The Epidemic of Celebrity Cowardice (with Gianmarco Soresi and Caroline Kwan)

So I wanted to start with a joke. I'm so excited. You're right. You're right. So a gay man in Germany identifies as a political. I was wondering if you guys consider your art political and if so, how can movies these days help fight the rise of fascism in Europe and America? Well, I think we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now. And so as artists, I'm always interested in doing things that are apolitical. That's the joke. That's the joke. Yeah, no, it's a good one. Not a comedy podcast, guys. Sorry. Hello, hello. And welcome back to "A Bit Through Me." It feels like every week for the last several months, a new celebrity has stepped forward to bravely tell us one thing. They are not political. After flirting with Maga Alignment for the better part of a year and gleefully becoming the object of Donald Trump's admiration, the president tweeted about the jeans ad and I wondered what that was like. It was surreal. It was surreal. Sydney Swini declared herself, quote, "Not a political person. Jelly Roll, who shook hands with Trump at a UFC rally not long ago, told journalists at the Grammys that. People shouldn't care to hear my opinion, man. You know, I'm a dumb redneck. I haven't watched enough." At the Berlin Film Festival, which is still going on, a number of celebrities and filmmakers have continued to excuse themselves from questions about politics and how their work relates to it. Ethan Hawke told a journalist who asked about the genocide in Gaza, quote, "The last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual council is a bunch of jet lagged, drunk artists talking about their film." Maybe that's true. But this all feels so far away from the pop culture of 10 years ago, when it felt like virtually every celebrity was chomping at the bit to espouse progressive politics, especially when it came to anti-Trump sentiment during his first administration or on specific issues, like the legalization of gay marriage or the brief collective reckoning over structural racism in 2020. Hashtag Blackout Tuesday. And while there are certainly some celebrities who didn't speak out then, and there are some who do speak out very loudly now, shout out bad bunny, shout out Billy Eilish, I think it's undeniable that the median entertainer's willingness to speak out against anything really has plummeted significantly. And so today I want to interrogate why that is. I have some feces about some specific turning points in, I don't know, in the year 2023, but we will all throw our hat in the ring and see what happens. Today I am so excited to be joined once again to episodes in a row by our friend, Twitch pop culture streamer Caroline Kwan. Hi, I can't believe we're two weeks in a row. This is so exciting. This is my life now. I really have you on retainer. And we are also joined by a new friend of the show, John Marco Soressi is another anti-Zionist Jewish gay guy. And a big jelly roll fan. John Marco isn't gay, but if you're not familiar with John Marco lore, I mean, where do you stand on being gay? Yeah, I'm not gay, but it's how I was raised. So it's a musical theater kid. So I would say that my social life was a mostly gay growing up. I often feel like a middle aged gay man spiritually. I look for those types of people to come on this show. I went on John Marco's podcast the downside last year. It was where we met for the first time in person. And I will insert the clip here of me learning in real time. That John Marco is not gay. Can I say something? You can say it. So we walked in, I walked in just now. And I asked if you lived here. And he said, no, my girlfriend, you still live here. Amazing. I didn't know you were heterosexual. Oh, oh yeah. Wait, you learned on the podcast? Yeah. And by the way, not the first person to do so, we made a compilation, a compilation video of people finding out. He mentioned his girlfriend. And I was like, I don't know if you've ever seen the clip of Britney Spears sitting next to her Ryan C. Cress when Ryan C. Cress mentions a woman that he spent tonight with. And Britney Spears looks into the camera and she mouths the word. She's like, woman? Because she thought Ryan C. Cress was gay. And that's the exact experience that I had with John Marco where he was like, oh yeah, like my girlfriend and I used to have this place as our apartment, but now it's our studio. And I was like, it's nice to be able to break barriers as a straight white man. Can I just say to since we've mentioned jelly roll, one thing that has felt really ominous is a bunch of these celebrities haven't just said, you know, I'm a political whatnot. There's also been almost a threat of, well, you'll find out, you know, I'm not going to say anything right now, but you'll find out soon. I'm like, I'm preparing a statement. I'm preparing a statement. Yes. I have a lot to say about it and I'm going to in the next week and everybody's going to hear exactly what I have to say about it in the most loud and clear way I've ever spoken my life. All will become clear. It's this very like riddler type speak. I actually forgot to include this in my outline. I don't know if you guys saw the quote from Rupert Grindt. Yes. Yes. Formerly Ron Weasley. He's at the Berlin Film Festival right now and he was asked like many of the celebrities we will talk about in this episode how he feels about like the rise of fascism and he was like, you'll be hearing from me. Will we? I don't know. Why does he feel like some ominous vibe to it? The actors are constantly proving the importance of writers and that's why you got to remember a lot of these actors. You like them, but you're not hearing that it's writers and then they get asked to say something. He's like, I'm going to, if he said I'm going to consult a screenwriter to prepare a statement and I'm going to deliver the fuck out of it. I go, okay, that makes sense. Also, someone says, how do you feel about the rise of fascism? It's a pretty broad, like you can just go, yeah, fuck that. That's all you have to say. My statement on fascism is dropping. I think it was Juliet Benosh. Last year at Cannes Film Festival, she did something similarly. She was asked. So she was the Film Festival jury president. She was asked about why she had not signed this, one of the letters, one of the global letters that was condemning the industry silence over the crime being committed in Gaza. And she goes, I cannot answer you. You will maybe understand a little later. I mean, in her French accent. But you maybe will understand each a little later. I thought we could get sort of a soft intro here with Sydney Swini, who, you know, I think is a less complicated case than some of these figures, but still reveals some of the same structural rot within Hollywood that leads people to do this shit. I think most people know that Sydney Swini has sort of just become this political lightning rod over the last year. You know, at the beginning, I was like, I don't think she's in on it. You know, I was willing to entertain the idea that, you know, and it's true. I think at the very beginning, there were a lot of like right wing men online who were attributing, you know, the death of wokeness to Sydney Swini's boobs. Like, that was a real thing that was happening. And at the beginning, I felt kind of badly for her because I was like, you're just up there doing SNL in a dress. And there suddenly there are think pieces about how wokeness is dead. Then it seemed to me, and you guys are more inside the entertainment industry than I am. But it seemed to me like a PR strategy was acknowledged at a certain point where, you know, the president is tweeting about how Sydney Swini has the hottest ad. And she really gets like consumed by the right in this culture war over the American Eagle advertisement. And then she, you know, she's asked about it in interviews and she gives these co-e answers like, it's surreal. And it felt like she was feeding into it because, and again, tell me what you think. It felt like her PR team had decided we're going to cash in on this audience a little bit. Maybe cash in or I think more of the opposite. It's like, okay, you were avoiding being talked about politically. People just wanted your soap of your bath water and you're raking in money, raking in money. And then the president does this and it's like, okay, if you respond negatively, you're going to just lose money. I think just so much of this is the true defense would be, I'm going to lose a lot of money if I say anything. And I mean a lot. And it's like, yeah, and that's why you're being criticized because ultimately you're saying like, I don't want to give up all this money. And yeah, you're right. You're right. You have to sacrifice money for values. And so I don't even know if it's your PR team necessarily going like, oh, we're going to cash in per se. I just think that the president, he's a fan of you. What's your options? You either are silent. You either are coy, which is same thing or you go fuck the fuck the president and then you lose a couple million dollars. And you know, it's tough, but that's what you're faced with as a mega celebrity. The one reason I think there is strategy here though is I don't know if you guys remember, but a couple years ago, Sydney, she had posted a video online. You know, she was crying and she was talking about how exhausted and frustrated she was by [BLANK_AUDIO] constantly sexualized. And again, this is before she really then leaned into the hypersexualization, the campaigns that were very clearly directed at Hornie Young Men. But she had posted this video where she was very upset. And I remember feeling empathetic for her. I said that's, you know, she's just a woman who is trying to succeed in this industry. She has boobs. Wow. Okay. Let's, you know, let's, let's consider more than her boobs here. As she became more famous, she seemed to, you know, whether this was her team or her, I don't know where it's coming from, really embrace the hypersexualization in order to sell these products. I don't think she went into that gene commercial. And again, maybe I'm wrong. I think she probably showed up on set. This is the campaign. I have good genes. They came out and then you hear all this news and you go, oh, fuck, dude, what? What are they doing? And unfortunately, that's when you have to make the decision. You have to go, even if you had no intention, you just made a gene ad. You should make 10 ads an hour. And you find out this one's being reappropriated. And it's, it's probably really annoying. It, it probably sucks to wake up and find out you're trending on white supremacist Twitter. And you go, oh, fuck, now I, now I got to figure this shit out. But that's what you have to do if you want to continue to participate in selling yourself as a human being. That's the marketplace that you've entered. Yeah. Well, needless to say, Sydney Swini is now on the cover of Cosmopolitan. Currently, it's on every news stand in New York. This is her when she is advertising for her new lingerie line. The new lingerie line she's promoting, which Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell put a billion dollars into one billion dollars, which is okay, then that's why she was at Jeff Bezos's wedding. I digress. It's, it's called siren, but it's s y r n. This is not at all relevant to the theme of the episode. But I want to campaign for startups to bring back vowels into the names s y r n sern. It feels like I feel like that's an old, I feel like we move past that. Like we were doing that for so long. Grindr, crumble, like let's just bring back the vowels. It's fine. It's actually okay. That's my, that's my party platform. But you know why it's because it's copyright. That's where like copyright is actually motivating aesthetic where it's like they probably siren was taken. So they just had to misspell it. So you just had to make it sern. Yeah, the next phase is the ad mouse. The next phase is it's s i two eyes a silent age. They totally could have done the thing where if you've ever been on like r slash white people, baby names or whatever that is where they'll take a name, you know. I know what happened. I'm not subscribed to that particular subreddit. So we are slash tragedy spelled T R A G E D E I G H. They could have done like S E I G H R Y N. Right. You add you go the opposite direction where you add the most letters. Sure. Sure. Regardless, she's on a, she's on the cover of Cosmo and she said quote, I'm not a political person. I'm in the arts. I'm not here to speak on politics. That's not an area I've ever imagined getting into. It's not why I became who I am. Just say you want money. I just would respect honesty. Yeah. At least at this point. Instead of being like I'm an artist. I want I want to be as rich as humanly possible because because the problem is again, it's the division. It's talking about the arts is some kind of a theory of concept that you participated in. And the same way politics is some ethereal thing. Of course, we all know we all agree here. Politics is everything. Politics is engaging in the world. So you want to engage in the marketplace, but not the not the world. You want to sell yourself as a human being, but not talk about what you actually think and feel and believe. That's the hypocrisy of all this. It's like if you don't want to engage in politics, go go become I guess a mathematician or a physicist or an accountant or just sell sell, you know, would. I don't know, but you're selling yourself. And then you want to say, Oh, actually, I don't have any thoughts. Okay. I also just think that it's like we're going to see more probably interesting revelations that come out of the relationship she has with Scooter Braun. A lot of people don't know Scooter Braun's influence in like the whole sort of like Zionist activism within Hollywood scene. First of all, Scooter Braun has like a gazillion dollars from managing and exploiting a lot of very famous artists music artists. And he is intimately tied in with all sorts of pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us, which is why I don't know if you guys saw this. Sydney Swini posed for a photo in the backyard of Scooter Braun's 65 million dollar home in LA with two former Israeli hostages turned, you know, sort of like activists slash like poster children for Israel. That got posted to the Stand With Us Twitter page. If you don't know what Stand With Us is, it's just a right wing pro-Israel advocacy organization. And obviously that was the work of Scooter Braun being like, babe, like, I don't think do I think Sydney in earnest knows what the fuck is going on in the Middle East? No, that's Scooter being like, babe, I have this photo op, just do it. It's fine. And then we'll like go get lunch after it. You know what I mean? Yeah. How many dates do you wait for until you ask your partner to help with Israeli propaganda? Like what's appropriate? Is it a third day? Six. Six days. It just makes this whole song and dance. She's attempting to do to me more grigis. You were saying that this is about not bleeding money. But now it seems like she's trying to walk back from it. So do you think that's still the same calculus of just trying not to bleed money? And eventually the right wing thing became too toxic? Yeah, I think so for short or or maybe for all I know she's she's saying I really don't like this. I feel like I'm on the bad side of things. Can I can I can I go up and say like I think people should be treated well and the team's like, I don't know. I don't know if you can say that. And it reminds me a lot. I'm not a Taylor Swift person. It just no reason at all. But but I remember that documentary where you really got to watch. I felt like it was an honest portrayal of her team being like, if you make this statement, it really is going to fuck sales up. And that was kind of a look where you know, and of course, this is the part that they presented. I never trust a documentary produced by the people it's about. But it was her kind of with the money people being like, we should do something they're like, we really shouldn't. Can we do anything else? And we don't really know internally what those negotiations are. However, when she's with Scoot of Braun and doing this picture, there's a there's an overall picture that you do start to see emerge in terms of what she's concerned about. So yeah, maybe it was a shift financially. Maybe she felt a little bit bad. Sure. Sure. Well, the one thing with the Taylor Swift doc two is that she specifically mentioned the Dixie tricks. She talked about in 2003 when famously the Dixie tricks spoke out against George Bush and the rock war and were one of the actual and first instances of a cancellation. And that was what Taylor was referencing as far as this is what happens when you challenge power. This happens when you speak out and look at the Dixie tricks. They suffered for it. Can I just say about that too? It's so interesting that Taylor Swift has like cited the Dixie tricks as an example of good activism and sacrifice for good. We're going to talk later about like LeBron James having the same sort of admiration for Muhammad Ali, but also Taylor Swift and LeBron James both being billionaires now. Name dropping these people as influences only to not follow in their footsteps in truly any meaningful way. Sorry. Like it's it's it's a little wild to me. Yeah. Well, they're billionaires and that's I think the that's on the story. I do feel bad for for some of the country singers because like listen, even if if jelly roll suddenly became very progressive and spoke out against ice, I still wouldn't listen to him. Sure. And that's that's tough. I can't I can't get behind it. But yeah, the Dixie tricks their whole career got fucked because of it. And so I just you can't have sympathy for someone who goes, I really want to be a good person and a billionaire until you realize that those two things are at odds with each other. Yes, you're not going to get respect from the progressive side of things. Also to anyone in who might be like, it's the chicks now. Yes, the Dixie tricks change the chicks. Just talking about the Dixie tricks as they were as they were in 2003. Yeah. One point before I forget it on Sydney, Swini in this Cosmo article, what she says in the article about siren, aka, trend is that I want to show women that we can take back our power and fully free ourselves. Like this is what this was a quote from the article. And then she went on to talk about how siren stands for the power of choice. Women can take back their power through a fast fashion lingerie line funded by Jeff Bezos. Okay. Okay. I mentioned in the intro how everything we're seeing now with like celebrities taking or I should say refusing to take stances on anything feels like such a far cry from a decade ago, even with some of the very people we've been talking about in Gluten Taylor Swift. And so I want to just revisit that era for people People who forgotten it, people who are extremely young listening to this podcast and don't really remember what that was like. My real pop awakening, that coincided with my gay awakening, was 2009, 2010, was when Lady Gaga released "Born This Way." Gay straighter by lesbian transgender light, like saying the word transgender in a pop song that was on the radio, wow, woke really was alive and well. That had a real impact on me. That really, to me, kicked off the decade of so much political celebrity activism type stuff. And I do think for a lot of them, it started in earnest. - Mm-hmm. There were multiple global social justice campaigns and movements that were taking place in the 2010s. And because the support was so huge, it was something that became safe for a lot of these celebrities to adopt it into their brands because that's really what it is. So it was Black Lives Matter. It was support for victims of sexual abuse through movements like me too. Other movements like times up. I mean, there was a lot that was happening in the 2010s. - Gay marriage, occupy. - I think what can be really tough to know is like, okay, so let's say people are obviously capitalizing. They go, oh, gay is in. Or wow, gay fans really participate. They see shows and they buy tickets. And there's a part where it's like, okay, even if it's cynical, if it's for a good cause, if it's for like being more accepting, is it a good thing ultimately? And then when the times turn economically, you go, did we get any progress that lasts when the money's not there? And I don't know the answer to that because part of me is like, it is good. I remember my gay roommate in college from musical theater playing born this way. And they were moved and it was a beautiful thing. - Absolutely. I do think nuance can be held in the conversation of like a lot of the work that these people put out when it's economically viable to do. So has a positive impact. Like, firework by Katy Perry. That music video showed two young gay guys kissing. And I sat in my bedroom in middle school and I would, the one second, one second where they kissed. I replayed it over and over and over and over and over again. And I was like, this is like a- - Baby, you're a firework. - Yeah, I was like, I want that. Like, that's real to me. So I think like the net effect of that stuff can be good. And then also we have to ask these questions relating to capitalism, which is like, why did all of this stuff come out at a very specific time of pop culture and why isn't really happening now in the same way? - Just so you know Matt, the experience that you had watching firework with Katy Perry is the same experience. Youngstraight guys now have watching the Sydney Swini Eagles at. They go, oh my God. (laughs) That means so much to me. Oh my God. - It's finally a safe time to be youngstraight in America, wow. - It really is. I mean, look, I think there are. We have to make a difference too in social issues that are still a lot safer. Safer, you know, as far as you're not going to get as much backlash or you won't worry about as much controversy. And I think supporting the LGBTQ community is one that a lot of artists will still kind of hide behind I think when they don't want to talk about Palestine. - When they don't want to talk about Palestine. I mean, this all comes down, I think this conversation today to talking about how Palestine is the litmus test for a lot of these artists, for a lot of these celebrities who have built these brands out of championing equality, championing acceptance, you know, appealing to marginalized groups who they have profited from that like these are social issues that have helped further their careers, that have helped increase their net worth have grown their audiences. But at the end of the day, there is still safety and say, going, I love gay people, you know, let's all be gay versus talking about support for Palestinian liberation. - Yes, there's a lot of homophobia in Hollywood undeniably, but there is also a tradition in Hollywood of celebrities but also executives and people high up in industry who are conservative but are friendly to issues like gay marriage or like the legalization of weed. And this is to me the lie of I'm a social liberal but I'm a fiscal conservative because when you are a fiscal conservative and that means requiring you to appeal to power so that you can continue your income. And that means, you know, sacrificing, for example, Palestinians because standing up for the most oppressed people among us in society right now becomes an issue to your bottom line. Well, suddenly you're not so socially liberal anymore because it's like socially liberal for who. - Does that make sense? - Mm-hmm. I guess sometimes I get curious, Matt, I feel like whether it's a Neal Patrick Harris of it all, I wonder what it's like as a gay person to look at Israel and I think one of the defenses that they go is they go, hey, this place is more friendly towards gay rights than other places in the world. And that is the hook of like, that's why I support this thing. - We will put a pan and Neal Patrick Harris that we will take out later in the episode but I do think just as a quick note, like it's about realizing that like liberation for people is most certainly not a zero-sm game and that like you as a white gay man are not the last frontier of liberation. That's what it means to me. And this is like such a syndrome that a lot of like white gay men have, frankly, I mean a lot of people have it, but it's like white gay men have it in their own way where they are just so invested in like LGBT Pride causes or AIDS related causes and that stuff is all good but they think that it's like where it stops, you know? And that if you have freedom to walk down the street and tell of you as a gay man, then that's sort of like the moral end game for you as a human being on this planet. And it's like, well, I mean, it's just not. Like there's just other people who have it worse than us right now and that's not about making a competition of suffering. It's just like, okay, but I can understand my suffering and I am willing to fight back on it. So we should be able to do the same for other people. I always think about like Emil Joaquim who was on SNL for one season, should have been renewed but wasn't. And he did this very brave moment on weekend update where he was basically like, you know, if you stop bombing Gaza, like there's say, oh, you can't have gay rights in Gaza, like stop bombing them, they'll get to gay. - Yeah. - But you have to stop bombing them first. And I think about it that way. It's not a zero sum game where like I get my gay rights or Neil Patrick Harris gets his gay rights and then, you know, so Gaza can't have, or they get their rights in Gaza so I can't have my rights as a gay man. It's just, you have to think bigger than that, you know? - Yeah, it's really like a thing, like not realizing, like yeah, there's gay Palestinians. It's just not seeing obviously a group of people as people. And it's like, it's like yes, it's if we're talking about gay rights, it's not just gay rights of the people on this border that keeps expanding. It is, it's global. - Mm-hmm. Anyway, not to zoom through a decade too quickly and not to simplify it, but this was sort of a theme throughout the 2010s where like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Gaga, Kesha, I mean, I just named women 'cause that's who I think about as a gay guy who loves pop music. But everyone sort of like did this political pop. To me, this reached a saturation point with Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" music video, which sort of just represented homophobia as this like Westbro Baptist church style like incoherent hatred, which is not typically how homophobia I think shows up for a lot of people. And it just seems like a really cynical weaponization, I think, to a lot of gay people of LGBT culture and celebrities. I also think about this decade through the lens of the prom, which was a musical and then adapted by Ryan Murphy into a movie that was not good. But the premise is funny because the prom is about a group of flailing celebrities who feel like they need to attach themselves to like a safe cause to revive their careers. So one of them goes on Twitter and learns that a high school in Indiana has canceled their prom because a lesbian student wanted to bring her girlfriend. So the celebrity is then go to that town in Indiana and like cynically attach themselves to this girl's cause for their own benefit. And then of course it becomes like a heartwarming thing, but that's the premise. That's to me like a lot of the 2010s was celebrities being like, what's a brand safe cause to utilize for my career? - Well, I think what also needs to be mentioned is Beyonce's Super Bowl halftime show when she had the revolutionary black Panther aesthetics. It was very explicit in the symbolism and there are still Beyonce fans who just like other, you know, stands of any major, major pop star who try and do the whole, no, no, no, Beyonce is actually, you know, she's not just a billionaire, she's not just a massive brand and everything she does is in service of that. But who will still point to that super bowl performance as in no, no, no, but that was that's Beyonce. You know, don't focus on the fact that as Beyonce has become a billionaire, she and Jay-Z have only, you know, quadrupled their wealth that they have become less and less even participating in this display of political aesthetics. Was there a picture of the two of them? They were like getting dinner with the Kushner's, weren't they? Yes. Yes. A few months ago, Beyonce and Jay-Z were at some like fundraising gola or something with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner sitting at a table with them. I mean, look, I know Beyonce has shooters, you know, as do Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and all these people. Obviously, I'm on Twitter. I know that they exist. You can love these people's work. I have loved a lot of these people's work and you should be able to criticize them, you know? Like, please just know that before you come into the comment section. It's kind of the opposite of separating the art from the artist where it's like just because someone's art is good. It doesn't mean that the artist is good as well. If you're a fucking billionaire that speaks a lot to who you are as a human being and you don't have to go, oh, their art is bad or their art doesn't even present as revolutionary or their art doesn't say something good. But that doesn't mean the artist themselves is a good person. And I don't think they should be allowed to like ride on the image that they are a good person while they participate in bad things. Yeah. This is a quote from an essay from Jason King in 2019 in pitchfork called Activism Identity Politics and Pop's Great Awokening. Only a small handful of money to elite superstars have enough of a platform and budget to be able to make certain kinds of highly charged political statements, even in a diminished music economy. But the flip side is that those same artists are not likely to upset, disrupt or criticize the capitalist system that has facilitated their success. And I think that's ultimately like what you saw happen with this decade times and presidents changed. The political landscape became less conducive to celebrity branding and the vast majority of them, I think, dropped that part of their brand as quickly as they had adopted it. And I wanted to note here that Taylor Swift and Beyonce both recently showed their tour films in Israel. Now anyone who knows about the boycott divest and sanctions movement knows that cultural boycott is a key component of that. You are not supposed to show your tour film in Israel. That's part of a peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza. And I just remember specifically there was a video that came out of a theater, a movie theater in Israel. I don't know if you guys saw this. I was at the screening. Okay. All right. Funny guy. Pack it up. They were in the theater and they were waving Israeli flags singing, you won't break my soul. Yes. And all of that is part of reputational whitewashing that is normalizing these unbelievable crimes against humanity that are committed on every single day basis. And of course, and it's like the reason they're doing it is because it's the bottom line is they want money. And it's the same way that a company, if they found out that they could dispose of their waste in the local lake and it saved the money, they would do it. But we have laws, hopefully, that are all going away, laws that say you can't. And when it comes to art, unfortunately, you might not have laws that govern where the art can be spent. And it's up to the fans to make economic decisions that put pressure on these because Beyaz is not a person. She's a company. It's about the consumers to enforce the social laws and pressures that force them navigate things. I don't think they made the diss, and I could be wrong. I don't think they made the decision about Israel because it was like, well, I believe, I believe in the right for Israel to exist. They go, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And it's like, yeah, it's up to the fans as annoying or as they'll be painted as annoying or woke or whatever the fuck. That's the only guardrails that these corporate entities of artists have to guide them. There's no laws. People are the laws. They are the rules. They are the guides. And it's tough if you love an artist, but that's your role as a consumer. Exactly. 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Do you think that is a fair thesis? Yeah. It made it way more complicated than I think it had been in the past. Even when I think about when I was younger, it was so easy to be like, "Oh, I'm a Democrat because it was centered around gay rights," which again, Democrats were never spotless in that record. But it was like, "Oh, this is an easy thing. It's like this side is against gay people getting married. This side is for it." And I think that childish view of the world was the celebrity view with a lot of issues. And suddenly they were like, "Oh, the world's more complex than this." And it's not easy to make a statement and just rake in money. Do any of you want to talk about your experience in the entertainment industry around ending the aftermath of October 7th? Because I'll start. Does anyone want to talk about it? I do. But I had representation as an influencer at a big talent agency before October 7th. And I've told this story to my friends. But I started speaking out about Palestine because I thought it was the morally correct thing to do, not long after October 7th because the genocide started and ramped up very quickly. It did not go over well at that talent agency. And there were lots of headlines coming out at the time about all sorts of people like more famous and in traditional media than I was being punished by these similar talent agencies like Susan Sarandon, like Melissa Barrera. I remember before I was officially dropped by that talent agency, I at one point was in a Zoom call with celebrities, like real celebrities who were all kind of like, you know, getting from their fans online. Like, what do you think about Israel? What do you think about Palestine? What do you think? October 7th? October 7th? Say something. Say something. And for the first time, like you said, John Marco, because a lot of these people had simplified ideas of just like, "Well, we're anti-Trump. So we define our politics as being anti-Trump." They were like, "We don't know what to say." Because we don't know a lot about this. And the sort of like institutional messaging around what you could and couldn't say was very explicit. And that I think is why I did not last at that talent agency. And that was totally fine because now I do, you know, everything by myself. And I'm very happy that way. But there was, and I think we all remember this, but especially if you were sort of inside of the entertainment industry around that point, there was a real silencing of dissent. I mean, like Melissa Barera dropped from scream. I think the chilling effect was just undeniable. And to me, that is the turning point because as the genocide got worse and as public opinion changed and as it sort of just became undeniable, you couldn't deny what was in front of your eyes, a lot of people in entertainment were forced to do so. And I look at what happened to Rachel Zegler, right? And just the constant harassment from entertainment media, from fans, from her own bosses. That muddied the waters in terms of celebrities feeling like they knew anything about anything or had a place in saying anything political about anything. I just think the chilling effect was so large. And so like, am I going to ever be hired again if I step into politics? Meanwhile, three years ago, you were talking about BLM. You were talking about game marriage. You were talking about all of this stuff. But now it's all just too complicated because Palestine. I really do think it's not all that simple, but I think that's a huge part of it. I mean, it's stressful in a way. You and I just speaking in terms of what our businesses are, we have a very direct one-to-one relationship with people that ultimately result in us making a living. And I do think a lot of these actors, some of them, it's like they really are in this system that they, for some of them, they didn't realize how Zionist it was. And there are so many powerful people that have a firm line about this one thing. And they'll listen to agents are not known for having kind of a strict moral backbone. They'll represent Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon on the same agency. If people understood who these agencies represented and how these three major agencies represent people across the spectrum, in a way, there was a freedom of that as a performer. You said, well, I didn't have to bend the need to anything because they don't have any conscience. And then there was this one thing. There was this one thing where it was like, actually, we do care about that. And in a way, I didn't feel an effect because frankly, I wasn't successful enough that it mattered. I wasn't in a movie to be kicked off of. My, my business is a one to one with people buying tickets or not. And I got the benefit of course of being a Jewish person, a Jewish man. Let's do the full of straight Jewish man. Let's do the full spectrum of all the privileges I had to speak out and be honest with whatever. But, but I think a lot of these actors were terrified were terrified because I think for some of them, it did threaten their whole livelihood and they didn't realize it. And unfortunately, they had benefited off the social causes that that were easy to speak on. And we're confronted with something new. It's like, yeah, you made a, you made a deal with with the devil to a degree. And now you have to face it. One thousand percent there was and still is blacklisting that's happening. When Melissa Barera's firing was so public and caused a huge backlash. And I think that that was not anticipated because again, for the most part in the entire history here, people have been kept in the dark about Israel's behavior. They have been largely like, oh yeah, Israel, democracy, ally in the Middle East, you know, great friend to the US. And so when things started to switch, there was a backlash to these firings. And so what they did instead was they kept blacklisting, but they did behind closed doors. They did not make it as obvious. And I remember, I mean, I covered this on stream on October 7th. And looking back on that, that was wild because I did not anticipate, I did not anticipate what would happen afterwards. And I, so my career, I was working in the entertainment industry, COVID happened. And then I switched to being a digital content creator. And I covered the events as they were unfolding on October 7th. And that led to crazy smear campaign, just the worst harassment I've ever experienced in my life. I was thinking to myself, if I were still trying to pursue a career in Hollywood, I'm fucked. Like if I ever try to go back, you know, if I ever try to go back and be a screenwriter, you know, I still have some some scripts floating around like I still have a script at this one production company. I am flocked because of how obviously the blacklisting of people who have this perspective have been taking the stance is. And I know we've we've mentioned talent, high profile talent, who got fired, but do you all remember maha da keel? I think her name is maha da keel. Yes, she was head of co film at CAA, I think. Yes. And they came for her. And you know what's fascinating about the maha da keel story. So she is one of the biggest agents at CAA, which is one of the biggest talent agencies in entertainment. She represents Tom Cruise, Madonna, Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman, these enormous blockbuster artists. What happened because what she posted on her Instagram story shortly after the genocide began was a graphic that said, if you're ever wondering what you'd be doing during a genocide, this is it, which by today's standards is in sort of run of the mill take, but at the time you could not say that. But did they fire her? No, because she brought in too much money. What they did was they punished her within CAA, they took her off of, you know, some board that she was on, I think temporarily. And to me, the hope in that story is that, you know, like we need our own structures that have moral clarity. And that's why, I mean, that's why we live at a capitalist country. And so part of it is like, you have to decide financially to support the things that you want. I don't think we're ever going to have a major agency, a miracle will crumble before there is a major agency that competes with the big three that is not a very Zionist leading at industry. It's not going to happen. That's why you got to support completely non-problematic celebrities like Tom Cruise because they're there. But listen, the world's complicated. It's a good thing what Tom Cruise did. To be clear, Tom Cruise stood up for Mahatakil and that's part of why they did not fire her completely. Yes. And Tom Cruise is, he kills me because he's done a lot of great things, you know, how he protects people. And sad to make sure people are compensated, but then at the same time it's just the little thing, a tallity thing. But yes, you're right. It's like what needed to happen. And then what did happen was people with real power who Tom Cruise himself might not be, you know, out there educating around what it means to be anti Zionist, but he stepped in to use his power in the industry to stop them from completely throwing Mahatakil in the trash. And that's why it can sometimes feel exhausting. I do understand when people get kind of tired of celebrities choosing what pin to wear at whatever festival. And as if that's worthy of applause. But I will say that when you have powerful celebrities who, you know, like a Mark Ruffalo who's going to continue working, no matter what, they end up clearing a path to a degree of saying like, look, your people can express this opinion without you blacklisting them. They become a coalition of you can't get rid of, you know, 50 of these top earning actors, they use their money and their power to give head clearance for people. But Nathan, because ultimately, some of these conversations we talk about Susan Sarandon, who again, I admire what she does, but she's also okay. She's got money. There's people, I know, I know a comedian where it's like they were fired from the agency and they don't have money. They're not going to get scooped up by UTA because this other agency dropped them. And those are the ones that we're not even talking about because we don't even know who they are because they really took a hit. That's why it's it's not worthy. Oh, Beyonce did kind of a, had a lyric that was cool 10 years ago. It is the chicks. They lost their career. And thus we don't even talk about them as much anymore. Well, that's how fuck speak for yourself. I'm talking about them all. And good, and good. And that's that's putting your, you know, putting your money where where your heart is. And I would never going to go in here like, oh, don't ever support or don't ever listen to the music. We can't deny what we want artistically sometimes. But you can go out of your way to financially support people whose views you you admire because the industry's not going to look out for the ethics. Tom Cruise, listen, he may have stood up for that agent, but I promise you when he wants Elrond Hubbard's great granddaughter to become a movie star, he's going to come knocking in and get that favor back. This is not an ethical industry. I will say I still have, you know, I have a lot of a lot of empathy and sympathy for people who are caught between a rock and a hard place because they they don't have money and power like a Mark Ruffalo. But there are still a lot of people who don't have those protections. And yet you do have Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo and Hannah Einbinder. It's just a lot of big talent in the industry who have expressed publicly support for Palestinian liberation have called the genocide a genocide. So when you have other famous names that are refusing to to join them, it's like I don't know anymore if this is working for you as far as the, oh, if I say anything, I'm screwed. The last thing I want to say before we talk about the film festival that is still going on and the Shakespearean drama that is unfolding there. I just want to say John Marco, when I went on your podcast a little while ago, it was still earlier in the genocide and I have receipts of the chilling effect around free speech and entertainment affecting me in my own psyche. It's nobody was telling me what to do. I had internalized the censorship and I was self-sensoring because after I I got home from doing our recording. I message you on Twitter. Hi babe, thank you for having me today. I had fun. Quick edit request for you. Could you cut the part at the beginning where I'm like, is this a safe space to say fuck Israel, LOL? The message is true, but the tone didn't land how I like to LOL heart. Who, who, who was I censoring myself for? Like this is the thing, this is the thing, this is the thing. I know that there are maybe a few celebrities who listen to this podcast. I don't say that to have a big head. I just know that that's true. And it's like, listen, as a podcaster, I know I'm not a movie star or a pop star, whatever, but like as a podcaster, I am in the rare privileged position to be financially supported through Patreon, through advertisers. I'm good. Who am I censoring myself for? That's the message that if you, not that this is just like a podcast for like the three celebrities who might be listening to this, but it's like, you're fine financially, Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle Yo, like we're gonna talk about them, but like, who, who is this for? Is this really, you could have a second beach house? I don't know, listen, I'm not mother Teresa. Like I'm not an infallible, perfect person. I'm just like, in hindsight, I look at that self-sensorship that I was doing that. I know a lot of these people with frankly a lot more money than me are doing, and I'm just like for what? You know, that's my impassioned rant. - I just think like, listen, when you look at what a movie costs to make, there's a little bit of a tangent, but there's someone who's been very much talking about Broadway, is the sweaty oracle is his name, and he like does kind of, you know, rants about Broadway and theater, and he's very, very funny, and he's been reflecting pretty harshly on how many Broadway producers and what not are in the Epstein emails. And I think the cynical part of me goes like, yeah, what do you think Broadway shows cost? If something costs 20 million to make, and that's the money that you need to fund, it's gonna be connected towards rich people, rich people are connected to bad things because to get that fucking rich, oftentimes you have to be a little bit of a sociopath, and it's the same with movies where like, there's a degree where I think you get to this point, you don't know you're being constrained in your views, 'cause you haven't had to confront it, or it's been easy, and you get to this certain level where you're working in movies and you get to work with cool people and fund projects and you're famous, and you're making, you're not just rich, you're filthy rich, and then you find out, oh, there is this one thing you should not, you can't talk about, and you're already here, and these movies cost a lot of money, and they are tied to a lot of people that will not put you in that big movie anymore, and you are gonna be in pain, and you haven't been honest on the way up, you haven't necessarily expressed your views on the way up. You know, Rachel Zegler, she's expressed herself, she can now kind of with a more clear conscience, continue to be a movie star, and anyone who works with her, producers, directors, they will have had to deal with the fact that she's been outspoken, and she's expressed these things. Some of these celebrities, they never did, they never talked about anything, and it's true, their careers might change, there might be some movies they lose if they speak out, and they can't expect people to not give them shit for it. That's the bargain you made, and yeah, it sucks for you, that if you speak out, it's gonna affect some of the movies you get to do. That's life, that's life. - It's also like, there are people who are speaking out, who are students on visas. - Yes, exactly. You have infinitely still, infinitely more protections and privileges than people who are getting yanked off the streets. A couple of years ago, this environment of fear and chilling speech, I get more people who were in a position to and didn't say anything, but now it doesn't work. It doesn't work because the other thing is that they're not just asking them about Palestine. It's like they're asking them about fascism in the United States, yet they can't even, they're so afraid to say anything about fascism. - And the beautiful art that they make, sorry, the beautiful art that they make, the movies or whatever, having just recently, I just did kind of a tour of some countries in Asia, and I'm going to Hong Kong, and I'm going to places where the art you can make is a lot more limited than it is in America or other parts of Europe or other parts of Asia too. But the rise of fascism will affect the art you're able to make. And maybe right now you're able to make that period piece where you get to talk about a gay person in the Holocaust and you get to talk about the struggle that they had and you get to dive into humanity. For now, but that was earned. That freedom was earned and the things that we're talking about now will encroach on the movies that you get to make and the stories you get to tell. And that's the disconnect where you go like, don't you understand the movies that you're allowed to make were hard one by people who sacrificed money for humanity. And if you don't have power, if you don't have power, like let's say, I don't think anyone's asking, you know, they're asking the big celebrity some of these questions, but like, let's say you're an actor and you're like, you're broke, you got a movie, it's shocking, it's in a festival, but you were paid sag rates so you don't have any money from this. You could go, I'm scared to say what I think because I'm worried it's going to have an impact. Like at least say that, even that is better than going like, oh, I got a lot of thoughts and you'll be hearing from me at some point. (laughing) Just say, say, be honest about it. - Especially when you have, you have athletes at the Olympics who are speaking out more than these artists who have in the past, you know, proudly talked about how political these film festivals are and how important, the role of art can play inspiring conversation in fostering human connection and like just the fact that the silence from these artists, this attempt to claim apolitical status, when you got goddamn skiers pissing in, or sorry, what is, is Gus Kenworthy a skier? Gus Kenworthy who peed, who peed fuck eyes? - I'm asking the skier snowboard. (laughing) - Skier snowboard, you got skiers pissing fuck eyes into the snow. I love that the one sports question was like the only time in the last hour and a half that there's been total silence. (laughing) - But per your point about money, like people with a lot of money and power, you know, speaking out, like it's the same with athletes, like if you're brutally talented, like, you know, Muhammad Ali, it was a degree of like, what are you gonna do, take him out of boxing? And this is the marketplace, people are gonna fill up Madison Square Garden to see this guy throw a punch and it's like that's a lot of power and he used that power to speak honestly in a way where no one could be like, hey, you talk like that again, we're not gonna let you in the ring. In Hollywood, that is true a lot, but with athletes, especially, it's like, if you're fucking the best, nothing anyone can do to shut you up. - But also what I wanna say is like, when Muhammad Ali spoke out when he, you know, to say I'm not gonna go fight over in Vietnam in this bullshit war, that was at a time when he really was one of the few prominent superstars that was saying that, in the same way that the chicks in 2003, especially as country artists, you know, they really were on an island. And so right now, there is such an outcry. You got people in Minnesota who are like, I have never protested the day of my life, you know, they're on the news saying this, but fuck this shit. I am going out because I can't, you know, I will not sit here and do nothing. And so this is not even a time period that, oh, if you say something, then, you know, you're gonna be by yourself and you have to shoulder all of that backlash. - Yeah. - I wanna shout out rocket money for sponsoring this episode. It is a new year, Trump sure as shit hasn't done anything for affordability. And it's time to think about how we can budget responsibly in 2026. Budgeting is something that my dad has always instilled in me. And even when I thought he was being really annoying about it, he, as always, was right. Shout out to you, dad. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Monitor's your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. The app is really clean and easy to understand. It gives you a dashboard where you can see all of your subscriptions and repeated expenses in one place and helps you cancel the ones you don't want or need anymore with just a few clicks. It's a really easy and accessible way to just feel like you always have a handle on exactly what money is coming in and out. You know, rocket money has over five million users and saves them an average of $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. If you'd like to start canceling your unwanted expenses and grow your savings, you can head over to rocketmoney.com/fruty. That is rocketmoney.com/fruty. Now it is time to get back to the show. So, in speaking about genocide, now let's shift focus to the site of one of the worst genocides in history, Germany, where a certain film festival has been taking place and it has not been going well. So, the Berlin Film Festival has been going on for the last week or so. The drama that has been unfolding there with regard to what celebrity is willing to say or not say anything about what is going on in the world has just been reaching Shakespearean levels. And I wanna walk through it. I wanna walk through this drama and see what we learn from it. So, the Film Festival opened last Thursday, I believe, with a press conference with the festival's voting jury. Where a journalist asked about the role of film in politics and specifically about Germany's ongoing support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. - I also have a political question I was hoping to get a quick answer from everyone because since Avod said, you know, change the world, this festival does not happen in a vacuum. The Berlin Ale, as an institution, has famously shown solidarity with the people in Iran and Ukraine, but never with Palestine, even today. So, my question is in light of the government support of the genocide in Gaza. And it's role as the main fund of the Berlin Ale. Do you as a member of the jury support this selective treatment of human rights? - It should be mentioned here that the festival has previously taken hard stances on other global events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. First, the Polish producer, Aewa Puzinska, apologies for not that wrong, said this. - Oh, not just the Polish producer, producer of zone of interest. - She produced zone of interest. - Woo! - All right, here we go. - Does the jury want to answer? I mean, I think we also want to talk about films in the festival, but. - Well, films are political as you just said. - So, you know, the films are not political in the meaning of the world. I think you think of the meaning of the world. Asking us this question is a little bit unfair, because you know, there's this we are trying to not, you know, we use the word change the world, but of course we are trying to talk to people every single of the viewer and to make them think. But we cannot be responsible for what the decision would be, would be the decision to, you know, to support Israel or would be the decision to, you know, support Palestine or, you know, this is we can talk about Senegal and all the other wars, you know. You just pointed the most the biggest, but there are many other wars where genocide is committed and we do not talk about that. So this is very complicated questions and I think as I said, it's a bit unfair asking us. - That's real all genocides matter. (laughing) All genocides matter, but you know what? We won't even talk about any of them. - We always say that this film festival, we wanna change the world, but we didn't really mean that. How dare you ask us such a question. - Yeah, I also can't get over her saying this is not a fair question and something that has really left me quite flamixed is these jury presidents and members of juries at these international film festivals, getting cut off guard or going, we'll hold on to sec this isn't fair. As if they don't expect that these questions are gonna be asked when these questions have been asked over the last couple years when the question arises of, hey, these institutions are complicit, especially Berlin Film Festival because of Germany. Like Germany is aiding and abetting Israel's actions in Gaza and in the West Bank. And this was the same thing when Alexander Payne, who was the jury president at Venice, he was asked about Palestine, who was asked about, are these institutions remaining silent? These film institutions complicit then. He said he was unprepared. He's like, I'm unprepared to answer this question. I go, how the fuck are you unprepared? You're not unprepared. You don't wanna answer the question. - And when it comes to the matter of fairness, apologies, it's like you participated in an industry that's about society and per what you said. Politics, like if you wanted to open a bakery and it's in your small bakery and you're trying to do an interview about your croissants and the first question they ask you about is like make a statement on Israel. I could understand a little more so being like, oh fuck man, I really, there's a lot of, this is in Brooklyn. I was hoping to get some of these sales, can we forget this out later? But this is the movie festival in Germany that involves political movies. Like that's the industry you chose. - Yes. - Sorry, sorry it's inconvenient right this moment. It benefits you in other times. You don't just get to pick and choose. - I love the idea of being interviewed about your croissants. Anyway, so then Vim Vendors, who is this famous for decades, a filmmaker and who is the head of the jury at this film festival takes the mic and says. - We cannot really enter the field of politics. (audience applauding) We have to stay out of politics because if we made movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics, but we are the counterweight to politics. We are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians. - Bill. - So I wanna read to you a quote from this man's book from 1988 that he published called The Logic of Images. - Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be entertainment movies. They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change. In every frame, they tell you everything's fine the way it is. They are a continual advertisement for things as they are. So what changed? - Palestine, it's Palestine. It's always Palestine because Vim Vendors just last year made a short film in conjunction with Germans cultural ministry that addresses the current insecurity in Europe due to Russia's aggression in Ukraine. They're illegal invasion and tying that, making the parallels between the end of World War II and the current environment in Russia. And he has spoken about how it is important to speak on these matters. It is important to create art that is reflective of this reality. So it's Palestine. That's what it is. Palestine is the litmus test. Palestine is the line that they refuse to cross. And it puts their hypocrisy on full display and Vim Vendors knows, he knows. He knows that this is hypocritical. I know he knows this because I know his work because I know what he has said his entire life as a creative. - It's also just like the world that they envision or the world that they seem to want where it's not fair to bring this up. It's like, okay, so is the world that you imagine is that all governments function without any kind of public discussion. And then outside of that, we have an arts industry that just talks about the past and theoretical versions of feelings. That's not a world we'd wanna live in and the world of confronting things involves uncomfortable conversations, especially if you're gonna use a forum where you open it up to questions from the general public. Otherwise, what do you want? You want just everything to go on as it is and you get to put on a movie festival and know whenever it talks about things. It's just nonsense. It's not fair. - This sets off a string of journalists asking celebrities at this film festival about politics, about Palestine, about ICE, et cetera, et cetera. So Neil Patrick Harris is at the Berlin Film Festival promoting his new movie, journalists ask him a similar question. I wanna play his response. This clip is so surreal. When I first watched it, I felt my body like levitating. - I have a question to the director, George, maybe Neil O'Bella, I was wondering if you guys consider your art political and if so, how can movies these days help fight the rise of fascism in Europe and America? - Well, I think we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now. And so as artists, I'm always interested in doing things that are apolitical because we're all as humans wanting to connect in some way. That's why we experience things together. And so when you get to go to a film where you're carrying about the people, you're carrying about the heart of what's happening. You're watching this film of these young adults growing up under the umbrella of a world where some of them won't. And I think that is so touching and also kind of exciting and rebellious and horny. And like it's. fun to be able to witness that without having to process it through a contemporary lens, right? It is so current and yet timeless. So getting to spend time in strangely sunny Glasgow, Scotland, it didn't rain once, like for the entirety of the time we were there. Because there's a fortune turning off there. Right? And then getting to just hang out with these amazing people who've had illustrious careers and who are sort of starting their careers as a little group of artists outside of the world conversation was quite unique. Love to do it. The weather, he gets asked about the rise of fascism and he in the short sweet 80 seconds dilutes the conversation from fascism to the sunny out right now. The part where I question, you know, my own kind of brashness is like, do you go, okay, if everyone knows my political views as an artist, maybe a bunch of huge swath in the population in whatever, as he said, the divided algorithmic world that we live in, they won't even engage in my art. And here's where I think it's a little bit bullshit. If they engage in my art, which is about humanity and understanding other perspectives, maybe that will bring out their own humanity. That's what I think the most like good faith interpretation of some of these things is is like, well, how can I how can I persuade as a Zionist to see people as human beings if they if I can't even get them into the movie theater. But the bottom line is if they never have to confront their own views, they can go see a movie and go like, yeah, you should treat others like you want to be treated and still endorse a genocide because human beings are able to be hypocritical in that way. But that that's the part that I think like what some artists, I think probably think or want to project those that aren't fully financially motivated. That's my thought. When I saw this, I was just thinking like Neil Patrick Harris is a gay man who came out as an already famous person in the mid 2000s. He knew what his being an entertainment meant then politically. And to have become so privileged that you just drop the act. And this is what I mean. It's like this syndrome that a certain type of oftentimes privilege white gay man has about like thinking their own suffering is the final frontier. Neil Patrick Harris also was the grand marshal for Tel Aviv Pride in 2019. So I don't know. I guess that wasn't political. Of course. He's not even being asked specifically about Palestine. He's being asked about, you know, as a lot of artists were about the rise of fascism. And I think this decision to say, I'm just interested in a political to go back to John Marcos point earlier of do you understand what fascism does to art and culture and freedom? Like do you get that like some of the first things to go are art and culture and fascism, you know, it devours everything and then eventually devours itself. So your film might not explicitly be about the rise of fascism, be about, you know, any particular political messaging. However, you are creating a film that has political elements. You have a gay character talking about cancer, etc. I know it's a light hard, it's you know, it's lighthearted, fair, but it is still being created in our current world. They are acting as if this is a world that is completely separate from this other world where all these things are going on. So Michelle, yo, who is also at the film festival was asked in a press conference she did if she had quote any comment as an international actress on the current state of the US, which is obviously pointing to Trump fascism ice, etc. Palestine was not mentioned because as I'm trying to make the case, I think the chilling effect is bigger than just Palestine. She said quote, I don't think I'm in the position to really talk about the political situation in the US. And also I cannot presume to say I understand how it is. So that's not to talk about something I don't know about. I think I want to concentrate on what is important for us, which is cinema. She's like, I want to concentrate on what's important to know, which is that matamorable flip it around wicked, which can I say, I actually liked Michelle, yo and wicked. So what I'm about to say is not about that. A lot of people responded to this statement by Michelle, saying well, she's Malaysian. How could she know about American politics? If she was just some person, I could be sympathetic to that. I don't know what's going on in the political world of Malaysia. I really am sympathetic to that argument. However, there's a number of things that make me question the legitimacy of that argument. First, Michelle, yo has a home in Beverly Hills and has for years and also spends a ton of time working here for the last many years. Yeah. Michelle, yo is a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations. Did you know that? Yes. Also, I'm sorry, but we're talking about the United States. It isn't the same thing for you to understand Malaysian politics, because Malaysia does not have the power in this world. Therefore, the influence and global reach that the US has. So all the things that you just listed, yes, absolutely, are reasons why this is totally bullshit, but also because we are talking about the United States. There are people who are not Michelle, yo, who are not global superstars who have lived in, you know, have homes in Los Angeles. There are regular people all around the world who have an awareness of the United States because of the impact that it has on on their own country. Michelle, yo is a full human being with a very long career and a complicated integration into actually Malaysian politics. Interestingly, there's sort of just a lot that we don't have time to get to today. But my thesis around Michelle, yo skating around what I thought was a very softball question. Is that she is really tied in to the sort of global elite class? I think nothing represents that better than the fact that her husband is the former CEO of Ferrari. Among a lot of other things, he is an extraordinarily wealthy man. Another billionaire. Who is in the Epstein files? Yeah. He was having friendly email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein in 2017. 2017. This was not 1999. This is post conviction. Yeah. You know, this I'm not trying to point that oh, Michelle, yo's husband was involved in nefarious activity with miners. But I am saying like the thing that we have learned from the Epstein files is the way that this sort of global elite protects each other and is involved with each other on a level that sort of like ascends morality and law. And to me, Michelle, yo's skating around this question has much less to do with like her being a Malaysian, which by the way, her primary residence for the last seven years has been in Geneva, Switzerland. It is more to me, I think, about her being deeply enmeshed in this global elite. Just my opinion. Feel free to disagree. I think also, similarly with Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle, yo will get political. She will speak on politics when it affects her personally. So she is always talking about representation. She just talked about it when she got her Hollywood walk of fame star this week. She talked about it when she was given a lifetime achievement award. The first Asian person, maybe Asian woman to get that at Berlin Film Festival. She got into, you know, cause, cause some tea, cause some drama when she was up for an Oscar for everything ever all at once, because she had reposted a piece that someone had written. Oh my god. This was like this was like gay guy civil war. Yes, it was because it was about K plancha. It's like you have these two mothers going up against each other. K plancha for tar, Michelle, yo, for everything everywhere all at once. And she had reposted this piece about how a win for Michelle, yo would be much more significant because of all the barriers in Hollywood because, you know, we've only had one other actress of color, Halle Berry, who had one best actress. So Michelle, yo absolutely gets political when it is pertinent to her own self when it is to her benefit. And and like we're all about representation in film. Like I think she makes some valid arguments of course when it comes to that. Of course, I'm an Asian woman who, you know, was in the entertainment industry. Of course, representation is so important. It's something I've talked about. But I think it's and this really ties back into the 2010s when I feel like the dominant form of progressive politics is spoused by people was relegated to identity politics. Yes. And identity politics without class analysis doesn't take you very far. As we've seen, it really set the stage for I think in a lot of ways where we are now. So over the course of the film festival, these repeated answers from film stars from the people working in the film jury for the festival. They started to get a lot of significant negative attention online. This led festival had Trisha Toddled. to release the following statement. - Increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticized if they do not answer. They are criticized if they answer, and we do not like what they say. They are criticized if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief sound bite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else. - This just. - Oh, come on. Listen, it would be one thing. If these journalists were like, can you weigh in on the Texas Senate race? - Right. - In the Democratic primary between James Tolerico and Jasmine Crockett, Michelle Yo, Neil Patrick Harris, the inventors, are you supporting Tolerico? They're asking the basic softball questions of like, what do you think about genocide? What do you think about ice, kidnapping? Like, these are like majority held positions by people that all of this stuff is bad. These are really vague and easy questions to answer. - Especially for a festival that's bragged about being the most political. - Well, so that's the other thing. It's amidst all of this. I was like, what's the tea on the Berlin Film Festival? 'Cause like, I'm not, I can't pretend to be a film guy. So I went to their website and it was reading the About Us section where they say, the Berlin Festival enjoys an eventful history that is to this day, it is considered the most political of all major film festivals. That is on their own website. Following this statement, 81 artists, including Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Adam McKay, release an open letter criticizing the Berlin Film Festival's silence on Gaza. And I clipped part of it here. We write as film workers, all of us past and current Berlin Al participants, who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity and the terrible violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians. We are just made at the Berlin Al's involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the German states key role in enabling it. Last year, filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlin Al stage reported being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. We fervently disagree with the statement made by Berlin Al 2026 jury president, Vim Ventures, that filmmaking is the opposite of politics. You cannot separate one from the other. Then, then, Trisha Tuddle, God bless this one. Imagine this being your job. - She's out here tuddling. (laughing) - She is tuddling. (laughing) - Imagine being Trisha Tuddle and this is your job every week to just be like, it's just hard to condemn genocide. You're forcing us into an impossible position. She releases another statement about, quote, holding space for that complexity of the conversation around Israel's genocide. She wrote. - Not everyone wants to talk about this issue, as serious as it may be in their own lives. Some people want to come to the festival for other reasons. The festival needs to provide space for filmmakers to talk about their work, but not necessarily always be the story themselves. This clearly hasn't worked for the activist campaign who want us to say what they want us to say and anything less than that is going to result in continued harassment and misinformation. We're in the process of reaching out to some of the people we know who have signed the letter to make sure they really understand what they've signed and that what they've signed is not fair or accurate. Okay, so this actually sounds like y'all are gonna be engaging in this harassment that you claim you have been victim to. My God, enough, enough, shut up. Matt, I texted you this, but I used to put together, I worked on putting together our slate when I was at Sony and worked in international production. I would prepare my boss to go to Berlin and all of these major festivals. I have never seen this much conversation, media reporting, et cetera, around Berlin festival that has not to do with the films, but these ass and I statements that are coming from filmmakers, jury members, and the heads of Berlin. So actually this has really backfired on them. The decision to try and wave this away and then dig their feet in even harder and then release these condescending, ridiculous statements is unfortunately taking the attention away from the films that they have so desperately tried to insist upon that that's what it's about. It's about the movies. I feel like for me, it's easy to look at this wild back and forth that's happening between Neil Patrick Harris and Bim Vendors and Trisha Tuddle and just be like, "Wow, this is just the level of drama." But this is what it's really about for me. So the film No Other Land, which is about the Israeli sort of ongoing attacks in illegal settler expansion in the West Bank of Palestine. This was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024. It won the documentary film award there. It also won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. In March 2025, months after it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won all these awards and sort of made the film industry feel good about itself, I would say, is the role of a lot of these films and the festival's decision to show it. Hamdon Bollal, who is one of the film's directors and writers. He went back home to Palestine, he lives in the West Bank and was attacked by Israeli settlers at his home and then kidnapped from his ambulance by the IDF. The academy did not immediately support him in any capacity when this happened. This is a man who stood on the Oscar stage with an Oscar in his hands. Yeah, like two weeks prior, No Other Land had won and the academy had refused to put out a statement until they faced pressure from major a-listers. And another year later, just a couple weeks ago, Hamdon's small concrete house in the West Bank where he went back to after winning an Oscar was attacked again by settlers while he wasn't home. But his brother was home and this just happened. The settlers knocked his brother to the ground, his name's Muhammad, and they choked him until he turned blue in the face and Muhammad's children had to take him to the hospital afterwards. This is from the Guardian. Quote, "Relatives in a nearby village who got news of the attack made their way to the Bollal's house and were intercepted by the army, the Israeli army. Two of the directors' brothers, a nephew and a cousin, were held in handcuffs and blindfolded for three hours at a nearby army base. Before being released at night on a road used by settlers, putting them at further risk." The IDF released a statement confirming the detention of his family members. And their statement said, "Oh, well, we didn't attack them. It was more peaceful than he's bullfucking shit." We know that they don't just come and peacefully arrest people for living in their homes. And so this is the reality, right? Is these institutions show this man's movie? They get all the praise, all the standing ovations for saying, look, two years late, hundreds of thousands of potential deaths later, we're gonna show a Palestinian movie and use that to sort of, I think, cleanse the industry's image a little bit after doing so much silencing of speech. And then when those Palestinians go back home and are continually attacked by Israeli thugs because this issue has not been solved and because the international community hasn't put pressure on Israel to change its behavior at all, then the very same week that this man continues to get attacked, Berlin all says, "Oh, we're apolitical." And that's what it's about to me. It's like the closest thing that these festivals get to doing something good right now turns out to just be an exploitation. - And I think the twisted aspect here is that Hamdan Belal has not just been repeatedly targeted because he's a Palestinian living in the West Bank. And for decades, it's been under military, a legal military occupation and these illegal settlers who brutalize Palestinians in their own homes on their own lands. It's not just because of that, it is because he was a part of making this film because he won these awards. And the first time that he was attacked right after the Oscars, that was an element of why they went after him because he had that Oscar and the message was, you might have a shiny trophy, you might have one fancy awards for this film, but you do not have the power here. We will still come into your home and do whatever we want and that Oscar isn't gonna stop anything. And that is exactly what you said, how these institutions will pat themselves on the back. They will try and pretend like they are not complicit because look, we have Palestinian films and these Palestinian films are getting awarded. And so our job here is done. The other part of this is that for these artists who want to separate politics from art, that is a complete sign of privilege. Hamdan Belal does not have that luxury because his entire existence is political. To him politics is a matter of life and death. politics is what strips him of his humanity. Politics is what allows these thugs to come in and brutalize him and his family. - Yeah, and I mean for Neil fucking look, I'm not gonna like scapegoat Neil Patrick Harris as like if Neil Patrick Harris had alone said something that all the world's issues would be fake. I know that's not the case, but it's just this evading a responsibility that I find so disgusting because you know what? Neil Patrick Harris was sitting in that chair in Berlin, Germany 80 years ago. He would have been arrested, taking a concentration camp and had a pink triangle sewn to his vest. You know? - Yeah. - And so it's just my god. - And I think the point that's trying to be made is that it's not the responsibility of these artists, of these actors to speak on these issues. Like it's not their responsibility as artists, which I don't agree with, but I think we should look at it in terms of, well, what about your responsibility as a human being? I also just wanna mention that Arunt Haddie Roy, boycotted Berlin Hall, she put out a statement that was condemning Vim Vendors and Berlin Hall's complicity here and their attempts to deflect away from talking about Palestine. Also the director of Voice of Hinn Rajab, how Thurben Hinnia, she rejected her award that she won at Berlin Hall because of the political cover that they have provided for Israel's crimes. So not everybody, yeah, not everybody is doing this a political song and dance. Oh, sorry, we're just here to talk about the movies. That's it, that's all, la la la la. - To cap out, cap out, to cap off, cap off, to cap this conversation. - She's losing it. I wanna bring up another celebrity, not totally in the enter, well, I guess professional sports is ultimately entertainment. - Space two. - That's true. LeBron James made waves the other night when at the press conference for the NBA All-Star game, didn't think you were coming to the "Bitfruity" podcast to talk about the NBA All-Star game, youth out wrong. He was asked about the Israeli player who was playing in the game and more generally what he had to say to his fans in Israel. - What message would you like to send for Israel? - If I have fans over there, I've never been there. If I have fans over there, then I hope you follow my career. I hope I inspire people over there. To not only want to be greatest sports, but I want you to be better in general in life. So hopefully someday I can make it over there. Like I said, I've never been over there, but I've heard nothing but great things and I appreciate the question. - You never heard a bad thing about Israel? LeBron, I know you're on Twitter. I know you're on Twitter. I see your tweets. You've never heard a bad thing about Israel? Get out of here. Get out of here, LeBron. No one's buying that bullshit. Even in Israel they're like, okay, don't pander. Please, get out of here. You have so much money. Just say it, just go, oh, I would love, I, oh, if I fans in Israel, I'd love if they gave me some of their money. That's what you're saying. Just say it. Just fucking say it. Enough with this bullshit. We're all tired of it. And I hope as a society, we just more and more people go, shut up, shut up, stop talking in that fake bullshit way. Never heard a bad thing. Get the fuck out of here. I, I mean, this is the thing with LeBron James, who I won't pretend to be a scholar, but I do know that LeBron James has long-sighted Muhammad Ali. That's like me saying, that's like me saying, I've never heard a bad thing about your son's of ball skills on the court. And I don't fucking know anything about basketball, but I've heard, I've heard, you're telling me, I've heard more about your son and not being as good as basketballs you, but you have heard a single bad thing about Israel? Get out of here. Sorry. So it is. Are you done? You don't have to be. Yeah, I'm done. No, no, no, no, that's all I know. It's just, you know, he's cited Muhammad Ali as one of his greatest influences, specifically the way that, you know, if you don't know anything about Muhammad Ali, he was widely considered the best athlete of all time. And as a 25 year old, in 1967, at the height of his physical ability, he refused to be drafted to the Vietnam War due to his ethical opposition to it. Convicted of draft evasion by the government, stripped of his titles, and banned from boxing for three years, which I think is just like, it's a level of moral clarity from a public figure of that stature that is almost unthinkable today, but especially from LeBron James, he's a billionaire, you know? Which we're sensing a theme here. I'm just gonna read a passage from an article that Dave Zürin, who is the editor, the sports editor, for the nation, and who's also Jewish. He wrote this about LeBron James. James has said his two goals in his life, one is to be, quote, a global icon like Muhammad Ali, and the other is to be the richest athlete in the history of the world. And while these may be two great goals, they don't exactly go together. That's because people like Muhammad Ali didn't become global icons because they were rich, but because they were willing to sacrifice everything, including sponsorship deals to stand up for what they believed in. This week, the effort to balance the spirit of Muhammad Ali with his life as a 41 year old billionaire tipped away from Ali. Actually, it didn't just tip. It crashed to the ground. James knows what's been going on in Gaza, and it's ludicrous to think he's heard nothing but great things about Israel. He certainly hasn't heard great things from his old Cavaliers running buddy, Kyrie Irving, who has not been shy about showing his solidarity with the Palestinian people. He hasn't heard great things from current and former NBA players, like former teammate Dwight Howard, or Tarek Aldoel Had, or Aetan Thomas, and more who've spoken out against genocide and for a free Palestine. Hell, during this past week in Zalstar game, Irving wore a press shirt in solidarity with the journalist in Gaza, killed by the Israeli army, and spikely were the colors of the Palestinian flag court side. James knows what's going on. Instead of fulfilling his teenage dream of being a hero to the downtrodden, he has chosen to turn his back on war crimes, permitting his fans to do the same. Perhaps he fears what a backlash will do to that other youthful dream of unfathomable wealth, or maybe he just doesn't care. The only way to be a billionaire in this world is to be a sociopath. That's the bottom line. And until culturally, like in a deep way, every person understands that, that having that much money is not a sign of like brilliance, or even if it really is more deeper than anything else, a sign that you do not value other human beings. And are thus not worthy of people's respect, that you're going to get away with that. And so I just think when you have this much money, it's a warning sign automatically. And before you know, you're going to start saying some crazy shit, like you've never heard a bad thing about Israel. I don't know. I don't think I could find a world if we were trying to make a jury and go, is anyone have any thought who hasn't heard a bad thing about Israel? Shut up. Yeah, maybe somebody who's been in a coma for 50 years. For the last 75 years. Plus, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Caroline and John Marco, thank you so much for joining me on this episode today. It's weird and often frustrating times, but I just personally get through it by trying to make sense of it. So thank you for helping me do that. Where can people find more of you? You can find me on all social media platforms. John Marco Surrazi spelled with a G. A lot of stand up on YouTube, I tour, and I have a podcast that Matt has been on. Give it a good listen. It was a great episode. We talked about Jubilee. We got deep into the weeds of that. So it was a lot of fun. And that's called the downside available on YouTube and anywhere else you get your podcasts. And I said, fuck Israel. And for some ungodly reason, ask you to edit it out. So I'll have to return to your podcast and we'll rectify it. That'll be the title. Caroline. Oh, I cannot answer you. You maybe will understand a little later where you can find me. [LAUGHTER] You can find me at Caroline Kwan. Some variation of it though, unfortunately, on certain social media platforms. Caroline Kwan was already taken. But mostly I'm on Twitch streaming just about every night. I love you so much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I will see you on the next one. And until then, stay political and stay fruity. [BLANK_AUDIO]