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Federalist Radio Hour
Saving American Film From China
00:42:22
On this edition of The Federalist Radio Hour, film producer and author Chris Fenton joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss how Hollywood sold out the American film industry to China, what President Trump could do to...
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A
All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.
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Refreshers contain caffeine.
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C
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist and your experience Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge. As always, you can email the show@radioheederalist.com Follow us on XDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Chris Fenton, CEO and Media Capital Technologies of Media Capital Technologies and former president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group. Chris has lived and led the outsourcing of the US Film industry to China. He says that was a mistake. He joins us now on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. Thank you so much for being here, Chris. I appreciate it.
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B
Yeah, well, it's my pleasure. And your voice is so soothing. It makes some of that nefarious activity sound somewhat pleasant, to tell you the truth.
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C
Well, if they, I guess if they ever need a soothing voice for the nefarious activity, I'm open for business. But that's what has been open for business on all fronts. Earlier this week I had a conversation about biotech and the alarms therein that China has Communist China has, you know, really attempted to take over that and, and, and will eventually be the leading supplier of that. You were on the front early on of moving production from Hollywood to China because of so many different things. How did all of that begin? And on your journey in that you have done a 180 and why so.
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B
Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up the, the biotech realm because I'm counsel on foreign relations and there was an interesting paper recently on pharmaceuticals and the supply chain chokehold that China still has on the United States of America. It has not gotten any and we were awoken to that problem during the COVID situation. You would have thought it made us a little wiser about what we're doing there. But yeah, biotech and pharmaceuticals is a real problem with China in terms of the film and television production and the entertainment ecosystem, which is something that I've been a part of the real sort of. And if I want to go back to Using the word nefarious. Looking back at it, it does seem a little nefarious. It actually seems very anti American. It seems like corporate greed, selling out the welfare of the United States of America for a buck. But it wasn't quite that simple. In fact, most of us, I would say 99% of us that were involved with the exchange between the US and China were under this mission and purpose of, well, a having a good career. There was real opportunity, but, but really there was a higher calling which was spreading the soft power of democracy inside a communist country, bringing jobs here in the US by bringing in revenues from a market that we never had revenues from, which would ultimately create jobs here in the us. So this idea that we were selling out America was actually not the case because Kissinger and Nixon really put us on that sort of mission and purpose back in 1971, which got enhanced with formal trade relations in 79 and then obviously the WTO induction of China in 2001. And we all followed that mission and of course it was fruitful. But there was a higher calling. Now what happened since 2001 is most of us have been punched in the nose realizing that what we were doing to get our products and services into that country, you know, did not have the best ramifications for the United States over the long run. In fact, that aspirational quality of democracy was not really even spreading in that country either from our products and services. And on top of it, they were taking our jobs. And GDP growth, yeah, was there, but it was a bit of a sugar high. So looking back at it now, the big part that we helped on the entertainment front with China, that has been a problem for us is that we taught them how to fish in order to sell our fish in that market. And when they learned from the best in the world how to make movies, how to develop scripts, how to do the VFX and the post production work and all that kind of stuff, they ended up making their own film industry into one that rivals ours. So if you look at say 2012, 2013, when for instance, I was a part of movies like the Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon Levitt thriller Looper or the Robert Downey Jr. Starring Iron Man 3, we were occupying roughly 80 cents of every dollar in that market at the box office. Cut to today, it's down to around 5%. So they have completely kicked us out of the market. And they've learned how to make rival quality movies for their own audience from their own domestic film industry. And that's where part of the Story starts. But the other part that we want to hit is, is why all the offshoring everywhere else around the world, which is something we can get into.
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C
Yeah. I'm curious because this question comes to mind immediately when you talk about your experiences and what China has done with them. How much of this is China learning? How much of this is China stealing?
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All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.
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B
Refreshers contain caffeine. Well, that's a great question. I mean, in order to get movies like, say, Looper, which was a time travel thriller that had a lot of parts of the equation that would not allow Beijing's approval to get the film in, we had to promise them that we would shoot a certain amount of the movie over there. We would mentor a lot of their below the line crews to teach them how to do the process. The same thing was repeated with, say, Iron Man 3, where not only did we mentor a lot of their crew members and they're below the line and also above the line, but we also worked with them on their sound stages and how their facilities were built and how they would be made maintain properly and operate effectively. So there was a lot of process, you could call it theft or process education. We did. But then on top of it, in order to get films in that market or to get any sort of business in that market, you had to create essentially forced JVs, forced joint ventures where the government and. And China entities would own 51% of those JVs. And through that, that's where we see a lot of the tech theft and the IP theft that would occ, quite frankly, process theft that for, for instance, we might have as considered proprietary. Something that we only want Americans involved in. But they're, they force us to essentially implement their Chinese nationals into that process. And ultimately those Chinese nationals learn the process and then apply it to domestic competitors.
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C
Did all of this open up any issues with national security? I. I asked this. You know, we, we think about, well, it's, it's Hollywood. They're making movies, you know, they're, they're entertaining. China doesn't look at anything without looking at it through the, the prism of their own national security and what they can do against their enemies. And we've seen this with TikTok and other Chinese owned applications, it creates some real questions about what they're doing in terms of not only tracking technologies, but tracking Americans and tracking Americans who may have, may be privy to information that China wants on the national security side of things. Yeah.
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B
Well, I'll give you two examples that are specific to the film and television business, the Hollywood business. I've seen lots of national security issues in various other industries that have been a part of the touch point for. But let's focus on film and television so that we don't go on for hours on this podcast. Right, so there's soft power influence, right? The ability to control the hearts and minds of, of people around the world and to embrace them in a way that they want to be a part of. Your system of government, your system of hierarchy in the world versus somebody else's. I spoke at, in Stuttgart, Germany at AFRICOM this January about this very thing. Because AFRICOM is the part of the Department of War that oversees the continent of Africa and right now have China infiltration in that continent on a massive scale financially. Right. They created a belt and road initiative that applies to Africa where they're building ports, they're financing railways, financing mines, you know, helping people get better educated in various countries. And they're trying to win over the continent towards the Chinese system of government through just the sheer willpower of financial influence. Right. We don't have that type of financial influence or we haven't allotted the type of resources needed to do that with the African continent because we have various other priorities elsewhere. So what we're trying to do is go back to the CIA playbook where we win the hearts and minds of those on the African continent away from, say in the 1950s, from the sphere of influence that was the Soviet Union, and draw them towards the west, draw them towards the American system, the European system. Right. And that worked really well for the CIA. We did all kinds of things with jazz musicians and comedians and actors and artists back in the 50s and 60s to do that. Today we need to do the same thing. And I was there speaking in January about, you know, the idea of partnering more with studios, partnering more with streamers to create more top guns, to create more Rambos, to create more things that show aspirational qualities of democracy that differentiate us from the system that China has. So that's number one, right? Cultural influence, the impact on people. The second thing is a slow moving train wreck which is a part of that soft power play. Right? And you're probably, I'm 55 years old. So when I think about Russia, and I've never been to Russia and I actually don't want to go to Russia. And the reason I don't want to go to Russia is because the way I see Russia is the way it was portrayed in television and film throughout my childhood and throughout today. In fact, it's incredible that in a Born Identity movie or in a James Bond movie, you don't have Chinese villains, Right? You always have Cold War spies that are part of the KGB or whatever, the previous Soviet Union, USS Putin looking fellas.
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C
You basically have those movies. Yes.
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B
So because of that, when you think of Russia, even in today's world, I automatically go back to Gorky Park. I think about rain, sleet, snow, miserable people, alcoholics, KGB spies, missiles, nuclear warheads. It's a terribly depressing place, right? Well, China on the opposite side has forced Hollywood to never portray China for what China is in a lot of ways, right? You don't see Xinjiang camps, you know, concentration camps. You don't see, you know, June 4, 1989, you know, massacres at the Tiananmen Square. You don't see smoggy skies, pollution, all the problems they have with poverty, all the mass, you know, IM immigration into these cities that cities can't handle. And then they have to throw them back out into the fields, you know, during their national holidays with massive train lines and bus stops that are so packed you can't even get in within a mile of it. You don't see any of that. What you see is blue skies, you see gleaming skyscrapers, you see perfect infrastructure, you see gleaming malls, you see people with smiles on their faces. Everything that has been portrayed in film and television that my kids that are 19 year olds have seen about China portrays that part of China portrays the part of China that Beijing wants people around the world to see. Because we've been forced to do that in the movies that we do. We cannot have villains from China. You can't have criminals from China, you can't have criminals escape the police in China. You can't have smoggy skies, right? So when you think about that, my kids want to go to China. Why? Because they see all of that versus why. I don't want to go to Russia because I saw all of the reality there, right? So there is a problem that is slow moving train wreck that has caused younger generations to see China in a way that Beijing wants them to see them, but is completely not the reality of what's on the ground.
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C
There's Excuse me for my ignorance here, and there's plenty of it, a number of subjects, but why wouldn't Hollywood want to make a movie about what we know in the United States, that China has all kinds of human rights issues. That sounds to me like a, you know, an Academy Award winning movie. Why is it that they don't do that? Because you're absolutely right. We don't see that. They don't see that in China in their movies, obviously. And we rarely if ever see that in our movies here. What kind of control do they have other than, you know, that so much of this is outsourced in China. I get that. But we're still making movies in Hollywood. Why aren't we making that movie?
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B
Well, it's pretty simple. It's money, money. And it's not. I'm not saying people that are running companies are, you know, villains because they're running a company to be profitable. In fact, I've been just as guilty as anybody in terms of, you know, trying to make things as profitable in China as possible and not step on the landmines that are created. When you create something that's going to make Beijing upset or make Beijing censor or blackball or whatever, what happens is if you make that kind of movie that you were just talking about, or for instance, make a James Bond movie where a very obvious spy villain antagonist could be somebody from, say, the Chinese PLA or something, if you make that, everybody involved with that movie, forget about the movie ever getting into China, it won't get into China, but everybody involved with that movie will be blackballed from ever having any product or service in that market again. We've seen it with Richard Gere, you know, from being in, you know, in, in the movie Red Corner. We've seen it with Martin Scorsese from making K. You know, we have. Brad Pitt was banned for decades because of Seven Years in Tibet. The people involved with the remake of Red Red dawn, which made the Chinese army invade the USA in the original part of that movie, the remake where the Wolverines fight them back, well, when Beijing found out that movie was made, they said you either destroy that movie or you make it with a completely different villain. And just the fact that you even tried to make that movie, we're banning most of the entities involved with that film for at least a few years. And that's.
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C
That is infuriating. That is absolutely infuriating. And can I do this as a child of the 80s, first and foremost, Wolverines?
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B
Yes.
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C
I'm sorry, I'm Sorry.
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B
Shout out to Swayze up there.
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C
Yeah, God bless Swayze. Absolutely. And the rest of some of the rat. Rat Pack players. Brat Pack players, I guess they were. No, I mean, that is infuriating because we are being held hostage. And it's not just the movie industry as we talked about before. It's so many industries. There was a lot of talk in 2024 in the election. I heard it a lot from a candidate by the name of Vivek Ramaswamy, who's now running for governor in Ohio. But covering him in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses, he kept saying over and over again, and maybe he was the leading voice in that, we have to have a divorce from China. We have to decouple, have to get production back in America in all sorts of facets. But here's the issue and I want you your take on this because you've written extensively about it. You talked about the. So the, the soft side of things, the soft selling of America and democratic values, what went on in the 50s. We don't have Bob Hope anymore in Hollywood. We have Gavin Newsom in California. I bring all of that up because I think your road was about, hey, it's becoming increasingly more difficult, expensive to make movies in California because of tax policies, regulation, all of this stuff. That's one of the big reasons that this stuff that the movie production went elsewhere, particularly China. So how do you deal with that reality? Because it would seem to me based on what we saw in the California primary as of late, nothing is going to change. Another Gavin Newsom is going to come along.
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B
It's a, it's a great question and honestly, I feel like in order to rectify the situation, we have to take California and Los Angeles out of the equation. Those. Yes, I live in California. I love living in California. It's hard to leave 72 and sunny. But there's a lot of issues here. And for the most of the country, see, California and LA are toxic words, okay? So I don't expect to have anybody having any sort of sympathy around the country for the issues that are happening here. And if you want to talk about the issues, the stats are amazing. I mean, we've lost 58% of the production for television since 2022. LA is down 50% in production overall. In film and TV since 2015, CBS Radford Studios, one of the most iconic studio backlots in all of LA, just went bankrupt. We've lost 50,000 jobs in just the last couple years. It's a disaster. But let's put CA and LA aside. The entertainment ecosystem of film and television production is 3 million jobs. The majority of them are outside of California and Los Angeles. The majority of them are middle class jobs, upper middle class jobs by trained craftspeople that do everything from a camera person to trolley operator to grips, to gaffers, to electricians and plumbers, to drivers to caterers, you name it. 122,000 small businesses are a part of the ecosystem, employing somewhere between six and 10 people. When you think about that and the fact that the states that probably you and I care about a lot, red states, states that supported, say, Donald Trump's rise to the presidency the second time. These states are like Georgia, right? For the last three years they've lost from 4.4 billion in direct production spend down to 2.3 billion, almost 50% in Georgia alone. The sound stages are 75% either underutilized or empty. There's world class facilities down there like Trilith Studios, which by the way was founded by Dan Cathy, the chairman of chick fil. A31 sound stages, a thousand acres of backlot. It's one of the greatest facilities in all of the world. They are fighting to keep people employed down there. This is a real problem. And this is a real problem. In Kentucky, in Tennessee, where we shot Bad Counselors, we shot it in North Carolina. We employed 1200 people, all Americans, from cast through crew to vendors, to production companies or the production companies to the post production houses, all the vendors, the accountants, you name it, all Americans, 1200 people. We shot it in North Carolina, in Tennessee and partially in Texas. We did it all in America. And it's one of the only movies I can find of the last couple decades that can say that we are fully American made. And what I love about this movie, Bad Counselors, which is a little movie, comes out after The Odyssey on July 22. Anybody listening to this, please go out and buy tickets. It's coming to your Cinemark Regal or AMC theaters nearby your house. So go see it because it's American made, the same way you'd buy a Harley Davidson or a pair of Levi's. But what I like about it is, is a small movie that provides a template of how Hollywood can look at this issue moving forward. And what we want is the United States of America to go, hey, forget about California and la. This is something that affects the heartland, right? And if you look at, say, Donald Trump, who's probably the only one, our president's the only one that can help push through an American Federal production incentive. Right. Which would be essentially a layer of a tax credit on top of what the states are already doing to make us competitive with the 80 plus nations around the world that have national incentives. We have none. We're losing all this production because places like Canada, places like South Africa, places like the UK have stolen our production based on these massive subsidies that they do from a national level. The thing I want to make clear though about an AFPI is that it's not giving money away to build facilities. We have all the best facilities already in the world here. We have them, but they're just empty. No money goes to education or training. We have the best world class people that already know the trades better than anyone around the world. So none of that's involved. A tax credit simply would go towards the people that are employing these great Americans on these American productions. And it only happens after a full audit, which by the way, we're going through on Bad Counselors. We made that movie a year ago. We still go through the audit to showcase where we spent the money, who was employed, were they North Carolina residents, were they Tennessee residents, all that kind of stuff. And we don't get a dollar until all of that is audited and we prove who we hired and where they lived and why it was good for the taxpayer to give us some sort of a rebate. Okay, that's exactly the same thing that we're asking here. And by the way, when you think about it, it's the 250th birthday of the United States of America this year. There would be nothing better. I see. In terms of going into the midterms, if you're Donald J. Trump going, I was responsible for the rebirth of USA filmmaking. I am bringing good jobs back to American workers across America in the heartland. Forget California, Los Angeles, that's a lost cause. What about people in your backyard of Georgia, your backyard of Iowa? All these places have production hubs and we need to get people working.
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C
250th anniversary of this exceptional nation brought to you by communist China. That's really what it is. Everything is, is so subsidized by China. It is, it is horrifying to think about what is and what is next. Chris Fenton, CEO of Media Capital Technologies, former of multi billion dollar DMJ Entertainment Motion Picture Group. Chris has lived and led the outsourcing of the US film industry to China. And we're talking about what a mistake that that was. You also are the author of, I think a pretty interesting book, Feeding the Dragon Inside the trillion dollar dilemma facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American business. And we're hitting on all of those topics of that book. But I have to ask you two questions related to what you just said. One is how are you still employed in the film industry after having said nice things about Donald Trump, first and foremost. And you do see the PR problem, the public relations problem of Hollywood, in essence. And I know you want to keep Hollywood out of. It's hard to not see Hollywood in all of this. That Hollywood would be requesting tax relief from the taxpayers that Hollywood has spent belittling and hating for so long.
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B
Yeah, that is. Well, first of all, to answer the first question, yes, when I, I wrote a, an op ed, I came out of the closet and I said I voted for Donald Trump in 2024. And I, I definitely lost what remaining friends of mine were still clinging on with the fact that maybe he can rec this weird sort of, you know, phase he's going through, because that started when my book came out. And the left, even though I've been a lifelong Democrat, the left did not want to talk about China challenges or issues. So I pretty much was relegated to promoting my book on Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and Laura Ingram and Maria Bartiromo, etc. And I pretty much lost half of my friends back then. So it was hard to lose anymore. But, you know, it's, it's interesting because we have a beltway that is under GOP control, at least for now, and there's a lot of people that are unemployed around the country that have voted GOP their whole life and have voted for Donald Trump. And it's something that I think is a strange irony. I mean, it almost brings me back to say when we had these images, terrible fires a year and a half ago, and Gavin Newsom was suing Donald Trump for X, Y and Z and talking terribly about him and trolling him on the Internet or, you know, on his Twitter, yet at the same time, he was asking for federal relief to rebuild, you know, it was just a crazy thing. It's like if you want to be in the game, you have to play ball. And when I look at the fact that the majority of these really important jobs, these jobs that are not occupied by people that have large war chests in their savings accounts that maybe live paycheck to paycheck or maybe have, you know, because of the way this business works, you know, everybody's sort of freelance. They move from job to job. So you do have, like, a certain buffer that you're always expecting to have and the average, say, cameraman or the average grip or the average, you know, caterer or whatever it is, they tend to work maybe when. When things are healthy, say four or five times a year on maybe three movies and two television series or whatever it is now. It's one or maybe one every two years. So people are drawing down their savings pretty quick. And these are good people around the country that have nothing to do with California, Los Angeles. They just happen to get into a business, a manufacturing business that manufactures content. And keep in mind, a lot of these people got in the business. They're 55 years old. When I got into this business, there was none of this talking poorly about people on the other side of the aisle or, you know, whatever you want to call it, the overly woke stuff or the huge criticism of, say, you know, George Bush in every movie or whatever it was. There wasn't that. It was about making entertainment, about making water cooler content that could. People could talk about when they were at work sitting around a water cooler. That's why they called it. You know, you had red and right and left watching Roseanne and Cosby show and Family Ties and Miami Vice and talking about it the next day. Like now. We created. We moved into a space where we create content for the coastal elites and we, you know, White Lotus or whatever it is, and we create content that, by the way, should get nominated for awards. But you never see Landman nominated for something or Yellowstone. It's crazy. Yet they get huge audiences. Right? But we've bifurcated the viewership outside of, say, the NFL or some sports programs. It's really been bifurcated. And that's what we loved about, you know, making this movie Bad counselors because there's no political ideology in it. It's completely nostalgic for parents that want to bring their kids to go see it because a lot of us went to summer camp. There's a feel good sort of premise to the movie. The two characters get nicely redeemed. It's very inspirational for young kids. And young kids, quite frankly, are going to camp right now. So they feel a lot of relevancy to it. And that's what I think we need to go back to in Hollywood, is to just create good content, good entertainment, good engaging entertainment that allows people to just escape their challenges on an everyday basis and just enjoy themselves and not be talked to and preached or whatever it is. So to answer your question, yeah, it's tough, you know, I. It is. In fact, it's very tough to talk about the afpi, because a lot of people in Hollywood won't even talk to the. Right. And I'm sorry, you're not going to get anything done with President Trump if you're unwilling to talk on the platforms that he listens to, that his staff listens to, that people that are around him are influenced by the constituents listen to. I mean, the Federalist, you know, I, I don't know how many people from Hollywood have done the Federalist podcast five times, but I think I might be the only one. Right.
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C
You are, by the way, just, just, just for the record, and I feel
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B
honored to do it. I love it, you know, and, and it's, yeah, it does drive me crazy. But the reality is if our president can put aside his feelings towards California, Los Angeles, and focuses on the majority of the people that are affected by this and can benefit from this and the fact that they happen of his constituents and a lot of the voters that actually put him into office, I think it's a huge win for him and a huge win for those people.
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C
Despite the rhetoric. And it's not just rhetoric. A lot of what has been said about California politics is true. You have to separate, you know, the elitist in California with the people. And I think this president truly loves America and that includes California. He has deep ties to California in certain respects and some of that is, is in entertainment, of course. And so I think he would, and I think most conservatives would love to see California prosper again and, you know, to be that shining city of the shining, you know, the shining neighborhood in the shining city on the Hill. As Ronald Reagan said, there's just such a, a bubble there. It's such a leftist elitist bubble. And it happens in so many blue states around the country that we are never going to solve the kinds of issues you're talking about unless you can puncture that bubble and get through to it. So I guess as we look ahead, how do you, you're talking about tax credits, but how do you solve that massive China problem that, that we're talking about here?
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B
If I could just interject one other subject, if it's okay, which is AI disruption. Right. So one of the things that we're racing against too with this AFPI is, is we want to reshore these jobs and get all a solid foundation for these people before AI disruption really starts to occur in our business and starts to mitigate the amount of jobs that are out there. Overall, I have, I'm hopeful that what we're going to see is the Democratization of making content. And we'll see more content made with fewer people making each form of it. But I do think there's going to be opportunities for everybody in an AI disrupted universe. Right. But the second thing that I wanted to bring up about AI disruption and it goes into this political ideology and the issues with California. We talked about LA and California, but we haven't talked about San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And that's, that's the AI disruption issue. And if you look at it, yes, you have the occupational disruption, but you also have the content, the output, the information, the news, what people are going to AI to learn about. And Loam Entertainment, which is the, the studio that we've been building down in Franklin, Tennessee, that was the financing and production, creative production company behind Bad Counselors. We have that movie coming out July 22, but then on September 22 we have a platform called Uplift coming out. And Uplift is an AI technology that allows people to feel a trust in the information that they're getting because the guidance they're getting from the AI inputs that they give the output is spiritual guidance that comes directly from scripture. And one of the things that's interesting about it is that we believe that human flourishing, the kinds of things that make people feel content with their lives, knowing it's got roller coasters, sisters and ups and downs and all that stuff really requires faith behind believing in something higher. And whether that's Christian or Judaism, or believing in your yoga instructors, higher beliefs or the universe, whatever it is, that faith of believing in something higher is, is very important in human flourishing. In fact, I got a, a book behind me that's from the Trilith foundation called Human Flourishing. And what we've also found is AI is influenced by a particular worldview. So we looked at that and said, hey, where do people want to get their, their most trusted sources of truth? And you look at people, you know things they believe in, faith wise. And what we found was there was an opportunity to create content from AI. The output that comes derived from Scripture and it's delivered from the truth from the Bible itself. We don't say, oh, that is the truth you gotta believe in, but it is from, directly from the Bible, one of the most trusted books of all time, right? And you can interpret it the way you decide to go back to the Bible, look at that, or go back to your source of faith and use what comes out of uplift and apply that to way you look at believing in something higher to get that true truth. And it's Something that I think is really interesting. We're seeing others do it, for instance, like Glue is doing. And various others are trying to create platforms to counter what this particular worldview is coming out of Silicon Valley in San Francisco, and to help people navigate how they're getting their information, how they're getting their research. So it all plays into this. Yes, we're talking about film and television content and how it's shaping people's opinions and also how it's backfiring on Hollywood's business model. But at the same time, we're starting to see that with AI content, and we're trying to provide an alternative to it the same way we did with all this offshoring. Let's provide an alternative that's fully American made. And we really hope this is not a zero sum game. We're just a little part of the puzzle. But we're hoping others really start to try to push this kind of idea through and help people flourish. Because humanity is, I think, at stake, and America is a bit at stake. I'm a big pro American. So, going back to your China question, the best thing that's happening for Hollywood in terms of China is that our movies just aren't working over there. So the influence they have on us inputting China messaging, that's proactively narrative for Beijing, we're not doing anymore, mainly because the payoff isn't really there. But what you won't see in terms of the China influence, that would be, in your case, something that's a good, good thing or a good sign is this idea of like, oh, let's go make something that we know is sensitive to Beijing or something that's offensive to Beijing, or go make that human rights movie that you talked about. No one's going to do that. And the reason for that is not because we think it's going to make a lot of money in China. Those movies won't get into China. It's about what's happening with the multinationals in that market. And they don't want to jeopardize it. I. E. Disney has a huge theme park outside of Shanghai. It's a huge part of their business over there. It funnels all the machine that creates all the merchandising profits. They don't want that damage Universal, big theme park out of Beijing. They don't want to damage the potential, the economic potential of that huge investment they made there. And that's repeated over and over by all the different multinationals. Everybody is looking at China like, okay, just don't offend them. Don't do anything sensitive, you know, make sure you stay, you know, on the straight narrow with them. Always give them an apple a day. That's going to get you the A right there. There's never a, an idea of like, oh, let's provoke something over there. Forget that never will happen. And that's unfortunate until maybe say, a move on Taiwan is done and suddenly China gets elevated into something more of a North Korea type of situation in terms of the way people look at them.
- [39:21]
C
Yeah, it's a, it is a sad state of affairs. It is the, the harsh reality that we have to deal with. You know, I would love to see everybody in, in industry, whatever industry it is, focus on pissing off China. I just, I, I have, I have had it with that. But you know, you write about it in your book. The NBA is a key example of that. They don't, they do not want to alienate China. They, they, first of all, they want to be in China. They want their, their brand in China. In order to do that, they have to kowtow to China. And China has done some really horrible, horrible things. And I think it is so anti American to not offend someone or to try not to offend someone. In essence, what I'm saying is it is so anti American not to tell the truth about something. Americans do that about their own government and they should very much be doing it about oppressive regimes in China. But that's where we are. Can I end with this question? It has nothing to do with what we've talked about just tangentially. What is a gaffer?
- [40:36]
B
So there's all kinds of people involved with the scaffolding and holding microphones. You got mic operators, gaffers, or people that work on the electrician parts of the equation. On a production. You have grips that are involved with all kinds of maneuvering of the dollies and the trucks and the various other components of camera. The, the camera work. So it's just slang terms for people that hold a variety of different positions. Everybody's got to be a bit of a jack of all trades on these movies, particularly if you're making an independent film like Bad Counselors, which, by the way, for anybody listening to this, please go to bad counselors.com and go buy your tickets for July 22nd.
- [41:18]
C
You are still so Hollywood.
- [41:20]
B
You know what? I still have to make sure people go see this because, well, for sure people might want to go because it's American made and it's a good movie. But you know, it's it's something that I'm really passionate about. You know, I, I feel like being pro American, being patriotic for some reason has been turned into this situation where it's not seen as great anymore.
- [41:43]
C
And yeah, I feel like we need
- [41:44]
B
to get back to that, that.
- [41:46]
C
I, I agree completely and I want to see movies made in America again. I don't think that should be too much to ask. Apparently it has been. And just to the gaffers, again, have they ever asked to be called something else? Because, you know, gaff is, is, is something that, that Joe Biden was well known for. The gaffes of Joe Biden. It's, it's, you know, it's kind of a rough term, but I suppose when something gets into the lexicon, it's hard to, to grab an extremely important issue and it ties into everything we're dealing with. China is our number one enemy and we have been subversive to that enemy. We need to stop that. Thanks to my guest today, Chris Fenton, CEO of Media Capital Technologies and former president of the multi billion dollar DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group Group. Chris has lived and he has led the outsourcing the US film industry to China and he says it's time to turn that around. You have been listening to the Federalist Radio Hour. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. Table working to God. Got no kids in the love.