Movie Lovers Unite

John and Bob discuss Movie Lovers Unite’s history and its future. The future is bright; listen to find out more.

https://youtube.com/live/tGmxzAhMxYU

Bad AI Transcript

Hey, everybody, and welcome to a conversation with Movie Lovers Unite, specifically, John DeGregorio. Yeah, you actually got it right, man. Thank you. Oh, wow. Well, that was a lucky shot. I could have gone anywhere with that, so. You did really good. I’m proud of you, man. Well, you know, it’s kind of one of those, you have a lot of syllables in your name, so DeGregorio. Imagine trying to spell it in English. Well, imagine trying to spell this. I spelled my last name in grade school. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I could play Wheel of Fortune with it and maybe spell something different. Yeah, because you got two I’s, two O’s, an E. I mean, all you’re missing is a U and a Y. You got them all in there. So, yeah. You got all the vowels. It’s a Wheel of Fortune. There you go. Right. So…
Actually, I met John on KJNA podcast one night just out of happenstance. And then we did Fright Night and Dune. Yeah. And so, yeah. But I wanted to talk to you. So basically, I just talked to folks about what they’re doing. So how did you come up with Movie Lovers Unite? So it started off like as a Facebook page. And so, you know, my thing is this. I’m not big on Facebook groups. I hate Facebook groups. I hate trying to be an admin on a group. I had people try to get me to be admin. So I’m like, look, I’m not an admin. Put me on a page. I’m good to go. I’d rather go ahead and ban someone and I can just like the person and be done versus having to go through a bunch of members. But how the page came about was this. I got tired of seeing like fake movie news.
and if you remember movie pilot back in the day, I got tired of seeing fake news and stuff like that when it came down to uh sites like movie pilot and we got this Covered, but we got this cover came out like later on. But I got tired of that. So I’m like, you know what? I want to go ahead and create a page where people can feel welcomed. Not only feel welcome but be able to talk about their favorite movies just as i talk about my favorite movies and they have a safe place to do it without being judged because all movies are subjective. I might like, you may not like, or there might be certain scenes that you liked and I didn’t like. And you can’t measure film physically or anything like that. It’s just something that cannot be measured. So, you know, I always say all movies are subjective. I always root for people that love their films, even though I may not like their film. I’m like, good for you. I’m glad that you liked that movie. It didn’t work for me, but I’m glad it worked for you. That’s great. But…
you know, I was always in that type of space where i like i want to do a movie new new movie news then after that, I was like, okay, time to make a channel. I have, and then at that time, too, I also had somebody else that was working with me on the page, and i didn’t put any type of advertisements into it or anything like that because i don’t pay for advertising and well we got the admin at the time that i had was like, well, let’s put some money into it. Let’s go on ahead and do it. so Then after he left, it just was just me. And I had a couple of other people. And it was just like, you know, basically people coming and going. But, you know, I would never take anything back. And I’m happy that even though we may have our differences, I’m actually happy that he did support the page and he made it what it is. And then, of course, I continued off of it. But, you know, after that, I’ve just been there.
It’s just been Rossi and I ever since with just the page. But I want to say I started back in 2013 or 15. I think with the page now, I have like 22,000 some followers on it. Wow. That’s a lot. It’s done good. And everybody was telling me, oh, you cannot do a movie page. Because a movie… Like, movie taste and stuff like that is different for everybody said yes But if you do it right, in the right kind of context, it can work. I said, I can do movie memes. I can do memes from different movie quotes, stuff like that. I can make the algorithm work. And so, that’s what I did. Um Then one of my friends like well, you need to make a youtube channel. So, I was like, okay, now it’s time to make a youtube channel. So, in 2000 and, yeah, I want to say 2013, though.
i started watching amc movie talk and i was trying to learn the lingo, learn the business side of it. So I discovered john Campia, AMC Movie Talk, started watching them, watching how they do things as far as stuff goes. And then i decided, okay, it’s time. So I went on hit made the youtube channel. Then YouTube changed their ways of doing things. You know that um you have to have at least a thousand followers at that time in order to go live. And I was using Google Hangouts to go live. Oh, right. Yeah. So think of it like this. So I’m like, okay, so now I can’t go live anymore. And it would take me three to four hours to just upload one video because my internet speed was so crap because I lived down in the city. Here’s the thing. I don’t live out in the city area at that time. And so I had the most crappiest internet from AT&T. So you were on DSL back then. Yes.
And so I decided not to worry about trying to do a movie show anymore. Then my friend D comes up to me and goes, have you ever thought about doing a podcast? This is like in 2019. Okay. So it evolved into being several different things. And I also had another co-host named Charlie and stuff like that. We had our differences and stuff. And then Rusty and I was like, look, it’s always been you and I doing this together. Let’s just make it just you and I doing it. I’m like, okay, it works. But, you know, D was like, well, have you ever tried doing that? Have you ever tried doing a podcast? So 2019, I started the podcast and it was on my cell phone. And you remember Anchor, right? Oh, yeah. Anchor. Yeah. They got bought out by Spotify now. Right. So then I was like, okay, so I got Anchor. I’m using Anchor.
I’m using it on my cell phone. And if you listen to like earlier episodes, you can hear, uh, crickets outside. You can hear different things because I’m doing the shows in my car. Right. Oh, okay. Like in the summertime and a hundred degree weather in the South. Yeah. I’m going like three or four bottles of water in my car because you don’t have the air conditioner on. I’m guessing. Cause it’s too noisy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, even in the evening time, I’m doing an hour-long show in my car in the evening time, and you can actually hear the crickets and stuff like that. I was like, I like the sound effects. I’m like, that’s not sound effects. That’s actually crickets in background they’re like oh that felt really relaxing. I’m like, well, I’m glad it did, but that wasn’t intentional, but i’m glad that you enjoyed it. So, then i finally managed to be able to save up enough for a computer, got me a mic,
Got me stuff set up. But also, too, at that time when I was doing just the audio stuff, I didn’t know how to edit. I didn’t know how to do any of that. So I was just uploading episodes and stuff like that. And I was doing podcasting for about a year for the audio. And I’m eating lunch one day, right? So while I’m eating lunch, I had someone message me. I’m looking at my spam folder at lunch. And I happen to see a publicist from Netflix. Oh, cool. I’m like, what? So I’m like, this has to not be real. So I ended up, I messaged her. She goes, yeah, we would like to actually do something from Martha Luther King Day. Why don’t you do a trailer reaction to a movie that we’re releasing on that day? I’m like, okay, perfect....

A Conversation with John from Movie Lovers Unite