2024-03-20 - the importance of picking a fight you'll never win
Season 6 - Episode 42 - 03-20-2024
It's raining in NYC, he can't ride his Boosted board. Cab ride. The driver is looking at sexy pictures while driving! In 24 years it never happened. Doug Liman is boycotting South By South West Premiere of the Road House movie against Amazon MGM because they refuse to make the movie into theaters. Casey doesn't understand. It is a big Hollywood director. Casey knows him, so he goes to meet him at WB sound mixing studio. This is where they mixed Road House. 2 spaces to mix for theater or house for TV. He is wearing a cowboy hat. He is on war with Amazon so the hat means the fight. When he made Bourne identity, a big budget movie, there was boundaries, things they were not able to do, and he didn't understood why as he was able to do it with low budget movies like Swingers, because they were not hiring the people who said no. Bike ride in NYC. Huge billboard for Road House... on Amazon Prime. Stop at the Post Production studio. He explains that they made Road House for the big theaters. Imax cameras, big stars. It's a party, a movie you watch with friends, not alone in front of your TV. At the beginning Amazon said they will invest $1B in theaters. They never did and never intended to do so. It happens to a lot of other movies directors. Casey explains that he quit HBO because he didn't want to have people saying what he can or can't do. Later Doug takes a plane to go to the SXSW festival. No more boycott? He acknowledge that he lost. He tried all he can, he lost, time to move on. Flight to Texas in a small private plane. Car ride to the festival. The reason Doug is making movies is to have them played in front of an audience. Lot of work, but the payoff is when you can show it to other people. He hates losing but he publicly lost. Back at his studio Casey explains that at the beginning he was confused, Doug's job is to make movies, he has a great job. Distribution is not his job. But now he gets it, the movies belong to theaters. Even if he lost, he greatly appreciates that he stuck up for his movie. Casey also met Conor McGregor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-vWRLGnTGg
