we were solidly still in the this is awesome era of
00:09:08.100the story. But even then, every time I swiped that MoviePass card, I'd think, how is this
00:09:14.540sustainable? Like, how is this making anybody any money? It kind of felt like the money wasn't even
00:09:19.740real. And if it was, well, it wasn't my problem. I want to talk about MoviePass because I remember
00:09:27.560the height of MoviePass. And for people who weren't there, it's like it truly was that you
00:09:32.340had to be their moment in culture. It's kind of a joke in my house. My partner, one of our first
00:09:38.760dates, I was in a movie and they texted like, hey, do you want to get a drink? Do you want to hang
00:09:44.220out? And so I left the movie to come meet them. And they were like, wow, you must really be into
00:09:48.660me if you like left the theater. And I was like, nah, homie, movie pass. I'll just go catch the
00:09:52.640end tomorrow. What was it like to be part of it in that heyday, in its height when like it was
00:09:59.220really popping. You know, one of the weirdest or most outer body experiences that I had was I
00:10:07.080remember going to Regal Union Square and I think it was on a Saturday. And I remember, so where you
00:10:15.340go and if you're getting your ticket in the theater, you walk into kind of this vestibule and
00:10:20.600there's two walls, but they kind of sit almost at an angle. You walk in this way and there's one
00:10:27.520wall here and one wall there. And I was standing at my wall and I kid you not, everybody pulled
00:10:34.080out a movie pass. And I looked over to the other side and they all had movie passes too. And people
00:10:40.400were waiting and it was surreal. It was like, and people were looking at each other like, yeah,
00:10:46.400you're part of the club too. And we know each other and we're, you know, we always had this
00:10:52.000saying movie passes for movie people right and we movie people understand what that mean and that
00:10:58.640was a very surreal moment that's when I knew we were sitting in another world then you were always
00:11:05.120on the grind for years trying to get this thing and get it up the hill and everybody's trying to
00:11:10.760knock you down and it's not gonna work and no one's gonna like it and the theaters aren't gonna
00:11:16.280allow it and and then boom it just it's it's everywhere and that was that moment how did the
00:11:23.860idea come to be you know it wasn't i don't think it's revolutionary it was kind of like
00:11:31.200we should make netflix for movie theaters it was just this idea that so everyone was going in the
00:11:39.560direction of subscription so you had music going subscription you had uh you know streaming you had
00:11:47.500everything going from from your your people were doing food coming to your house on a subscription
00:11:53.740and movies just seem to make sense to a certain number of people who go often enough and what
00:12:00.900you were doing was for the theaters you were increasing attendance and for the consumer you
00:12:06.820were driving savings and reducing mental friction like should i go shouldn't i go then it just became
00:12:14.660a question of do i have the time right and i know for me with my movie pass um not only being a
00:12:22.820creator but a customer i would be in a city somewhere and oh i got two hours before my next
00:12:30.620meeting and boom i'm i'm in a movie you know and uh it it kind of changed the friction of
00:12:37.860it while it may not be much that 20 you make should i spend the money on this it took that
00:12:44.440friction away and that's was a really big difference you know that i saw it happening
00:12:50.220it's like you had to be there if you know you know kind of moment in culture i have tried to
00:12:54.960describe what it was like to people who missed it and i i don't feel like i can articulate
00:12:59.380that that cultural shift and like, yeah, just what a time it was in those early days.
00:13:06.560Yeah, it was a you know, the big thing was in taking that friction away. It was about focusing
00:13:12.800on behavior and focusing on going and just, you know, being in the habit. And
00:13:19.900it's it's weird, like some people might not understand it, but it was also not so much
00:13:27.040about the money. It was about being a member of a group of people whose behavior, it was like
00:13:34.240there are deadheads, right? And you would hear about deadheads saying, like, if somebody said
00:13:41.180to you, I took three months off my job to go follow the Grateful Dead around for the summer,
00:13:48.860you'd think they were crazy, right? But people do that. And you'd see white people talking about,
00:13:55.180yeah, I wouldn't follow the debt. But I felt like movie pass to movie people was not only
00:14:03.660this card carrying member that, yeah, I'm one of those people. And it was, I'm a cinephile.
00:14:11.520I love movies. Movies are a way of life. And movies are something that are so important to me
00:14:17.760that I want to make this investment in its future and my future. And that monthly payment that I was
00:14:27.580making was also a forward-looking statement of my commitment to this art form. And so that's what
00:14:36.420it made it really powerful to me and what we saw with other people. It had that no one had ever
00:14:44.080built a community around movie going there was you're a member of this theater chain or you're
00:14:50.800a member of the disney club or something like that but no one had ever done it around just
00:14:56.360movie going in general um i remember people saying i'm gonna go see uh every oscar nominee
00:15:04.220on movie pass right and they would say i'm and they would post it and they that was that was
00:15:10.880you know such a huge change and i thought something great for our cinematic culture
00:15:15.280yeah like that like the cultural in-group building i think is really important because
00:15:20.680you know if you're a movie movie people are uh we are a weird type of people it's a weird type
00:15:26.580of person who's like i want to see the movie i want to read eight reviews about the movie i want
00:15:30.980to see what they're saying on reddit i want to i want to put it on letterboxd like that is a
00:15:34.540particular kind of person and i think you built something that was like a a way to signify that
00:15:40.820you were in this group so i did a podcast yesterday and i asked them what movies had
00:15:47.700they seen lately and it was very funny the two movies they named i said you saw that in theaters
00:15:52.800they were like no no on streaming no no movie go to the movies and it's funny how you have some
00:16:00.320people who think if i watched it on my phone it's the same thing right like if you got to
00:16:08.060listen to a Prince song on your phone and you got to see Prince like those are not the same thing
00:16:15.700no you know and I mean not to go back to Sinners but I hadn't been to the movies in a while and
00:16:22.020Sinners was the first time I'd been to the theater in the kind of a little bit and we were essentially
00:16:27.260dancing together having this like communal experience I forgot how fun and how special it
00:16:33.740to go to a theater this communal thing the lights go down and all of a sudden y'all are like family
00:16:39.860you're strangers especially especially a black movie it's like it's like it is a special thing
00:16:45.380and there is just no way i would have had as much fun watching it on my couch on tv there's just no
00:16:50.440way no i think the the most recent most fun i had was when i went and saw nope and0.86
00:16:59.060it was like when kiki's running and people are like run bitch run0.78
00:17:07.200yes there is like a special thing you're not gonna get that in your house it is by yourself0.91
00:17:15.780i don't care how animated you are about the movie you're watching and when i went and saw minecraft
00:17:22.660uh that was crazy uh when when uh i saw the beyonce film and when she did uncle johnny0.96
00:17:33.900the uncle johnny track and the the fans came popping out i was like oh shit it's like you
00:17:41.240know it's it's it's like whenever somebody says i watched it at home or i watched it on my phone i
00:24:53.560but the service quickly became unusable.
00:24:56.720MoviePass started blocking users from seeing movies intentionally,
00:25:00.520resetting passwords and blaming fake fraud alerts.
00:25:03.800You know, something the government kind of thinks of as a crime.
00:25:07.540According to the FTC, MoviePass did this to 75,000 users.
00:25:11.980The FTC says that Mitch and Ted knew about,
00:25:15.600ordered, and helped run this so-called password disruption program they were running on paying
00:25:21.300customers. Meanwhile, Mitch and Ted were also blowing through MoviePass' money,
00:25:27.160like flying the rapper 50 Cent to Coachella on a MoviePass-branded private jet. Why? Who knows?
00:25:34.920The Justice Department says this was all a scam. They lied to investors claiming the $9.95 model
00:25:42.320was profitable. When they privately admitted, it wasn't. They also hyped up some powerful AI that
00:25:48.340was meant to monetize MoviePass user data. Only that AI didn't actually exist. Classic AI washing.
00:25:56.020A tech CEO vaguely claiming that AI is doing a thing it is absolutely not doing. Both Mitch and
00:26:02.680Ted eventually pled guilty to securities fraud. They face actual jail time. In just eight years,
00:26:08.640MoviePass went from massive growth to total collapse.
00:26:12.520And Stacey, well, he was out of the company that he founded.
00:26:19.900What did it feel like to be pushed out of something that you built, you know, that was your baby?
00:26:27.500Well, you know, you watch movies and you watch stuff.
00:26:31.640And if you saw a biopic and I don't know, Cinderella Man or some movie where some some lead character, something goes wrong with them, you like you shouldn't have let that happen.
00:26:44.800You should have, you know. And it's funny when you're inside of it and it's unfolding in real time.
00:26:50.840I mean, it was very simple kind of big boy chess moves where it was like we got some investor capital, we had three board seats, that additional money asked to expand the board to five, and he had then three seats and we had two.
00:27:09.300And then he brought Mitch in. And the next thing you know, the dynamics of the board had changed and they were then able to make decisions that we couldn't stop. And you kind of think, oh, we're all friends here and we all have the same purpose and we're rowing in the same direction.
00:27:27.400And then quickly the dynamics had shifted and then you realize too late you're out. But people say, what would you have done differently? And I said, I honestly don't know because you're out raising capital and there are some businesses you can go make a little hair salon or a pizza shop and you have your initial startup capital and you work your way up over many years.
00:27:56.420But when you're building something that is like a national theater subscription circuit, you can't do a little at a time. You kind of have to do it all. And so you have that build cost. And so you have to build fast and someone or someone else is going to build it and beat you to the race.
00:28:16.540Like Netflix, if you can get there and you can get there first and establish dominance, you can withstand the storm because you were first to the party.
00:28:25.880And even when people cut away, like they're starting to do with streaming services, they're still going to keep the one.
00:28:33.480Back in the day, nobody would cancel HBO, right?
00:28:41.580And that having gone through that experience, you realize how how many, you know, a lot of diverse founders or artists woke up, whether it was Sammy Davis Jr. or Red Fox or Richard Pryor, and they woke up and they were broke.
00:29:01.920You got to walk through something similar and you realize it can happen to you, too, no matter how smart you are.
00:29:11.580So I remember watching the girl group TLC give one of the most honest interviews I have ever seen after winning a Grammy for their breakout album Crazy Sexy Cool.
00:29:20.760When asked how can you sell 10 million records and still be broke, their answer was a sobering reminder.
00:29:27.440Trust me, you can sell 10 million albums and be broke if you have greedy people behind you.
00:29:32.420It's kind of a warning. No matter how talented, successful or smart you are, you can still end up on the outs, especially if you're a Black creative.1.00
00:29:42.260Stacey's story is ultimately about what it means to navigate this kind of dynamic.
00:29:47.060Getting pushed out of the very community that you built and being left to feel like you have nothing on the other end of it is a story far too many of us know all too well.
00:29:57.240Stacey writes about this in his book, Black Founder, The Hidden Power of Being an Outsider.
00:30:01.760Watching the documentary, I was really struck by the ways that it was a story about race.
00:30:10.300And, you know, the reality is not great for, you know, folks of like entrepreneurs of color.
00:30:17.620I think it was like what, like less than one percent of funding goes to us.
00:30:22.520And so is there a negative perception that comes with funders handing over a big check and a lot of trust over to a black founder?
00:30:30.880Do they feel more comfortable handing over that trust and handing over that money to somebody who looks like Mitch and Ted versus somebody that looks like me or you?0.95
00:30:38.780Yeah, I mean, I definitely think there is a black tax that you have to pay.0.76
00:30:46.280And I think that, you know, people will let me I'm going to say something that it's my experience, but it may it may sound funny the way it's going to come out.0.98
00:30:57.040I think we are creatures of habits and we follow pattern recognition. And I'll give you a thought experiment and what I mean. So I was being interviewed by, I think it was the New York Times and it was a woman writer and she asked me a similar question.
00:31:15.920And I said, you know, if we go outside, we were at the Angelita, and I said, if we walk outside onto Houston Street and we start asking people, close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like, right?
00:31:31.060They're going to describe or give me a name or tell me what you think of tech founder.
00:31:35.680I told her they're not going to describe someone who looks like me and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you.
00:31:41.140But I said, tell me what a star basketball player looks like or tell me what a star athlete looks like or or even give me a star player in golf or even tennis or even gymnastics or any of those things.
00:31:57.720Well, they may describe someone who looks like me when it comes to that. And again, that's that thing about pattern recognition. And I think when I was working on my book and we were deciding what the cover was going to be, we talked about Black Founder and it was like, I wanted to put my face on the cover so that more and more you're going to see this is what founders look like too.
00:32:23.740Right. And once upon a time, we were not in any sports. And so we had Negro leagues, but we weren't on the main field. So over time, I think it can change. But there needs to be more of us who are out there making it happen and that they get to see us and they start to realize, OK, this is acceptable.
00:32:46.360I don't think it's like racism, like they're not as good. I think it's a categorizing in a way to say, because I don't see this that often, I'm going to trust it less or I need more to be convinced that it works.
00:33:02.880I was reading an interview before we got on. I think it was with the director of the film.
00:33:11.260One of the instances that did not make it into the film was that folks would come into the room and automatically assume, bypass you and automatically assume like, well, certainly this white person is the founder.
00:33:22.520And I think that speaks to what you're talking about. It's not a question of ability.
00:33:26.540If every time you walk into a room like that, the white guy is the founder, I can understand how we need to see more and more founders that look like you, founders that look like me, so that folks break those patterns.
00:34:13.600Um, and, but he would have Julia Roberts or some lead across him and they couldn't, they never touched each other. And then, uh, when I saw Moonlight, I was like, that's a huge accomplishment. It, you saw black love, you saw same sex black love and it wasn't, it wasn't even broke back mountain violent in the tent. I'm taking this shit black love.
00:34:40.760It was beautiful. And that's what I mean by now you can see people moving around in the world and it's fine. It's like Pratt and Recognition. It's one of those strange things about our time, how people are trying to roll back things that are now commonplace and trying to roll history back to the 1950s as if that's something more sacred, but interesting.1.00
00:36:39.780It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:36:47.680Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:36:56.860Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:16.840as like a kind of a source of strength.
00:39:18.540It's like, yeah, I bring a different perspective.
00:39:20.560I can see things that the other folks can't see. And that is a that is a in some ways a gift.
00:39:26.260That's right. So when we started Urban World, it was like you had John Singleton, you had Spike Lee and you amazed or occasionally had another director who would pop up and do something.
00:39:40.980But there was so many other directors trying to break in and trying to get on the scene. And it's kind of like, you know, if we get to play, we're going to rock this. And the fact that the gatekeepers, there was a very systematic type of gatekeeping.
00:39:58.760And what I struggled with was, I don't want to get on my soapbox too much, but what I struggled with was the well-intentioned gatekeepers, often white, their version of what they like to see was black pain.0.79
00:40:20.220And sometimes those of us who are coming from the experience don't just want to see that. We want to see us having fun. We want to see us being the Cosbys. We want to see us making money. We want to see us in love.
00:40:37.520We don't just want to see that. Oh, I feel so bad about what happened during slavery or during civil rights and and the black pain experience. What about the black beautiful fun experience? Right. And so the things that were bubbling to the top were still those same experiences.
00:40:59.580But regular black life or fun black life wasn't getting seen because it wasn't critically acclaimed. And we felt that all of it needed to be seen. And at some point, someone said urban world became to cinema what Showtime at the Apollo became to music.
00:41:20.680Like it became this curation place. And if you made it here, you can make it anywhere kind of thing. If we say it's great and we think you're great, then you're great. And that was like if you wrote rub the stone at the Apollo and you made it there. Forget about it. We don't care what the rest of the world says. We know you're the best because we are tough critics.
00:41:43.860And I remember when Ava DuVernay was our publicist and I remember Ava sitting in the theater. We were watching Dreamgirls. Her mom's next to her. She goes, you know, I really want to make a movie. I go, well, Ava, we got Urban World. Make it. We'll premiere it.
00:42:27.280It says something that she continues to come back.
00:42:29.480Of course. Yeah. And I think it's a it's great to have a home base and it just feels good to have a home, have a people that are supporting you and rooting you and watching you go out around the world, changing the world and our stories.
00:42:46.680You know, our experience and our struggle, I travel all over the world. And what's really funny about these times we're walking through, America's greatest export is us.
00:42:59.800When you go to France or you go to England or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe shirt, they're watching Black Panther.
00:43:14.800It's like we are what they are most proud of. And when you think of the possibilities of America, the black experience is the one that everyone holds up as, oh, that's why I want to go there.
00:43:31.040Sure, you can be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, but we have such a unique experience about coming from the bottom up that that is one of America's greatest exports.
00:43:41.880And yet, why would you want to kill that?
00:43:43.780People love the idea of coming here because of those possibilities, and they see it in music and film.
00:43:51.000They love walking around Brooklyn, knowing the streets where so much of hip hop and coming to the Blue Note and seeing jazz and seeing all of these things where constant waves of our experience dominate the world culture.
00:44:09.100So I just I think it's really important about that's what God gave to us to share to the world.
00:44:16.420You did a TED Talk about the use of AI in filmmaking, and you sounded like you really do think that film and music and culture and stories have the ability to literally change the world.
00:44:28.420And that if more people have the ability to make projects like this, that power only grows.
00:44:33.800I'm going to tell you a quick little story.
00:44:35.900so back in Warner Brothers music history and I know this from the music industry because I was
00:44:44.080there before I came into film when you take you used to have to go into a recording studio and
00:44:52.760you had to record stuff and it was very expensive and the first person to really do that in our
00:44:57.740community was Barry Gordy with Motown now here comes MIDI recording where you can do a drum
00:45:04.920machine and you can do um all this stuff and this 17 18 year old kid has a demo and
00:45:15.200the head of music at Warner Brothers went to see him and it's Prince and he asked Prince
00:45:23.080who played on your album and he said I played all the instruments okay but he had the drum machine
00:45:30.800He had the Tascam four track. He had the synthesizers. He had the guitar and he sang. And you could now go and make an album or at least a demo in your bedroom. Okay. And what that did and the sampling and being able to sample music and put the samples in the keyboard exploded music.
00:45:54.820So what do you think is going to happen when filmmaking gets affordable that kids in bedrooms can now make movies? The same thing that happened with hip hop is about to happen with the longer visual form of storytelling. And you can't stop it. And that's what I talked about during my TED AI talk.
00:46:15.720We've seen this before in technology with music industry.
00:46:19.740You can make a full album off of your iPhone right now, right?
00:46:24.340So the distance between what you imagine and what you believe to happen, the distance between those two gets shorter and shorter and shorter.
00:46:35.740And AI is going to make that and it's going to bring the cost way down.
00:46:39.160Movie making is a very rich person's game.
00:46:41.940you're about to make it that kids are going to blow our minds with the place that they're going
00:46:47.140to take us now it's a very i mean i love to hear an optimistic vision for the future for once
00:46:54.500100 but what do you say to people who say the opposite that ai is simply going to kill
00:47:00.540creativity in film you have people on both sides of the argument kind of promoting doomsday
00:47:07.460scenarios on either side filmmaking is going to become so expensive it's going to die or
00:47:13.400filmmaking is going to become so cheap no one's going to make it anymore well you it never happens
00:47:19.440that way because as artists mature up prince didn't just stay recording in his bedroom right
00:47:27.700and when you saw many synthesizer bands the ones who survived they all went to real instruments
00:47:34.860And you saw bands who hadn't used synthesized or prerecorded stuff go the other way. So why do you see Christopher Nolan and others shooting on IMAX and shooting on film stock? Why do you see that? Because they look at the masters that came before them and there's stuff that they want to do and they play with the technology and they go forward and backwards in time. And that's how all art is, you know.
00:48:02.500And so I'm not worried about it. Artists, artists, tools change and change and change and change. But we are still connected to the artist and their journey and experience. And a robot or an AI system still needs to run through the human, you know, vessel that we as people will care about.
00:48:28.760Right. We want to know where you're from, what block you grew up on, what trials and tribulations you went through to make this piece of content.
00:48:37.360And that's when when the audience will care. If you if it's just I spit it out on my computer, no one's going to care.
00:48:45.880You know, we don't we didn't care if Whitney Houston or what do you call Dolly Parton wrote, I will always love you.
00:48:55.260But when that song came out through Whitney, we heard her mother, we heard Dionne Warwick, her aunt, we heard her church upbringing, we heard all of that come through Whitney.
00:49:13.480You know, that's the part that I think is very special.
00:49:16.080So it sounds like you're saying that even if creators are finding ways to use tech in their work, it really all comes down to whether or not they're doing so in service of creating something authentic, you know, something new, something real, because if it's not authentic, your audience is really going to be able to sniff it out.
00:49:32.340Yeah, we've had. Do you remember Milli Banilli and sampling and people not singing on their own albums, whether it was AI or something else?
00:49:41.080We still crave authenticity and authenticity will always trump that which someone didn't do.
00:49:48.580Even when it came to sampling, we wanted to know where did that sample come from?
00:49:54.140Oh, that's Frank Sinatra or it's a hard knock life. Right.
00:49:57.980We wanted to know. And then the sample wasn't cheating.
00:50:02.160the sample was I'm going to I'm going to bring another world of this white experience into our0.99
00:50:10.300black experience and show you how they're the same I'm going to have Annie tell you it's a1.00
00:50:15.900hard knock life and then I'm a pull Brooklyn in here right well that's a that that pollinization
00:50:23.660is so beautiful and we've been doing it forever so I'm again I'm not overly worried or concerned
00:50:29.440about it we love authenticity and artists are gonna have to be authentic in their own way
00:50:34.160whether you're using voice samples or whatever and we we we know the real deal and what we want
00:50:40.380because we get goosebumps when it happens and you you can't deny it like real recognize real you
00:50:47.260know something when it's authentic and it's grounded in that experience you can tell that's
00:50:52.040right, 100%. In 2022, Stacy was able to repurchase MoviePass. He still runs it today, along with
00:51:00.700Mogul, a brand new platform that lets movie fans compete in fantasy-style tournaments based on
00:51:06.060their favorite entertainment. When Stacy relaunched MoviePass, nearly 1 million people were waiting
00:51:11.400to sign up. I asked Stacy if it felt like he was recapturing some of the magic of the old days.
00:51:16.400it was crazy so in in four days we had 800 000 people sign up for the wait list
00:51:23.840um and people joined and it went you know instantly it it it was back and so we were
00:51:32.180very excited about that and you know we were catching back up when we first were born we
00:51:39.780were the first to the party and then afterwards it's been now that you have uh 60 percent of
00:51:47.100theaters have some form of movie pass right they have a subscription of their own so now with mogul
00:51:53.080and other things we're even changing the space more but it was such a how often does a founder
00:52:01.400get to go buy their baby back and relaunch it you know it just rarely happens you know that's like
00:52:06.940Steve Jobs and Michael Dell from Dell Computers have gotten to go back and do that. That is a
00:52:14.020very rare thing. So I know how lucky we were to be able to do it. And it just meant so much
00:52:21.000of the fans that were so excited and were posting like, I want my movie pass back and
00:52:28.120that they were there when we were ready to bring it back. They were there. They were like, I'm down.
00:52:33.320they love the idea that you can just go to any theater to anywhere you want and just boom here's
00:52:39.120my movie pass let's go you know and that's what's really exciting where all of the others you can
00:52:44.800only go to just that theater that theater chain but movie pass you go wherever you want so it's
00:52:50.900still a beautiful thing and we are continuing to grow it and love being that epicenter for fans and
00:52:57.620fan fandom if you will and um being able to have that voice for so many people
00:53:04.320stacy i could talk to you all day thank you so much for like i honestly just the fact that you0.97
00:53:10.940have built such a great career and presence out of like nerdy like black nerd shit really like0.87
00:53:19.740yeah i it it really warms my heart and you you have such a passion for filmmaking and a passion0.99
00:53:25.220for film it really is beautiful so thank you for being here i really appreciate it bridget thank
00:53:30.380you so much and um i'm actually working on a book called how to watch movies and uh i i there's so
00:53:38.600many times i was talking to people and i would say like going see a kid's film don't go see it
00:53:45.540at night go see it early in the afternoon when the theater's packed with kids like you get a
00:53:50.720different experience. Like telling people how to go see movies can give you a different experience
00:53:56.360than just thinking, oh, I'm going to just go at eight o'clock at night or six o'clock at night
00:54:00.180or where to go see a movie. You go see a horror film, go see it uptown.
00:54:06.660Right. Right. It's like there's places that you're going to get a whole different experience
00:54:12.840if you go do things in different ways and help educate people on how to how to watch movies.
00:54:19.880it's a whole different thing i cannot wait for this book when it comes back when it comes out
00:54:24.520please come back to the show this is yes you have no idea you are like very much speaking my language
00:54:28.780i have a whole thing about how i go see a movie where i go see a movie who i see it with who i
00:54:33.860don't see it with i have a whole philosophy yep it's it's a bad experience if you pick the wrong
00:54:40.740person to go oh my gosh i'll go by myself before i'll take the wrong person same same same oh i