← Conversations with Coleman
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- [00:00]
Coleman Hughes
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman.
- [00:03]
Justine Bateman
My guest today is Justine Bateman. Justine is a filmmaker, author and former actress who rose to fame as Mallory Keaton on the hit 80s sitcom Family Ties. In recent years, she's moved behind the camera, making her directorial debut in 2021 with the movie Violet. She's also published books on fame and aging. In this episode, we talk about fame and its impact on identity.
- [00:28]
Coleman Hughes
We talk about the influence of streaming platforms on the film industry, we talk about the role of Gen AI in creative fields, we discuss the societal shift.
- [00:37]
Justine Bateman
Towards digital interactions and much more. So, without further ado, Justine Bateman.
- [00:51]
Coleman Hughes
Why.
- [00:51]
Justine Bateman
Are podcasts like this one at all popular? We can't compete with the resources of a place like cnn.
- [00:58]
Coleman Hughes
I can't give you the sheer volume.
- [00:59]
Justine Bateman
Of analysis that the New York Times can, but there's one thing I have that those organizations trust. I think my audience listens to me because they found my judgment to be trustworthy in the past, but have found mainstream media organizations to be the exact opposite. That's why I love Ground News. They're an app and website designed to help you escape ideological echo chambers. But by pulling in the world's perspective on today's most emotionally and politically charged issues, Ground News breaks down the political bent reliability, ownership and location of each reporting source so you understand that news isn't simply reported. Often narratives are crafted. For example, consider a recent story about the Department of Education informing my alma mater Columbia University, that they broke federal anti discrimination laws and failed to comply with accreditation requirements. There are many different ways to frame the story. Instead of your typical news feed that uses algorithms to push or suppress certain angles, if you go to Ground News Coleman, you can zoom out and understand the full scope of the story. For instance, you can see that the Bloomberg headline frames it as Trump targeting Colombia over pro Palestine protests, which is a framing more sympathetic to the protesters, whereas Arucheva frames it as Trump moving to strip Colombia of its accreditation over anti Semitism concerns, which is a framing more sympathetic to Trump as well as to Jewish students. Even the difference between the phrasing matters here is Trump targeting or is he moving to strip? The same action is being described, but the first one sounds far more negative than the second. These are the kinds of observations you begin to notice when you start using Ground News. That's why I got you 40% off the same Vantage plan that I use. Just go to groundnews.com Coleman and expand your worldview with unlimited access to all the features I mentioned, plus their browser extension and exclusive newsletters. Get a well rounded view of the world, think critically about what you read and find common ground between perspectives. That's groundnews.com Coleman for 40% off their vantage plan available for a limited time only.
- [03:18]
Sponsor
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- [03:50]
Coleman Hughes
Justine Bateman, thank you so much for coming on my show.
- [03:53]
Justine Bateman
Yeah, really pleased to be here.
- [03:56]
Coleman Hughes
So, you know, many, many people will be familiar with you all the way back from the 1980s, and there's so many different places we can start. But you've written very interesting work about what it's like to be famous. Kind of bringing the normal person into the point of view of someone that goes through the entire life cycle of fame in a way that is quite rare. You've also written and directed a film called Violet, which I watched yesterday in preparation for this. And so a lot of different places to start books. But let's I guess start from what's kind of more recent, which is your political commentary. Some people may have seen you on Fox in the past few months. They may have seen you in other places talking about partisan politics and so forth. I'm curious, what was your journey from actor, director to a public commentator on political issues?
- [05:08]
Justine Bateman
Well, I'm not an actor. It was a fantastic career, long in the past, but just a filmmaker now and an author. And I don't really feel like I make any political comments. I'm just. There's something that happened in the last eight years that was a suppression of the new, of new ideas, of anything that contradicted what was the acceptable list of positions to have all of that. And the only time we really get a national poll is during every four years during the presidential election. And that national poll said that enough people were like, I'm done with this. And that broke the mob mentality momentum that's necessary to maintain that kind of suppression, that kind of oppression. It was more of a. To me, it was more of a spiritual thing, like you could, at least in Los Angeles, you would feel the heaviness like, you could just feel it everywhere you went and that. It broke that. And you could look at other sort of mob mentality situations in, in, you know, over the last, I don't know, thousand years. And you can. There's a momentum that's necessary, and once that momentum is broken, it can't. It can't maintain itself anymore. So that's what I've mostly been very excited about. And then I think the only place where I really talk about anything political is just. And to me, it's just like, are you going to be a leader if you are in an elected position or not? Because if you're not, get away from us because you are going to be a danger to our city, our state. And along those lines, yeah, I think Gavin Newsom, the current governor of California, and Karen Bass, the current mayor of Los Angeles, have done. Have been very detrimental to our state and our city. And I just, to me, that's not political. It's just like, my God, just vote for competent people. You need to vote someone in that can handle your worst case scenario. And if that's not your criteria, then you're just playing games. And when the shit hits a fan, you're going to have an absolute problem, which is what we've seen recently.
- [07:49]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, so you talked about a mob mentality. I mean, that's something I talk about on this podcast all the time. And I often talk about what it was like to go to Colombia between 2015 and 2020 when, you know, you, You. You literally were not allowed to ask certain questions. And the, the level of social pressure and social, you know, punishment that was doled out on people that questioned the orthodoxy, whether it was around race issues, identity, gender, or just, you know, not even necessarily political issues. You know, I remember, I mean, I had stories of one person that said they didn't like Beyonce, and the whole room had like. Like a meltdown. You know, there was just like a baseline conformity around certain things that you had to like. And it was actually difficult to describe to people that were not a part of it because some of the stories I had were so outlandish that they almost felt made up, but you actually couldn't make that. You couldn't really make them up. So that's just a way of giving you a little bit of where I come from and the kinds of things I've talked about on my show. I'm curious as I guess my perception of you is that you must be a Hollywood insider. You must know a lot of people in Hollywood. I don't know if that's accurate given that your acting careers in the past. But my real question is like, what window can you give into what it is like what the culture of Hollywood is, is like in these mob mentality, respects.
- [09:35]
Justine Bateman
Oh sure, yeah, acting's in the past but I'm, I'm, you know, been in the business since I was 16 years old. It's actually, you're actually wind up in a much better position when once you're a screenwriter and director producer because you are, you are gathering people into your film versus being somebody who's, you know, auditioning to be included. So yeah, I've been in the business since 1982. 1982. And yeah, I know a lot of people and one of the fun things about being in the business this long is the people that were assistants when I was younger are, you know, running this and running that. That's a fun thing to see, you know. Or somebody who was like a lower level agent or an agent's assistant or a runner in the mail room is now one of the partners. So yeah, I know a lot of people in the business, you know, of course and, and I, and I love, I love the entertainment business and I love all the people that are called to it. It's a very special collection of people with you know, from, from the executives to the crew with very specifics, with a very specific skill set. You know, varying skill sets, but very unique skill sets. So yeah, well, I'll say here's what's happened. I'll give you the shorter version of what's happened in the business. Specific to what you just asked. And I have an essay coming out in Tablet, they're doing a physical magazine that kind of talks about that. But the entertainment business was established, I'll just say, you know, specific to the film business was established by people who were really risk takers. Like they're not only willing to like essentially, you know, recruit enough people to as like a small city to get a film done, but and to create some sort of fanciful story or reenact some real story or something that wasn't there before, just create something out of nothing. But you're also willing to. In most situations it's rare to not have this, but you're willing to earn a living where you're not sure how you're getting the next check. So it's a constant. You're, you are a risk taker financially, you're a risk taker emotionally, creatively. Everything you have to be that Stopped. It's funny. I went to school late in life, so I went. I was at UCLA from 2012 to 2016. So I was like the. I was the. The bash. Right before you were there, I. At ucla. I said that. Yeah, yeah. And I'm really glad I wasn't there during that shutdown time. I would have been. I would have been really sad about that. Anyway, we can get into education later, but in entertainment, something. What happened, I believe about, you know, well, there's other things. And not to make this too long of an answer, but. And I've written essays about this. How the tech companies, you know, once they decided to use our work for their. As content for their websites, they. They changed a lot of things. The way work is treated, the way work is spoken about. They don't call them films and series, they call them. They just call it content because it's just stuff for their shelves, really. They change the financial ecosystem in a lot of ways that are extremely detrimental to the filmmakers and the crew and everybody involved. But one of the things that happened to the film industry for a couple reasons, they lost their North Star. They lost their North Star of outstanding work, meaning that was always the goal before. And there was room for all kinds of work. There would be films and so, so TV series. But like, the goal was this excellence. You wanted to be associated with something really good and not just something that like lasted beyond this era. And it was shameful to do something for money. And sometimes you had to, but it was. You didn't feel good about it. And what happened like eight, 10 years ago is you had this streaming situation. You had a lot of studio executives chasing, kind of chasing after them, not wanting to be made to look like chumps financially. So they started following that business model that really screwed things up. And they also started following that North Star in as far as how they relate to the work. The studio started looking at the films and TV series just as content and started making. There's exceptions to this, of course. There have been some good work over the last 10 years, but the focus became volume, content. And I can tell you I watched four films in the last three days. One of them was good, the other three big stars, lots of money. I know, shit. Absolutely terrible. Phoned in performances by actors who are good actors. Bad script, bad direction. Phoned in direction. Passable production values. And like, if you're really called to this and you're gifted at this, and this is. This is where you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to do it would rip you up inside. To turn in something like that where it just seemed like it's not like you swung for the fences and you didn't really make it, but you tried. No, this was like, didn't it look like you were paid to not care? So. And sorry, the component that relates to what we were talking about, that oppression, the shutdown, they started through all of that behaving a lot more like a corporation than anything to do with making films and series in that they were very much reacting to the loudest 1000 people on social media who are committed to being angry about anything. Put a plate of pudding in front of them, they're going to get mad about it. Anything. And I think that is a lot of like intimacy through injury is what I call it. Like you want connection with people and it's a lot faster to get that connection through conflict than it is through, you know, developing a friendship or something like that. So they started reacting to that and they went into this fear mode. And you saw a lot of reboots, a lot of remakes, a lot of sequels, a lot of, you know, creative fear and financial fear and like. And that was it. So even the stuff that has been good over the last decade has had very difficult, for the most part, difficult time getting an audience not had the support of the promotion that's necessary. Yeah. And it's like you're in this giant Costco of stuff and you have to paw through it to find the actual films and the actual series because, yeah, like there's no one at the helm anymore. There's no, you know, you also. Oh God, I could go on and on about it. You got rid of the, the critics really. There aren't really many critics anymore. There are people that'll do like summaries of some project that was released. Sometimes you'll find some good critics, like accidental critics by. I've read some know, sort of film bloggers that really watch the film, really know the history of filmmaking and could see where the influences were and what the metaphors were and things like that. But gosh, I don't really see that mainstream much at all.
- [18:39]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, I mean I, I grew up like going to the movie theaters like multiple times a month with my family. It was like a family thing.
- [18:49]
Justine Bateman
And.
- [18:52]
Coleman Hughes
You know, as, as one gets older, I always ask myself, do I think that there was a golden era? Just because it's when I happen to be a kid and a teenager and I'm looking through at the past through rose colored glasses or is it actually the case that there was a golden era and that era has passed? I think about this with music, too. And, you know, I go back and listen to music from the 60s and 70s, and it kind of feels like a golden era, even though I didn't grow up with that music. So that makes me feel that maybe I'm being. Actually, I am being kind of objective when I say that, like, the 90s and 2000s was a golden era for just really good films. There was, like, a lot of good films being made, high quality. Some of them were mass appeal, some of them were niche appeal, but there was just really good storytelling that was happening. And I agree with you. It's not that that doesn't happen today, but it does seem like it happens at one third the rate it did a few decades ago. And I'm curious, what are the deep drivers of that? Do you think that the best storytelling has moved from films to streaming? Because this is something that a lot of people will say. It's not that the storytelling doesn't happen anymore. It's that now it's on hbo, Max and Apple TV and Netflix, as opposed to at the movie theater.
- [20:28]
Justine Bateman
Oh, I don't even think we can make a distinction between the two. We can make a distinction between the effort that's going into, like, TikTok videos and YouTube channels. And I mean, that's definitely changed the whole talk show circuit, you know, like, anyway, there's that. But I think if I don't know that we can make a differentiation between streaming. Streaming films and series and films that are in theaters and series that are on tv. There was a point where we could. There was a difference. There was. There were, say, like 2007, 2008, they started, you know, webisodes, streaming shows. And the first. First that had. The first one that had a serious budget and a. And serious stars and a serious script and a serious director was House of Cards, which.
- [21:38]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [21:38]
Justine Bateman
I remember that was 2012, 2014. I don't have the date right, but somewhere around there and then, which is something I was, like, pitching in 2007. And they're like, nobody will ever watch anything more than three minutes. And I said, no, that's a YouTube restriction. You couldn't upload any anyway. Whole other story. But, yeah, that. Once that started, then there wasn't a differentiation. There is a differentiation between content and films and series. And it's not necessarily money. Definitely not necessarily money. It's commitment. It's focus. It's so one of the big things that's happened is either a carelessness and, or laziness because it's not a huge effort, I don't think. Maybe just because I'm a screenwriter, but it's not a huge. It doesn't take a huge effort to lay into your scripts of cohesiveness to have there be reasons why people are doing what they're doing. To not just have a bunch of. Throw a bunch of events out there and then, you know, but because the focus has been on making content second screen. So that people on their primary screen or their phone and going through Instagram, whatever they're doing are not distracted from whatever up on the TV or on their laptop. Distracted enough that they would turn it off. That's been the focus. Have they achieved that? Yeah, 100%. Got lots of stuff where I, I can look away for 15 minutes and look back and I'm not lost. I'm. Or I'm just as. I'm just as confounded because they didn't really put time together. They. Here's, here's a way that you can tell, you said like, you know, are we just imagining that what we saw when we were younger was better because we were more open to it or something? Here's a test. Watch something that when you were a kid you thought was sort of a kind of a disposable film, you know, like, I don't mean disposable. I mean like not a. Not a. Maybe not a top tier film. You know, something if it was on. On a Saturday, you'd like. Yeah, you totally watch it. Maybe a. Not to speak derisively of rom coms, but like maybe a rom com or something, you know, not something that was possibly going to be nominated for an Oscar or anything. Right. You just look at one of those from your childhood and you'll see, you'll notice the story is tight. The angle, the camera moves are specific. The actors are committed to like. It feels more full. It feels satisfying. It feels. And I mean, that's how I can tell. Like, I can look at like any film from the 80s or 90s. And sure, there was a lot of B stuff too, but the stuff that was just like, that's out in theaters. You go watch it with a friend because it's fun, but you know, you know, it's not a top, top tier film. But you watch one of those now and you're like, damn, this is tight. This is intentional. This is entertaining. It's complete. It's goes full circle. It's. Or it leaves or even if it doesn't go full circle, it. It ends with, like, a question that makes you want to contemplate that question for a few minutes after. They're just not doing that right now. For the most part. I, again, there are exceptions.
- [25:32]
Coleman Hughes
So I'm trying to put together the theory of sort of why this has happened. And so one thing I'm hearing you say is that whereas storytellers, screenwriters used to write for an audience they assumed was paying attention solely to the screen and had no other distractions. Because in 2006, what would I have had to be distracted by? Right now? They're writing for an audience that is presumptively scrolling on Instagram or TikTok or half distracted looking out of the corner of their eye. And the kind of story you have to write in that case is one where, you know, first of all, you've got to have celebrities to. Because people like to look at celebrities. You've got to have something crazy going on in every scene, whether or not that's actually good for the story. Long story short, you have to optimize for a totally different set of things than you would if you're just trying to write for an audience that's paying attention. So is that.
- [26:37]
Justine Bateman
Let me change that for you a little bit. The audience is different, but it's not the audience you just cited. The audience in the past were individuals who were going to watch television and they were going to go to the theater and they were going to also have subscriptions to HBO and places like that. That's not the audience now. That's who was buying. Do you know what I mean? Who's buying this? It's somebody spending money in a theater or it's somebody watching that television. And based on the Nielsen ratings, we see that these people are watching or not watching, and the advertisers are interested and who's watching and that they're going to pay based on that. That's not the. That's not who's paying. The people who are paying now are the streamers. Apple is paying, Netflix is paying, Amazon is paying. Sometimes the studios are. But for the most part, not only are these the buyers, these. This. Not only are they the buyers, they're the. They're the. They're the last. The last kind of depot for your project, even if you're. It's a Sony project and you're releasing it in theaters. You know, I say Sony because they don't have an online outlet for themselves, but that's where it winds Up. Those are your buyers. What those? That's your audience. That's who you're making your project for. You're not making it for human beings. I mean, I mean human beings. You're not making it for the, for the, the actual, the actual human audience.
- [28:24]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:25]
Justine Bateman
You're making it for these companies. That's your audience you're making your project for. And what do they want? They want something that will drive traffic to the Amazon site so you can sell your items. They want something that's like, even if it's a loss leader, whatever to sell their devices. Apple. I'm just saying like it's not even as a, not even as a criticism as much as it's a just a simple business observation. You have the castle and the moat in business. What is Amazon's castle? It's not making incredible films. Amazon's castle is their website and selling these goods on their website. So what do they need to do? What has to happen in the boat to put in the moat to protect that. And part of that is get people on the site. Apple devices, computers, you know, hardware. And then how do you keep people, keep people on that device? Now Netflix is a little different but for them it's a website. Get people on the website, keep them on the website, keep them, keep giving them new stuff. Even if it's just the promise that there's something of quality inside of it. God, there was a really good word I found one point and it means that on the outside there's every indication that there's quality inside. But then when you open it there's nothing. So keep giving you something new so that you keep that subscription up. Now in the past, because the audience really was, were individuals who were going to buy tickets and turn on the television set. You had to make it for them. You had to make it like you were just saying you had to make it in a theater. My God. It has to be interesting enough to hold their attention for 90 to 120 minutes and for them to tell their friends and for them to come back again and want to, want to watch it again and to make it for them what's going on in society right now? Not so much. Maybe you're making it story wise about what's going on society right now. But that's tricky because you're probably starting at a year before that society that's going to watch it. And so are you making. You got to look around at society and go what's missing? What do I need to make that will fill that hole and hopefully that hole will still exist the day it's released. And then you have that, you know, you have that magic tv same thing. You're gonna make something that you know is gonna make them wanna come back next week and see that again or you know, see the next iterate or not iteration, but the next episode. You are making it for those people. What did those people need or what do they need? They don't know they need, you know, but that's not, that's not generally speaking the focus. And if that's where most of the money is coming from, these streaming companies, which by the way, Apple, Apple and Amazon in particular, like I said, that's. This is not their castle, right? They don't need it. They can shut it off like this. And in fact, not too long ago they stopped acquiring as much material as they had been in many films rather and series as they had been before. And that really messed up the business. So now you've got your dependence, a lot of your financial dependence on these companies, two thirds of them, this isn't their main business at all. And they could just shut you off like this and it really wouldn't affect, it'd be better for their bottom line. They wouldn't be outlaying all this money because you know, you have to pay a lot of money to get people to come do something that's not that great. Right? That's a very precarious situation. And then you introduce generative AI and like so that whole business, that whole 100 year old business that was so phenomenal, you know, and you know, you'd have some dogs in there too. But, and, but there was an ecosystem, financial ecosystem, a creative ecosystem where there was room for everyone and everything that's. That died. It's not there anymore. Right now you have like sort of this volume content factory and again some exceptions. But that's as far as what the focus is. That's the focus because that's the audience. The audience is Amazon, Netflix, Apple.
- [33:06]
Coleman Hughes
I love what Amazon prime does. It's, it's genius from a business perspective. Just almost any movie you could ever want. Everywhere else it's 399, Amazon prime, it's always 379. They're just undercutting on thousands of movies by 20 cents just because they can. Because fuck you, they're Amazon. You know. But look, when I go to buy my movies I always, why not save 20 cents? It makes no difference, you know, it'll add up. Yeah, exactly.
- [33:36]
Justine Bateman
Especially if you didn't watch it in time and you got to re rent it. Right?
- [33:40]
Coleman Hughes
Exactly.
- [33:41]
Justine Bateman
Yeah. But I will say this too. There is the art of filmmaking. Soldiers on those are really called to this. And they know what I'm talking about. Everything I've said, they know what I'm talking about. There's a tunnel through this content AI Inferno. And focusing on making the absolute best film you can make and going beyond creatively doing. Going. Going further than. Than you think you can. Going further than filmmakers you admire, you know, from the past. Like, you know when they say that you can stand on the shoulder of giants. Yeah. And also you have the football right now, they don't. They passed it to you. Now what are you going to do with it? Go forward. And I think there's a new genre coming in the arts because we haven't really had a new genre in the arts since the 90s. Not of any real significance. And again, there's been good work here and there. But like what, like what characterizes. Well, I would argue aughts or the tens.
- [34:54]
Coleman Hughes
Or what about the comedy sitcom with no laugh track, styled as a fake documentary like the Office, Parks and Recreation.
- [35:04]
Justine Bateman
So listen, I think a lot, if we're to bring up examples, a lot of what we're going to name predates. Predates social media or the explosion or predates the explosion of social media. Because that's really made things not great. Like, you know, because again, the loudest people on social media, like you got executives going, oh no, this, they said this, they said that. Do you know what it was like in the 80s? You didn't hear from any of these people. I mean, that's a long time ago. Fine. But just as an example, like, because, you know, I had experience with that, you didn't hear from anybody. You would get. They'd send letters. And so you have somebody who took the time to write the letter and put a stamp on it. You know, I wrote about that in the book. Um, but now it's like anytime somebody wants to pop off about any show whatsoever, and maybe they don't even really mean it, but they just feel like it.
- [36:08]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [36:09]
Justine Bateman
Again, for that intimacy through injury, they're going to get more attention for, you know, speaking poorly about something than saying like, wow, I really enjoyed this.
- [36:20]
Coleman Hughes
Right. If you imagine the Arrested Development or even the Office. Right, the Office. Like, you know, the famous Diversity Day episode with all of the racial humor from Michael Scott, which is like so funny. If that happens in the era of social media, man, you have to imagine there's a Twitter storm the next day and the executives are all worried about this risky, this risky humor.
- [36:45]
Justine Bateman
That's why you don't really see any comedy. I mean comedy was the first thing on the chopping block as far as, you know, canceling things.
- [36:55]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah.
- [36:56]
Justine Bateman
And I think there's a lot of resentment in there by people who look at artists and think that they are regarded in a lofty manner and resenting that and wanting that for themselves. And there's a lot of like resentful hall monitor behavior that that's gone on. Yeah, a lot of revenge of the hall monitors.
- [37:23]
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- [37:52]
Justine Bateman
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Justine Bateman
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Coleman Hughes
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- [38:10]
Justine Bateman
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- [38:21]
Coleman Hughes
See mintmobile.com I wanted to talk about your, your film Violet a little bit. So one of the kind of screenwriting 101 pieces of advice that they give, for example when you're like converting a novel to the screen is that obviously in a movie you can't hear what's going on in the character's head, which you can in a novel you can have a readout of every thought and everything. And when you're converting for the screen you either have to show what they're feeling with an action or otherwise except that that's not gonna, that may not be conveyed to the audience. But your film Violet was really interesting because it actually, it actually created kind of like a different form where you, the whole movie pretty much you are seeing not only what the main Character is saying and doing and what's going on on her face. You're hearing her own inner monologue, which you call the committee in, in, in the film, which is the committee of voices. Sometimes it's a male voice that's always saying negative things to her and other times it's an insecure voice of insecurity that's like written across the screen. And you're seeing this as she's actually speaking the dialogue that is normal, you know, film dialogue. And so in that way it's kind of like it's closer to a visual novel than a movie. And it really works as a, as a method of storytelling. I hadn't, I don't know if had that been done before or. I've never seen that before. Had that been done before? And if not, where did you get that idea from?
- [40:10]
Justine Bateman
I'm sure somebody said something. I mean, there are films where, you know, there's been writing on the screen. Sophia Coppola, a lot of handwriting on the screen for, I believe for the title sequence for Virgin Suicides. Ed Templeton, the artist, photographer and painter, he has often drawn on his photographs. Also Peter Beard, another photographer, famously in Africa, would draw, would write on his photographs and paint, paint on them and sometimes with animal blood and things like that. So there's definitely kind of a background on that. For me, it was like as a filmmaker, I'm look at each film and I go like, okay, or each project, the books too. Like, what's my objective here? What's my thesis statement? And then for me, once I know that, then it makes it. Then all the decisions after that are easy because I need to choose department heads, wardrobe choices, scene choices, dialogue, cadence, everything that kind of dovetails into that to support or contradict and then supporting it in that contradiction, that thesis statement, like writing an essay. So with that film I had the, you know, which is all about somebody who's making fear based decisions. And if you are someone who's making fear based decisions, you're kind of, you're off your own track. You're not really being yourself. And how do you cross that chasm from making fear based decisions to making instinct based decisions wherein you would be on your track. And for me, years and years ago, I made a lot of fear based decisions and I did not feel like I was on my track. And then I started looking at the, so the negative thoughts, I started thinking like, how would I react to these negative thoughts if they were coming at me from somebody else? Like Coleman, if you were saying them to me, would I treat them with as much. Wait, with as much. Would I. With as much. Would I think they were true or would I question them? And often if you're looking at something objectively, you're more so going to question it.
- [42:52]
Coleman Hughes
I wanted to ask you, talk to you a little bit about fame. You wrote a book about fame and you've been in, you've gone through a whole arc with fame. Right. You were famous very young. I've heard you talk about this without expecting or seeking. And then you've, over time, lost much of the fame. Some of the fame, fame moved on.
- [43:19]
Justine Bateman
It's not something that you can lose. It's something that hovers over you for a while and then moves on. You have no control of it.
- [43:25]
Coleman Hughes
Right, yeah. Um, and you know, I've always been fascinated by. There's a, there's a clip of Bill Murray saying this and there's a clip of Ben Affleck saying the exact same thing to the point where it actually feels like plagiarism. But Bill Murray says, whenever I meet a young person that wants, says I want to be rich and famous, I tell them, try being rich and see if that doesn't get you what you want before the fame. Right. And the lesson there is that having money, you know, actually can allow you to, if your values are good, it can allow you to just get more of what you want in life and you can spread the wealth among your family and friends. You can do all kinds of things that people without money would struggle to do. But having fame is a much more of a double edged sword than having money. I think that's what he was getting at. What do you think of all that?
- [44:22]
Justine Bateman
Well, I think when people say they want fame, they want love. They just want love because they're looking at, you know, fame is like this ephemeral idea. Right. But what. So I don't know that they're saying they want fame. They want what they think they see other people enjoying. They want. They want. They look at, I don't know, Beyonce, she became a Beyonce, or, or Bill Murray or whoever, Mary Tyler Moore. I don't know why all these odd names are coming to my head. And they assume what their life is. They assume that all the doors open for them. They assume that there's always a table for them at the restaurant. They assume that they're just given opportunities to do their creative work all the time. You notice nobody says, oh, I want to be famous. Barack Obama is famous. Or it's always somebody who's doing something. Or maybe sports too. Sure. But they're doing something that seems fun too. So they're like, oh, you know, they always get to do something fun every day. They always have these opportunities to do all this fun stuff. You know, as for a living, they get to, you know, I say, like the restaurants, they get to hang out with other people who are dynamic and fun and everybody just gives them money and they can do no wrong. And really, and I say this in the book, it's something like being a toddler, right, Mommy? I mean, provided you had a mommy and daddy who liked you. Mommy and daddy are always applauding everything you're doing. You know, you fed yourself or you dressed yourself. Applause, applause. You're given opportunity after opportunity to prove this genius. You have to do these simple things. You know, they'll take any scribble you've done on a piece of paper and put it on the fridge and everything's taken care of for you. You have some place, you have a place to live, they buy you food, they buy you clothes and. Right. And that for a lot of people is love. So if you say just money, I would, I would push back a little bit on that because I. And you can see in a lot of the behavior, a lot of the very, very wealthy people, for some people, this isn't true because they're not looking for this love. But you can tell the ones that are looking for that love, that appreciation, admiration, people looking at them, those stars in their eyes. Some of the very wealthy people exhibit this desire too, because they're wanting. It's not. Money doesn't always solve that. What's going to solve that is, you know, I think, you know, you gotta get a spiritual life because it's all those things I just mentioned about this is what happens to you when you're, you know, working in the business or, you know, you're a musician or something like this. It's incredibly hard work. In fact, the only way you can really withstand the waiting, the rejection, the hard, hard work that goes into making all these projects is if you're called to it, because then you have the gas to. To withstand all those moments in between. And. Yeah. Does it feel good when you know, you've completed this project and people are applauding? Yeah. But more so it feels good that you were faithful to that project and you delivered that project. So the rest of it is like you don't have any control over that. And yeah. When, you know, people like wanting you and calling you and you're in demand and all that. It's, that's a very weird feeling. It's, it's not really real. It's. You know, we were talking about mob mentality before. It's like a frenzy. It's this weird frenzy. Like you're caught in this wave and you just kind of go with it and does it approximate love because everybody's like wanting you and they've got big smiles on their faces and all of this. Yeah, for some people it can feel like that, but if you can get a little objectivity to that and while you're in it, it's hard to have the objectivity but, and understand this is just a wave you're in right now. And the wave will, you know, just like anything in nature, some kind. There's going to be an ebbing and a flowing in some manner in with everything in nature, including anything that happens in your life. And you just write it for a while and then it'll, it'll, you know, even for somebody for whom fame is sort of, you know, they, in the life cycle of fame, they stayed here at this equilibrium like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and people like this, even there, there's gonna, there's gonna be an ebbing and flowing even in that position. But a lot of people get afraid when, and you don't have to be famous to be subject to this fear, but they become afraid when the flow starts to ebb and they're afraid it's always going to be in the ebb and it's not, it's always going to look at anything in nature.
- [49:57]
Coleman Hughes
Always.
- [49:58]
Justine Bateman
Cycle goes, I mean not necessarily cycles to the same place again, but it always changes.
- [50:05]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, I've heard you say something which is very close to what I've said before, which is that what people really want is not fame but admiration, the admiration of their peers, really the admiration of the people they respect. And often I've thought that through my podcast and you know, everything I've done I've had, you know, especially after moments where I've gone on primetime TV and briefly gone viral. I've had that experience of like, you know, three people coming up to me on the streets of New York in one day and then, and usually it's because they're fans of mine and they're very polite and it's a super positive interaction. They have been some very negative ones as well, including couple scary ones here and there. But mostly, mostly my career has been as a person with a mid sized podcast which, which means once a month One of my fans spots me in public and it's just a super positive interaction and I'm. Yeah, I never, I always know that I'm not actually being recognized. So I'm basically a normal person that's experienced small bouts of, of, of low level fame. Nothing akin to, I think, being on a sitcom or a movie star in any way. But it's always struck me that really what feels a lot better than being recognized on the street is having the admiration of people I admire. Right. It's the, the ability to send a message to a podcaster or a writer that, that I like and get a response and begin that relationship. Like having that level of clout is, is way, it feels way more gratifying than being recognized at Starbucks.
- [52:06]
Justine Bateman
Yeah. And that I think is a healthy position to take. You know, it's like you know their taste because you know their work.
- [52:16]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [52:16]
Justine Bateman
And if you are part of what they like, then that means something. I've always felt that way about awards. Like I, I never really, I never want to be nominated for or get like an Oscar or any of these awards that are for films or critics awards or anything because I'm, I'm not, I'm not entirely clear on who the taste of the voters. I mean, I don't mean that in a, in a, I don't mean that to sound like I'm putting those people down at all, but, but rather if I were given a war, given an award by five filmmakers, they have a small committee. There's five filmmakers that I, whose work I really admire. And if they think my work is good like that, that feels nice because like, well, that's nice company to keep. But the rest of it is, but for a lot of people it's, and this is something social media has done. We've quantified value instead of qualifying it. So they do just look at the numbers, like, oh, so and so has, you know, 100 million followers. Or they must be this, that, this that. It's like, no, they're actually not very good at all at what they do, but they do a bunch of this crazy stuff and that's why people are following them. Or I don't know. So yeah, I agree with you. But for a lot of people, they, they just look at what's valued now and what's valued now are numbers, volume, not quality.
- [53:56]
Coleman Hughes
Right.
- [53:57]
Justine Bateman
Yeah.
- [53:58]
Coleman Hughes
I talked to someone recently who was real. I, I've heard some of what you said about this. So I anticipate you'll dis. Disagree with what he said. But what he was saying is that he really thinks actors should embrace generative AI, that, that the wave is coming and what, you know, it should be a kind of situation where they should get a stake, a financial stake in the product. So, for example, let's say, how would.
- [54:33]
Justine Bateman
They go about that?
- [54:35]
Coleman Hughes
So I'll give you an example. The example that he gave me. You play a character on a TV show that is, you know, super athletic, let's say, and motivating peloton comes to you and says, we want to make a generative AI of your character from the show that's going to be. Be a peloton coach. So instead of having one of the default peloton coaches, I can pick this character I love from my favorite TV show, and he's going to be cheering me on during my workouts. And how does the actor, him or herself, get a cut of that revenue? Yeah, they already do that.
- [55:17]
Justine Bateman
You can't do a. Well, first of all, that gets into copyright, too, because that. That character is not owned by the actor. It's owned by the. By the show, whoever owns that ip. But they already do that. If it's a character that looks just like you, particularly if it's a character you played and it looks just like you. No, they have to engage you. They have to engage you under SAG rules. And there might be a federal law now, too. I don't know. I stopped following them when I. When I looked at enough of the exemptions. Yeah, they already do that. But the problem is not with that. The problem is that the only way generative AI can. The only way AI models can function that deal with video is if they have consumed 100 years of film and TV series. So if you had a new tech that can function on its own, great. But if the only way it functions is if it stole all this work, chopped it up, and then reserved it with no, with zero compensation for anybody. None of the filmmakers, none of the crew, none of the actors, none of the studio, nobody. None of the investors who put money up for any of that. No, nothing. It's theft is the biggest copyright violation in the history of the copyright office. That's a problem. And you cannot. If somebody said, oh, well, we're building a model that's only. That's very specific to. Well, there's problems with this too, but it's very specific to Disney. It's just Disney films. I'd say, like, there aren't enough. There aren't enough Disney films. So you're going to. If You're. If you're going to customize something, you're going to build that on top of a model. You've already got that in, that swallowed, you know, 100 years of film and TV series, and then you're going to customize it on top of that. But your foundational model is not just Disney films. And if those in. If Sam Altman and those guys want to do it where it's just their home movies and all the writing that comes out of it, that's Frankenstein writing that spit out of it is just based on their journals and not based on all the writing, all the books that have ever been written and all the writing that's on the Internet that nobody ever intended to have sort of hoovered up, then great, do that. But to just assume that just because it's sitting online that you can just take it. I don't know. No.
- [58:04]
Coleman Hughes
So let me play devil's advocate. If I were making an analogy to, say, music, and I'm a rock musician, and I've basically trained my creative mind on the entire Beatles catalog, and now I'm making new songs that are clearly, stylistically right out of the Beatles. It sounds like a song that Paul McCartney, that's in the Paul McCartney vault that never came out, but that's my style, and let's say it's as successful as it is. How is that so different from an L or a gen AI that's trained its creative mind on, like, tons of.
- [58:45]
Justine Bateman
But there is no creative mind.
- [58:49]
Coleman Hughes
There's an. There's an algorithm.
- [58:51]
Justine Bateman
There's an algorithm. Nothing new will ever come out of Generative AI ever. It's a regurgitation of the past. It's an approximation of some of a prompt. Nothing new will ever come out of it because artists are tubes through which God, the universe, magic, whatever you want to call it, comes through into society. And that's been. You know, we've got some plaque buildup in there right now because of the fear. Right, right. That we were talking about earlier. So we haven't had that flow. Like I said, like, there's a new genre coming that has been, like, sort of, you know, stopped up because of this fear, but it's gonna. It's gonna come and just nothing new. So if people are using it and imagine that they're filmmakers, it's. That's not filmmaking. It's something else. I mean, people go ahead and do it, spit out whatever you want, but it's not filmmaking.
- [59:54]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, before I let you go, one last question. One thing I worry about with people really like the Gen Z and even younger than Gen Z generation. So you know, I'm talking about people born like after 2001 say is that so many of them grow up with influencers as their main role models. And to, to be fair, many, many influencers are super talented content creators in terms of. Very funny. They're doing sketches, they're doing whatever it is they're doing. Many others are just taking.
- [60:35]
Justine Bateman
Infomercial salespeople.
- [60:37]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, infomercial sale people. Or there's just like not really doing much outside of being famous for being famous.
- [60:45]
Justine Bateman
And selling.
- [60:47]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, and selling obviously. And so, you know, what, what do you make of the. I guess what, what words would you have for the generation that is being raised on role models of the influencer role model?
- [61:05]
Justine Bateman
I don't know, like turn up your bullshit detector. You know, like, don't let tech bros push you around. The algorithm isn't. The algorithm is just to sell you stuff. Like in other words, if that's what you're being fed, like look beyond that, you know, pick up a book, look at something new. I actually think that Gen Z, they see the bullshit that the millennials kind of bought into, you know, not all of them, but like they bought into the idea that like, you know, the commercials where they go like, oh, somebody who's you know, older, younger, whatever, is having trouble with something and then they show a millennial going, oh, there's an app for that, that self satisfied half smile and then they put the phone in their pocket and walk on. That's the generation they sold. Don't work for the man, don't save anything, don't get married, don't have kids. I'm saying generally speaking, of course there's a lot of exceptions to this and be your own CEO and work for TaskRabbit or also the whole live like a VIP. You can feel like you have a personal driver if you take an Uber. You can feel like you have a personal assistant. If you call TaskRabbit or you call, you know, Instacart, you can feel like we'll bring everything to you, bring everything to you. And it's like, yeah, okay, well what happens when they turn 50 and you've convinced them that, you know your sex positive. I don't know if I'm putting all the terms right here, but you know, you don't have to go out with that guy. You don't have to be in a relationship. You don't have to. This you can do. You can sleep with whoever you want. You do whatever you want. Yeah. Okay. And then now you're 50 and you have no savings and you didn't get married and you're not having kids and you've been doing this job and that job, and because you didn't want to focus in on. Again, I'm making a lot of generalizations, but you get the idea. Like, they're sold. This idea that, you know, I'll tell you something. I saw something the other day in a store and there was somebody working behind the counter. You can go up and, you know, buy your product there, but there was a monitor there. And you know, they're just trying this. They're trying this out to see if they can just get rid of all the employees. There's a monitor there and you can order your item on this monitor on the touchscreen. And there's something around the touch screen. I'm going to see if I can find said self order here. And then above it it said, skip the chit chat, like, as if it's like such an incredible annoyance to deal with a human being. And at the bottom it said, you independent badass. So what they're doing is suggesting to you that dealing with another human is a. Is a real pain in the ass. And if you don't talk to that human, you're independent, which is positive, and you're a badass, which is we're just going to elevate your position here. And what is that for? That's to convince you. And it's the same thing that got millennials into all of this way of thinking. It's the same thing. It's just so they can sell you something and not have as much of an overhead. That's not to make your life better. They're testing to see if they can get rid of all the employees in there. Absolutely. And they're trying to make you think that you're an independent badass if you don't talk to the employees. So they're conditioning you to not have to. So they're conditioning you to not miss the employees if they get them out of there. It's just. It's soul crushing. It's all from money. You asked earlier what, what's going on in the business. Why is this happening? Money. Why is this happening with generative AI money? It's not to make anything better for anybody. It's so that they can get rid of the. This is my position. I know you might have a different one, but to me it looks like just trying to get rid of the human capital overhead. I'll tell you in the business doesn't make anything better. It doesn't get us better films. It does not get us better films.
- [65:30]
Coleman Hughes
All right, Justine Bateman, thank you so much for doing my show.
- [65:34]
Justine Bateman
Thanks for having me on.
- [65:36]
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