#60. Louis CK, Wrestlemania, and Old Fashioneds
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The review is Louis CK's Sincerely, taped at the Warner Theater in 2019 and self-released on his own website, and all three agree the set matters less than the distribution. Sonny, a longtime fan, calls the hour merely fine — he laughed a couple of times, ranks it well below his best, though still better than 80 percent of what Netflix puts out — and finds the real interest in the black box around it: nobody knows how many people bought it, only that no executive at Netflix or HBO would have absorbed the heat, so CK's own platform bought him the freedom to close the set by discussing the masturbation scandal without ever conceding he did anything wrong, only that you'll get in trouble for it. JVL, who had never seen a CK set, found it very dark and very sharply written, singling out the bit about the crematorium man arriving for his mother's body with an empty red Gatorade bottle rolling around the back of his Ford Windstar, and the wheelchair-in-a-drugstore-window joke where you can hear the set being workshopped as he adds "since the bombing at the marathon" and then builds a second bit out of the audience's groan. Vic came in knowing nothing about him, laughed at some of it, and admitted other stretches were simply offensive to him, while professing admiration for anyone who can hold a room for an hour. JVL ties it back to the WWE, which slaughtered its own pay-per-view cash cow for the $10-a-month Network and then pivoted faster than any sports league in America, taping WrestleMania at its empty Florida training facility, pulling leukemia survivor Roman Reigns, staging Undertaker versus AJ Styles as a stunt-show action sequence, and turning Bray Wyatt versus John Cena into what he describes as Natural Born Killers crossed with The Shining — a Dada-esque masterpiece he loved. Also: Trolls World Tour heading to $20 rental with studios reportedly unhappy with the raw VOD numbers, Cardinal Pell's conviction quashed by Australia's high court hours before taping, Michael Biehn recording a Terminator-voice PSA for Rebeller, and a coda calling Tiger King's seventh episode a mess. It opens with Sonny mourning an old fashioned a third of which splashed out when he dropped his spherical ice cube in from an inch too high.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- On this latest episode, we discuss the return of comedian Louis CK in Sincerely . JVL explains Wrestlema...
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? Sonny, what is going on in
Sonny00:00:26Dallas? Not much. I just want to give you guys a story about what my life is like now. I decided that for this show, I was going to drink an old-fashioned. As you know, I make excellent old-fashions. I make probably the best old-fashions. No one has ever questioned the goodness of my
Vic00:00:45old-fashions. Question, do you make your own simple syrup? I do. Let me tell you, I made
Sonny00:00:50simple syrup today. I made my own simple syrup today because I was getting ready for this. I was so excited. I was so excited. I made just a very small batch, just one cup of sugar, one cup of water. You boil it for five minutes, set it, let it cool, and it's fine. I made my own simple syrup today. Yesterday, when I went to the grocery store, I made sure to buy a fresh lemon and a fresh orange so I could cut the peel off. And you can do a little spritz of the oils. You get the oils in there.
Vic00:01:15Oh, my gosh, yes.
Sonny00:01:16And I got my bourbon, and I poured out the proper amount of bourbon. I won't tell you how much bourbon it was, but it's the proper amount of bourbon. And I put in my bitters. I put in a lot of bitters because I like it to be a little bit spicy. I like a little bit of spice in my old-fashioned.
Vic00:01:31Are those the Angostura bitters or the Peychaud's bitters?
Sonny00:01:34Oh, the Angostura bitters. I don't deal with that. I don't mess with that Peychaud's stuff. What language are you speaking?
Vic00:01:41You gave me that, Sonny.
Sonny00:01:43Is this all English? Yeah, and then I mixed all the ingredients together, and I twisted the peels, and I put it all in, and I stirred it, and it was perfect. And I went and I got my spherical ice cube. My typical ice cube. Death Star-shaped ice cube. And I went to go put it in the drink, and I put it in the drink, and I dropped it a little bit too high, and it all splashed out the top. It all splashed out the top. The whole drink, I put it in, and the displacement. Because the spherical ice cube is so big. Because the spherical ice cube is so big. The displacement, I splashed it in from just like probably an inch too high, and like literally a third of the drink just splashed out the top. So then I said, fuck it. I said, fuck it. And I just filled it up with bourbon. And that's it. That is the life that I live now. That is my life. That's the life that all of us live. We've devolved as people. We just say, fuck it, and we do it now. We're not even going to beat these things.
Vic00:02:42That is as bad as the Death Star exploding itself.
Sonny00:02:45I really mothed it. I really mothed it.
Vic00:02:49You know how you could have recovered, by the way? Can I tell you how you could have recovered?
JVL00:02:53Slurping it off the counter?
Sonny00:02:55Besides that? No, no, no, no.
Vic00:02:56Uncle Nick style? That would be definition of rock bottom. No, no, no. Victorino. Thank you. Very nice. Yeah, that's right. That one, that's a special shot, as we all know, at the bar. No, you said you filled it up. You said, screw it. And you put on the bourbon. You filled it to the top. What you could have done is done exactly that, Sonny, and then opened up one of those dull fruit cups. And that's the old-fashioned. You just know how to have it.
Sonny00:03:21No, that's a palm old-fashioned. That's a, you know.
JVL00:03:24You muddle it.
Sonny00:03:25You muddle it. With a little sweet and low. This is, I've clued many people in on this, so I think it's only fair that I clue our loyal listeners in on this. I may have discussed this on the show before. I can't remember what we talk about on this ridiculous podcast. But the, I can't actually order an old-fashioned at a bar anymore because too many bars, they muddle the fruit and it becomes this kind of like fruit cup at the bottom with like a big. Kind of a party. With like an orange slice and like a full cherry. Okay, maraschino. They like mash it up.
Vic00:03:57You muddle.
Sonny00:03:57Mash it up. And then when you, but then on top of that, they also put in club soda, which is the real sin.
Vic00:04:04No, no, no, no, no, no.
Sonny00:04:05The real sin.
Vic00:04:05You know who did that? I'll tell you who did the club soda. It was, I remember. Do you remember the Sonny? We're at Morton's. It was right before a holiday party of the Beacon. Oh, look at this. JVL. It's my favorite part of, this is my favorite part of the show. And look what happened to JVL. JVL's not at office. I'm going to nod off during the movie part.
Sonny00:04:24JVL's not at office. I'm going to nod off. But we're going to do like 10 minutes on the frigging Catholic church in like five minutes.
Vic00:04:30Club soda, by the way, club soda, that's a sin. Speaking of the Catholic church, club soda, that's a sin. Don't ever do that to your old fashioned. And rye. I like rye.
Sonny00:04:37So I don't, I don't order, I don't order old fashions anymore because I've encountered so many bars that murder their old fashions. But if you order a Manhattan, it's basically like an old fashioned, except it's incredibly, it's incredibly hard to mess up because it's literally just rye or bourbon. And plus vermouth and like a cherry.
Vic00:04:57Two parts rye, one part vermouth, two drops of bitter.
Sonny00:05:00So if you, if you are, if you are in an unfamiliar restaurant or you're in an unfamiliar bar, order a Manhattan straight up. It will be stronger. It'll be, it's hard to go wrong.
Vic00:05:10You know what's nice about the fruit cup thing at the end of the bad old fashioned, you think to yourself, it's so sweet. I'll have another. That's what happens.
Sonny00:05:17Yeah. I've never had a problem getting another one. When did the old fashioned come back? Uh, that was, um, it was an, it was a madman. It was a madman thing. It was a madman thing. Cause it was like, it's an easy cocktail to do.
Vic00:05:27Yeah, it was sometime in the nineties with the return of the mixologists.
Sonny00:05:29No, no, no. The nineties, the nineties was martinis. Martinis. The nineties was martinis. I, I'm pretty sure it wasn't until madmen. Like I want to say it was like 07 or 08 or so that like the old fashioned.
Vic00:05:40Before that there was, uh, um, some of the great, um, um, master mixologists like Dale DeGroff and those guys, uh, they, they were bringing it, uh, they were bringing it back, but then you're right. Uh, madmen really. Uh, uh, boosted that. Um, I read about it and I can't remember anymore. Uh, JVL, how are you?
JVL00:06:02All right. Victorino, you choose. Are we going to talk about Cardinal Pell or WrestleMania?
Vic00:06:09Yeah. Uh, boy, that's a hard one. Um, you know, I'm not really into wrestling as you know, and, and, and Cardinal Cardinal Pell, uh, what happened to JVL with Cardinal Pell because, uh, wasn't the, I Well, you tell us first, what happened?
JVL00:06:27We are taping on Monday evening and mere hours ago, the Supreme Mugawampa. I don't know what they call their court system in Australia, where everybody there is a convict anyway, even the judges. Botany Bay. Uh, but anyway, they went and they vacated.
Vic00:06:46Sonny's God.
JVL00:06:47Yeah, I know. That's okay. Oh, he's dead. Well, you know what?
Vic00:06:52Don't do visual shtick if the listener can't appreciate it because they're all demanding. I'm listening. They're all demanding. I don't know what you're doing. I just see that thing. Now you can see my face. I see that dark bulbous thing.
JVL00:07:04Okay. Cardinal Pell, one of the good guys, we thought, uh, and then was accused of touching choristers and was, uh, convicted in a court in Australia. The conviction was then upheld in an appeals court. He's been sitting in a. Um, the, whatever the Aussie version of super max is, I assume it's got Paul Hogan as the guard.
Vic00:07:30Oh, I was going to say, Paul's not in the jail.
JVL00:07:32No, no, he's, he's, he's a warden. That's how tough it is. Paul Hogan is the warden of the jail. Uh, and the entire thing seemed, this is one of those weird things where from half a world away, trying to keep up on the case, nothing quite made sense, right? So it was, it was two counts or only. The only people who charged it were two choristers. It turns out only one of them charged and one of them was dead. The one who's dead, uh, his mother testified that he told me this never happened. Uh, there are all sorts of contradictory witnesses and the timing of it never made any sense.
Vic00:08:11JVL, you should stop talking right now. If you value your life and if you value your family's life, do not even start making theories. You know what happens? You know, I'm not a godfather. Part three.
JVL00:08:21All I'm saying is, all I'm saying is, from the outside, looking at this, the whole thing just didn't make any sense. And so I always assumed, well, there must be five layers of things going on here. Uh, and the Supreme Court just, unanimous, a unanimous decision. And by the time we're actually talking now, he's probably being released from prison. So they were like, you know, he's going to be out of here two hours from now. Okay. Really? So a crazy, a crazy thing.
Vic00:08:47I was going to say, um, wasn't he in charge of trying to reform the Vatican Bank?
JVL00:08:54Uh-huh.
Vic00:08:57Sonny, I got one word for you. I got one word for you. Sonny, you know what a drink brought you? Immobiliare. Immobiliare.
Sonny00:09:03Immobiliare.
Vic00:09:04Immobiliare.
Sonny00:09:04Oh, wait. Oh, the eyeglasses. Oh. So the, the, all of my Catholic friends were all abuzz about this. Like, again, like 40 minutes ago, I was, I, but I am not, since I'm not steeped in the arcana of your guys, um, you know, cult, I like didn't understand what was happening. And so this guy was, this guy was trying to reform. The, the Vatican bank.
JVL00:09:28Mm-hmm.
Sonny00:09:28And so he like, and then he got charged with all this really shady stuff.
JVL00:09:34Mm-hmm.
Sonny00:09:35And then he ate, then he took. Out of nowhere. Then he took his zinc, uh, chloroxide pills and he, and then he got better.
JVL00:09:44He got better in the, in the eyes of the court.
Sonny00:09:47Chloroquine.
JVL00:09:47It's like a miracle. It just goes away.
Sonny00:09:50It's interesting.
JVL00:09:51Uh, all right. Everything's fine. Victorino, how are you? I would be careful if you walked out into the airport, somebody could come right up
Vic00:09:57to him and just say, Michael Corleone says, hello.
JVL00:10:00And then that's the end of it.
Vic00:10:01So you never know how that is.
JVL00:10:02Victorino, how are you doing? Did you just finish planking?
Sonny00:10:04Wait, wait, wait. No, tell me, tell, I, I want to hear about WrestleMania. Oh, I want to hear about WrestleMania.
Vic00:10:11I was just about to talk about my, my, my. No, I don't care about your. Come on, man. Oh God. Put your, put your arms down. Oh, come on. Yeah, that's right.
JVL00:10:17Like Ricky the Dragon Steamboat over there.
Vic00:10:19I want to hear. I can only aspire. I want to hear.
Sonny00:10:21I want to hear what it was like to watch. WrestleMania with an empty crowd. What is this like a two day special? It was like a two day thing.
JVL00:10:30What is going on? So did you watch any of that, Sonny? No. Just out of curiosity. So this is, this is highly interesting to me that the WWE pivoted on their business model faster than any other sports league or entertainment property or entertainment house in America. They made the decision to. Cancel WrestleMania pretty early, which is a very, very big deal because it's an enormous moneymaker is supposed to be in Tampa. And what they've been doing is they've moved their live shows over the last few weeks to their training facility in Florida. And they did WrestleMania on tape. They didn't even shoot the matches live. They were all shot on tape and taped beforehand. And so it's in this small room with no crowd. A minimal number of people working. A couple of the wrestlers had tested positive for COVID-19. There was another wrestler, one of the very, very big main eventers, Roman Reigns, who himself is a leukemia survivor. And so just could not be around any of this stuff as they had to yank him out of one of the marquee matches and put somebody else in. But here's what's interesting. They decided to try to do a couple different things. And so they did not just move everything in. It isn't like playing baseball games in an empty stadium. They took a couple of matches and turned them into something else. So the two matches where they had the Undertaker versus AJ Styles, and they set it in a graveyard at night and basically turned it into... Vic, do you remember the Universal Studios stuntpalooza? Do you remember the guys set on fire or jumping off buildings? Okay, this is not...
Vic00:12:24Not to be confused with like the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing that they did at Universal where there's the escape and the plane and the whole deal. But it was a special effect and there's a big explosion and you could feel the heat, I think.
JVL00:12:37So that is essentially what this thing... So it wasn't even a match. It was like watching a scene from an action movie, right, where a bunch of guys are fighting and doing crazy, crazy violence against each other and falls off a 20-foot roof. And it's cut, there's background music, it was edited together so it was not like watching one continuous match. It was interesting. I thought that was sort of a failure. But then the other big thing they did was they took Bray Wyatt and matched him up against John Cena. And the only way I can explain what they did is imagine if you took Natural Born Killers and mixed it with The Shining but made it into a wrestling match. And had it be a wrestling match which was really a celebration of WWE heritage going back to the Hulk Hogan days. Do they have like actual refs there in the whole thing then? Is it just a free-for-all? No, no, no. The whole thing was shot in, I don't even know how to describe it. It was this Dada-esque masterpiece, highly produced, where they were cutting like... Forrest Gump style, like the modern day, you know, John Cena into old footage and having the two of them sort of reenacting other like, you know, Paul Orndorff and Hulk Hogan being together. Everything of it. And that thing worked like crazy because it's the big storytelling thing. I mean, it was like watching, I don't know, like watching a Greek myth come to life or something. It was super cool and super interesting. And the extent to which the WWE was willing to experiment with the form and try to take the constraints imposed by the pandemic and to really kind of be forward looking and think about, okay, so what is this product really? And what can we turn it into? It was fascinating. It is.
Sonny00:14:52Well, but, but WWE has been. Way ahead of the curve on a lot of this stuff. Like, for instance, just the very way they have kind of treated their business over the last five years or so. Right. When did the WWE network start?
JVL00:15:07I think we're now four or five years. Right now. They did. What they did is piggybacked on Major League Baseball. Right. But in fact, the MLB designed their their app.
Sonny00:15:16But what they basically did was they said, instead of trying to make money off of a monthly thing that everybody paid $50. For or that, like some people that some small number of people paid $50 for every month. And then you have the big quarterly ones with WrestleMania and SummerSlam, where where a larger number of people will pay $50 to watch. Right. They instead have the WWE network, which is, I don't want like 10 or 20 bucks a month, something like that. 10, 10 bucks a month. So it's 10 bucks a month. So you basically you end up spending much, much less per year. If you're one of the people who was buying all of the the. The pay-per-views, but you end up spending a little more if you're one of the people who only get like who only got like the one big pay-per-view a year or like one or two big pay-per-views a year. And they they which I have always thought was like kind of brilliant. And I've always been kind of curious as to how it really worked for them. But it seems it might my my guess from what they are trying to do with this is that it is working really well for them because they don't want to stop it. They don't want to have like any interruption in the WWE network. They like need this to be a thing that. That works all the time.
JVL00:16:26Yes. So it has to be a pipeline of continuous content. And I mean, they did something very, very brave. And, you know, it would have if it hadn't worked for them, it would have been stupid, which is they they slaughtered their cash cow because they thought it wasn't sustainable for the long term. And so, you know, whenever you look at, you know, management theory, they always say, oh, if only Blockbuster had been willing to blow up its own business model. Then they could have stopped Netflix. But Blockbuster never does that. Right. I mean, no, in no business does anybody ever say, so we've got this thing that's minting money for us. We think there's trouble in the medium term horizons. So let's let's take a huge hit right now and try to get ahead of it. Nobody ever does that. Yeah. But wrestling did. And that's on the one hand, you can do that when you're a monopoly. And, you know, it helps a little bit. They didn't they weren't competing with some of the wrestling promotion in any real way. But it's interesting. And it's worked out for them. And I got is I really love the WWE Network. It's great because you can they don't I wouldn't say the entire library isn't always accessible. They do sort of roll things in and out of the vault sometimes. But, you know, you can go back and watch the classic matches that we saw when we were kids. Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, you know, Macho Man Savage and and Ricky the Dragon Steamboat with George Steele coming and eating the turnbuckle. All that stuff. It's it's great.
Sonny00:17:53OK, I mean, it's it's not like we know another industry that's really in a time of flux right now and might need to slaughter its cash cows to stay afloat.
JVL00:18:03This is exactly what I was thinking about. But again, I mean, you know what, though? You could see somebody if the entire studio movie business was just Disney, then Disney would have the being a monopoly helps and being a monopoly gives you freedom to do things which are still daring and still risky, but which if you're locked in competition, with a bunch of other people in your sector, you you just can't do. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Victorino, how are you holding up? Has she killed you yet?
Vic00:18:34No, no. And I, you know, I'll tell you what's what's good. She told me that a number of the pay TV channels are now free or they've opened up their vaults. So she she told me she told me don't step on my joke. So she so she did. But she did tell me she's like, oh, you know, I mean, like Showtime is free and stuff. And maybe, you know, and I said, oh, really? I'll check it out tonight when everyone's sleeping. Maybe, you know, they should do for the because of the pandemic race, they should just re-release the entire Red Shoe Diaries, like all five seasons of Red Shoe Diaries. It better be a bordello. What was the entire series?
Sonny00:19:20What was the show that was like? It was like a. It was like a documentary. So it was classy, but it was set in a strip club. So it wasn't on HBO. Oh, G-String Divas. G-String Divas.
Vic00:19:31G-String Divas. You should put that on the HBO app. Real Sex Parts 1 to 26, I think.
Sonny00:19:37That's a good one. No, Real Sex is gross.
Vic00:19:40You know what? That's what I said. That's what I said. And I mentioned it to our good friend, Mike. And he goes, no, no, no. Quite the contrary. It's great because it's real.
Sonny00:19:47No, it's real. I'm like, you know what?
Vic00:19:49Real is terrifying. I'd rather see fake. So to speak. But I did make a joke, JVL, because I said, you know, because HBO and a bunch of these other places now Showtime is free. I said, what about Brazzers? You know, when is that going to be free? And a listener friend of ours then says that he took a screenshot of their website where they are offering their, because of the pandemic, their top 10 best scenes for free. Wow. But you don't even need the whole movie. Let's be honest. Wait, wait. Top 10 by what metric? What's the metric? Oh, I don't want to get into that.
Sonny00:20:24Is it AVN awards? I don't.
Vic00:20:28Rotten Tomatoes. Is there a version of Rotten Tomatoes? Yeah. No. Like, I think somebody told me, like, Hustler used to do this with the rating, but it had to do with something like this, you know, which is like halfway full mast. It was like really good. Or it's like, oh, this movie's a dud.
Sonny00:20:45This show turned into just a hardcore pornography. It is. No, no. I barely even noticed.
Vic00:20:51I, you know, I was. I was thinking about. Thank you, Lisa. For the for the purposes. Yes, that's right. For the purposes of this show and for journals, I was going to investigate the top 10 scenes. Yeah, you should. Talk about Palm Sunday.
JVL00:21:05Just kidding. Sunday.
Vic00:21:09I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's Lent. I didn't check it out yet. Hey, Victorino.
JVL00:21:13Yeah, I got a real question for you.
Vic00:21:14Yeah, sure. Shoot.
JVL00:21:16So you gave up for Lent civilization. In a way, isn't the entire experience that we are having this Lent all penitential?
Vic00:21:29Yeah, like they should make a special.
JVL00:21:31In a way, should they be allowed to play civilization all seven days a week and not just on Sundays because of the extreme circumstances of this pandemic, which have basically rendered your entire life is a living penitential sacrifice at this point.
Vic00:21:45I believe it was mentioned during the Irby at Orby that civilization is now your you're able to play it. You know, I'm going to go ask Cardinal Pell. You should ask him. He's out now. He's out now. Him and him and him and Rod Blagojevich. They're both out. They're both out. Thank goodness. No. Otherwise, I'm fine. I try. I really keep an even keel. I you know, I mean, it's like I'm drunk all the time is even. I still I count and I still have 20 bottles of wine, so I'm in good shape. But I'm say I'm hoarding the good stuff. So I'm just trying to get rid of the bad stuff. Which is, you know, you know, it's headache.
JVL00:22:23Do you take Michael running with you?
Vic00:22:25No, no. He bikes. He bikes.
JVL00:22:27I took Flash out for a couple of runs of me over the last week, and he is still only 11. And he's so much faster than me now. He like it's really not even super fun for him because I'm I'm like, dude, can you slow it? Can you slow it down?
Vic00:22:46Like, I imagine, though, that you'd still have an edge on. I imagine you'd have the edge on the distance like they may have. No, really?
JVL00:22:54No, he could just go for forever at this point, or at least longer than I can go. And he's just quicker to I this is earlier. Again, I had planned for this to happen around 14 or so. Not not at 11, where I'm gasping and I'm like, hey, dude, can we bring it back down to like a 930 mile? Because I'm old and fat. You know, that's that. Wow. Wow. I'm 30. Jesus, what do you know?
Vic00:23:20And when what are you doing? What are you doing? Eight miles, seven miles, seven, seven minute miles. What are you doing over there? Come on.
Sonny00:23:26I, you know, I haven't run a 930 miles since I was in, you know, the 11th grade.
JVL00:23:33No, that's not true.
Sonny00:23:34They're 100 percent true because I don't run miles anymore.
JVL00:23:38That's a I know you run like eight forty fives, don't you?
Vic00:23:41No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think 930 is my best, but it's very hilly here in Arlington. But I do about three to three and a half miles every other day. So good for you. That keeps me sort of it keeps it keeps my lungs at full capacity and I avoid any old people I see.
JVL00:23:57You know, it's great, though. Yeah. When he like starts running ahead of me and I like he doesn't quite notice it because he's focused on something else. I have to call out to him and then just stops. He doesn't slow down to wait for me to catch up. He just stops dead and turns to me like waiting for me to catch up.
Sonny00:24:11Does he put his hands on his hips?
JVL00:24:14No, no, but it's something else.
Vic00:24:19No. Yeah, no, I like. Running by myself and I have my do my own route, whatever. Although I mean, the other day, an old friend came to the house to want to do a social distance walk with me and we walked two miles. The one and only Matt Reese. No kidding. He just he said, I want to catch up. Let's do it because, you know, he's at home. So I said, great, come to the house. And we spent like two and a half hours hanging out. He's doing well. So anyway, he sends his best. But I did want to say, speaking of movies and stuff that's coming out, um, Trolls World Tour. That is coming out this Friday, I believe. Is it a Friday? This Friday? Oh, OK. Yeah, it comes out on Friday. How that's going to be the first movie movie that would have been big in a theater that is now coming out straight while it's coming out streaming. How much does it make? How much are they charging?
Sonny00:25:14They're charging $20. Nobody will have any idea how much it makes because nobody has any real sense of what the actual total number of downloads are, right? We can guess the kind of ballpark based on what the charts, what the VOD charts used to look like and what like the number one movie on those charts would have grossed at the $6.99 price point. But the problem is nobody nobody really has any idea of what the actual raw numbers are. I can't remember if we talked about this last week. My understanding is that most of the studios are relatively unhappy with the actual raw numbers. So if you look at the charts, if you look at the VOD charts and the iTunes, you know, rental and purchase charts and all that stuff, all of these movies that are getting the early releases are near the top of the charts, right? Like, you know, Birds of Prey did relatively well and, you know, Bloodshot did relatively well. And by relatively well, I mean, it was like the one, one, two, three, somewhere in there. But the problem with that is that like one, two or three is, is good. Obviously you want to be higher rather than, than lower, but like, it's still not nearly enough to make up for what the theatrical, uh, the theatrical money would have been. It's not even close. Um, at least that is, again, that is my understanding. I don't know. I don't know exactly what, uh, the trolls number will look like because it is, I mean, look, there's a reason that universal didn't push this back. They're just putting it out now. And it's not because they had a lot of faith in this being a big hit at the theatrical box office. Um, if they did, they would have just saved it. Like Disney has saved everything that they're, they're holding onto and, and like Paramount is saving most of its stuff. Um, you know, I, I, I don't know. I, I, I don't know. We're in such weird uncharted territory. I mean, this is one of like the under, this is like one of the small violin moments, but it is like a very real thing for me. I have, I, the most frustrating thing about the streaming revolution, the move to Netflix and Amazon prime and the move from everybody watching everything live all the time to everybody watching on DVR two days later is that there's no, there's no real sense of what people are watching. There's no hard numbers. There's no good data on what people are actually watching on TV with movies. We had the box office, we had box office mojo, RIP. We could, you know, actually look at what everything was, was doing box office wise from weekend to weekend. And you could say, Oh, this movie had a good weekend. Oh, this movie had a bad weekend. Oh, this movie had an okay weekend. And it was, it was, it was like a metric. It was like a hard and fast metric that you could judge things by and you could see what was holding. Well, and you could see what, what wasn't. And with these VOD charts, you just don't have any of that. You don't have any sense of what is going, what is doing well and what is going to stick around and what is going to hold on. You just don't, you don't have any numbers. All you have are like one through 10 and one through 10. It's the numbers don't mean anything. The numbers just don't mean anything. It's all relative. And that's, that's a real, that's a real pain in the ball.
JVL00:28:48And there, but there's. So there's a, there are two other aspects of things you don't know because of this, right? Once you move to VOD, you don't know how many people have seen something, right? Because a rental, you don't know if it's one person or six people, right? You don't, especially with something like trolls, you know, or is this a household with one kid or three kids or, or what are both parents watching? The other thing you don't know is, is attention for lack of a better word. Right? I mean, this is the, God knows how many people finish a movie on Netflix, right? You know, I mean, this is why Netflix never releases the numbers, but almost everybody finishes almost every movie they go to see in a theater, right? You know, I mean, it takes effort to walk out. Yeah, it does take effort to walk out. And, uh, and so you, this is the, how, this is why movies eat up such a big piece of our cultural headspace because they are capturing attention in a real way. And you capture more attention when people have to go out of their way to see you and do you, right? This is why by Broadway got, got, I don't mean to be sucking up to John, but Broadway Broadway takes up more cultural room in America than it should, given the actual numbers of people who go to it. And that's because they're more attention is being paid to it. It's very immersive. Yeah, it's, it's immersive. You got to pay a lot of money to go see it. You got to like spend a day in New York to go see these things that people don't walk out of them. Uh, once it's on the video, I mean, it is like having a TV on when you're at the Jiffy Lube, right? I mean, are you really paying attention to whatever the view in whatever stupid show is, is on? Who knows? I don't know.
Vic00:30:33Uh, but we are going to talk about, uh, something else that, uh, just came on that was not free. Uh, and it was not on Netflix or Amazon, but it came out this weekend, which is the return of Louis CK in his, uh, new but not so new routine. Sincerely. Uh, when was, uh, Sonny, when was, when was this recorded? It was in DC, yeah?
Sonny00:30:57Yeah, it was recorded in DC in 2019. I want to say it was late 2019. Uh, and they were saving it and then, and he, he recorded it and he, he, so it's fun. It, you know, Louis CK is kind of a fascinating, um, leaving aside, let's leave aside the whole sexual, uh, side of Louis. CK, right? Let's leave aside the, the, the improprieties and the like kind of me too adjacent thing about Louis CK. We can come back to that. But what's fascinating about Louis CK is that he has kind of built his own little ecosystem and he did it in fits and starts. Um, his, he, he, at his website, Louis CK.com there, he released a, he released a whole show, uh, called horse and Pete's and it was, I want to say it was like two bucks an episode or something like that. And if you were a big Louis. CK fan, you could watch the show with Louis CK and Steve Buscemi and some other, you know, like real actors. It was a real thing. Um, that was shot kind of amateurishly. I like, I, it was, it was basically a series of one room, um, plays, not quite one room. They would, they, they, it all took place within this bar. Um, I only watched a couple of episodes. It wasn't frankly very good. I didn't think, uh, but like Louis CK has kind of created this little, um, ecosystem where he's, he was selling his, his. Specials and he was selling the show, uh, and I thought he would put his movie on there because he, he, he repurchased the rights to, um, I love you, daddy. Now you may remember in 2017 when he got into trouble for, uh, uh, jerking off in front of, uh, female comics without their explicit permission. We can, again, we can kind of come back to this. Um, he pulled the movie and he repurchased the rights from, I think it was Orchard, Orchard movies. Uh, uh, distributors, that's who was distributing it. Um, and I thought, I thought for sure that he was going to put that movie out on his website. I thought like he would charge people 10 bucks to watch it and that hasn't happened yet. It still might, um, but that hasn't happened yet. And what is interesting about this special, uh, the new Louis CK special is that again, there's kind of a black box, uh, in terms of interest. We have no idea how many people have downloaded. This, we have no many people. We have no idea how many people have any interest in it. Um, all we know are these kind of like yapping, yowling, amassed hordes on the internet who say like, Oh, you shouldn't watch this. Oh, I'm, I'm happy to watch this. Oh, I really want to watch. And it's, it is, it's, it's this weird, again, it's this weird cultural black hole that I just don't know. I don't know what to do with. I mean, the special itself. The special itself is fine. I thought the special, it's, I laughed a couple of times. I didn't think it was that funny. Um, frankly, compared to, especially compared to some of his other stuff, the most interesting thing about it again is the reaction to it and the, uh, the kind of response or lack of response it engenders in, in, in the society. I don't know. JVL, what did you think?
JVL00:34:14Uh, Victorino. Can you give me your thoughts first?
Vic00:34:21Uh, sure. Uh, if you want, uh, uh, I, I didn't really know much about Louis CK, uh, all going into this. Uh, I never watched any of his shows. I've never seen his standup routine. So this is my first time. So my impression was just, ah, you know, I remember he had hosted Saturday Live and people went crazy because there were skits that were references to the show, but I didn't get it. So I didn't, you know, I just not able to appreciate that. Uh, and so, uh, my, I mean, he obviously has a certain style. He has a certain, you know, his various ticks, his cadences. It's not, it's not like it's somewhere above Stephen Wright in terms of his tone, but it's, you know, it reminded me just of the, the way he does things is very deadpan and wry. Um, but it's also very dark. I mean, man, he went into a lot of topics that make various can make various people uncomfortable, including myself. Uh, and then other times I'm laughing and I'm thinking to myself, I'm sure other people are not laughing at this bit, uh, depending on what the bits are. So, um, it was interesting. I'm with Sonny. Um, I laughed a couple of times and other times I was like, ah, this is kind of offensive for me.
Sonny00:35:32Yeah. Vic, I would say that you should, you should try and check out some of his, well, I would say that you should try and check out some of his older routines, but I don't know where they are anymore. I think they got taken off of that.
Vic00:35:44Oh, every, oh, he got purged.
Sonny00:35:46I think he, I think he got largely. Largely purged. Wow.
Vic00:35:50Because he had the show, wasn't the original show on HBO?
Sonny00:35:53Well, he had, so he had two shows. There was a show on HBO that was kind of like, it was like an R rated three camera sitcom, which was, which was kind of like a weird, interesting little experiment that nobody really liked, uh, and, and went away pretty quickly. But then he was also, he also did Louie on FX and Louie on FX is considered to be one of the like great, uh, sitcoms. It's considered to be like basically one of, like of the works of the, you know, golden age of TV. I would put it up there, not quite with the Sopranos, but like more in, in line with like a 30 rock or, uh, uh, you know, that, that sort of show, it was definitely, or, or Parks and Rec. It was very well received.
JVL00:36:38A modern day Bonnie Hunt show. I don't know.
Sonny00:36:41I don't know.
JVL00:36:43A modern day Bonnie Hunt show. What are you talking about? The Bonnie, Bonnie Hunt show. The Bonnie Hunt, the comedian had a fantastic show, short lived, I think it was a CBS sitcom. I liked her. I always liked Bonnie Hunt. It was a very, very smart sitcom for the time. Sort of broke a bunch of the formulas.
Vic00:36:58Yeah.
JVL00:36:59I know, important, important.
Vic00:37:00JVL. Oh, by the way, let me just say this. Sorry. I just blew everyone's ears off when I just jumped in there and said, by the way, I apologize for that, getting into these microphones. I, regardless of the material, offensive or not offensive, I am always impressed, uh, by, uh, standup comedians being able to perform nonstop for more than, I don't know, if you could do 45 minutes to an hour, I always find that impressive, uh, how they get it down and they, you know, I mean, it takes a lot of work as our friend, Larry Miller always says, and even Chris rocks as he learned a lot about, you know, the craft from Larry Miller. I mean, it takes work to have everything down. There's various pauses and cues that help you along and there's little, you know, tricks, but, um, I'm always impressed by that.
JVL00:37:48So anyway, yeah, I, I, uh, I mean, it is dark. I mean, it's, it's very, very, very dark. I mean, he, he talks about, uh, losing it. And I would say there is some stuff which is offensive and which people will be offended by, but, but even stuff that isn't, it's just very dark. There's a bit where he talks about his mother dying and how she'd wanted to go off to a crematorium and the guy from crematorium came to pick up her body and like he walked outside with the guy and like there was an empty bottle, like red Gatorade rolling around to the back of the, in the back of his Ford Windstar.
Sonny00:38:23Yeah.
JVL00:38:24And that is a, that is the type of observed detail, which, uh, you know, just pick up
Vic00:38:30your ma. And, uh, I thought that was kind of funny.
JVL00:38:34Sorry. See, again, some people, it depends on who you ask for a while, but it is funny. This is funny. I mean, it's all funny. It's just objectively Boston.
Vic00:38:42So he's a Boston guy, obviously. He's ever.
JVL00:38:45He's very smart. I would say he strikes me as one of the more cerebral standup comics I've ever seen.
Sonny00:38:53Uh, had you, uh, JVL, had you seen any of his sets before?
JVL00:38:56No, I had not seen a set before this. And the, this set is, I mean, it's funny. I mean, you, in a lot of ways you can see exactly how he workshopped this set. He does a bit in the middle of it where he is talking about being in a town in New York, upstate New York and seeing a drug store and in the window of the drug store is a wheelchair and thinking to himself, uh, what, why do you put, you know, who's, who's impulse purchase is a wheelchair. If you know, you need a wheelchair, you know, you need a wheelchair. Why would you come here? And he does a gag with a, you know, can you mention a guy with no legs, like, you know, standing outside and looking up into the window and saying, yeah, you know what? I ought to get a wheelchair. It'd be a lot easier than like just dragging myself around the way I've done for the last 10 years. And then he sort of waits a beat. And he goes, since the bombing at the marathon, and then people go, oh, but then he has a bit that follows that about why are you saying, oh, and that is clearly something that, you know, he had road tested that joke had then added the, the Boston mass of Boston marathon part to it. And then seeing the reaction to that and then worked on following up. So you could see how the set was.
Vic00:40:08And knowing what the react, the groans are going to come and then he can react to it. It wouldn't work if there were no groans.
Sonny00:40:13Yeah. A brief interjection. Have you guys watched the marvelous Miss Maisel at all?
Vic00:40:19Not the latest season, but the first two.
Sonny00:40:22Well, I've only watched the first two seasons as well. So there, there is actually a funny bit in this. I want to say it's in the second season where she's working on her set and it's this exact sort of thing where she's like figuring out what jokes land and what jokes don't and like building and riffing on those jokes. And you, you get that, you get very much that sense of how a set comes together from this.
JVL00:40:43Yeah, no, I, I would say just watching this 60 minutes, you can see how the set was put together and there are a couple minutes in it where it's weak. I mean, there, there are a couple of sections where you can see actually this material isn't actually strong enough to be in here. It doesn't fit super well with the rest of it, but he's using it as connective tissue. But I don't know. I mean, overall, I, I don't know. I, I didn't laugh a ton. I thought it was funny, but it was, it's very, very sharply written and I admire that. And I was sort of happy that somebody was doing this. I'm not a big standup guy anymore. Like there was a time in my life when I really liked standup. I just don't watch it much. And when I do watch it, even when it's very good, it just doesn't resonate with me the way I did when I was like 25. But that said, I'm glad that there was somebody like him doing this sort of thing in that space because it's not safe and it is not lowest common denominator either. You know, he's not hitting a watermelon. I'm with a sledgehammer. Sinbad. Are you going to say Sinbad?
Sonny00:41:48Yeah. Well, you know, and it's and I don't know.
JVL00:41:50I don't know what passes for standup anymore. If you go to like the comedy club in D.C. or something. Yeah.
Sonny00:41:58No, I mean, I all of this again.
JVL00:42:00It's not observational humor either. Yeah, it's smart humor.
Sonny00:42:04I I'm I'm a big Louis C.K. fan. And the background for all of this, of course, do I I guess I should. I guess I should explain it, which feels a little bit weird. But, you know, Louis C.K. back in you to like to jerk off in front of people.
JVL00:42:21Right.
Sonny00:42:22Well, I mean, I just it's such a normal thing. I don't really understand why this needs to be explained. But like so back in 2017, right as I love you, daddy was about to come out. There was a there was a a a big scandal revolving around Louis C.K. And these are rumors that had been floating around in the standup world for a long time. So apparently Louis C.K. liked to invite people back to his his room after sets and, you know, they'd be talking or whatever. And he would say he'd say, you know, I'd really like to to masturbate in front of you. And they would they would, you know, they'd kind of laugh him off and he'd be like, no, no, I'd really like to. Is that OK? And when they said yes, he would just start doing it. And they said, yes. Well, so this is this is kind of an interesting undercurrent of the of the special, right, which is that. Everyone, everyone, the the progressive establishment has, for lack of a better word, wanted him to apologize for what he has done. They want him to explain himself and to work on that material in public and to say, here's here's the here are the mistakes I have made. Here's what I've done wrong. Here's why you shouldn't be like me, blah, blah. And he kind of does that in this special, except for the fact that he clearly thinks he did nothing wrong. When you guys were watching this, when you were watching this, Victor and JVL, not knowing really anything about Louis C.K. and his background, when he was going over that bit in the last 10 minutes or so of the set, did you get the sense that he was apologetic in the slightest for it?
Vic00:43:59No, not in the slightest. But I wondered if people went to the show. Obviously, he has a lot of diehard fans. I get that sense from the reaction of the audience. But I mean, I wondered how many people wanted to see this show to see him address it if he was going to address. And how? And so that had to happen at some point. And at the very end, he goes, OK, should I talk about it? Let's talk about it. And then he talks about it. But he really doesn't say, oh, what I did was wrong.
Sonny00:44:23No, but again, it's like he talks about it. But he says, like, this is what happened. Yeah. Don't do what I did because you're going to get in a lot of trouble. But not don't do what I did because it was wrong. Right. And I think that there's actually something. Again, I want to tie this back to the platform question, because here is the thing. I don't think he could have done this set on a Netflix or an HBO or a Hulu or wherever. There's no there's no there is no there is no executive who would say, OK, this is we're going to be willing to stand up for the heat to the heat for that we're going to get for this set that where he we have paid him to come and appear and do it. And by releasing it on his own platform, he has achieved a sort of independence that nobody else has that essentially nobody has. And that is what I find most interesting about this whole experiment. It's not the set itself. Set itself again is fine. It's OK. It's I don't think it's his best work, but I also I don't think it's it's it's still better than like 80 percent of stand up sets that you're going to watch on a Netflix or whatever. You know, he he's still very funny. He's still very insightful. He's still very penetrative. But what is interesting about this this set is is the fact that he was able to put it out at all. And the only reason he was able to do that. Is because he is he has created his own platform and he has his own fan base. And I that is that is the thing that is really most interesting here. And he is sui generis. I don't know that there's anybody else who could do this outside of a Joe Rogan or an Adam Carolla or maybe a Norm Macdonald. But even a Norm Macdonald, you know, he's got his Netflix.
JVL00:46:06Even Dave Chappelle.
Sonny00:46:07Dave Chappelle wanted to. Dave Chappelle has cover for a lot of reasons. And he can do essentially whatever he wants on Netflix, right? Like he he he essentially signed $100 million deal or a $50 million deal or something with Netflix to do like five or six stand up specials. And and I I don't know that Dave Chappelle would necessarily want to have that same sort of independence that Louis CK has. But I also don't think that Dave Chappelle needs it.
JVL00:46:39Can I can I loop it all back to the top? Sure. Because this dovetails very nicely with our discussion of WWE, right? That if you are willing to leave some money on the table in order to own the means of production, right, to own your own platform, that buys you. It's an enormous hedge, essentially, right? Because it buys you freedom and it gives you direct control of your audience. And that is almost all the time not going to be as. Lucrative as essentially being an independent contractor for a giant platform because they have all the money in the world to throw at you, right? But also it insulates you from getting canceled. It insulates you from the new executive deciding he doesn't like your style. It insulates you from your back catalog suddenly becoming too hot because tastes change and people decided that a word that you use in a set from 2007 is now an unsayable word and. This is I really do think that for most levels of content creator, it is almost always worth giving up money in order to own your work and have some control over how it is distributed. Amy Mann did this right when she left the record industry and started her own her own label. And this is, you know, I would say in the music industry there, you know, the people are finding out how lousy it is living in a world of Spotify and how there's no money. And people wish they controlled their own stuff. And that's why the business is all concerts now, right, where the artists can control things. And so, yeah, I'm not surprised that Louis C.K. has done this. And it would not surprise me, frankly, if this was the future of comedy, right? You go on to Netflix just long enough to build an audience so that you can get off of Netflix.
Sonny00:48:34Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just I just looked up the numbers. So Chappelle, I think, according to my very quick Google search, Chappelle has a deal with Netflix. Where he gets $20 million a special and he's done five specials so far. And those are all very up and down, very up and down. So he's made let's say he's made $100 million. Let's just spitball and say he's made $100 million. Louis C.K. would have to sell 12.5 million downloads of this special to make that much money. There's no chance in hell he did that. I would say it's much closer to one one hundredth of that. Let's say he does one hundred and twenty five thousand. Downloads that's still a million dollars. That's still a million dollars. He's a he's money. He's one guy. He's living. You know, he's he's he's got he's got some kids. He's got whatever. But, you know, let's say he made a million dollars off the special on top of all the money he made touring because he went to Warner Theater in D.C. He sold that out. You know, he went to he sold out everywhere he went. I think he sold out a lot.
Vic00:49:36Where was this show? Was that at the Warner?
Sonny00:49:38It was at the Warner Theater. Yeah, right. So, I mean, he's you know, he's he's making he's making money. He's making money touring. He's making money on on his his his this this special that he's releasing. I'm sure he will do something similar again in the future. He he's he's OK. He's doing fine financially. And again, he has the freedom to kind of he has the freedom to not have to say things he doesn't believe, which is the number one most important thing for a stand up comedian. And I think there's something. Look, I you know, I don't know that you have to respect Louis C.K. I could understand not respecting him. If I was a woman, I would probably not respect him. But as a as an artist, as a person who works in the arts, he has achieved a level of freedom that most of us could only dream about. And there's something to be said for that.
JVL00:50:40Yeah, no, I found it admirable. In its way. And I think is the future, right? This is I mean, again, this is very much the experience in the recording industry where people are trying to own their own income streams. Hard to do in the movie business unless you are the filmmaker. But you can't do if you're the actor, right? You're just a cog in the machine. If you're George Clooney or somebody like that.
Sonny00:51:04But if you hard to do a director to you got to be the producer, you got to be the studio. I mean, right. Well, you've got to be Sin Estate, right? As a for instance.
JVL00:51:14No comment. No, I'm just saying that I think the Sin Estate model is a very good model. You could say that, right? You could say the place where you work is smart.
Sonny00:51:22And the place where I work, the place where I work, we have a number of smart innovations and we are.
JVL00:51:27I think you could comment on that at least.
Sonny00:51:30Sin Estate does good. Thumbs up into the camera.
JVL00:51:34And, you know, like if you, for instance, get a bunch of subscriptions to RebellerMedia.com.
Sonny00:51:39Yeah. If I sold a subscription on Twitter today. Just talking to somebody about the great aggregation that we have at the top of the website. And, you know, he was so sold on that that he signed right up. And, you know, if we just get 9,999 more people to do that, we're set. We're gold.
Vic00:51:56Go check it out. Rebeller.com. RebellerMedia.com.
Sonny00:52:00Not Rebeller.com. We didn't pay for Rebeller.com. Somebody wanted like $150,000 for that.
Vic00:52:05You know, when we were at the Weekly Standard, we wanted Standard.com, but it was already owned by whom? The Industry Standard. Remember that magazine?
JVL00:52:17Yeah, they're gone.
Sonny00:52:18Yeah. Well, every magazine is gone. Every magazine is gone. Every magazine will be gone. Okay.
Vic00:52:24Do we have any other thoughts? No. Okay. Corrections, shout outs, anything?
JVL00:52:31Shout out to Jon Podoritz for having me on the commentary podcast this morning. Oh, man. How about that? A tremendous thrill. Look at you. That's a good show. It's a good show. It is a great show.
Sonny00:52:41I listened to a couple of episodes this week. Because J-Pod shamed me. He was like, I listen to all your dumb shows. You don't listen to any of my podcasts.
JVL00:52:48And I had to explain to him. You don't listen to the one I was on.
Sonny00:52:49I had to explain to him, Jon, I don't listen to any podcasts. That's the real. That's my secret, Cap. I'm always not listening.
JVL00:52:57Do you want to know how I got the invite? Sure. I texted Jon and begged him. After he had Andy on last week, I was like, I'm sorry. He's going to have literally every last friend of his on. Except for me. Except for me. I've never been on. What am I? What about me? What am I? Come on, Jon. Please come on, Jon.
Vic00:53:18Every last friend. I'm never going to be on. Because I don't have any. I don't have deep thoughts. As you know, I don't have deep thoughts.
Sonny00:53:24Well, every show needs. You're the spice, Vic. You're the cinnamon.
Vic00:53:28I think we could do without the spice. Okay. It was great.
JVL00:53:32So thank you to Abe and Christine and Noah and Jon for what was easily one of the three best podcasts I taped today.
Vic00:53:42Well, I'd like to give a shout out to the Sub-Beacon Extended Universe for having me on.
JVL00:53:48Your episode was great, Victorino.
Vic00:53:50All two and a half hours.
Sonny00:53:51Yeah. Vic. Oh, I haven't heard the second one yet. Vic Petty was on for two and a half hours.
Vic00:53:55The original invite. So it's Thomas Lassie and Chris Haberman and Ryan Kinney. And am I leaving somebody out? Was it just the four of us? Yes. It was just the four of us. I can't remember. And it originally said 9.30 to 10.30. Then it was midnight. So I'm like. I don't know. How long does the show go on for? And I left and I think they were still going on.
JVL00:54:18It was so good. It's so good.
Vic00:54:21Well, I saw. People have to go.
JVL00:54:23People have to go and subscribe to the thing.
Vic00:54:26I was flattered by the question about what was my life like before I was married, which was kind of a depressing time. But, you know, that's okay. It was a lot of drinking and I had great drinking stories. So I was happy to share that. You know, it was fun.
Sonny00:54:41It was a fun time. It was a fun time. The 90s, I guess.
Vic00:54:44Crazy stories. Some of which will never be repeated. JVL. Okay. That's all the time. Now that we've reached the end, now that we've reached the end, that's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Matus. Come on. Aren't you sure? You tweet a little bit now. You dabble. You're dabbling. You're just curious.
JVL00:55:08Oh, I actually gave my login credentials to Thomas Lassay, too. Would you guys like them? You guys can say anything you've ever wanted to say, but were afraid to say it under your own name. You could just say it off my Twitter.
Sonny00:55:22Oh.
Vic00:55:23Again, be sure to subscribe to us.
Sonny00:55:25That's why I have the Rebeller feed.
Vic00:55:27Google Play or Stitcher. Just type in Sub-Beacon under Podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. So, you know, there's so many shows on to watch. And right before coming up here, you know what I was watching? Terminator, the original. Oh, yeah. With the great Michael Biehn. Go ahead, Sonny. I just threw that up for you. Thank you. Thank you.
JVL00:56:00I was actually going to talk about this anyway.
Sonny00:56:02So, I'm like sitting, you know, I'm sitting at home on the weekend and I get a text message from Jennifer Blanc Biehn, who is Michael Biehn's wife. She's like, for your website. And it was a video. And I was like, I was literally in the middle of making lunch. I couldn't look at it right away. But then when I got a minute and I sat down and put my headphones in and listened to it, it's Michael Biehn doing his listen and understand speech from Terminator, but about coronavirus telling people to stay in. So, she was like, this is for your website. I was like, great. I'm going to put it up on the Twitter feed. We're going to, you know, blast it out there. And it was a nice little semi-viral thing. I liked it. It was fun.
Vic00:56:44That was very good. That was, you know, Michael Biehn in the Terminator is like you. And then Michael Biehn in the Abyss is like JVL.
JVL00:56:53Can we talk about something else before we leave? Can we do just two minutes post-mortem on Tiger King?
Vic00:57:02Yeah. So, apparently there's going to be a follow-up episode. Of course, now there is. But when we did the show last time, JVL, you had not finished. You finished it? I had not finished it. Okay. So, now you finished it. And I have now finished it. So, go ahead. Give us a coda.
JVL00:57:19The final episode is a mess. I mean, just throw in. And Doc's place got raided.
Vic00:57:27Right, right. Drip and drop.
JVL00:57:28You know, like, it just like, it feels like they were told you have to turn in a final edit of the seventh episode tomorrow morning by 5 a.m. no matter what. And they just threw it all together.
Sonny00:57:40Well, no, it's clear what happened. That Joe Exotic got arrested and then started ratting all these guys out. And so, like, the story kept going. But they needed to be done. Like, the show needed to end with Joe Exotic in jail and, like, dying in jail. But that wasn't, that was not his fate. Wait. Isn't he still in jail? He's still in jail, but he's not dead yet. Okay. He's got the corona. He's got the rona.
Vic00:58:06No, he doesn't.
Sonny00:58:08That's what I heard on the internet.
JVL00:58:09Harvey Weinstein does. Everything on the internet. Everything on the internet is true. What we didn't talk about, though, and I can't believe this didn't make the show, was his Prince Albert. Oh.
Sonny00:58:20I still don't understand what that is. I don't want to know. I'm sure it's fine. That didn't make the show. I'm sure it's fine.
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