frankly nobody knows how to make a good movie still like we've made I think just a little over 2 million movies in the history of mankind we made 300 million books since the the printing press this is still Uncharted Territory in a way we are feeling creatures who also happen to think the directors of old like all the greats that you can think of built businesses to make their movies that's
how dedicated they were to this we made our first Frontier film which is a new category of film it's not a feature film it's not a short film it's not a documentary The Distance the gap between genius people that you w up to and you is so much incredibly smaller than you could ever imagine we're all immigrants to life it doesn't matter where you're born when you become an adult and it's
your time to go make your mark in the world it's like you're just as fresh as anyone else well hello everyone it's Jim o shanesy with yet another infinite Loops I was very excited for today's recording my guest is Jason Carman one of our osv fellows and just a Dynamo uh who Jason man like do you ever ever sleep you are the founder of the story company I love your quotes too story inspires science
science makes story real but then we're in the Golden Age of science but the dark ages of story telling Jason welcome thank you thank you for having me this is more exciting for me to just just because before founding this company that like I've wanted to found since I was nine um which sounds ridiculous and like a lie but I swear it's not um I was working on an incredible job I had and I
was really burnt out and tired of making these weekend documentaries um and it was the most serendipitous message from you um after a hike with the roommates saying oh I'm so burnt out of making these documentaries um but it was a message from you and and the fellowship that gave me the confidence to and the financial support to make the jump to doing this fulltime and so um quite
literally would not be here today if it weren't for that support so thank you and it's an honor an honor to talk beyond that because i' I've come to really enjoy actually that the show quite a bit um and and a few people I'm filming with I go like type in their name on the Internet and you're the only one that has interviews with them which I think is a great sign it means you know talking to rare people so thank you
for doing this my pleasure and uh let me just add an addendum there I have every confidence that with or without me you would be doing what you're doing uh we are we find that people like you uh are really gracious in your thanks uh to us but like you by hook or by crook Jason I think you would be sitting exactly where you're sitting right now um Le let's let's dig into the sense you were nine
you know I uh Stephen Spielberg kind of same story right he they made a movie about it wasn't a very good movie though unfortunately but yeah like Spielberg same thing lot of people that I talk to like burning desire to do something from when they were a kid what was it when you were nine what what what flipped that switch you know it's a weird I I I think I have a full story of it I think it
just takes a few minutes to tell but I I really like the story because I think it properly honestly shares the events that occurred in the psychology like wrapped in with that rather than like um I watched a movie and I knew that I wanted to be the the best filmmaker of all time it's nothing like that it's totally I think it's a funny story and very like I don't think there's any psychological
warping that happens essentially it started originally because of laziness which is really funny because I don't I don't think laziness is normally a big part of my day-to-day anymore but B basically in fifth grade a teacher had a book report that was required you could either write it or uniquely I think the school was trying to be more Cutting Edge you can make a video report instead
and I was like that sounds easier than writing a five-page paper which is hilariously ironic because every day I write five pages now for scripting and things I me I love writing now but back then I I was afraid of it so I made this video it was really bad but I became there's a moment in the video where I added like a little sound effect like an MP3 really low quality sound effect of
like a a bomb going off with like a papier-mâché bomb I made and it was a prop and it was a whole thing but I was I was excited about the magic of like combining two different parts of that process and making it in together they were sort of a strong hole and that process just set me off into the interest of making little videos with like the USB flip Kim quarter recorder I I was lucky enough to go to to Italy I
think that summer with my parents um and we we took a few family trips when I was a kid and that was like I think the Highlight one and I just remember filming everything in in like the culture shock of going to Europe um as like a kid when you've never been there before um and just you have no idea what the culture is it's like so many things that like capture your mind and are like incredibly interesting like oh my gosh
why are there so many naked people everywhere in statues this is like I remember as a child that was like particularly interesting to me um and I was like why is this happening um and and all of the yeah I could go I could go on about that but it really started off this love for me of just filming filming things and then I I had an uncle who was a technologist and he and my dad both sort
of put this like imprint on me of like just storytelling being a valuable thing I mean my dad would tell me stories going to sleep every night as a little kid and that was he he was sort of like a generative AI back then and and I mean that in the sense of like he I don't think he he would take offense to this um he he wasn't like they weren't these like carefully crafted stories he was
sort of just making it up every next sentence and to the point where he he'd start falling asleep and then like the stories would start not making sense and like Dad like I don't understand why the like superhero was about to save the woman and then she turned into a crab um and and and he was like oh sorry think I fell asleep like it's like okay and then and my uncle um was a big fan of
technology and um building you know a fiber optic Network in rural Northern California and and was just a big technologist that's definitely where I think I caught the technology bug at a young age and he on the on the flip side of that was a big believer in the value of Storytelling and I remember one day I told him that I wanted to kind of maybe try out some green screen stuff in my my
family's home uh desktop computer was not going to cut it and like I don't think it would even have the ability to stack two video layers on top of each other that the low amount of compute it had so I go to my uncle I think I'm 10 or 11 and I'm like hey what what like how do I do this and he was like oh well you need to go tell your parents you you want a MacBook Pro 13inch 2012 or 2013
edition I was like okay went to my parents and they were like that's the $3,000 computer you're 10 um no and but but I think this is the next part that they say is what I think set me on the course him on um was that no but we'll help you save up for it and and so then two years of selling lemonade during the Summers and mwing Lawns and uh being a janitor in their dental practice um and
like over about a year and a half two years of saving saving money um I had the money for the computer and they and then I went and bought it at the Apple Store in Sacramento um and it was just like like Christmas for me it was like this insane feeling and I think then when I loaded the footage then I shot that then week I learned about the computer and had it sitting on the flip cam recorder for two years I think that
part might be might might be made up but I don't that's how I remember it but hey who knows um loaded in the footage and it just didn't work like the green screen footage it wasn't lit properly it was not working and I think in combination with saving up for for two years wanting to do this thing all the while and then it not working sort of set me on this like obsess of like I want to figure it out path versus like
just immediately downloading Minecraft and playing video games and and not not learning all the the CGI visual effect stuff I then went on to learn after um as a result of like the frustration and interest and how do I make this thing work um so I think that weird combination of events is what let me let me hear and then as time's gone on I've learned and grown more interest in like
the art and the depth of Storytelling um in the in the business side of like how do you make a a new film studio in the 21st century that works and is is successful and big so anyways but I think that's I think that's kind of the initial the initial spark for sure yeah it's I mean there's so much to learn there right because overcoming obstacles is how you get better at a craft and you
I mean it's part of our ancient DNA I think C problem try to figure out and then you continue to try to figure out because once you solve the first problem you get a better problem and then the better problem is harder and then you get a much better problem it's like you know the the line from uh uh Game of Thrones uh uh I change it to failure is a ladder uh because each time you're
climbing up that ladder you're you're you're getting better problems which makes you better but a lot of people um lack that uh sort of impetus it's kind of like high agency verse like oh I confront it at once [ __ ] it it didn't work close the MacBook I'm going to play you know World of Warcraft or whatever yeah and like to me though I I love that it's it's almost a set piece because I
was I was writing in my notes as I was getting ready uh to chat with you like your origin story is great you know you're the Plucky Underdog becoming the Rebel Alliance leader against the entrenched antagonists you have a heroic Mission and that that's kind I like I like though I like those words are great and I love that idea I think it's it's perhaps a little grandio for what my
mission is but I I love it nonetheless so I I will I I take it with with with honor the other thing you say I I mean it's almost like we're quantumly entangled because I think I out La you I think I'm possibly the laziest person that I know uh anywhere and it's like the old German or Prussian General he was asked you know how do you assign you know your soldiers and and one of his
remarks was well if they're lazy and dumb right to the front Canon fodder if they're lazy and clever I put them at the top of the highest command yeah because people find out the easiest way to get anything done right that's something I tell my team all the time is that I think there's like a Bill Gates quote that's similar to how he sort of thought about building Microsoft this idea of like laziness wins because
you're going to find systems and efficient ways to do things and I I tell my my my team this all the time like find a way easier way to do it we we we we have a few incredible people on the team um um one one guy who was at Pixar for 25 years now and now he works with us which is like dream come true it's like so cool and I remember like trying to explain this concept of like you were
trying too hard to make it look good you got to find a lazier way to go about and he was like I think at first he was like I got to quit this is not a good place for me to work as an artist and then I think I think over time he's he like realized like oh wait wait no no no the point is that I get to do more art and finding a way easier way to sort of go go about about this thing and like lazy
kind of like has all this negative baggage with it but in fact it can it can be a great force motivator yeah and uh that's interesting we were chatting before we started uh the official podcast and talking about you this is an interesting time for you because you're literally building out a team yeah and and so how's that going what do you look for like when when I put a team together
I always try to hire people who have who have cognitive abilities that are very different than my own or creative abil that are very different than my own because I'm loaded with blind spots we are all loaded with blind spots and I think one of the better ways is to find that person who isn't right and oh you see all the stuff I don't will you please work for me or with me how how are you proceeding on on that uh
building out of the team you know I I I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it and you know when I did S3 the the docu series exploring all these deep tech companies um deep Tech requires a rare level of commitment and wor ethic from its employees to to build Rockets satellites and robots that work I mean you're working an incredible amount of hours on the weekends um with a high
high potential failure and so that was kind of my bar going into it just just from immersion of like not being in Hollywood or or being like looking looking at other you know jobs where there's like a N9 to-5 expectation or something like this and so I mean I'll caveat everything I'm about to say with like I don't know let's check back in a few years or five years so far I think it's working but I
I think number one is we we look for people that have exceptional ability and portfolio work because um we're mostly hiring people that have worked either adjacent to the industry in in in film and um media creation and in general we're looking for like full stack filmmakers which sounds like a very Tech term but the intention is that you're not just an editor you're not just a
director you you you can do multiple things or you've demonstrated the ability to learn multiple things quickly um and and you're not just a part in the team I think an issue with one of many issues with the Hollywood model today is that people right now are incentivized to take their paid for how long they're they're staying in a period of production whether it's development pre-production production post
production and marketing they're paid for their time there so how does that incentivize you to move through that quickly or efficiently at cost it doesn't it it incentivizes you to stay there and get your hours up and so oh no there's another pre-production delay oh no there's another delay it's like they're getting paid more of course they would do that it makes sense and so I
think the ability to have we want people that can work at every stack of that pipeline you have multiple skills is one the next thing we do is once we've identified them we're like trying to show them how like this is their dream job and it's easy for me to believe that because I mean I've I've worked at multiple companies and I've been lucky to work at multiple companies that are like were at some point in my career
dream jobs for me however like I'm a kid that grew up wanting to watch Star Wars and wanted to be a visual facts artist and like make the next Star Wars you know and so working going to apply for a company that says that they want to do that is exceedingly rare and um especially in in such a foundational way where like a conversation at lunch can lead to a new faction in The Intergalactic War of the
series we're writing or a new design decision for the architecture of that faction or whatever and and so like it's really easy to sell a company to really talented people based on the the idea of like no no no no this is a once- in a-lifetime Opportunity um to to build a company that's trying to make the next generation of great sci-fi films because that does not I I know it just doesn't
come along ever and so that that's easy Once that's out of the way we're we're on to the third thing which is like we try to scare people before we hire them we we and and we want them to know how hard it would be to work here um we don't sugarcoat it we don't try to hide it we we tell them that we have like a SpaceX expectation like at least in the first five years of building the company
um the company is your life um the odds in in that this is an incredibly rare opportunity to work in a place that wants to make freaking Sci-Fi movies and have that make money and make sense on a business level um it needs to it requires a rare level of work ethic too um the original Star Wars was made for 17 million um mostly outside of the Hollywood studio system and Lucas thought he would do it for three million
and I think like if a few things had gone differently he could have done it even cheaper and so the the capital efficiency story and in the story of working exceedingly like incredibly hard to do that um is really important and so we we try to scare people and let them know like the expectation is that you're going to work crazy hard there's basically you're only call it all hours
um and that like any anything less than that like kind of won't be tolerated because that's what we require at this stage one day I don't think we'll we'll be quite that militaristic but right now I think it's what's required to make this work um and make it make sense um there's a balance between what's what I've learned now after doing for eight months is that there's a balance between
the SpaceX kind of like burn not all your employe employees way and the artists don't work well with that and it's not to say like oh artists are softer than you know um aerospace engineers um but but it's more to say that like the work is a little different like if if you're trying to create art there's something there's like things that are somewhere to engineering like you are dealing with you know in
engineering your your only enemy is the laws of physics um but or not even enemy but your constraint in art there are no constraints so as a result it's a very different kind of work process to get to something that's really quality it's not necessarily just about like throw the editor or the engineer at the problem until it's done and like sit on them until it's like done and and really burn
them out you can't really do that quite the same way it's like a different different approach and so that that's where it's like we're hiring people that want to do that like you cannot make somebody who doesn't want to work crazy hours and do these things we just talked about do that I I don't think I think you have to already want that like that's what I wanted when I was working
other places I think every person we've hired now wants that too um if and if I'm pleased to say it's like the only thing I've had to do as a manager and a leader in the past eight months is tell certain employees to like slow down and sleep and actually like save themselves which I think is a good sign um another funny little like Quirk about our company is that we require every single employee to be an editor um and and
which is I think unique and that like you know Elon has this whole thing of like the factory is the product not not the Tesla not the rocket not the car not the rocket it's the factory I similarly believe that is true with editing for film um you could give an a great editor bad footage and you can make a great edit you could not you could you could give great footage to a bad editor and
you would get a very bad edit so I think editing is the bottleneck it's it it's the most impactful part of the process um and it's the part that we've spent the most time investing people and processes and and infrastructure into to like really make sure we can grow out more and we're always looking to hire really incredible editors um they're rare because like it's like again we
want full stack editors which means you can do a bunch of of things um I think that's most of the the hiring process yeah it's it's really like incredible work ethic like a a rare level of work ethic and commitment um we're not looking for people who want a job we're looking for people who want to join a cult and build the next Disney the next Lucas film um and who when when we say that we can tell that they want to do
that because they start jittering um and that means they get it like it means that they're I'm just like them they're just like me you know from childhood we've grown up looking these movies and like oh my God it'd be an honor to make those movies and so we're hiring people like that who can learn really fast too um and that's one thing I think to to one final thing I'll say is like the
team we we brought on our foundational team is incredible I mean just from the learning rate alone so like for and I can like call out each individual member of the team of like over six months so at the beginning of six months um my lifelong producer and friend I've been able to hire like three lifelong friends who in Mill school high school we ran like a little movie making cult I will
say where we made a bunch of short films even a future film and then we all kind of went to college and said okay one day we'll be back together and we'll do this for real and it's like happening now um one of those people um is my producer and she didn't know Photoshop didn't even know like how to open it um or she probably knew that but like now she designs all of our merchandising in our
apparel and if you look at our apparel it's incredible she learned she is the only one that's doing that um there's no AI it's just her and like incredible work ethic and learning rate um our composer also lifelong friend didn't know how to edit at all now he edits like tens of shorts or vertical videos per month that are going viral and like helping us reach um our main target genen Z audience um like I I could go on
about every single member of of the team it has this incredible ability to learn new technical skills to to make incredible stuff and I think that that's really important especially as like we look to make the next industrial Light and magic for ourselves we look to make the next visual effects company the next editorial company to make our movies and so the ability to like have a team that
can learn technical processes to make art really well is really important so so yeah sorry I hope that's not too belong of an answer but I think it's it's pretty much all like right now what I'm focused on is like who are the right first 10 people at the company that will as we scale to 100 people in the future um hopefully it takes a while to do that I don't I don't want to speedrun that um um we they've they've
set the culture the tone and and the level of quality of work that that we want to see going forward yeah I mean there's there's so much there in what you've just said like I also I kind of heard Timothy Shalom uh in you loved his speech I loved his speech where it's like you know what I I I'm not going to be up here and and be uh you know humble bragging I want to be the best I I I
really aspire to Greatness and I I love that aspect of uh what you're building because you do too uh I had the uh opportunity to to meet um the um several of the the people that you mentioned um and and uh Star Wars so I I met him I I'm uh my kids went to school with Ron Howard's kids and and so he would have us over for um New Year's Eve uh every year and essentially there was always
like one surprise guest uh and and so I find myself sat next to the director aour of Star Wars and I'm sitting there and I'm asking him a bunch of questions about because I grew up on Star Wars right like Star Wars was my Matrix when I still remember standing online and like the you could feel the energy just because of the buzz from from the movie but one of the things that amazed me
about him was he has an incredibly competitive streak like he I would ask him and I will not name the other directors I asked him about but like wow blunt and like yeah yeah that guy doesn't understand that this is show business and then he underlines with his hand business and you know I I see that in you too because I love the fact that you're already talking merchandise right
like Lucas I don't know if it's an apocryphal story or not but like he he nailed it when he made the deal with the movie company no you know you know what I'll just take the merchandise I'll just take the merchandise and of course that created such a fortune um another thing that I found interesting as I deal with with creatives is that idea that you you have to almost create artificial
constraints like Lucas 3 million I can make this for 3 million right and and up being more but what if he said no I I you know I want a 100 million or whatever the equivalent back then would have been uh you know probably wouldn't have get made right and and so going into it with you know here's my minimum viable product so to speak to use founder words um I I just love that kind of energy and in in Creative people
because I think your call out on the differ between engineers and creatives is bang on right I deal with both right we have verticals all of our verticals are areas that I love and that I think have huge Arbitrage opportunities right so infinite films why why did I do infinite films because I love movies and I always have loved movies and it was pissing me off that like I wasn't seeing
any movies that were inspiring I wasn't seeing any mov movies that were like hey you know what there's a lot of geniuses in the world and guess what we've got this new thing called the internet where we can connect with them we can find them that's what that's why we found it the fellowship right like we can find and fund Geniuses at a level that was you know Unthinkable just like 15 years
ago and and so what do you what do you think you know because like I I also grew up watching in reruns I will admit but uh Star Trek right and and like Star Trek was really really at least from my view kind of an optimistic take on the future and then I kind of thought about it and I was like when did scii turn when did it go from because early sci-fi was like really optimistic really
optimistic and and then you know it seemed to me that between I don't know I think the assassination of Kennedy was a big deal I think because you know he that speech we will go to the moon like that kind of fire energy and like meanwhile the engineers are sitting there going well we don't have any of the tools that we need to get to the moon but they got so inspired and then of course him being assassinated then
you get you know the oil embargos by OPEC and the by the way I I went from age 10 to 20 in the 1970s and good and bad the 70s were like the worst [ __ ] decade of all time except you got Star Wars you got a lot of cool stuff but then you also had the oil embargo by OPEC that leads to soilent Green soilent Green is people and then it just got so dark right 911 happens we get Children of Men
we get all of this just like you might as well just kill me now because the future is going to just suck what what are your thoughts what do you think about how because I am sensing in your work in other work a real turn and I'm really excited about it I'm really rooting for it uh but but what do you think is it just part of our natur I mean because like we we are feeling creatures who
also happen to think we are not necessarily thinking people or creatures that also happen to feel emotions have like a four million year head start on stories yes but stories I believe and I want to get your take on this really have to appeal to emotion I think what do you think yeah I I they have to and oh my gosh there's there's way too many things to to that I'd love to comment
and talk about on on what you just just said and I think uniquely so so I spent I spent the weekend um like an hour the weekend I got away from work and just drove kind of South and listened relistened to like one of my favorite interviews with Lucas um because okay this is where I'll get spicy I I've been like thinking a lot about like how how spicy well will I publicly be about some of my opinions on
on Hollywood and I'm pretty much landed on like no I'm G to be fully honest about how I feel I I think I thought really hard about for many years what's what's wrong with Hollywood why why are movies worse movies take longer cost more money and are worse than ever before why is that happening and I think there like there's sort of two top level answers the first answer is that oh the studio executives
are greedy um which I think is a very obvious thing to think and then the second one that this one really upset me the most um was the response critical response and the wga's or the writers response to CGI and visual effects um and to to take a step a step back here when I was a kid after I I get the so I get the computer and I learn blunder which is a pretty exciting week to talk about this because back
then in 2011 2012 blunder was this sort of new open source software it was about to go through this big uiux change blunder 2.7 it was an open source software made in Europe and it basically was made by some guys who were like this is ridiculous that all the 3D software costs tens of thousands of dollars per license seat um we should make an open- Source 3D software that anyone can use
to make movies um the industry didn't um just say that that wasn't possible they they downright laughed at it um it's an incredible week and so like I I went on to like go and learn blunder be a huge supporter of it um and I remember even like as a as a stupid 12-year-old 13-year-old being like I'm going to one day make a movie studio that uses only blunder and revenue and profits from it
will support open source plug-in development and like tools we'll build for ourselves we'll also make open source to support the software that supported me in our journey um and now in five five years ago blunder starts to become like a legit software that more people are using in Industry um originally people just start using it because it's the only free software that can convert between all the file types
um that's the reason they're using it and they start using they like wait it's really good actually and then this week um blunder just won the best animated picture at the Oscars for a open source blunder movie like the amount of emotion that that gives me having been an early fan going from this is a stupid piece of software it'll never do any real work to just a decade butter winning an Oscar um
it gets me incredible incredibly emotional and and to take to take a step back um again I wanted to be a CGI visual effects artist like that was my first actual job I wanted in in the industry I didn't really wanted to be a writer director I was obsessed with like just the art of creating digital images fell in love with it and you know Star Wars was like you know they built Lucas
built ilm just you know five miles away from me over here um to make the visual effects for his movie I like I want to work at ilm one day that's my dream and around the time I'm doing that um and really interested in this life of pie comes out and it's this incredible movie um about you know you know that story it's got this tiger in it that looks photo real it's incredible the tiger
made the movie in a way and um it they win best visual effects as they should uh with 11 days of money left in the bank account the team for that movie Rhythm and Rhythm and Hughes relocated three times um across Canada and the United States to take advantage of of of tax tax uh incentives every time for the studio and due to the Contracting that happened um the studio did not have to pay them the overages
the overtime fees uh that that the that the visual effects company included or visual effects company incurred to you know make our first ever super realistic tiger so the film goes on to be pretty damn successful when Oscars and then bryman Hughes goes out of business because the studio refused to pay the the overages now that I'm a business owner running a studio I can understand
the Studio's plight a little bit more of like you made an agreement this is how long it took you to do it you didn't do it on the other hand all studios are really optimizing for is trying to win Oscars the amount of money they spent the Oscar Campion to do this is insane so when you have a film that does it not then respecting and paying back the the people that did it um is really tragic
so I point being around then I realized that like okay we're living in a very broken ecosystem where that's happening and then I started to look deeper and I realized that like the visual effects companies have been trying to unionize for a while just so that they could have the Simplicity of like hey we don't want to uproot our family every few months to take advantage of a 20% tax uh advantage
and incentive to make freaking movies like we make movies really we can't figure out how to just have our artists live in the same place and build a a family and a community there um and then I realized that that there was a specific group of people that were trying to stop visual effects they weren't supporting visual effects in CGI um they were in fact trying to block them from doing d uh unionization um and
they were the the reason in my opinion that movies are bad and that's the wga they four times have blocked visual effects from creating their own Guild every other part of the industry has a guilt directors producers writers cinematographers the visual effects in CGI doesn't and they used this like they made up this [ __ ] lie that the reason movies started getting bad in the 202010 was because of CGI which is
ridiculous it's not true and this starts to catch on in in like mainstream and people think like oh it's a bad movie because the CGI is bad first of all the CGI is rarely bad anymore and even back then it wasn't the writing is bad like the and so anyways I I go on this this tangent to think of to to say that like my general theory now is like going back to that initial question of like why do
most movies suck today how do you fix Hollywood if if you could change one thing like what's the one thing that you do to like increase the quality of movies and maybe you get to even increase the capital efficiency of movies too at the same time like what's the one lever you turn do you unionize CG visual effects workers do you like remove greedy Studio exec like what do you do and for a
while basically what I've landed on is that you need to like like whose fault is it I'm pretty squarely landed on it's the fault of directors and writers and producers today and that we need more writers and directors and producers who treat making a movie like they're building a company rather than making a movie like the directors of old talking about like not even old really but like
all of them like all the great that you can think of built businesses to make their movies that's how dedicated they were to this like Lucas founded companies Spielberg founded companies they did multiple at one time cuck built his own editing facilities and a trailer that could fall on sets they did outlandish things that if like a normal director today would be like oh but my
latte is not here by 10: a.m. and my like Hollywood man oh and like the script's not that good and we need to hire five more writers to make it good like the the quality of the director today in Hollywood is just Plumbing compared to what what directors of the 20th century were doing to make their freaking movies and and so it's like I think you have to have a fully verticalized like my my theory is that
it's like you need the director to also be a producer that's own money is on stake meaning that like it's it's my money making the movies I'm making so I'm very motivated to do it in a capital efficient way and that that that limitation of like I don't have an infinite budget is what makes the movie good it it incentivizes me to want to figure it out sometimes you'll run over
budget sometimes you'll be below budget but like it's the fact that it's my money on the line too that is motivating me as on that like I'm a big fan of like make sure that you're like your value alignment is is is square right like whether whether it's an employee or or a Founder whoever and so I I'm pretty firmly set that like the reason Hollywood sex today is that we don't have enough directors and producers that
are taking risks in this way you see it a lot now in the Art House Community um a24 has done a wonderful job of enabling this where they're like blank check not even a blank check but like here's your budget we're not going to how you do it versus like I'm terrified when we go to start making our first real movies of like what what Hollywood's going to try to make me do to make make our movies
like we're gonna be like okay great we've agreed on a five or 10 million you know dollar production budget for our first like big sci-fi movie awesome um and then they're like oh well we want four line producers who've made Sci-Fi movies like that before they're going to get in there and they're going to tear up my budget they're going to be like no like you can't there's no way you can do
the visual effects for like under 2 million like yes I can like like get out of my way and let me do it and and so um I this is this this is what I think about the most about and I think the the reason we've got here is because we started like I think in the past 20 years directors started to like I think forget that movies are a new emerging thing and a a new sort of Technology too
and a new art form and as a result started to think about it way too much as a fine art and less of a of a craft in a a kind of like Practical Art form um that that is that requires art form you have typography you have painting you have music film is the ultimate it's like the the Masterwork in a sense because it requires every other art can come into it and frankly nobody knows
how to make a good movie still like we've made three million or I think just a little over two million movies in the history of mankind we made 300 million books since the the printing press um there's not that many good books still today like great books like legendary books there's not that many like why so and we barely know how to make we now are starting to understand like how
would you write a good book but like nobody knows how to actually make a good movie still like this is still Uncharted Territory in a way so when when I like for a long time I started growing up thinking like oh I'm I'm bad or like I'm not a good director writer for being so interested in the business side of things um or the financial side of things they wanting to like build a visual effects company to make my movie
and then it's like I go back and I listen to the greats and that's all they're thinking about it's like the quote of like when painters get together they don't talk about paintings they talk about t the cost of turpentine and like you listen to these things about these interviews with Lucas that's all they're talking about they're talking about budget they're talking about like
schedules they're talking about like the business Logistics side because they realize that that is the movie um so I could I don't know I I could go down down down the tangent of this and but I share that to say like that's kind of my whole belief at this point is that like you have to fully have a vertical a single entity company person needs to own that film this this model we live in now where we've made the film
business an industry where there's clear jobs in ins and outs for the creatives is an abomination of of what it should be in my and what it used to be and it's why movies are going down um it's like when did sci-fi turn I think it's like as as much as like what you said it's a cultural response um but I think it's like um all I would say on that I think it's a very simple answer is that it's a
hell of a lot easier to make a really a a movie that is scary or negative that feels real istic and feels um like that feels real like a good a good movie that's scary and negative and pessimistic than the opposite it is hard as hell to make an optimistic movie or to make one that like properly makes you feel good and so my opinion is that people that make movies that are negative or like oh it's real life and
it like looks at these things that's easy real life is very dark and hard um we have a a negative bias built into our our DNA um it's making Forest Gump that that's nearly impossible making a good movie that feels optimistic and doesn't just come off as corny and stupid it's it's it's it's it's not natural it's really hard to do that and that's the calling of artists that's the calling of
of filmmakers in my opinion and so like whenever I see like another art housee film or another film that's just negative I'm just like it's easy it's not hard to make a movie that's negative like that um it's hard to make one that is anything but is sort of sort of my my view um and so I I think like as it became as the film industry became more of an industry um as we started to
delete the lines and borders between us and become more of an interconnected World um we're more exposed to this negative you know the reality that can be very negative time at times and movies start to go that direction too and because movies get easier to make make with technology the barrier to entry is lower um the amount of pain you have to go through to to make movies is lower and as a result we have directors
and writers and creatives that just aren't built like they were used to uh the same level of grade and gret that they used to be because I think once you go through the grade and gret to make something great why would you make anything other than like the best you possibly could so so it's a really long not not clear answer or not clean answer but I think that's that's kind of my
view and answer to all of it I guess yeah no I mean there there is so much that like we could talk for another three hours just you just said right because I completely agree another maxim of mine is I I look for things to root for as opposed to against yeah because finding things to root against is so [ __ ] easy I mean like literally all it's just like shooting fish in a barrel
finding things to root four is a lot harder by making movies like you make right like I'm convinced that the power inherent in making those things to root for in a movie like it is overwhelming I for example when when the Chopsticks caught the ship like I defy you to find anyone of any political persuasion unless they're in a death cult somewhere who did not get the Shivers when they saw that happen right
how long was that it was like if you watch the longer version it's like 90 seconds well so this is the crazy the crazy part about this is that you know we made our first Frontier film which is a new like category of film at least that's the way I'm thinking about it is it's not a feature film it's not a short film it's not a documentary like this thing that we're kind of trying to
Pioneer this Frontier film our first one was about space specifically new space which I worked in for two years and my my whole goal and I started feeling pretty stupid about this goal by the end of the movie but now I feel pretty good about it it was like I when I joined this satellite company that is now just a block away from me um 200,000 square foot most amazing office in San
Francisco looks like the Avengers HQ um and they're building satellites in an urban city that go to space and provide internet for for people super affordably um I didn't know anything about the industry that enabled that or that this company was a part of and so I had to read a bunch of books talk to a bunch of people and like really do a lot of research and just kind of beat in it for
two years to understand okay this is what new space is um what it came from all this stuff and so when I set out and and then doing S3 a year after that I realized like oh there's like 50 new spaces there's like 50 different Industries and and and and like revolutions that are going on in these industries right now um that is a mix of like technological new technological enablement as well as just like problems
with like what we're talking about in the film industry this decrepitation of artistry and quality in business sense um has happened to every industry in the past 20 30 years and every industry is trying to have its own little Revolution right now and so I realized like oh that's what Frontier films need to do is I wanted to basically if anyone had was like me two three years ago and I joined
aonis what the hell is new space um how many Rockets we launch there just all these obvious sort of things once you're in it that aren't obvious if you're not in it we wanted to make I wanted to make a film for each of these industries that you can just hand to someone and say hey it's okay if you know nothing about this thing by the time you're done with this you'll understand the basics what's
going on today in the next kind of 10 20 years why you should be excited and why you should be excited about it and so it it's kind of made for the L audience because like that's that's who we all are before we learned this thing and I I got the coolest piece of feedback on it where um there's a a friend's um I think parents or like cousins or or uncle aunt some family relative um was living in
Texas near SpaceX and their like relation to SpaceX mentally was like oh yeah it's pretty cool like we see Rockets kind of go up and come down don't know what they're doing like I hope I hope they're not littering I guess was kind of their like view on this and um they sent they they sent the film to them and they watched the film they they they they canceled their Friday night normal movie night um or or
I guess they didn't cancel they just watched our film instead and they called they called their their their their family member after him like oh my God this is crazy this is happening right next to us why did no why did nobody tell us why didn't we know about this like this is insane and now they're like the biggest fans of what's going on and it just made me so emotional and like
happy to think like okay yes we did it like that's that's what we want to be able to do with these Frontier films and um but point being like I say that to say in response to what you're talking about with like people just don't know why it's a big deal and and I think our on the non-fiction side of our our business because like we want to be the best science and technology storytellers
so we can be the best science fiction storytellers in it's a virtuous cycle I think um to do that like we just have to tell people like and it's weird because you immerse yourselves in these in these worlds of like newspace to tell these stories and then by the end of it you're like kind of repeating this obvious information by the you know you're immers for years it's like duh but like
you have to remember like no no no you didn't know this a few years ago and that this is like information that the other eight billion people just don't have and like needs to be packaged in a clear way and so so point being it's just that the information of the story the basic level of like here's the story of this rocket and why this thing Landing in these mechazilla arms is a big deal um yeah
yeah I love the idea that uh is also a very optimistic uh take and I share it which is you you can't get mad at people if they don't know right what's going on like we have a series that gets interrupted all the time because we're working on so many other things but we call it the great reshuffle right like right now we are going through the biggest transformation in I think maybe
all of human history yeah and like I just every day I wake up thinking I am so incredibly lucky to be alive at this point in human history because like wow just that the the more you see and that's why I got so excited about you and your application and watching your movies because I love the fact that you they do exactly as you said they introduce like there were a lot of your movies and I've
watched most of them there were a lot of your movies where I like I I like to read about a lot of different things and see a lot of things but honestly you introduced me to like several companies I'd never heard of and I'm like holy [ __ ] man this is like really amazing what what have you has there been a a a bleed through from what when you make the movies about the The Cutting Edge
companies are you taking away principles that you're seeing at that uh company and and building them into your own yes I mean the the original reason I started doing S3 back then which is now um we're kind of bringing back S3 in way but also like continuing its Heritage and the same idea through Frontier films um alth we have a lot of problems with that that we're trying to fix and we're actively
thinking about um with it but the reason I did it originally was just out of personal self- curiosity like okay I never knew that this crazy company as stus existed are there other companies like that and I think I would like to work on a company like this or build things like this that create create great things that give a lot back to humanity and make a better brighter abundant future um who's doing that
where are they doing that what can I learn from them that it was a fully purely selfish interest when I started the project and so um yes I'm doing it now uh and and I'm doing it for future things I want to build too and looking at these other companies and thinking like what are the kind kind of learn vicariously through them um yeah yeah and kind of back to the overall goal to
make you know incredibly great science fiction uh movies but first let's let's understand like the science um yeah yeah you know Josh Wolf over at Lux said something to me that really stuck with me he goes I love science fiction because it turns into science faction yep and the idea again going back to what we want to build what what kind of future do we want and my and we all have
different takes on that right you you're young you want to build your future and the future for your generation which I love but me like I have six grandchildren I want them to live in that world and I want to do everything I can yeah to nudge the world toward that that's a very arrogant statement right but like no Ian that's what it's it's sad that we have to say that but I think I think one of the great principles like
one thing I've been thinking about a lot is like what are the common optimistic sci-fi principles that come from stories like that that like what like what what changes um because I'm a new deep science fiction fan I've been a fan of Star Wars and um bits of Star Trek and in like the idea of being in space since I was a little kid but like I was not a space nerd or buff or geek I didn't know
the difference between Leo and Gio a few years ago I I'm I'm brand new to it which is wonderful because I'm I'm able to take the sort of beginner's mind like I have the skill of my craft and the ability to make a good image and a film but like I'm brand new to to learning sci-fi in space in a way like less than 5 years and one of the principles I'm starting to see that sci-fi uniquely
does um much like history is it gives you the ability to think beyond your lifespan and that's I think one of the most important tenants that we need to get into the heads of people alive today especially our children is like stop thinking about just yourself and the problems you're staring at think about the the problems of tomorrow and the opportunity the opportunities of tomorrow like people you know often
criticize like the Mars people who want to go to Mars and you know set up a base there or terraform Mars and they think it's crazy but it's like you forget we built Cathedrals over 300 years multiple generations of Builders built these incredible buildings in in Europe um and they were just buildings like we're not even talking about a second home for Humanity why wouldn't we move Lally move
Heaven and Earth to make that happen for our children and our children's children and so on like and I think that sci-fi sci-fi fans immediate like as soon as you start reading a few of these great sci-fi books your mind immediately starts thinking like okay like I'm not going to live to see this um but like how do you how we should still do it and and still realizing that it's still
worth spending the money and the time to do these incredible things for our our our kids and our kids kids and so on and so I think that that's one of the unique things that great sci-fi does and and like is that like longevity view that it's like it's beyond yourself I think yeah and um you know that that's a really transitive belief as well because for example my old world of asset
management right like it the best time Horizon you can have is infinite right because then you don't of the biggest problems in people trying to manage their money they all have different goals but essentially they don't they don't want to be you know uh sleeping rough right and they want to have a reasonably good thing chance to help their kids their grandkids Etc but what really happens again back to the we're
feeling creatures that also happen to think hyperbolic discounting is like the number one problem with people trying to make decisions right it's like wow they only think about like right now and that is useful in certain domains right like in storytelling or trying to take get somebody to take an action immediately but if you're trying to if you bring hyperbolic discounting to everything
like you're [ __ ] because essentially your world is what you seeing right now and only today and if it happens to be awful right like in markets if it's a if it's a down market then oh the world's going to end and like oh I'm I'm this is it this is the big one and if it's a boom Market I gotta get more of that right like and and and but it it goes across domains right like if you think
about the fullness of time if you think about like what could possibly be like most of it's going to certainly happen after I'm dead and gone uh after I've shuffled off this Mortal coil but while I'm here it makes me actually feel good to to be focusing on this stuff because like literally if I can make the world like 0.001% a little better for not only my grandkids but for everyone's grand kids
for your generation and the other thing that I like is especially your generation like you're just listening to what you said about the great filmmakers of your right it everything is cyclical right and so you get these things where you had those people doing those things then it as you say becomes an industry I'm making air quotes here yeah and like then it just kind of goes down down down
down kind of Kafkaesque metamorphosis but then a whole new group uh a whole new generation comes along and it says what the actual well [ __ ] let's let's let's reinvent and so it's kind of like a it's it's reinvention but it's also remix like you can see you now have some history like when when they first invented movie cameras what did they what did they film plays because they didn't think of any other way to use it
right and it's easy for us to think oh what dummies they were we do exactly the same stuff right like when a new technology comes along we find an analog in the past and that's the way we use it like it makes me think a generative AI right like the first thing people are thinking to do is like oh we'll replace movies and it's like no you're not it's not going to work like I I I'm I'm very
bearish on the idea of AI technology just replacing filmmakers and movies outright it took me a while to get there and I still have like some nights where I'm like is that true but like I I think like we can't imagine like generative generative media is going to be a totally different thing than than interactive media or just normal entertainment media so I I I 100% agree with that idea yeah and like if you
think about it uh as a tool right I generative AI is going to be an amazing tool it already is an amazing tool but where people get tripped up I think it's like there we are we are going to be over the next 10 years there's going to be a tsunami of slop slop movies slop writing slop music slop [ __ ] everything the slop apocalypse the slop apocalypse yeah and what is going to be
the thing that that is going to make the next gen of the big successes get that success it's going to be their Vision their human your their Humanity Etc so it's like the old saw AI isn't going to take your job a human using AI probably will if you don't do it and and it's just like I've been dreaming of AI since I was younger than you are now I found like I'm a journal keeper and like I
found writing in when I was 22 about like the alpha machine man and microman and I was like I can hardly wait yeah it's happening it's finally I mean it's so J one thing I kind of wanted to ask you about like especially in thinking about this sort of you know kind of talking about like hyperbolic discounting or or negative bi is you the name of your show like infinite infinite infinite Loops what
are some of the most what are some of the other interesting ones that you've come across like these negative infinite Loops or I guess positive ones those exist but like hyperbolic discounting seems like a very clear one but in in doing this show what are some of the other ones that stick with you or you immediately some of these common tenants that you yeah so so infinite Loops uh I'm a huge fan of
Douglas hoffstead and I was rereading I am a strange Loop and I'm like well I was thinking about it and thinking well basically a lot of lives get screwed up by getting caught in infinite recursive loops and so for example if if we are constantly living in the past if we are constantly obsessing over some event in our life that didn't go the way we wanted it and and we just keep going
back to it you start this negative comp compounding that then creates a habit that then creates the way you think and the way you think determines how you act and so you get in this negative downward Loop but then I thought well wait a minute there can be infinite upward Loops too right like if you start thinking rather about possibilities and ways that we can become better as people as individual
people as groups as societies you know the world itself basically what you've got to do is talk to smart people like you who are doing incredible things to give people the oh I can start thinking about that and then if if I'm lucky they'll start like really thinking about that and that becomes an upward trajectory for that infinite Loop and try to remind them on the downward because compounding works
both ways right and we we always talk about you know positive compounding negative compounding is really a [ __ ] yeah because if you continue to repeat the same type of behavior that leads to negative results it just like literally it's it's it's a life destroyer and and so the but but we also the other thing that inspired the name is if you I'm a huge fan of History right
and ah it's like Pearl Jam two and fro the pendulum throws right and we are here and now we're now then we're gone you know two and fro to and fro and if you just look at these sort of cyclic infinite loops and you just start to dissect them you you see that you can break out of negative ones and you can reinforce positive ones and the way to do that is to have a completely I joke to you it wasn't a
joke this podcast is based on the movie My Dinner with Andre which was made in 1981 and it's literally two people talking and I loved that movie when I saw it for the first time and and you know I got bullied into doing this podcast by a very uh agentic young guy who worked for me at oam and and and then I'm like okay but here's here's what you're going to have to deal with and and and
so I'm trying to just remind people give them a Peak at yeah we all know there's horrible horrible things going on in the world like that's a given that's always been a given throughout history if however we were going to like quantify it we living at the best possible time in history like yeah if you understand history it was it really sucked for most not not a great time not a great time
really bad right yeah and and so like the fact that we have we get caught in these kind of negative downward Loops takes our eyes off the much bigger picture which is like if if you look and you see those graphs right it's because they do the graph wrong right they're using an analog graph like yeah it just bumps along and it's a line down here and then it goes straight no if you did
a log graph you would see that yes there are these cycles that can be upward trajectory or downward trajectory but we've all got to do our part there right because Rome fell thousand years of Darkness can can I mean like I think about what if Rome never fell yeah Mars would probably already be occupied by human beings that that's actually really interesting lot experiment is like there's no reason that we couldn't have
had yeah that the entire Industrial Revolution and everything that's coming that the science revolutions couldn't have happened a thousand years earlier that that's totally that's super interesting actually wow um yeah I want to I actually and I'll probably pitch you on it at some point I want to make a movie about it right that's a good idea I just think how much fun would it be if
we just like one thing changed and and all of a sudden we find ourselves living in 2025 and like AI has been around for 150 years and you know it's interesting I I know that that you're um a proud American like like me as well and I think about this question too is it's like what if Rome never fell and I think we don't even have to wonder that we get we get to wonder like what if America doesn't fall and that sounds
like a horribly negative question in way to word it which I kind of say intentionally because it's like we we've never Humanity's never had a hyper Advanced civilization that is uh producing so much culture so much Innovation so much life um survive a long time and and I mean there's other famous people who like graphs uh and have an analytical background who I think would say that America's done and
it's time it's time for for another other world powers to kind of um take take the spot and I guess I wonder how you think about the future um for even even taking a step back from America specifically but like um just like yeah like I I don't know I spend so much time talking with people who work in defense or um space uh and this gets existential very fast because like small little decisions uh have big
consequences for many billions of people and it's an incredible time to be alive and a terrible time in some ways and I wonder how how we stored that into making sure Rome doesn't fall yeah like you know first off I think of America as an idea less than a country yeah right and because it is it can be Universal and it is in many ways and and it should be even more it absolutely can
be Universal right and and yet we do have this negativity bias humans me you I'm I'm I'm not saying they over there have negativity I'm saying all of us our human OS has a negativity bias because that makes sense right like in the when in the 98% of evolution where we were wandering around in tribes like we we wanted to novel dangers were really important for us to be able to see
quickly and act upon usually emotionally right terrified be or flee right but so Along Comes America at the age of enlightenment I think we also were lucky when we were formed because the Age of Reason the Age of Enlightenment the Scientific Revolution all of those ideas were percolating in the minds of our Founders right and yeah it's easy for us in hindsight to say well duh no man at the
time like every country was ruled by a king or a queen or a dictator and that was it the Hoban life is is you know brutal nasty and short right and like you were you were you were part of the neonian machine because science comes in here too right we we when Newton came out with the principa like everybody was like oh It's A Clockwork Universe we can find tuna we can predict everything and
then of course the quantum guys came along and say hold my beer guys like no but but so but at that time all of these were really new ideas like hey Life by the way the original Jefferson's original was life liberty and this pursuit of property not the pursuit of happiness right you know that and and and so the reason though life liberty pursuit of property happiness those kind of Rights for your
average individual were were were not present they weren't there if you weren't like part of the ruling aristocracy like there were two forms of law one for them and one for everybody else and so these ideals were absolutely inspiring to thinkers of the era when we were founded but as you just pointed out the idea of America is universal you you and and again I'm an Evidence guy and like okay
let's there's a great book called um uh the um reimagining the Beast uh about improving capitalism by Howard Bloom and basically he's saying you know only free markets if you look at all of the promises made by all of the religions of human history right you're going to get to the promised land follow me what will bring you to the promised land and then we throw in political religions like
communism and socialism and and we'll throw free markets in there too which one delivered on those promises one one free markets free mindes rule of law the average person is going to be at a Level Playing Field now like people listening might say well that's [ __ ] you know there's all of this yeah there are of course all of those problems but if you take that as you're given right you're
like free speech rule of law the ability to just do things right like there's a great book by Bill Bryson America One Summer and it's about the 1920s and like literally we are so new in in terms of like back then people could just do whatever they wanted to the guy who did Mount Rushmore he didn't ask anyone's permission he just went did it I think about when they turned on the Chicago pile reactor and they just
turned it on under a football stadium and covered it with graphite bricks and it's like sorry what like like it's a great example yeah yeah and and so this idea of like agency being some foreign thing that's what Built America like if you think about American DNA too this is another part of it I think right there there's a good uh book well there's a good book titled the book itself isn't
great but it's called Uh The hypomanic Edge what Built America and if you think about it the author makes the argument that you know like third fourth fifth generation Americans have kind of different DNA than say European or Asian societies and and and the point that the author makes is who came here you are talking about people who literally left everything they knew everyone they knew
all of their own history and said you know what I'm getting on that ship I'm going over there and I'm gonna see if I can make my life a spectacular thing yeah and and that is a very different underlying structure than any other country right and the other thing about America it's kind of like St Paul he was the best he memd Christianity into existence right because he was like
people doesn't matter what gods you got brought up under like your frog god or you're Sky God or all that you don't worry about those I have the greatest deal in the world for you there is one God and doesn't matter who you are what color you are what sex you are what you know where you were brought up you could worship this one true God and in America we made the same deal I can't move to Switzerland and
become a Swiss person I can't move to Germany and become a German person anybody can move to America and become an American yeah that's right and it is that aspect that is so both incredible but also fragile right yeah it's the Immigrant opportunity right and I look at like we're all immigrants to life like none of us like what doesn't matter where you're born it's like when when you become an adult and it's your time
to go make your mark in the world it's like you're just as fresh as as anyone else and like that that spirit and that opportunity of of the ability to to create a different and brighter future for yourself family for other people um if like I think that that is something that like people in the 20th century seem to have had so much more viscerally it's so unpopular and rare today and I
think I think that's why I'm so attracted to it in the Deep Tech world or or in the world of of founding or building things because it's much more common there it's like these people that are you know 20s somethings 30 somethings I mean it's like like like you said it's not an age color or or gender thing it's really just an agency thing and that the culture of AG see
um it's it's it's it's it's weird to say like it went away but in some ways it did in some ways it didn't but it it's so inspiring and motivating yeah and and you know it's like we we we are coming out of kind of a managed reality I think and and I and I think yeah that what's happening now is just for me so exciting because like there's there's young people like you and that just like really gets me
chuffed it's like yeah it's like holy [ __ ] we we can partner with Jason and we can do all this fun stuff and like then it's it becomes that infinite upward Loop yeah and and you know it's it's like there's so much to be excited about there's so much to be like really optimistic about and yet again if you study evolutionary psychology and biology you understand why it's also hard right and and so I I just I am uh
incredibly optimistic that we can keep this going that we can as I see young people like you saying hey wait a tick I no I'm not buying into that I I'm gonna I'm gonna do this like I'm gonna support you I'm gonna support all of those people because at the end of the day right like critics are like gone that real re just banging away they're just yappers right you know like okay fine it's
really easy it's a default position be that way I don't really care as long as there are people like you and other people that we're working with everyone on the team here at oan Adventures I'm gonna I'm going to remain like incredibly optimistic um now we're going to change subjects because I loved your your powerpo Point date about Dylan so I too love Dylan and I watched the movie with some friends uh
last week not knowing or not connecting the fact that I was going to when I was researching and going back through your stuff that I would see that again and and so first off it's really funny and and like she who who was playing your date cuz obviously yeah she she was she was a she was a paid actress um but she wasn't acting well I do I mean we basically were like hey here's the tenant one we
did we need you to do this we're not telling you the movie it's about um we're not uh giving you lines there's no second takes it's just we're paying you to show up and then like you know act as you would you can be positive negative we don't care just do your thing don't request is like try to be natural and Don't Force It yeah and so that that yeah that's who she was yeah it's I I I
I liked it because she was good uh she hilarious she was really funny and and her facial expressions were spoton like when you showed the maros just so fun I mean I I yeah I mean it's tough I really want that show to just exist I I I really get squirmy about being on camera and like I I don't think we'll do more episodes of it the original intention was like oh we'll keep doing this because this is a great
marketing tool for like our movies yeah is is if we if we create a show like this but I we committed to trying out three total EP total episodes but I just I'm too squirmy on it I can't personally I don't think I can personally be the one that does it but I think it's a hell of a show concept and show someone should do it I think it's a lot of fun yeah well we're working on several
things with you that might be just another one that will add to the list because it's incredibly entertaining but it also is is choca block full with information which I also love it's got a fun I I like the movie um I love the the I have a slide about this Bob Dylan is kind of an [ __ ] you agree or disagree I agree yeah for sure he's AB I I I love Bob Dylan's music I was brought up I'm I'm
the youngest of six and uh by I'm by a mile like I'm the martini baby mom and dad thank God thank you for having those martinis and cigarettes that that led to me because there's like nine years between me and my next youngest sister got it so I had all of these older sisters bossing me around but the good news was like I'm probably one of the few 64 year- old white males who knows the lyrics to every Supreme song because
I was hanging out with my sisters but I also got Bob Dylan and like was listening to it as a little kid because they were discovering it right and so it's like yeah of course he's an [ __ ] but like Steve Jobs was kind of an [ __ ] too right I think all great people are on some degree part of the part of the deal the deal it kind of is and and and so I thought it was hysterical I also
like the movie a lot I I did think that like I love music and so I know a lot about music history and you know that whole that that that whole they they really did kind of cast the folk people as the villains right it was interesting a little bit Yeah but also I don't know I also felt like I didn't take away that the folk people were the villains like to me it felt like it it still felt like God damn it
we fought for this Folk Festival to exist and we' like CL this up the battle we're not going to let this like upstart kid who we gave a a stage now take it away from us I totally get it like I I don't know to me to me it came off as very I can see both sides of it very clearly and felt I try to see both sides but on the on the one hand what what I saw was the it's about it's
a lot like what you said about Hollywood earlier it starts out as this really cool fresh new thing we're gonna have a a music festival that is devoted to folk which is very americ and like we've got Woody Guthrie we've got you know Pete Seager we've got all these incredible people and then you get Dylan in there and like they love Dylan right because he's like a poet and and
but but what worried me as you look at it it whenever something it's it's like art right do you know why the Impressionists are called the Impressionists they're trying to copy the the the previous no no no the Impressionists got their name from the French Academy of Art which had become so stultifyingly filled with stasis and no new ideas that they were doing everything they could to tear tear down
the new artists so they they said you know this looks like a children finger painting like I just have a brief impression of what I want to do this is horrible stuff right and and that happens all the time everywhere the one group like starts out as radicals right and then they get in control and they become instantly stasis obsessed we are going to keep it this way for and this
is the best it is and I saw a hint of that like with not Seager I love the I Ed Norton is Seager what an inspiring Choice by the way oh my go because like right is it right I was I was in love Yeah 100% and anyway but but it was the guy who started the festival he was turning into the little fascist no it no electronic music this is forbidden and and you got Dylan going [ __ ] you man like this is this is
creativity this is where the world's going get in the boat or stay on Shore I think it's inter also like side not you've got to do some voice acting if we ever do an animated film here like that's this is some impressive impressive the um you know it is interesting because you can think about a totally different way that that could have gone down where like you totally
could have had like the festival guy get up and be like okay everybody we have Bob Dylan he's going to play some different music tonight uh you know and like you could have prefaced it a little bit and like if the concern was like oh it's not folk it's like you have three days of folk or two days of it it's like yeah I do agree I think it could have been the festival could have handled it totally
differently but but but here's the thing I think that that kind of look look I if I have any political philosophy it is only I am fiercely anti-authoritarian I I just like they make my crawl and and and because like no this is the way it is this is the way it will always be it's never going to change it's perfect and you know like it's the enemy of everything that I'm about right and and the thing that I
thought was really interesting was yes they could have done that yes they could have gotten up and said hey you know Bob Dylan who we love by the way has uh some new music a lot of you might not like it uh you know you might not think it really fits into our genre but hey give it a shot like that would have gone really really differently but it's that authoritarian nature yeah prevents them
from doing that yeah it is like the the scene where he goes and shows up at the public TV right and he's playing with his blues and J and jazz legend and and like Pete Seager I thought that that scene actually informed seager's character better like little a little worried like ooh but okay and then what does he do he picks up his banjo and joins him right yeah well it reminds me of that opening scene which I think for
young young people was such like a jaw-dropping scene when you meet Pete Seager who's like the sweetest like bear of a character yeah um he's in court for a song that is like oh it's a bad song and he starts playing like what we today like I think I I was like my my like I think my jaw dropped when I heard like this land is my land this like what this was a song we were worried about and
then I mean and then but my God that's like the beauty of history is then to go and like learn the story of that song and like why it was treated like that it's like so so fascinating yeah and and again it's the story within the story right because it was the status quo like communism is bad yeah implying that this land is everyone's what are you a commi that wasn't wasn't what the song was
about but when you start seeing things through a unilens right the unilens that everyone was looking through back then was must defeat communism USSR bad and well that's true they they took it to these crazy extremes right and like we can't have people singing songs about this land being their land no this land is Our Land it reminded me of the the joke that well it wasn't a joke it was
uh J Paul Getty the famously awful human being who did very very well in uh the oil business uh once said that hey you know the meek might inherit the Earth but not necessarily its mineral rights it's a hell of a quote actually wow and there's so many ah there there's another project there's a project we should we should talk about offline sometime but there's so many incredible biopics that have not been made oh so
many so so many like you could devote we we could if we did made nothing else at infinite films we could probably do incredibly well with just a bunch of biopics I have an idea yeah we should we should I I have an idea about this uh we should we should talk about sometime let's let's do that offline though because we don't want to give away all our secrets no no secret going to shift
gears again because we also seem to really like the same movies like I love Tennant and everybody it was not a popular movie oh man like when I said that I loved it people would just look at me like I had treeh heads yeah and and the whole seder uh paland Drome like like that alone is like it's just so cool and like he made an entire movie around it and it worked and and he
actually pulled it off we would say that many wouldn't but I would I would fully full-heartedly agree probably more than most yeah but again this is kind of like the hey show people don't tell right like I don't expect people just to know about the Seder palindrome and you know that they found it in Pompei in what like 78 or 79 ad and but like I love stuff like that well so I got I got to ask you before we
go into into tenet what what do you think you you are far greater of a historian in like knowledgeable person about the sort what is the Seder Square from your understand like why why did it exist like what was it for like there there is as far as I can tell just zero understanding as what that thing was back then or like what what what was it so okay like I I have to adjust my woo
setting here right so I got to turn my woo all the way up if you want a really wild crazy answer or turn my woo all the way down if you want can we get both like can we just yeah well let's do both so start start with the start with the low low woo so let's go low woo seder rotus creates if you look at it seder rotus goes backwards and forwards it creates what infinite Loop yeah there you go it creates an
infinite Loop because when you you can read it anyway you can read it up down across diagonally like it still applies the same thing so I think honestly if we apply aam's Razer some very clever person was just kind of like [ __ ] around and they're like oh look look look at what happened cool this is neat and then it's it's kind of like you know I find it very interesting
that that the founders of two of the biggest religions of today uh sidartha Buddhism Jesus Christ Christianity neither of those guys ever wrote anything down ever and so why is that interesting a bit like this and you'll see I'm coming at this in a really circuitous way so you got to bear with me so so Jesus never wrote anything down sidartha never wrote anything down and yet like the texts from Buddhism you
know the however many noble truths and the 15 zillion different paths and all this stuff they were the guys and women trying to figure out what the [ __ ] was sidarthur going on about yeah right and then same with Christ like Christ was not a Christian said Haro was not a Buddhist so what happens is somebody clever for whatever reason like in this case I'm not saying that this is religious in any
way but if you want to go to the religion route there's a hidden anagram poteris Our Father Christianity was just kind of getting its legs there when this first one was found in like 79 ad um the Romans weren't having it and yet they were very taken with the way worked out right and so it became a puzzle and so people began basically putting their own belief structures on on the Seder pandrum on
the Seder square right and so like if you if you take the the simplest explanation somebody clever just came up with and he was like oh that's cool and he carved it in the thing and then it show and then it just started showing up everywhere because again what are what's one of our basic human instincts is we love to solve things right our our brains are prediction machines basically
like large language models predicting the next token hello we've got one of those right here yep and that's what we do now if you want to turn all the woo all the way up it was an ancient civilization that was space fairing it was the ability it was the coordinates to how to make sure that Earth remains intact and that doesn't need any patches like I have 20 pages on what this might be I
should have reviewed them before our conversation but like you and and if you want to have real fun just like go into your favorite large language model now we have our own AI in house here because we want the on labotz version of all these large language models and and so I'll send you some of them fascinating yeah it gets really crazy really fast and I always and I
always have to say now get rid of any humility get rid of and I want you to make outlandish wild speculations and they always end up in the sphere of quantum entanglement or like Consciousness and and these are the that's that's un limit of what we don't know right now as a like it's I mean I'd love to read that it's it's really interesting too is we sort of start to push up against you know there there's
like xai which is an in clad too from anthropic seemingly the two a AI Labs that are most interested in using AI to now crack new bounds of of knowledge and it's like large language models too are just going to be limited until we can start doing that and things things will get very interesting as we start to be able to go beyond what like the the the the local um maximum of knowledge is
well absolutely that's why like I I I mean you know jobs again computers are bicycles for the Mind AI large language models are rocket ships for the mind yeah they they are giving your average human more leverage than entire societies could ever throw at a problem and if you understand the leverage inherent in I mean this is Promethean fire yeah it's insane I mean it's like intelligence scares a lot of people too right for
sure so you know let's get back to movies because because you you are so good at at making them David Fincher said movies aren't finished they're abandoned like how do you know how what's what is it is it an emotional thing is it a logical thing how do you know like okay it's done you know I used to think that quote because I think Spielberg had a similar one um I used to think that quote was
like dumb and was like no it's a skill issue movies can totally be finished now I now I do not believe that and I fully believe that that quote um it's a really hard yeah I mean I'm dealing with it right now when we've we've were I'm in like post- production hell on the first short film I've done in six years um our in our first fiction project as a company uh it's called Planet it's a
little ambitious uh and we're struggling with it now um but like that's good I think it means we we picked a good idea that we're struggling with and um my view is like I'm a I'm a very like learning growth mindset person and like my God what we've learned from planet is just already insane and like I'm can't wait to go and tackle the first fiction feature film um here in a few months as
a result of all the learning but I don't know it's a hard question to answer I mean I'm a big deadline oriented person um like get a draft done iterate it like I I I I believe iteration is kind of the the key I think what I learned with planet is that the iteration should have happened more in the script stage uh rather than we we we the story was really developed for for the movie for over like a year but the script was
rushed and so as a result two weeks before production we wrote in extra scenes so that we could like make have more optionality in editing which is great we have the optionality the issue is just the optionality um so uh this is this a really good learning and like a director I'm really inspired by who I think is well I was about to say like does this really well is Denny Villanova
um you know for Dune he he just so meticulously plays everything but then I learned I guess there's like another hour and a half of Dune to that just they shot and didn't use and so I'm like oh never mind this is clearly like I'm clearly clearly this is something that everyone's dealing with um is like the inefficiency of making um a movie sometimes but I think I think my view is that um the one lever you get to
control as a builder of any kind is speed um Quality is a function of skill and iteration um or just skill like you have skill you can you know uh one year five years 10 years 20 years 50 years of expertise you know that the skill output from a single brushstroke or or or work output is going to be higher and then if you don't have that it's it's iteration Loops um infinite iteration loops and
and knowing um knowing I guess where where where to I think other than that some it's like you can run through your iteration Loops faster I guess it's my whole Theory like I often like kind of push on my team to like work faster um and I think often in in the industry there's like a negative association with speed um in in in art it's like well speed is bad it's like no it's not it's it lets
you actually get more quality because you get more passes at it um so I think that's my view is like try to cram as much iteration as you can um I don't have a I don't have a good answer for this yet because it's like I haven't completed a fiction film in six years and none of the ones I completed back that I'm very proud of um so I'm we I I guess like it'd be fun to talk about this again in two years in two years
we'll have short film done two films that we'll attempt to like win Oscars with or get nominated for um and then hopefully we're well in production of the first Trilogy film so I'll have more more more more data then until then it's like hard for me to say like I think I I do think it's interesting I I do believe oh one other thing I will say is that I believe in imperfection like I
think like embracing imperfection strategically is like a really important part of the film film process um and that like an overly engineered image an overly uh perfected image isn't Cinema Cinema Embraces imperfection and like that's where it gives it its character um it's you know it's it's the cut of the diamond the the quality of it too um and like better doesn't always mean
better and so I think I think that's a big part of it too yeah and you know it's funny because it as I was listening to you it brought me back to us talking about the reaction of the Folk Festival like ideas that are strong don't need a lot of no you can't talk about that no you can't talk about no you can't play that kind of music because that's not allowed it's like what there's a great quote from Jed
McKenna which is if somebody's having a little tea party with Lord lion and Lady gazelle and someone else comes along who questions their fantasy narrative it isn't that they're being mean it's that your fantasy narrative is a little fragile yeah and so like the fragility of the Folk Festival was like it was too fragile yeah if it was not fragile they'd be yeah do it Dyan show us this
new stuff we love it it's a great point and that's why I like anytime anytime I come up against somebody who's like no we cannot talk about that I know that they're trying to defend an incredibly fragile idea that's probably incredibly wrong that's been a big part of learning I think the past eight months is like attacking my own fragility and I think all artists have it to some to some extent and I think
it's like something that Engineers don't like really good Engineers or Builders don't have as much as they they like are a champion of the best idea um and I think that's that's been a really interesting thing for me to unlearn for sure is like um being being willing to attack my in fragility and like look at ideas as less holy there's something about like the artistic process that I
think at first glance and first interaction feels very holy and spiritual um of the idea of like oh I'm getting ideas from my brain that are becoming these works it's like okay well most of them are crap so does that mean the crap ones are also holy and it's like no but that's I don't mean to totally demean the artistic process and say like there's no part of it that's deeper or spiritual like I I do actually
I do deeply believe that there still is but that's something I've thought a lot about recently in our work is like you know my my whole career I haven't been able to be a collaborator I've I've been a oneman band and so now I get like on my team like my my new job is collaboration like solely like that's really what I do um writing and collaboration that's it everything like
we I'm trying to remove all editing from my table and and and focus on um collaboration with people on every stage of the process and and the vision for it and the and the writing and even that is like it's so much more fun and interesting to like you know it's like when you throw different people in a writer's room that you all really trust and you all know it's like it's like you're throwing different models in a
room that all have their different pre-training and data like that that they trained off of and like as a result you get just such different interesting combinations of knowledge um that is is really special um yeah so I we're I mean we're we're deep in the writer room on like four pretty incredible projects uh one one of which one of which working with you guys on and it's like it's just
so fun um and so that's that's where it really happens but I constantly have to check my fragility so to make a bit of a joke there but like it's a real thing um especially with artists it's like in trying get rid of that and be a champion of the best idea is like the best idea we all do Jason like anyone who says I'm I'm not fragile at all is lying or just La self awareness because like as I went
through life one of the things that like when I was younger I was a real protier I was a real this is the right way this is the way you got to do it and and as I saw others and myself uh like St Umble make mistake after mistake after mistake it was it really unlocked in me the idea that the average human is quite Fragile the fragility of of human nature and of of life itself is should not be just
dismissed because you're going to make a big mistake if you do that another thing that really helped me and was a huge unlock for me was when I started thinking of myself at best as a co-creator like when when I wrote my first book and I wrote my first articles and stuff like my wife graduated summum La in journalism and she's an amazing editor and like we had the biggest fight
in the world on one of the first pieces I wrote I I said hey would you take a look at this for me and this is back in the early 90s and so I gave her the paper I didn't even send it via computer and like we're going into the city we're in Greenwich and we were taking train into the city that evening but right before we're getting into the into the car to drive to the train station she
goes oh yeah here and she hands me what I wrote and it was literally a sea of red a sea of red and I got so angry like I I just was I mean the fight that we had on the train on the way in was like it ruined the night it was say and it was me being the [ __ ] she was right and like I was so like this is so precious and this is mine and you want to change it and you know what do you you just want to put it in this
institutional [ __ ] voice and no she wanted to make it much better right and and like the minute I got over that yeah was when the it really got fun because it was just like you know what all ideas are malleable all you know I'm going to listen to what other people say because guess what they look at the world differently than I do and they have insights that I'm just incapable of having like cocreate that's that what
was the unlock for me well like the AI models are just such a wonderful metaphor for the mind and it's like in yeah they're so damn similar but it's like a m like of course a single like imagine if you had an a model with just basically no data to train on just like a limited amount of data super limited first of all wouldn't generate you good response and imagine if you only gave it
one prompt and expected the perfect response no it requires ridiculous amounts of data and ridiculous amounts of iteration um and like there like that's always how it will be there's never going to be an AI ever that even if you give it all the data in the world and a single prompt that will always be a perfect output of what what you want it like that's where the iteration comes
in and like that and like that I think that ability to iterating and go further than iterate iterate and iterate is what what makes the really special thing totally I'm a huge fan of Douglas Adams I think once you uh read Adams and understand that he's a philosopher and not just a SciFi writer he makes so much more sense it's like the minute as you were saying that I was thinking of you
know the 42 what's the answer to life the universe and everything yeah 42 I love I love that book that book is an incredible one yeah it's a must readed in in my thing well I'm getting the hook here my God it's two o' I can't believe it we've been talking hours like when you get in flow and just get into a great conversation time just stops right yes and so definitely we're going to do a we're going to do a part
two but but for now um as someone who's who's heard the podcast in the past you know what my final question is I'm making you emperor of the world you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a re-education camp you can't in other words be an authoritarian but what you can do is I'm going to give you the magical microphone and it is going to incept all 8 billion people plus or minus 100 million
whenever we happen to be listening to this um you can say two things into it and everybody on the planet whenever their next tomorrow is they're going to wake up and they're going to say you know what I just had two of the best ideas ever and unlike all the other times where I just let them go I'm going to actually act on these two things what do you you going to incept in the
world I think I I would share my like my life quote as well as a um I think I think one would be uh this idea of I'm not prepared to give the the you know the the world Emperor probably has a few speech writers too so my my delivery is not going to be as clean as uh as you know as it would be with World Emperor speech writers but the first thing I'd say would would be if you're not already thinking beyond
your lifespan you should really seek to do so um and it's I think it's the most virtuous thing you can do as a human is to think obviously well maybe it's not obvious a outside of yourself and then B outside of your lifespan and how can you how can we give back more to our children our children's children and make sure our planet uh and civilization is still around for them um to to to to
enjoy and deal with it's probably one I think the second thing would be just the same thing that I learned two years ago when I started doing S3 and the same thing I just am learning every day which is that the the the the distance the gap between um genius people that you w up to and you is so much incredibly smaller than you could ever imagine um that would be it I I think I just am confounded every every
every year since every month every day since of how um small that Gap is and how it all seems to just come from a place of self-belief of of like I I think that's probably the number one problem with our age if I had to say is like that far too many people today um couldn't imagine that they could do not even impossible things things that other people are doing um blood alone impossible things and that it's
all just like comes from a a limiting self-belief and I think that's probably the biggest thing I would I I I might just say that twice actually um that that one that would probably be it yeah that's great that's like William James whether you uh the he said the the most profound thing that he ever discovered in all of his studies of course William James the father of American pragmatism
uh philosophy was that if if you change your mind you can literally change your future yeah and like that's a very back to America right that's a very American idea so um hopefully we can extend it all the way to Mars and Beyond uh but in the meantime huge fan of everything you're doing obviously we'll have you back on for we we'll we'll I'll send you the 20 pages on uh
the tenant deal and maybe we'll just do one podcast on that well that that or I think um I mean next time it should be when our movie comes out which will be sooner than I think uh there we go there we go I think we could do that and and talk about talk about that that'd be a lot of fun that would be enormously fun well Jason huge fan I think you are you are going to achieve your goals and I'm
happy to be uh uh one of the members of your uh group of boosters who who want to see you soar well J Jim thank you again for all the support I can't can't thank you enough I will continue to thank you enough you're you're too humble about it and um yeah we're I and the team are working incredibly hard to to to make make make you guys proud and thank you again for the support and doing what you do and um
I don't know I I I'm I'm so excited to listen to more episodes of this show to like I really enjoyed it um and the conversation was so fun and wide ranging and um yeah I I I need more of your reading list too my God I like wrote down I think like wrote down like eight different uh things said in books books you recommended too and um yeah this was this was this was a a lot of fun thank you