They make a joke about specificity in World's End. Heck, the whole movie is about conforming. When they start their bar run, I think at the 2nd or 3rd bar, they notice it looks exactly the same as the other ones.
I don't know how many times a friend showed me a trailer that looked cool, i realised it was for a tv series, and just said nope
Most series are not release all at once anymore. They do 2-3 episodes, then once a week. But the shows are only 10 episodes and basically one long movie, so they don't stay in the conversation very long. And you have to wait 2 years for the next season, that's pretty annoying.
Great podcast today, you three! Definitely lots to mull over.
The current online narrative is to call Netflix evil, but I’m in “let’s wait and see” mode. The big advantage of Netflix and the other streamers is how they put some amount of control in the hands of viewers. Rather than schedule your week around your favorite show/movie, you can now watch your show/movie on your own time. It’s hard to argue with convenience.
I wonder about the state of indie filmmaking. Everything in theaters comes from studios and everything on streaming comes from studios, so where are the indies these days? I suppose there’s YouTube and TikTok and the like, but then they’re YouTubers or “content creators” and at that point are we still talking "movies" as we know them?
Like a lot of us, I’m concerned about how AI is freakin' everywhere. I’m not made of stone – I went to Midjourney and played around with ideas for cover art for my books. Some of them look pretty good, but the eye can still tell the difference. And yet, my attempts to find a human artist to collaborate with have only been dead ends so far. Again, it’s the temptation for convenience.
Also, I watched DIE HARD 2 tonight. Gotta love the conveyor belt fight!
The psychosis is not that you prefer to play a record over streaming music. The psychosis is that you've described the exact opposite when it comes to movies you own, even to the extent that you'll pay to access a movie rather than going to another room and getting the disc. Pick a lane, Patrick!
Excellent podcast and discussion as always. Always love hearing JB and the what a treat getting a podcast with the wonderful Jan B. I could use more of these types of episodes, even just once or twice a year, or over on patreon. You guys have shaped so much of how I view movies that hearing discussions like this is very very welcome.
At the risk of sounding like a tone-deaf moron, I'm gonna ramble a little bit about piracy.
I find your students' justification of torrenting, that the streamers have enough money already, to be very interesting. I think people are pretty cynical of the idea that any of their money is trickling down to the artists involved, and it's much easier to live with screwing over a faceless mega-studio than it is to steal money out of the pockets of artists. At the end of the day, though, whether a movie or show gets butts on seats determines whether or not writers and directors get future work.
Having said that, I used to pirate quite a lot, and I think the reasons I pirated and the reasons I stopped are worth mentioning. I'm in Australia. Australia used to have absolutely appalling internet speeds. Streaming services simply didn't work properly. If you didn't want to pay Netflix only to have to watch movies in low quality with constant pauses while the movie loads the next few minutes, then the alternative was either not watching the show or pirating it. Australia also makes it very difficult to watch certain movies and shows. Certain streaming services are completely unavailable in Australia, and the ones that are have much smaller catalogues.
When it comes to physical media, region-locking meant that I couldn't watch anything from Scream Factory, for example, and region-free players were pretty hard to come by. Even if you have one, Criterion and Scream Factory don't ship to Australia (or at least didn't when I last looked into it). I happily bought and paid for Arrow, Eureka, etc. But if a company isn't going to sell me a movie, it seems pretty harmless to pirate it.
When you can't pay for something even if you wanted to, it's harder to claim that pirating is stealing - they're not missing out on your money, because you can't give it to them for the product anyway, and it's the only way to actually watch it in the first place. It's completely arguable that piracy is still a form of entitlement - ok, sure, I can't buy the movie because it's not available in my country, but that doesn't mean I can just take it... But again, I think that's a harder claim to make if the product isn't physical. Unlike shoplifting, I'm not taking a physical item that they then have to restock at their expense. When I was a kid and I snuck into the movie theatre because I wouldn't have been let in to see an R-Rated movie (Australia's version of NC17), I never considered it stealing - because they weren't losing money from me sitting there, they just weren't gaining money.
This is probably only a minority of why pirating happens anymore, but internet speed, region-locking and lack of availability were definitely a major contributor to pirating in Australia.
I basically stopped pirating once I finally got a reliable region free player and once internet speeds in Australia allowed for streaming. I'll only pirate a movie now if it's some completely obscure, unavailable or out of print movie.
But I agree that piracy becomes a genuine risk to the movie industry if the entire industry turns digital. What a crazy time to be a movie lover - better access to lovingly restored versions of almost every film you could possibly want, and almost nothing new worth watching and fewer and fewer places to watch them anyway.
I have definitely watched stuff on YouTube that I can't find anywhere else. I probably made it sound on the podcast like a black/white binary issue and it's not, so thank you for your perspective!!
I think the piracy problem is probably simpler than that. When I was younger, and a little more cash strapped, I used to pay for one movie and see two. I knew it was wrong, but all I was doing was sitting in a seat that would otherwise be unoccupied (I believe Patrick once referred to this as stealing light). I didn't think of it as stealing someone's intellectual property at the time. That's probably how your students look at this. They would never slip a blu-ray into their purse and walk out of a store because it's a physical thing that someone made and that there's only so many out there. A pirated movie is just a file, it's not tangible and it doesn't feel real. It can be duplicated an infinite number of times.
I don't think I've pirated a movie or song in the last 15 years, I don't see the need to. But probably once a week I'll click on a YouTube link posted by someone who certainly hasn't licensed the copyright. If I want to hear Chris Penn talk about someone getting their dick glued to their belly, I probably should pull my Reservoir Dogs DVD off the shelf, load it, find the scene and watch it. But I don't. I probably should only watch scenes from the Wedding Singer that have been officially posted by the official New Line Cinema page, but Franklovespink69420 has an HD clip of Adam Sandler singing Love Stinks and they don't. Unlike sneaking into a 2nd movie, I'm not sure if I'm actually doing anything wrong here
I'm rambling a bit here, but it's all to say that I do see where your students are coming from. No matter what the ad on my Fight Club DVD says, pirating a movie just doesn't FEEL like stealing a car.
Another wrinkle in this complicated, wrinkled argument involves rights holders who have no interest in licensing or profiting from their own property. After a lifetime of NOT being able to see Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpfe and Find True Happiness… someone finally posted it to the YouTube machine. My entitlement and my insomnia allowed me to watch it for free. I am a bad person. (And the outfit in Rockford that later sold me a DVD… are the pirates.)
Interesting and different format this week.
ReplyDeleteThey make a joke about specificity in World's End. Heck, the whole movie is about conforming. When they start their bar run, I think at the 2nd or 3rd bar, they notice it looks exactly the same as the other ones.
I don't know how many times a friend showed me a trailer that looked cool, i realised it was for a tv series, and just said nope
DeleteMost series are not release all at once anymore. They do 2-3 episodes, then once a week. But the shows are only 10 episodes and basically one long movie, so they don't stay in the conversation very long. And you have to wait 2 years for the next season, that's pretty annoying.
Great podcast today, you three! Definitely lots to mull over.
ReplyDeleteThe current online narrative is to call Netflix evil, but I’m in “let’s wait and see” mode. The big advantage of Netflix and the other streamers is how they put some amount of control in the hands of viewers. Rather than schedule your week around your favorite show/movie, you can now watch your show/movie on your own time. It’s hard to argue with convenience.
I wonder about the state of indie filmmaking. Everything in theaters comes from studios and everything on streaming comes from studios, so where are the indies these days? I suppose there’s YouTube and TikTok and the like, but then they’re YouTubers or “content creators” and at that point are we still talking "movies" as we know them?
Like a lot of us, I’m concerned about how AI is freakin' everywhere. I’m not made of stone – I went to Midjourney and played around with ideas for cover art for my books. Some of them look pretty good, but the eye can still tell the difference. And yet, my attempts to find a human artist to collaborate with have only been dead ends so far. Again, it’s the temptation for convenience.
Also, I watched DIE HARD 2 tonight. Gotta love the conveyor belt fight!
The psychosis is not that you prefer to play a record over streaming music. The psychosis is that you've described the exact opposite when it comes to movies you own, even to the extent that you'll pay to access a movie rather than going to another room and getting the disc. Pick a lane, Patrick!
ReplyDeleteLOL, guilty. I'm a man of contrast.
DeleteExcellent podcast and discussion as always. Always love hearing JB and the what a treat getting a podcast with the wonderful Jan B. I could use more of these types of episodes, even just once or twice a year, or over on patreon. You guys have shaped so much of how I view movies that hearing discussions like this is very very welcome.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of sounding like a tone-deaf moron, I'm gonna ramble a little bit about piracy.
I find your students' justification of torrenting, that the streamers have enough money already, to be very interesting. I think people are pretty cynical of the idea that any of their money is trickling down to the artists involved, and it's much easier to live with screwing over a faceless mega-studio than it is to steal money out of the pockets of artists. At the end of the day, though, whether a movie or show gets butts on seats determines whether or not writers and directors get future work.
Having said that, I used to pirate quite a lot, and I think the reasons I pirated and the reasons I stopped are worth mentioning. I'm in Australia. Australia used to have absolutely appalling internet speeds. Streaming services simply didn't work properly. If you didn't want to pay Netflix only to have to watch movies in low quality with constant pauses while the movie loads the next few minutes, then the alternative was either not watching the show or pirating it. Australia also makes it very difficult to watch certain movies and shows. Certain streaming services are completely unavailable in Australia, and the ones that are have much smaller catalogues.
When it comes to physical media, region-locking meant that I couldn't watch anything from Scream Factory, for example, and region-free players were pretty hard to come by. Even if you have one, Criterion and Scream Factory don't ship to Australia (or at least didn't when I last looked into it). I happily bought and paid for Arrow, Eureka, etc. But if a company isn't going to sell me a movie, it seems pretty harmless to pirate it.
When you can't pay for something even if you wanted to, it's harder to claim that pirating is stealing - they're not missing out on your money, because you can't give it to them for the product anyway, and it's the only way to actually watch it in the first place. It's completely arguable that piracy is still a form of entitlement - ok, sure, I can't buy the movie because it's not available in my country, but that doesn't mean I can just take it... But again, I think that's a harder claim to make if the product isn't physical. Unlike shoplifting, I'm not taking a physical item that they then have to restock at their expense. When I was a kid and I snuck into the movie theatre because I wouldn't have been let in to see an R-Rated movie (Australia's version of NC17), I never considered it stealing - because they weren't losing money from me sitting there, they just weren't gaining money.
This is probably only a minority of why pirating happens anymore, but internet speed, region-locking and lack of availability were definitely a major contributor to pirating in Australia.
I basically stopped pirating once I finally got a reliable region free player and once internet speeds in Australia allowed for streaming. I'll only pirate a movie now if it's some completely obscure, unavailable or out of print movie.
But I agree that piracy becomes a genuine risk to the movie industry if the entire industry turns digital. What a crazy time to be a movie lover - better access to lovingly restored versions of almost every film you could possibly want, and almost nothing new worth watching and fewer and fewer places to watch them anyway.
I have definitely watched stuff on YouTube that I can't find anywhere else. I probably made it sound on the podcast like a black/white binary issue and it's not, so thank you for your perspective!!
DeleteI think the piracy problem is probably simpler than that. When I was younger, and a little more cash strapped, I used to pay for one movie and see two. I knew it was wrong, but all I was doing was sitting in a seat that would otherwise be unoccupied (I believe Patrick once referred to this as stealing light). I didn't think of it as stealing someone's intellectual property at the time. That's probably how your students look at this. They would never slip a blu-ray into their purse and walk out of a store because it's a physical thing that someone made and that there's only so many out there. A pirated movie is just a file, it's not tangible and it doesn't feel real. It can be duplicated an infinite number of times.
DeleteI don't think I've pirated a movie or song in the last 15 years, I don't see the need to. But probably once a week I'll click on a YouTube link posted by someone who certainly hasn't licensed the copyright. If I want to hear Chris Penn talk about someone getting their dick glued to their belly, I probably should pull my Reservoir Dogs DVD off the shelf, load it, find the scene and watch it. But I don't. I probably should only watch scenes from the Wedding Singer that have been officially posted by the official New Line Cinema page, but Franklovespink69420 has an HD clip of Adam Sandler singing Love Stinks and they don't. Unlike sneaking into a 2nd movie, I'm not sure if I'm actually doing anything wrong here
I'm rambling a bit here, but it's all to say that I do see where your students are coming from. No matter what the ad on my Fight Club DVD says, pirating a movie just doesn't FEEL like stealing a car.
Another wrinkle in this complicated, wrinkled argument involves rights holders who have no interest in licensing or profiting from their own property. After a lifetime of NOT being able to see Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpfe and Find True Happiness… someone finally posted it to the YouTube machine. My entitlement and my insomnia allowed me to watch it for free. I am a bad person. (And the outfit in Rockford that later sold me a DVD… are the pirates.)
ReplyDelete