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If you're looking to understand the business of film, let me suggest listening to Ben Fritz, who covers entertainment for the Wall Street Journal and is my guest for the podcast.
Why? Well, for me, it's two things. First of all, if you listen to his astonishing documentary podcast called "With Great Power: The Rise of Superhero Cinema", you get to hear why he's such a successful journalist. An executive will offer a throwaway line, and Ben simply asks: why? You get something much closer to the truth from a one syllable question than one might expect.
It happens throughout this podcast series from 2023, and it is a true masterclass on how interviews should be conducted.
And two -- he's just straight with people. In this episode, we talk about an article he recently co-wrote on MUBI, the streaming service, and the money they've lost over the past year. In almost any other situation, the company doesn't participate, the article is branded a hit piece, and the audience is left wondering about the veracity of the story.
Instead, MUBI's CEO is quoted in the article, which tells me the respect he gives the co-authors.
Or maybe it's three: just listen to the insight Ben provides in this episode. If you go by the notion that the business offers an explanation of the films that show up on our screens, there's no better person than Ben Fritz.
In this episode, Ben and I talk about:
his preference for hosting a podcast or being a guest on one;
his ability to tell a story evenly without looking for gotcha moments, which distinguishes his journalism;
how he got started in filmmaking;
what he expects out of the summer festival market;
what he's learned between covering filmmaking to AI and back to filmmaking;
the future of AI in filmmaking;
the "$50 Movie Ticket Has Arrived" article and what it means for theaters;
what that means for indie filmmakers;
the behind the scenes story of his article, "How VC Money and Israel Outrage Derailed a Hot Hollywood Startup" about MUBI;
what MUBI's business model portends for the industry;
how production companies make money in such a competitive environment -- branding;
why Silicon Valley doesn't invest more in Hollywood;
what's next for him and how things have changed since 2019;
Ben's Indie Film Highlights: PINK WALL (2019) dir. by Tom Cullen; COW (2021) dir. by Andrea Arnold
Memorable Quotes:
"I try to make clear to people I'm not gonna pull any punches, but I'm also not here to try to get a gotcha moment."
"I feel like it's becoming a lot like everything in the American economy, which is, it's a have and have-nots world."
" What I realized quickly is if you understand the business, then you understand why you get the movies and TV shows that you get, right?"
" So you could see more movies getting made, more original movies getting made, more people who don't have access to Disney and Netflix being able to raise a little bit of money and make an interesting movie on their own. So we could see this blossoming of creativity that maybe would rival what we saw in the 1970s."
" The danger, which some people in Hollywood think, is the more movies become a premium experience where you spend a lot of money, the more it becomes something people think of as I only do this two or three times a year,"
" I think the I'm gonna get a specialty label or specialty company to buy it and put it in theaters is...that's like winning the lottery at this point."
" The one promising thing in this world of indie film theatrical I've seen recently is you've seen some YouTubers put movies into theaters and find a niche audience."
" I was able to connect to a source who was just close to Mubi, who was able to give me a lot of inside information on really what happened."
" Mubi is a solid business. That's why Sequoia invested in them. It is a healthy business. They just made this huge mistake last year."
"My teenage son knows what A24 is, and that name means something to him."
"Sequoia's investment in Mubi was shocking to a lot of people. This is so outside the box for what they normally do. And the only other prominent example of VC investment in entertainment is A24, which definitely has some VC investment in it."
Links:
Ben Fritz's WSJ Page
Ben Fritz's Website
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