电影在文化中的角色

Marc: I think movies play the role in our culture that myths and legends used to play in ancient cultures or that novels used to play 100 years ago. They're the art form that is capable of basically containing and expressing and making permanent the most important aspects of a culture or of a civilization.

Marc: 我认为电影在我们文化中扮演的角色，就像神话传说在古代文化中扮演的角色，或者小说在一百年前扮演的角色一样。它们是一种艺术形式，能够基本承载、表达并永久保存一个文化或一个文明最重要的方面。

Katherine: There were a lot of great films in 2019 and then just a memory hole of what great film has come out since then. Something happened in Hollywood. The scripts that are being written, the types of things that are being made today are very, very different than what was happening in 2018, 2019.

Katherine: 2019年有很多很棒的电影，但那之后，就像一个记忆黑洞，不知道有什么好电影问世。好莱坞发生了一些事情。现在正在创作的剧本，正在制作的电影类型，与2018、2019年时的情况非常非常不同。

“情况监控者”的玩笑

Eric: Mark, you've been known to monitor a situation or two. Welcome to the program.

Eric: 马克，你以监控一两个情况而闻名。欢迎来到节目。

Marc: Eric. How would you characterize me as a situation monitorer?

Marc: 埃里克。你如何形容我这个“情况监控者”？

Eric: Extremely eager. You know, I picture you with security cameras just extensively monitoring at all hours of the night.

Eric: 非常热切。你知道，我脑海中浮现出你带着监控摄像头，在深夜里广泛监控一切的画面。

Marc: So basically Howard Hughes in the penthouse is up there.

Marc: 所以基本上，霍华德·休斯在顶层公寓里就是这样。

Eric: Yeah. You're an elite situation monitor, which is why you're here. We're so happy to have you.

Eric: 是的。你是一位精英级的情况监控者，这就是你在这里的原因。我们很高兴能邀请你。

詹姆斯·邦德电影与霍华德·休斯

Marc: Well, speaking of movies, I'm watching all the James Bond movies with my 10-year-old, and we just got to Diamonds Are Forever, which is the one set in Las Vegas. It turns out the producer Harry Saltzman of the Bond movies was a close personal friend of Howard Hughes at the time. So they set the movie in Vegas and had all this cooperation from Hughes, and there's actually a Hughes character in the movie. But I'm just going to give a spoiler alert. Blofeld has kidnapped Hughes and is holding him hostage and has sort of substituted in and is pretending to be Hughes. And James Bond scales the side of Hughes's big casino in Vegas at the time and drops down through the skylight into essentially Howard Hughes's bathroom. And the bathroom is literally set up with monitors and computers and typewriters and an elaborate phone system, and then a single golden roll of toilet paper. Bond drops into it and he's like, "Hmm." And I was like, "That's the perfect bathroom." Our new media team has a Twitter group chat called "Monitoring the Situation" where that's the room that they want in the office for exactly all the things happening on Twitter. With that, let's segue.

Marc: 谈到电影，我正在和我10岁的孩子一起看所有的詹姆斯·邦德电影，我们刚看到《永远的钻石》，那部电影背景设在拉斯维加斯。原来邦德电影的制片人哈里·萨尔茨曼当时是霍华德·休斯的亲密私人朋友。所以他们把电影背景设在拉斯维加斯，得到了休斯的所有合作，电影中甚至有一个休斯角色。但我还是要剧透一下。布洛费尔德绑架了休斯，把他当作人质，并冒充休斯。詹姆斯·邦德爬上休斯当时在拉斯维加斯的大赌场侧面，从天窗跳下来，直接进入了霍华德·休斯的浴室。浴室里真的摆满了显示器、电脑、打字机和一套复杂的电话系统，然后是一卷金色的卫生纸。邦德跳进去，他“嗯”了一声。我就想，“这简直是完美的浴室。”我们新媒体团队有一个名为“监控情况”的推特群聊，他们想要办公室里有这样一个房间，专门用来处理推特上发生的所有事情。说到这里，我们来过渡一下。

Katherine: And did they ask for it to be the bathroom? Was that part of it?

Katherine: 他们要求是浴室吗？那是其中一部分吗？

Marc: Yeah, that'd be the next evolution.

Marc: 是的，那将是下一个进化。

Katherine: Would that just be an added feature?

Katherine: 那会只是一个附加功能吗？

Marc: Yes.

Marc: 是的。

Eric: Okay. All right. Let's proceed.

Eric: 好的。那么，我们继续。

对电影制作的尊重与娱乐性电影

Eric: Mark, not everybody knows this about you, but you are an extensive movie buff and movie aficionado, and you've been having some commentary in our group chats lately over some films that you think are worth watching right now and broader commentary around what's been happening in film. So why don't you share that with us?

Eric: 马克，不是所有人都知道这一点，但你是一位资深的电影迷和电影爱好者，最近在我们的群聊中，你对一些你认为现在值得看的电影以及电影界正在发生的事情发表了一些更广泛的评论。所以，你为什么不和我们分享一下呢？

Marc: Yeah. So let me start by saying why this topic matters. I think this does matter a lot. First of all, I have enormous respect for anybody who does anything creative. Every time I see a movie, I'm just marveling. I know what it takes to make one. It's like making a tech startup or something. It's just this incredible labor of love and effort and blood, sweat, and tears on everybody's part. It's just a minor miracle, I think, whenever any of these things actually show up as a two-hour executed film. I think that's amazing. None of what we're about to talk about should be considered a knock on filmmakers per se or the people who put all this work into it. And then the other thing I'd say is, look, in the last five years, decade, 20 years, there have been a tremendous number of what you could call highly entertaining movies. And some that I think are jaw-dropping. For example, in my favorite genre, action, the John Wick movies are the best action movies of all time. They're all from the last 15 years. You could name that for a lot of different kinds of movies. The entertainment factor remains very high.

Marc: 是的。那么，我先说说为什么这个话题很重要。我认为这确实很重要。首先，我对任何从事创意工作的人都怀有极大的敬意。每次我看电影，我都会惊叹不已。我知道制作一部电影需要付出什么。这就像创办一家科技初创公司一样。这简直是每个人倾注了难以置信的热爱、努力、心血和汗水。我认为，每当这些作品最终以一部两小时的电影形式呈现时，都是一个小小的奇迹。我认为这很了不起。我们接下来要讨论的任何内容，都不应被视为对电影制作人本身或为此付出所有努力的人的批评。另外我想说的是，在过去的五年、十年、二十年里，涌现了大量可以称之为“高度娱乐性”的电影。其中一些我认为令人瞠目结舌。例如，在我最喜欢的动作片类型中，《疾速追杀》系列电影堪称史上最佳动作片。它们都出自过去15年。你可以为许多不同类型的电影举出类似的例子。娱乐性仍然非常高。

电影作为文化核心的衰落

Marc: Having said that, I think movies play the role in our culture that myths and legends used to play in ancient cultures or that novels maybe used to play 100 years ago, or that maybe songs used to play or something like that. Which is basically they're the art form that is capable of basically containing and expressing and making permanent the most important aspects of a culture or of a civilization. Sometimes you'll hear the term "the great American novel." There's this idea that there are certain novels like The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird that kind of capture the spirit of a time and become immortal through doing that. I think the idea that novels do that is probably at this point pretty unlikely for a variety of reasons. We could have a whole separate podcast on that. But for the last at least 60 years, and probably 100 years, movies have been the way that our culture is able to express itself in a way that is going to really deeply stand the test of time, where people 100 and 200 and 500 years from now are going to look back and say, "This is what these people were about." Katherine, would you agree with that?

Marc: 话虽如此，我认为电影在我们文化中扮演的角色，就像神话传说在古代文化中扮演的角色，或者小说在一百年前扮演的角色，或者歌曲曾经扮演的角色一样。它们基本上是一种艺术形式，能够承载、表达并永久保存一个文化或一个文明最重要的方面。有时你会听到“伟大的美国小说”这个词。有一种观点认为，某些小说，比如《了不起的盖茨比》或《杀死一只知更鸟》，能够捕捉一个时代的精神，并通过这种方式变得不朽。我认为小说能做到这一点，在目前看来，由于各种原因，可能性已经很小了。我们可以为此专门做一期播客。但在过去的至少60年，可能100年里，电影一直是我们的文化能够表达自己的方式，这种方式将真正经受住时间的考验，让100年、200年乃至500年后的人们回过头来看，会说：“这就是当时人们的生活。”凯瑟琳，你同意这个观点吗？

Katherine: Yeah. No, no, definitely. I think it was in slow decline probably the last 25 years because fewer, probably the 90s was the last decade where everyone watched the same movies and the Oscars were indicative of what's a great film that everyone has to see. I would love to hear when you think it started bifurcating, but it does feel like there's been this sort of bifurcation of if, you know, maybe you could say the Tarantino films of the last 20 years were widely watched and mattered in cinematic lore, but it feels like there was a lot more to say it's like the next great American novel is actually the next great American movie. That feels like that maybe that ended in the 90s.

Katherine: 是的。不，不，我完全同意。我认为在过去的25年里，它可能一直在缓慢衰落，因为很少有人，也许90年代是最后一个十年，每个人都看相同的电影，奥斯卡奖也代表着每个人都必须看的好电影。我很想听听你认为它何时开始分化，但感觉确实存在这种分化，也许可以说过去20年昆汀·塔伦蒂诺的电影被广泛观看，并在电影史上占有一席之地，但感觉更多的是，下一部伟大的美国小说实际上是下一部伟大的美国电影。这种感觉可能在90年代就结束了。

泰勒·斯威夫特与《花月杀手》的对比

Marc: Yeah. So, it's possible. Although you could also say it is interesting because as we've discussed in other forums, it's not that there aren't cultural artifacts that everybody participates in. Everybody, I am told, there's this young lady named Taylor Swift who is apparently extremely popular, and I am told that other than me, everybody follows her with a great deal of avid attention. I'm told that she has a new album and movie.

Marc: 是的。所以，这有可能。不过你也可以说，这很有趣，因为正如我们在其他场合讨论过的，并不是没有所有人都能参与的文化产物。我听说，有一位名叫泰勒·斯威夫特的年轻女士，显然非常受欢迎，而且我听说除了我之外，所有人都对她投入了极大的关注。我听说她有新专辑和新电影。

Katherine: Album was that album? Yeah, there's a movie, there's a new movie coming out too, I think. Right. I believe.

Katherine: 专辑是那张专辑吗？是的，还有一部电影，我记得好像也有一部新电影要上映。对吧。我相信。

Marc: I just remember her breakthrough. She actually, her first movie was the movie a couple years ago that came out that was so popular.

Marc: 我只记得她的突破。实际上，她的第一部电影是几年前上映的那部非常受欢迎的电影。

Katherine: She had a thing on Netflix that was sort of following her around.

Katherine: 她在Netflix上有一个节目，有点像跟踪她的生活。

Marc: Okay. So, okay. Here's something I know about Taylor Swift that you don't, which is the only time in my life I'm going to be able to utter those words. She did a famous thing in Hollywood in the movie industry. She released that actually in the theaters, and it was actually very significant that she did that because she cut the deal directly with the theater owners, and I think it was a straight 50/50 revenue split with the theater owners. She booked it directly, and it was a huge release, on 4,000 screens, and it was extremely popular. A lot of Taylor Swift fans and a lot of families with young girls went to see it. I remember it at the time because it went big the same week that Martin Scorsese's movie, Killers of the Flower Moon (一部由马丁·斯科塞斯执导的电影，讲述了20世纪20年代俄克拉荷马州奥塞奇族印第安人因石油财富而遭遇谋杀的故事), was in theaters. If you remember the reviews, Martin Scorsese is one of these filmmakers who's made these mythical movies that will for sure stand the test of time. Killers of the Flower Moon was a movie that he intended to do that, and I don't think it did, and we could talk about why not. But it was this movie about, it was a period piece set in the 1920s about basically the rape and pillage of Native American natural resources by evil white people. It was a three-hour movie, and I didn't see it, but apparently it was extremely slow, and then apparently it had these extremely long stretches of silence because he was trying to get across this sense of awe and grandeur and emotional impact. Apparently what would happen is that movie would be playing adjacent to the Taylor Swift movie, and the Taylor Swift movie was so loud that whatever he would go to the silent part, you would just hear Taylor Swift pounding away on stage.

Marc: 好的。那么，好吧。有一件事是我知道而你不知道的关于泰勒·斯威夫特，这可能是我这辈子唯一能说出这些话的时候了。她在好莱坞电影界做了一件轰动的事情。她实际上是在影院上映了那部电影，而且她这样做非常有意义，因为她直接与影院老板达成了协议，我认为是与影院老板五五分成的收入模式。她直接预订了影院，这是一次大规模的发行，在4000块银幕上上映，而且非常受欢迎。许多泰勒·斯威夫特的粉丝和许多有小女孩的家庭都去看了。我当时记得这件事，因为它与马丁·斯科塞斯执导的电影《花月杀手》(Killers of the Flower Moon: 一部由马丁·斯科塞斯执导的电影，讲述了20世纪20年代俄克拉荷马州奥塞奇族印第安人因石油财富而遭遇谋杀的故事) 同周上映。如果你还记得当时的评论，马丁·斯科塞斯是那种制作神话般电影的导演，这些电影肯定能经受住时间的考验。《花月杀手》就是他打算做成这样的电影，但我认为它没有做到，我们可以讨论为什么没有。但这部电影是关于，它是一部设定在20世纪20年代的时代剧，讲述了邪恶的白人基本上对美洲原住民自然资源的掠夺和洗劫。这是一部三小时的电影，我没看，但显然它非常缓慢，而且显然有非常长的沉默片段，因为他试图传达一种敬畏、宏伟和情感冲击的感觉。显然，当时的情况是，这部电影与泰勒·斯威夫特的电影相邻放映，而泰勒·斯威夫特的电影声音太大，以至于当他的电影进入沉默部分时，你只能听到泰勒·斯威夫特在舞台上激情演唱。

Katherine: Probably helps the movie out. Probably a little bit.

Katherine: 可能对电影有帮助。可能有一点。

Marc: Arguably improved the movie from what I heard, you know, filled in the missing soundtrack. So anyway, there are still mechanical issues with reproduction of these things. But the point is there are these things, we do have cultural artifacts that sort of have almost universal attention. It's just a question of where are the, what I'd say, true art with a capital A, is the thing that not only captures the popular imagination, not only that people really experience, but also is the thing that actually has the lasting impact such that in 10 years and 20 years and 50 years and 100 years, people are still discussing it. As time passes, the most important cultural artifacts are continuously reinterpreted. The way that comes across when it's released is not the same way that comes across 5 or 10 years later and then 20 years later, and then each new generation that discovers it interprets it and talks about it in a different way. Capital A art is the ability to do that.

Marc: 我听说，这可以说改善了电影，你知道，填补了缺失的音轨。所以，这些作品的复制仍然存在机械问题。但重点是，确实存在这些东西，我们确实拥有几乎普遍受到关注的文化产物。问题在于，我所说的，大写字母A的真正艺术，不仅能抓住大众的想象力，不仅是人们真正体验到的东西，而且是真正具有持久影响力的东西，以至于在10年、20年、50年、100年后，人们仍在讨论它。随着时间的推移，最重要的文化产物会不断被重新解读。它上映时的呈现方式，与5年、10年乃至20年后的呈现方式不同，每一代新发现它的人都会以不同的方式解读和谈论它。大写字母A的艺术就是具备这种能力。

好莱坞变革的深层原因：流媒体革命

Marc: For sure it's true that the audience overall has fragmented. For sure it's true that the internet has created, is sucking away enormous amounts of time and attention from movies. It's certainly true that the business pressures in Hollywood, which we can talk about, are probably more intense than ever. But it is still true that I think it is still possible to do what we're describing. We'll talk about this more, but I think we'd all agree Tarantino was able to do this with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, not that recently. So, anyway, maybe I can say I still hold out hope this is possible. I think this is a thing that the best filmmakers in the world, in the country, really ought to be able to do. Would you agree with that or do you think that's too optimistic?

Marc: 观众整体碎片化是肯定的。互联网确实创造了，正在从电影中吸走大量的时间和注意力，这也是肯定的。好莱坞的商业压力，我们稍后可以谈，肯定比以往任何时候都更加激烈。但仍然如此，我认为我们所描述的这种艺术创作仍然是可能的。我们会更多地讨论这一点，但我认为我们都会同意，昆汀·塔伦蒂诺在《好莱坞往事》中做到了这一点，那也不是很久以前的事。所以，无论如何，我可以说我仍然抱有希望，认为这是可能的。我认为这是世界上、这个国家最好的电影制作人真正应该能够做到的事情。你同意这个观点吗，还是你觉得这太乐观了？

Katherine: I hope. I think I'm a little more pessimistic than you, that I do think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the last American movie, but for different reasons. I think not only what you know, it's like again, Tarantino is this, I think he has one more film in him as he says, but that was really his final opus, right? The penultimate film is that that was what he had been kind of moving towards. I think he said his last film is going to be a much scaled down, smaller sort of film when he decides to do it. But I think there's something about 2019 in particular. There were so many great films in 2019. There was 1917. Parasite (一部韩国电影，由奉俊昊执导，获得奥斯卡最佳影片奖) won the Oscar. Stole it from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in my opinion, but still was a decent film. There were a lot of great films in 2019. And then just a memory hole of what great film has come out since then. Something happened with COVID where we stopped going to the theater, and it does kind of map to that, you know, no one goes to the theater anymore. But it's also like something happened in Hollywood, which I know we want to get your take on what happened in Hollywood because it does feel like the scripts that are being written, the types of things that are being made today are very, very different than what was happening in 2018, 2019.

Katherine: 我希望如此。我想我比你更悲观一些，我确实认为《好莱坞往事》是最后一部美国电影，但原因不同。我认为，不仅如此，就像昆汀·塔伦蒂诺一样，他自己说他还有一部电影，但那部电影确实是他的收官之作，对吧？倒数第二部电影是他一直在努力的方向。我想他说他的最后一部电影会是一部规模小得多的电影，当他决定制作时。但我认为2019年尤其特殊。2019年有很多很棒的电影。有《1917》。《寄生虫》(Parasite: 一部韩国电影，由奉俊昊执导，获得奥斯卡最佳影片奖) 赢得了奥斯卡奖。在我看来，它从《好莱坞往事》手中抢走了奖项，但仍然是一部不错的电影。2019年有很多很棒的电影。然后就像一个记忆黑洞，不知道那之后有什么好电影问世。新冠疫情发生后，我们不再去电影院，这确实与此相符，你知道，现在没有人再去电影院了。但感觉好莱坞也发生了一些事情，我知道我们想听听你对好莱坞发生的事情的看法，因为感觉现在正在创作的剧本，正在制作的电影类型，与2018、2019年时的情况非常非常不同。

Marc: Yeah. So just spend a moment, let's spend a moment on the state of Hollywood for people who don't track it. There's a bunch of things. The theater business has obviously taken a giant hit in the wake of COVID. COVID was this big step down because the theaters were closed along with everything else. There's been this question ever since of how to re-engage those audiences and get them to go back to the theater. Maybe that's just a secular change that goes with people being on their phones or whatever. Having said that, it's not a complete explanation for what's happened to the art form, and the reason for that is that the length of time that it takes to actually make a movie. The movies that showed up in the theater in 2019 got greenlit in, call it, 2015 or 2016. They got staffed in 2016, 2017, and then they got executed in 2017, 2018. Then they went through editing and post-production and so forth. For big movies, that whole process is like a two-year process. Then there's the long run-up to release with the marketing campaign and putting the actors on the road and doing all the stuff. So there's like a four-month ad campaign or whatever. By the time you go through that process, start to end, it's like four or five years. So for Once Upon a Time to show up in 2019 meant that the making of it, the backstory, probably starts no later than 2015. I just bring that up, which means the movies that hit the theaters in 2021 started in 2017. The movies that are showing up today started in 2020. So the COVID explanation is not sufficient for what we've seen in the last five years because those movies weren't greenlit under conditions of COVID. Those movies were greenlit under conditions of pre-COVID. So whatever changes have taken place, which we can talk about, I think probably started around 2015.

Marc: 是的。那么，我们花点时间来谈谈好莱坞的现状，对于那些不关注它的人来说。有很多事情。在新冠疫情之后，电影院业务显然受到了巨大冲击。新冠疫情是一个巨大的下坡路，因为电影院和其他所有地方一样都关闭了。从那时起，就一直存在一个问题，即如何重新吸引观众，让他们回到电影院。也许这只是一个世俗的变化，与人们玩手机或其他事情有关。话虽如此，这并不能完全解释这种艺术形式所发生的一切，原因在于制作一部电影所需的时间。2019年在电影院上映的电影，是在2015年或2016年获得批准的。它们在2016年、2017年组建团队，然后在2017年、2018年执行制作。然后它们经历了剪辑和后期制作等等。对于大电影来说，整个过程大约需要两年。然后是漫长的上映前准备，包括营销活动、演员路演以及所有相关工作。所以，大约有四个月的广告宣传期。所以，当你完成整个过程，从头到尾，大约需要四到五年。因此，《好莱坞往事》在2019年上映，意味着它的制作，也就是它的背景故事，可能不迟于2015年就开始了。我之所以提到这一点，是因为这意味着2021年在电影院上映的电影是在2017年开始制作的。而今天上映的电影是在2020年开始制作的。所以，新冠疫情的解释不足以说明我们过去五年所看到的情况，因为那些电影并非在新冠疫情条件下获得批准的。那些电影是在新冠疫情之前获得批准的。所以，无论发生了什么变化，我们都可以讨论，我认为可能始于2015年左右。

Eric: And what is your theory around why things really started changing in the 2020 decade of film?

Eric: 那么，你对2020年代电影业真正开始发生变化的理论是什么？

Marc: Yeah. So again, let me give maximum respect here, which is there's no question a couple of things. Just the secular changes. One thing is, look, the streaming revolution has had a very big impact, and the streaming revolution hit Hollywood incredibly hard, very positively for a stretch, basically through the 2010s, because all the companies that were engaged in the streaming wars started spending unprecedented amounts of money on shows and movies of all kinds. So there was just a giant flood of money, and I would say the mood in Hollywood eight years ago or something, six years ago, was you might even describe as euphoric from a business standpoint, just because the big thing was when Netflix scaled up to the point where they were spending $20 billion a year on content, which is just this giant budget. Everybody else, there were a dozen streaming companies or whatever, all the different platforms that wanted to compete. That money kind of took off like a rocket. And then what's happened is as the streamers are consolidating, as the streaming wars are rationalizing, that money got pulled back. That was a big financial blow.

Marc: 是的。那么，我再次表达最大的敬意，毫无疑问有几件事。仅仅是世俗的变化。其中一点是，流媒体革命产生了非常大的影响，流媒体革命对好莱坞造成了难以置信的冲击，在一段时间内非常积极，基本上贯穿了2010年代，因为所有参与流媒体战争的公司都开始在各种节目和电影上投入前所未有的资金。所以当时资金泛滥，我想说，八年前或六年前好莱坞的心情，从商业角度来看，甚至可以形容为欣喜若狂，仅仅因为最大的事情是Netflix发展到每年在内容上花费200亿美元的程度，这简直是一个巨大的预算。其他所有公司，有十几家流媒体公司，所有不同的平台都想竞争。这笔钱就像火箭一样飞速增长。然后发生的事情是，随着流媒体公司整合，随着流媒体战争合理化，那笔钱被撤回了。那是一个巨大的财政打击。

Marc: And then the other thing that streaming did that has really affected things a lot in Hollywood in a very negative way, which is streaming cut off the financial upside to films and TV. Films used to, when they were hits, they first would sell a lot of box office, and then they would sell the television rights or ultimately the streaming rights. Then they'd had this long aftermarket where they would sell DVDs, videotape rentals in the 80s, 90s, and then DVDs in the 2000s and 2010s. So if you had a movie that was a hit, it could run for years generating enormous amounts of revenue and cash. Same thing with TV shows. It used to be a successful TV show, the line I think was "six seasons and a movie," where if it got to 100 episodes or something, it would enter syndication, and then you could sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars, and there would be all this upside for the people involved in creating it. What happened with streaming on the economics of streaming is those forms of upside just vanished because what happens is the streamers just buy the projects with a cost-plus model a lot of the time. So you make the movie and you turn around, you sell it for a 10% profit margin to a streamer. Then there's no aftermarket because it's just a tile on the streaming service. There's no DVD sales, there's no TV syndication rights. Those concepts are irrelevant. The streamer just has a perpetual right or a 20-year right or whatever to be able to show it at that fixed fee. So the upside got cut off, and that removed a lot of the economic incentive for the wildcatting thing that Hollywood used to do more, which is to really take these chances on things. Hollywood used to work a lot like the venture capital model, which is you put 10 lines in the water, you get four bites, and you get maybe one grand slam. If it works, that's a spectacular model, but the grand slam has to be able to scale economically in order for that to happen, and that's been cut off. So that did not help.

Marc: 此外，流媒体对好莱坞产生了另一个非常负面的影响，那就是它切断了电影和电视的财务上行空间。以前，电影如果大卖，首先会获得大量票房收入，然后会出售电视播放权，最终是流媒体播放权。之后，它们会有一个漫长的后期市场，出售DVD，80年代、90年代的录像带租赁，以及2000年代和2010年代的DVD。所以，如果一部电影大受欢迎，它可以持续多年产生巨额收入和现金。电视剧也是如此。以前，一部成功的电视剧，我认为的说法是“六季加一部电影”，如果达到100集左右，它就会进入联播，然后你可以以数亿美元的价格出售，为参与创作的人带来巨大的收益。而流媒体的经济模式下，这些上行空间都消失了，因为流媒体公司很多时候只是以成本加成模式购买项目。所以你制作电影，然后以10%的利润率卖给流媒体公司。之后就没有后期市场了，因为它只是流媒体服务上的一个内容。没有DVD销售，没有电视联播权。这些概念都无关紧要。流媒体公司只是拥有永久播放权或20年播放权，以固定的费用播放。所以，上行空间被切断了，这大大削弱了好莱坞过去更常做的“冒险”行为的经济激励，也就是真正去冒险尝试新事物。好莱坞以前很像风险投资模式，你投入10个项目，有4个能获得关注，也许有一个能大获成功。如果成功，那是一个了不起的模式，但大获成功必须能够在经济上实现规模化才能发生，而这已经被切断了。所以这并没有帮助。

好莱坞变革的深层原因：“信息”文化转向

Marc: And then there's the big thing that happened, of course, which is Hollywood, being on the vanguard of culture, got hit by the cultural change of the last decade incredibly hard. We've talked a lot about how tech got hit by that incredibly hard. Hollywood got hit by it in a very intense way. Nobody's ever quite figured out the right way to talk about this. Sometimes you say things like "wokeness" or whatever. In the 60s, they would have called it the New Left. There's actually my favorite term for it in Hollywood is there's a YouTube channel called Critical Drinker (一个著名的YouTube电影评论频道，以其尖锐的、通常带有保守主义视角的评论而闻名), where he's a movie reviewer, is quite funny. The Critical Drinker has been documenting basically the thing that hit Hollywood, and in quite scathing terms this whole time. What he calls it is "the message." It's the message with a capital M. It's actually really funny because for a long time, people who watch the Critical Drinker, he would never actually define what the message was. He would basically just say, "This movie has been affected by the message." Of course, you guys are both laughing because of course you already know what the message was. Everybody knows what the message was: All white people are racist. All men are sexist. Everybody's a transphobe. America's a force for evil in the world. You just go right down the list of everything that you would expect from the last decade. America's an incipient fascist regime. Just the entire package, whatever's on the front page of The New York Times that day, just "the message."

Marc: 当然，还有一件大事发生了，那就是好莱坞作为文化先锋，受到了过去十年文化变革的巨大冲击。我们已经多次讨论过科技界是如何受到这种冲击的。好莱坞也以非常强烈的方式受到了冲击。没有人真正找到恰当的方式来谈论这件事。有时你会说“觉醒文化”或其他什么。在60年代，他们会称之为“新左派”。实际上，我在好莱坞最喜欢的一个词是来自一个名为“批判性饮酒者”(Critical Drinker: 一个著名的YouTube电影评论频道，以其尖锐的、通常带有保守主义视角的评论而闻名) 的YouTube频道，他是一位电影评论员，非常有趣。批判性饮酒者一直在记录基本上冲击好莱坞的这件事，而且一直以来都用相当尖刻的言辞。他称之为“信息”。这是一个大写字母M的“信息”。这实际上非常有趣，因为很长一段时间以来，观看批判性饮酒者的人，他从未真正定义过“信息”是什么。他基本上只会说：“这部电影受到了‘信息’的影响。”当然，你们俩都在笑，因为你们当然已经知道“信息”是什么了。每个人都知道“信息”是什么：所有白人都是种族主义者。所有男人都是性别歧视者。每个人都是跨性别恐惧症患者。美国是世界上的邪恶力量。你只需列出过去十年你所期望的一切。美国是一个初生的法西斯政权。整个一套东西，那天《纽约时报》头版上的任何内容，就是“信息”。

Marc: Movies transformed themselves. A very large percentage of movies that could have been great, in some alternate world could have been these great works of art, just basically became political propaganda. Or if you wanted to be more generous, you could say that those will be the lasting artifacts of this last decade, which is historians will look back and they'll be like, "Holy Lord, these people were really wrapped around the axle on a bunch of political issues. My goodness." So they got hit hard by that. That led to in Hollywood what can only be described as a reign of terror. This is something that occasionally Hollywood figures will talk about in public, although very rarely because it's a very sensitive topic still. If you know people in Hollywood, basically through the especially the last eight years, they felt like if they made one misstep on casting or on details in the script or use of words or the themes of a movie or anything, they just felt like they were in danger of a lightning strike from the sky just striking them dead on the spot. They had friends whose careers just got completely detonated in one unpredictable way or another. People have different opinions on this, and you could argue it was long needed or whatever, but it became a thing, and it basically changed the process of how projects were selected. It changed the process of who made projects. It changed the process of staffing. It changed the process of screenwriting. It changed acting. It changed aesthetics. It changed almost every aspect of how these projects get executed.

Marc: 电影本身发生了转变。很大一部分本可以成为伟大作品的电影，在另一个世界里本可以成为这些伟大的艺术品，却基本上变成了政治宣传。或者如果你想更宽容一些，你可以说这些将是过去十年留下的持久文物，历史学家回过头来看，会说：“天哪，这些人真的被一堆政治问题缠住了。我的天哪。”所以他们受到了很大的冲击。这导致了好莱坞只能被形容为“恐怖统治”的局面。好莱坞人物偶尔会在公开场合谈论此事，尽管非常罕见，因为它仍然是一个非常敏感的话题。如果你认识好莱坞的人，基本上在过去的八年里，他们觉得如果他们在选角、剧本细节、用词、电影主题或任何方面犯了一个错误，他们就觉得自己有被“天打雷劈”的危险，当场毙命。他们有朋友的职业生涯以一种或另一种不可预测的方式彻底毁掉了。人们对此有不同的看法，你可能会争辩说这是早就需要的，但它确实发生了，它基本上改变了项目选择的过程。它改变了项目制作人的过程。它改变了人员配备的过程。它改变了编剧的过程。它改变了表演。它改变了美学。它改变了这些项目执行方式的几乎所有方面。

Marc: But I think that's changing again right now. If you talk to the same people in Hollywood, what they'll tell you basically is this year the fever has broken. There's a bunch of indications for that, and we're entering the post-message era. We don't know what era we're heading into. Maybe there's a new message or something, but there's a phase shift that's underway. But that phase shift is going to take time because it takes time to make movies. The movies that are greenlit today are not going to come out until 2027, 2028 soonest. So we're in this liminal period or this interstitial period where for the next three years, we're going to get a thousand movies that have the message, and they're all going to act like the message is brand new and fresh and nobody's ever heard it before, because they all pretend that this is some big revelation that all white people are racist. There's going to be a thousand more of those in the next three years, and they're just going to land like an absolute thud. If you wanted that message, you got it. You already saw a thousand movies to set you. The next thousand movies don't contribute to that.

Marc: 但我认为现在这种情况又在改变。如果你和好莱坞的这些人交谈，他们基本上会告诉你，今年这种狂热已经过去了。有很多迹象表明这一点，我们正在进入“后信息”时代。我们不知道我们将走向哪个时代。也许会有新的“信息”或什么，但一场阶段性转变正在进行中。但这种转变需要时间，因为制作电影需要时间。今天获得批准的电影，最快也要到2027年、2028年才能上映。所以我们正处于这个过渡期或间歇期，在接下来的三年里，我们将看到一千部带有“信息”的电影，它们都会表现得好像这个“信息”是全新的、新鲜的，以前从未有人听过，因为它们都假装这是一个巨大的启示，即所有白人都是种族主义者。在接下来的三年里，还会有上千部这样的电影，它们只会像绝对的沉闷声一样落地。如果你想要那个“信息”，你已经得到了。你已经看了上千部电影来满足你。接下来的上千部电影对此毫无贡献。

《一个接一个的战斗》：一个过时的“信息”电影

Marc: Just to knock on one, he's a brilliant filmmaker, but I just saw the new Paul Thomas Anderson (一位著名的美国电影导演、编剧和制片人，以其复杂的人物刻画和独特的叙事风格而闻名) movie, "One Battle After Another." It's literally like a time capsule. It's like a 2022 time capsule. It's literally time frozen 2022. In 2022, this movie would have been like, "Oh my god, this movie has got the message. It's just like everything about it." We could spend hours just on this movie. It lands today and you're just watching, you're just like, "Wow, that was a weird time. Oh my goodness."

Marc: 随便提一部，他是一位杰出的电影制作人，但我刚看了保罗·托马斯·安德森 (Paul Thomas Anderson: 一位著名的美国电影导演、编剧和制片人，以其复杂的人物刻画和独特的叙事风格而闻名) 的新电影《一个接一个的战斗》。它简直就像一个时间胶囊。就像一个2022年的时间胶囊。简直就是时间冻结在2022年。在2022年，这部电影会让人觉得：“天哪，这部电影充满了‘信息’。它的方方面面都是如此。”我们可以花几个小时只谈这部电影。它今天上映，你看着它，只会觉得：“哇，那真是一个奇怪的时代。天哪。”

Eric: I want to talk more about this movie because I think it was Brett Easton Ellis who came out and was the first person, you know, because it's getting all the Oscar buzz. It's like, "Oh, it's definitely in line for the Oscar," right? He came out, he's like, "It feels musty," right? I should get the actual language he used because it was much worse than that. But he said it's like a musty film. It's exactly what you said. It's 2022. This was greenlit at a very different time, and now it's come out, and the world's moved on. I'm curious, do you think that we're still going to pretend these movies are great even though they don't match with our time, or is there going to be a three-year period where we are allowed to say, "Actually, that doesn't make any sense anymore, and maybe that movie shouldn't have been made"?

Eric: 我想多谈谈这部电影，因为我认为是布雷特·伊斯顿·埃利斯率先站出来，你知道，因为它获得了所有的奥斯卡提名。就像是，“哦，它肯定会获得奥斯卡奖，”对吧？他站出来说，“它感觉很陈旧，”对吧？我应该找到他实际使用的措辞，因为那比这糟糕得多。但他说它就像一部陈旧的电影。这正是你所说的。那是2022年。这部电影在非常不同的时期获得批准，现在它上映了，而世界已经向前发展了。我很好奇，你认为我们还会假装这些电影很棒，即使它们与我们的时代不符，还是会有一个三年期，我们被允许说：“实际上，那已经没有任何意义了，也许那部电影根本就不应该被制作出来”？

Marc: Yeah. So this one is a complicated scenario. On the movie itself, the movie itself is actually, and it's quite, I quite enjoyed watching it. I quite enjoyed watching it not just for ironic reasons, but just also watching it of how this happened. The filmmakers, one of the great filmmakers of the era, Paul Thomas Anderson, he made There Will Be Blood and he made Boogie Nights. Those are two movies that are in the Hall of Fame of the art form, where 100 years from now, people are going to be like, "Wow, that's what that culture was about." So he is one of those guys, and clearly that's what he was going for in this movie. It is a weird movie in that it's partially based on a famous Thomas Pynchon (一位著名的美国小说家，以其复杂、后现代主义的叙事风格和对科学、历史、文化等主题的探索而闻名) novel called Vineland (托马斯·品钦的小说，背景设定在1984年的加利福尼亚，探讨了60年代激进主义的遗产). Which is Thomas Pynchon's novel basically about the Days of Rage, the Brian Burroughs book, or the Weather Underground (一个激进的左翼准军事组织，活跃于20世纪60年代末至70年代初的美国), basically the violent social revolution from the far left in the 60s and what happened in the aftermath of that. That's the theme of the novel, but it's very much a novel of and about the 1960s. It's not considered most people don't consider it maybe the best Pynchon novel, but it's a mid-tier one, and it's in the pantheon. It turns out it had been Paul Thomas Anderson's favorite novel. He'd been trying to make a version of it for 20 years. What he did basically was he kept the very basic plot framework setup, but then he completely updated it for the message. So it has specifically a whole bunch of racial plot structure to the whole thing and sexual in ways that are fairly amazing, but that are completely based on the current moment of circa 2022. So it's a little bit like the early 2020s filtered through the 1960s. It's just a little bit odd with that. Arguably, it is kind of salient to our times because I think if you were to retitle the movie, you would just title it Antifa (Anti-fascist: 反法西斯主义运动，通常指通过直接行动反对法西斯主义、种族主义和白人至上主义的各种团体和个人) the movie. It's a full-throated celebration of basically violent social change, violent social revolution. It's completely unapologetic. I'm going to spoil it.

Marc: 是的。所以，这是一种复杂的情况。就电影本身而言，它实际上，而且相当，我非常喜欢看。我喜欢看它不仅是因为讽刺的原因，也是为了看它是如何发生的。导演，这个时代最伟大的导演之一，保罗·托马斯·安德森 (Paul Thomas Anderson: 一位著名的美国电影导演、编剧和制片人，以其复杂的人物刻画和独特的叙事风格而闻名)，他拍了《血色将至》和《不羁夜》。这两部电影在艺术形式的“名人堂”中，一百年后，人们会说：“哇，那就是那个文化所代表的。”所以他是那种人，显然他在这部电影中也是追求这个目标。这是一部奇怪的电影，因为它部分改编自著名小说家托马斯·品钦 (Thomas Pynchon: 一位著名的美国小说家，以其复杂、后现代主义的叙事风格和对科学、历史、文化等主题的探索而闻名) 的小说《葡萄园》(Vineland: 托马斯·品钦的小说，背景设定在1984年的加利福尼亚，探讨了60年代激进主义的遗产)。这本小说基本上是关于“愤怒的日子”，布莱恩·伯罗斯的书，或者地下气象员 (Weather Underground: 一个激进的左翼准军事组织，活跃于20世纪60年代末至70年代初的美国)，基本上是60年代极左翼的暴力社会革命以及之后发生的事情。那是小说的主题，但它非常是一部关于1960年代的小说。大多数人并不认为它是品钦最好的小说，但它是一部中等水平的作品，而且在经典之列。结果，它一直是保罗·托马斯·安德森最喜欢的小说。他试图制作一个版本已经20年了。他基本上保留了非常基本的故事情节框架，但随后他完全根据“信息”对其进行了更新。所以它特别包含了大量种族情节结构，以及以相当惊人的方式呈现的性内容，但这些都完全基于2022年左右的当下。所以它有点像通过1960年代过滤后的2020年代早期。这有点奇怪。可以说，它与我们的时代相当突出，因为我认为如果你要重新命名这部电影，你只会把它命名为《反法西斯》(Antifa: Anti-fascist: 反法西斯主义运动，通常指通过直接行动反对法西斯主义、种族主义和白人至上主义的各种团体和个人) 电影。它完全是对暴力社会变革、暴力社会革命的由衷赞颂。它完全不带歉意。我要剧透了。

Eric: Spoiler alerts for "Monitoring the Situation." Everyone's already seen it here. So,

Eric: “监控情况”的剧透警告。这里所有人都已经看过了。所以，

Marc: It's a two-hour and 45-minute movie that I went, by the way, and I went to the theater and I paid full price and I smuggled in my snacks and the whole thing. I go through the whole thing and I'm hoping he's such a brilliant filmmaker. I'm hoping it's a subversive movie. I'm kind of hoping that by the end he's like, "Okay, these Weather Underground people who went on the run for 20 years and destroyed their lives and were always basically just crazed privileged children raging out against their parents and blowing things up and killing people, and just the whole thing was a giant mistake." I was kind of hoping that that would be the way that you could tell the story. No, no, no, he's just like, "Oh, no, that was great. That was fantastically good. These people are amazing. They're these are the myths and legends of our time." He clearly wants to make these people into mythical figures, and then at the end, it's just very clear at the end he's like, "Yes, and I completely endorse and support all of this, and this is exactly what, these are the role models that children should have, and it's fantastic." In a perverse way, maybe it stands the test of time that way, where it's just like, "Wow, these people constructed a mythos in which violent robbery and murder basically is great, is wonderful." Maybe that's like reading Emma Goldman (一位著名的无政府主义者、政治活动家和作家，以其对个人自由、社会正义和妇女权利的倡导而闻名) essays a century later or something. It's just like, "Wow, these people kind of really got carried away," but it's not what it could have been.

Marc: 这是一部两小时四十五分钟的电影，顺便说一句，我去了电影院，付了全价，还偷偷带了零食，全程看完了。我看完后，希望他作为一位如此杰出的电影制作人，能拍出一部颠覆性的电影。我有点希望到最后他会说：“好吧，这些地下气象员组织的人，他们逃亡了20年，毁了自己的人生，基本上一直都是些疯狂的特权孩子，对着父母发脾气，炸毁东西，杀人，整个事情都是一个巨大的错误。”我有点希望故事会以这种方式讲述。不，不，不，他只是说：“哦，不，那太棒了。那真是好极了。这些人太棒了。他们就是我们这个时代的神话和传奇。”他显然想把这些人塑造成神话人物，然后到最后，非常清楚的是，他会说：“是的，我完全赞同和支持这一切，这正是，这些是孩子们应该拥有的榜样，太棒了。”以一种反常的方式，也许它能经受住时间的考验，就像，“哇，这些人构建了一个神话，在这个神话中，暴力抢劫和谋杀基本上是伟大的，是美好的。”也许这就像一个世纪后阅读艾玛·高德曼 (Emma Goldman: 一位著名的无政府主义者、政治活动家和作家，以其对个人自由、社会正义和妇女权利的倡导而闻名) 的文章一样。你只会觉得，“哇，这些人真的有点走火入魔了，”但它并没有达到它本可以达到的高度。

Marc: Anyway, this is out of time, although hopefully won't become more relevant. The other is again that the business aspect of it, which is being a great filmmaker. This is the one that he got the real budget for. This is a much bigger budget than any of the other movies that he's made. With that, the cast is incredible. It's Leo DiCaprio and Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro and all these amazing actors and actresses. But as a consequence, I don't have the numbers in the top of my head, but it was estimated it cost something on the order of $200 million to make, and then it's more money on top of that for advertising. The challenge and then it's got Leo, and he's fantastic in it, very entertaining. But spoiler alert, one of the things about the message, it's got the message. So the Leo character plays one of these, basically he's a bomber basically in hiding for 18 years, and he's got this daughter, the daughter of his lover, who was this violent revolutionary in the era. They've been in hiding for 18 years, and he's completely fried his brain on drugs and alcohol. He's completely blown out as a person. He spends the entire movie running around in his bathrobe, basically high. If you actually watch the movie carefully all the way through, it actually turns out nothing he actually does at any point in the plot ever actually matters. He plays no actual role in the plot. It's this incredible performance, and it's incredibly dynamic and entertaining performance, and the movie is going to do well overseas as a result of that because people love Leo. But again, it's consistent with the message of course, the white male lead can have no actual role to play in the plot. That's definitely not allowed. In the climax, he literally shows up at the end of the climax and just like, "I'm here," and it's all over. Everybody's dead. It's all just done.

Marc: 无论如何，这部电影已经过时了，尽管希望它不会变得更具现实意义。另一方面，是它的商业层面，也就是作为一名伟大电影制作人的身份。这是他获得真正预算的电影。这比他制作的其他任何电影的预算都要大得多。因此，演员阵容令人难以置信。有莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥、肖恩·潘、贝尼西奥·德尔·托罗以及所有这些了不起的男女演员。但结果是，我记不清具体数字了，但据估计制作成本约为2亿美元，再加上广告费用。挑战在于，有莱昂纳多，他在电影中表现出色，非常有趣。但剧透一下，关于“信息”的一点是，它包含了“信息”。所以莱昂纳多的角色扮演的是一个基本上躲藏了18年的炸弹客，他有一个女儿，是他情人的女儿，他情人是那个时代的暴力革命者。他们躲藏了18年，他完全被毒品和酒精摧毁了大脑。他整个人都崩溃了。他整部电影都穿着浴袍跑来跑去，基本上处于亢奋状态。如果你仔细看完这部电影，你会发现他在情节中任何时候所做的任何事情实际上都无关紧要。他在情节中没有扮演任何实际角色。这是一次令人难以置信的表演，而且是非常充满活力和娱乐性的表演，因此这部电影在海外会表现良好，因为人们喜欢莱昂纳多。但同样，这与“信息”是一致的，当然，白人男性主角在情节中不能扮演任何实际角色。这绝对是不允许的。在高潮部分，他真的在高潮的最后出现，只是说：“我来了，”然后一切都结束了。所有人都死了。一切都结束了。

Marc: So anyway, it's going to do reasonably well because it has Leo, but it's still going to lose $120 million, are the estimates that I'm hearing, which is a pretty big loss for a movie like this. The fear in Hollywood always is when there's a movie that loses that much money, will the executive greenlight new original movies? Hopefully the lesson drawn from this is, it's the Brett Easton Ellis point, which is the fussiness or the mustiness. Hopefully the conclusion is don't make movies that are going to be musty when they're released. You didn't have to greenlight the thousandth movie with the message in 2022. That was a choice. So maybe don't do that anymore. But maybe it's time to move on.

Marc: 所以无论如何，因为有莱昂纳多，它会表现得相当不错，但据我所知，它仍然会亏损1.2亿美元，对于这样一部电影来说，这是一个相当大的损失。好莱坞的担忧始终是，当一部电影亏损如此之多时，高管们是否还会批准新的原创电影？希望从中吸取的教训是，布雷特·伊斯顿·埃利斯所说的，那种“挑剔”或“陈腐”。希望得出的结论是，不要制作那些上映时会显得陈腐的电影。你不需要在2022年批准第1000部带有“信息”的电影。那是一个选择。所以也许不要再那样做了。但也许是时候继续前进了。

《埃丁顿》：触及现实的艺术

Marc: Let me highlight the movie on the other side that I think is very underappreciated, and I think has, you could say maybe at best right now it's becoming a cult classic. It's just not that big of a hit, but I have hopes for it, and I hope it becomes one of these mythic movies, which is "Edington." Have you guys both at this point seen "Edington"?

Marc: 让我强调另一部我认为被严重低估的电影，我认为它，现在充其量可以说正在成为一部邪典经典。它并没有那么大受欢迎，但我对它抱有希望，我希望它能成为这些神话般的电影之一，那就是《埃丁顿》。你们俩现在都看过《埃丁顿》了吗？

Katherine: I haven't.

Katherine: 我没有。

Marc: Okay. Well, you're in for a treat. In my opinion, personal opinion, Edington is the first capital A art, great art movie I've seen since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I think it clears the bar. I start by saying it's not a perfect movie. There are things about it that I'm sure five years from now or whatever, even the maker of the movie might look back and say, "Could have done things differently." But it has the opposite of the musty feeling. It has the feeling of, "Oh, I'm actually finally seeing on screen real people again." Finally, real people set in the real world doing real things where you're just like, "Wow, I'm actually seeing the world that we've actually spent the last five years living in." It's the first movie like that that I've seen in a long time. Specifically, it's the first movie, and it's amazing that this is the case, even with the time scales that we're talking about. It's the first movie in which the George Floyd riots actually happened. It's the first movie in which COVID actually happened. It's the first movie in which social media actually happened. It's the first movie in which wokeness actually happened. It's the first movie in which Trump actually happened. It's the only movie in which any of those things actually happened in the universe of the movie. Every other movie that's come out that's been significant over the last five years, it's as if none of that ever happened. My explanation for that is these are all the hot-button issues that if you screwed them up in Hollywood, you got your career destroyed. If you said the wrong thing about COVID lockdowns or vaccines, if you said the wrong thing about Trump, if you said the wrong thing about the Floyd riots, if you said the wrong thing about wokeness, your career would get obliterated. So we have a generation of creatives who basically got taught, "Do not touch the stove." The auteur who made Edington, this guy Eric Aster, who's this young auteur, very talented guy, he basically was like, "I'm just going to grab the stove with both hands."

Marc: 好的。那么，你会有惊喜的。在我个人看来，《埃丁顿》是我自《好莱坞往事》以来看到的第一部大写字母A的艺术电影，一部伟大的艺术电影，我认为它达到了标准。我首先要说它不是一部完美的电影。关于它的一些地方，我敢肯定五年后，甚至电影制作者自己也会回过头来说：“本可以做得不一样。”但它却有着与“陈旧感”相反的感觉。它给人一种“哦，我终于又在银幕上看到真实的人了”的感觉。终于，真实世界中的真实人物做着真实的事情，你会觉得：“哇，我真的看到了我们过去五年生活在其中的世界。”这是我很久以来看到的第一部这样的电影。具体来说，它是第一部，而且令人惊讶的是，即使考虑到我们所谈论的时间尺度，它也是第一部真正发生过乔治·弗洛伊德骚乱的电影。它是第一部真正发生过新冠疫情的电影。它是第一部真正发生过社交媒体的电影。它是第一部真正发生过“觉醒文化”的电影。它是第一部真正发生过特朗普事件的电影。它是唯一一部电影宇宙中真正发生过这些事情的电影。过去五年上映的所有其他重要电影，就好像这些事情从未发生过一样。我的解释是，这些都是热点问题，如果你在好莱坞搞砸了它们，你的职业生涯就会被毁掉。如果你对新冠疫情封锁或疫苗说了错话，如果你对特朗普说了错话，如果你对弗洛伊德骚乱说了错话，如果你对“觉醒文化”说了错话，你的职业生涯就会被抹杀。所以我们这一代创意工作者基本上被教导：“不要碰炉子。”而制作《埃丁顿》的导演，这个名叫埃里克·阿斯特的年轻导演，一个非常有才华的人，他基本上是说：“我就是要用双手抓住炉子。”

Marc: And I'm just going to hold it up for dear life. It's like a roller coaster ride through every crazy thing that happened in the last five years. I was just howling with laughter. Put it this way. Me and the other four people in the theater who were watching it were just like, "Wow, it was amazing. It's finally happening."

Marc: 我会紧紧抓住它，就像过山车一样，穿越过去五年发生的所有疯狂事情。我简直笑得前仰后合。这么说吧，我和电影院里另外四位观众都觉得：“哇，太棒了。终于发生了。”

Katherine: Other bright side of this too is that it's not unknown actors, right? It's Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone. What's really interesting about, as you said, most movies try to gloss over social media or things where it's actually hard to depict it on a screen. There's nothing really interesting about looking at your phone, but getting a COVID nostril test is actually very funny. I know the trailer begins with pulling up in this old car and getting the nostril test. It's just a funny thing. So it's good that some of these more absurd things that have happened in the last couple years, they're actually very cinematic, and they should be put on screen. Great filmmakers should be showing them because they're so funny.

Katherine: 另一方面的好处是，它不是无名演员，对吧？有杰昆·菲尼克斯、艾玛·斯通。正如你所说，大多数电影都试图掩盖社交媒体或那些很难在银幕上描绘的事情，这真的很有趣。盯着手机看没什么有趣的，但做新冠病毒鼻拭子检测实际上非常搞笑。我知道预告片开头就是开着一辆旧车，然后做鼻拭子检测。这只是一个有趣的事情。所以，过去几年发生的一些更荒谬的事情，它们实际上非常具有电影感，应该被搬上银幕。伟大的电影制作人应该展示它们，因为它们太搞笑了。

Marc: Yeah. So I'll do a couple again. I'm going to blow through the spoilers. The opening scene is Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix plays this crusty sheriff of this small town in New Mexico called Edington, which actually kind of reminds me of the town I grew up in. The key thing for the thing is Edington, there's just nothing in the town. It's like 600 people. The streets are empty, the stores are empty. It's a town that was empty before COVID. And then the lockdowns hit, and then it became even more desolate. But there's nothing happening, and you could just walk around, and there's nobody there. Joaquin Phoenix plays the sheriff who's this crusty, unreconstructed, and he's not really a Trump supporter, per se, but he's this sort of crusty, traditionalist kind of guy. He's the kind of guy who just really does not want things to change that much. Everything is changing around him. It starts when COVID, it starts in April of 2020. He's sitting in this pickup truck in the middle of nowhere, and he's eating a sandwich or whatever. This other truck pulls up next to him, and it's a set in New Mexico. So there's these, the town that he's in are adjacent to these tribal lands. So these two young tribal cops, Native American cops, pull up in a pickup truck next to him, and they're young and, let's say, cooler than he is. They're both wearing their masks. Literally they're like, "Roll down your window." He rolls the window, and literally from their pickup truck into his, they're like, "You have to put your mask on."

Marc: 是的。那么我再说几个。我要直接剧透了。开场是杰昆·菲尼克斯。杰昆·菲尼克斯扮演新墨西哥州一个小镇埃丁顿的脾气暴躁的警长，这个小镇有点让我想起我长大的地方。关键是埃丁顿这个镇上什么都没有。大约600人。街道空荡荡的，商店也空荡荡的。这是一个在新冠疫情之前就空荡荡的小镇。然后封锁来了，它变得更加荒凉。但什么都没有发生，你可以在里面走来走去，一个人也没有。杰昆·菲尼克斯扮演的警长是一个脾气暴躁、不屈不挠的人，他本身并不是特朗普的支持者，但他就是那种脾气暴躁、传统主义的人。他就是那种真的不想让事情发生太大变化的人。他周围的一切都在变化。故事开始于新冠疫情，始于2020年4月。他坐在荒郊野外的一辆皮卡车里，吃着三明治什么的。另一辆卡车开到他旁边，故事背景设在新墨西哥州。所以他所在的城镇毗邻这些部落土地。所以这两个年轻的部落警察，美洲原住民警察，开着一辆皮卡车停在他旁边，他们年轻，而且，可以说，比他酷。他们都戴着口罩。他们真的说：“把窗户摇下来。”他摇下窗户，然后他们真的从他们的皮卡车里对他说：“你必须戴上口罩。”

Marc: This literally, it was for me, it was like heaven has opened, the angels are singing, I'm finally seeing a capital M movie like this. He's a brilliant, so he gets across in one look the feeling that I think we've all had for the last five years, which is like, "What the hell?" That's just the opening scene, and then it cascades through all the COVID. Then it cascades through, spoiler alert again, it cascades through Floyd. So the Floyd riots hit midway through the movie, and then the local high school, it's 100% white New Mexico, and then the white kids basically become obsessed with racial justice even though they literally don't know any black people, and they start having full-blown riots in the main street and breaking store windows and crashing everything. There's one black person in town who's a sheriff's deputy, who's Joaquin's deputy, who's a military vet, and he's just like, "What the hell? Why do I have to defend the grocery store from the white kids trying to burn it down on my behalf?" Anyway, so the whole movie is like that.

Marc: 这真的，对我来说，就像天堂打开了，天使在歌唱，我终于看到了这样一部大写字母M的电影。他是一个天才，所以他一眼就传达出了我认为我们所有人过去五年都有的感觉，那就是：“搞什么鬼？”那只是开场，然后它贯穿了所有的新冠疫情。然后它贯穿了，再次剧透，它贯穿了弗洛伊德事件。所以弗洛伊德骚乱发生在电影中期，然后当地的高中，那是100%白人的新墨西哥州，然后白人孩子基本上痴迷于种族正义，尽管他们根本不认识任何黑人，他们开始在主街上进行全面的骚乱，打破商店橱窗，砸毁一切。镇上有一个黑人，他是警长的副手，是杰昆的副手，他是一名退伍军人，他只是说：“搞什么鬼？我为什么要替那些白人孩子去保护杂货店，不让他们烧掉？”总之，整部电影就是这样。

Marc: Maybe just one more thing about it that's just hysterical. Eric, this is a good time for you to take a drink of water because you're going to love this part. Pedro Pascal is in it. At first you would think Pedro Pascal plays the mayor, and at first you're like, "Oh, this is going to be a clear setup where Joaquin is like the retrograde right-winger, and Pascal is the voice of reason." It's like, no, no, he's Gavin Newsom. I swear to God he's Gavin Newsom. 100% Pedro Pascal is playing.

Marc: 也许关于它还有一件事情，简直是歇斯底里。埃里克，现在是你喝水的好时机，因为你会喜欢这一段。佩德罗·帕斯卡在里面。一开始你会以为佩德罗·帕斯卡扮演市长，一开始你会觉得，“哦，这会是一个明显的设定，杰昆是那种倒退的右翼分子，而帕斯卡是理性的声音。”不，不，他是加文·纽森。我向上帝发誓他是加文·纽森。佩德罗·帕斯卡百分之百扮演的是。

Eric: What does he do?

Eric: 他做了什么？

Marc: I don't even want to like, it's, I'm not even intending to bad. I'm just saying, or just every other politician. Whatever is your idea of a politician who's like Gavin Newsom, Pedro Pascal plays him and just could not be looking down on the sheriff character with more contempt. Just absolutely, and vice versa. Then basically what happens is that they effectively, so the sheriff gets frustrated by the whole thing, the lockdowns and everything, and so he decides to run for mayor. So then it becomes a fight between the two of them. Which by the way is just the beginning of the movie. It then gets actually quite a bit more elaborate after that. But the big thing about it is it's just an absolute full-frontal examination from top to bottom. It pulls in, Katherine, it doesn't have a lot of on-screen graphics of people on social media, but it does have this recurring thing, which again is just, it's incredible how rare this is in movies, or maybe other filmmakers haven't figured out how to do it, which is these characters live in a world of social media. He does this great, when a character in this movie wakes up, he rolls over and he checks his phone. It's our world, and he does a very good job of showing the back and forth of how people are, and again, this is a rural town in the middle of nowhere. People are living this double life that we all now live, which is we've got our in-person life and then we've got our online life, and there's this question of which one is more real. This is the first movie I've seen that actually just, and it doesn't incorporate that. It's not social media the movie. That's not what the movie is about, but it just kind of shows naturally how the nature of reality has changed around that and then how it influences real-world behavior. Anyway, so I can't recommend it highly enough.

Marc: 我甚至不想，我甚至不打算说坏话。我只是说，或者说其他所有政客。无论你对像加文·纽森那样的政客有什么看法，佩德罗·帕斯卡扮演的就是他，而且他对警长角色的蔑视简直无以复加。绝对是，反之亦然。然后基本上发生的事情是，他们有效地，警长对整个事情，封锁和一切都感到沮丧，所以他决定竞选市长。所以这就变成了他们两人之间的斗争。顺便说一句，这只是电影的开头。之后它实际上变得更加复杂。但关于它最重要的一点是，它从头到尾都是一次绝对的全面审视。凯瑟琳，它没有很多关于人们在社交媒体上的屏幕图形，但它确实有一个反复出现的东西，这再次说明，这在电影中是多么罕见，或者说其他电影制作人还没有弄清楚如何做到这一点，那就是这些角色生活在一个社交媒体的世界里。他做得很好，当这部电影中的一个角色醒来时，他翻身查看手机。这就是我们的世界，他很好地展示了人们是如何来回切换的，而且，这又是一个偏远农村小镇。人们过着我们现在都过的这种双重生活，即我们有现实生活，然后有网络生活，问题是哪一个更真实。这是我看到的第一部真正做到这一点的电影，而且它并没有刻意融入这一点。它不是一部关于社交媒体的电影。电影不是关于这个的，但它只是自然地展示了现实的本质是如何围绕着这一点发生变化的，以及它如何影响现实世界的行为。总之，我强烈推荐这部电影。

Katherine: Isn't Emma Stone's character like taken by conspiracy that she finds online or like what is her role in the movie?

Katherine: 艾玛·斯通的角色是不是被她在网上发现的阴谋论所吸引，或者说她在电影中扮演什么角色？

Marc: Yeah. Well, so this is part of the, and at this point I'm grabbing the stove with both hands also. She plays the upper-middle-class white woman who's just wrecked with anxiety. This is the plot arc. She's incredibly deeply unhappy. So she gets locked into online conspiracies, and then there's this whole thing. I don't even want to spoil the thing that happens with her because it's quite something, and it's quite a plot arc of its own that she has her own parallel life that kind of unfolds through this. She's watching Joaquin Phoenix's husband, and he loves her and has absolutely no idea what's going on in her head. He's married to her. He loves her. She's clearly extremely depressed. She's clearly extremely anxious. He has no ability whatsoever to understand her, communicate with her. Her mother, she's very close with her mother. Her mother keeps showing up, lives in town, and just hates him and is scathing towards him, and he's like, "What? I'm doing my best. I can't read her mind. I don't know what's going on." So it's got that, it's got a whole arc there.

Marc: 是的。嗯，这也是一部分，此时我也两手抓着炉子。她扮演的是一个被焦虑彻底摧毁的中上层白人女性。这是情节主线。她内心极其不快乐。所以她沉迷于网络阴谋论，然后就发生了这一切。我甚至不想剧透她身上发生的事情，因为它相当精彩，而且她有自己的情节线，通过这个故事展开了她自己的平行生活。她看着杰昆·菲尼克斯的丈夫，他爱她，但完全不知道她脑子里在想什么。他娶了她。他爱她。她显然极度抑郁。她显然极度焦虑。他完全没有能力理解她，与她沟通。她的母亲，她和母亲非常亲近。她的母亲不断出现，住在镇上，就是恨他，对他刻薄，他会说：“什么？我尽力了。我读不懂她的心思。我不知道发生了什么。”所以它有这个，它有一个完整的故事线。

Marc: And then it's got another one more. It's got the, in the little high school, there's a very attractive blonde high school girl who basically becomes completely committed to social justice and is going on and she's got all the patriarchy. She's got all the talking points. She's ready for her sociology degree. All the boys and men orbiting around her basically become obsessed with, there's a white male high school kid who's just generally oblivious, and he has a thing for her, and so he starts reading Angela Davis (一位著名的美国政治活动家、学者和作家，以其对民权、女权和废奴主义的倡导而闻名) in an attempt to basically become attractive for her. He starts spouting off about white privilege and the whole thing.

Marc: 然后还有一个。在那个小高中里，有一个非常迷人的金发高中女生，她基本上完全致力于社会正义，她拥有所有的父权制理论。她掌握了所有的论点。她已经为她的社会学学位做好了准备。所有围绕在她身边的男孩和男人基本上都痴迷于她，有一个白人高中男生，他通常比较迟钝，但他喜欢她，所以他开始阅读安吉拉·戴维斯 (Angela Davis: 一位著名的美国政治活动家、学者和作家，以其对民权、女权和废奴主义的倡导而闻名) 的著作，试图通过这种方式吸引她。他开始滔滔不绝地谈论白人特权和所有这些东西。

Eric: Does it work?

Eric: 有用吗？

Marc: It doesn't work. It doesn't work for the purposes that he intends it for. But he, let's say, he ultimately, yeah, he has a very successful plot arc of his own. He actually plays a major role in the, he goes on his own journey and plays a major role at the end of the movie. Anyway, so it's just like, it's one of these movies, and there's different critiques of it, and it's a little bit of a, I don't know what they call like a shaggy dog story, where as the movie goes, increasingly crazy things are happening, and things get kind of deranged in a way that you could argue is truly reflective of how deranged things got, or you could say maybe he gets a little bit carried away. But it's just, it directly, it's such direct engagement with our times that to me it's just like, "Wow, I'm actually seeing on screen our world," as opposed to this manufactured view of a world that doesn't exist, or this manicured view where these topics have just become untouchable. So anyway, my hope is it's the beginning of a wave of like, there's so much material. This is the old Tom Wolfe (一位著名的美国作家和记者，以其对美国文化的尖锐讽刺和新新闻主义的风格而闻名) thing, which is what was Tom Wolfe's term? He said what was it, the beast with 8 billion feet or what was his term? The mass of humanity. He had this term where he's like, Tom Wolfe always had this point of view, the great novelist journalist, the most interesting topic in the world is the human race. The collective behavior of 8 billion people on planet Earth is the most interesting thing in the world. The 8 billion people on planet Earth are always getting up to the craziest stuff. If you want to write great fiction, he was always telling people who wanted to write fiction, "If you want to write great fiction, you want to go out and you want to be with the people and you want to actually observe what's happening." It's so crazy that if you just write it down, that's how you write the great American novel. That's what you do.

Marc: 没用。它没有达到他预期的目的。但他，可以说，他最终，是的，他有自己非常成功的情节线。他实际上在电影中扮演了重要角色，他踏上了自己的旅程，并在电影结尾扮演了重要角色。总之，这就像，这是那种电影之一，人们对它有不同的评价，它有点像，我不知道他们称之为“漫无边际的故事”的东西，随着电影的进展，越来越疯狂的事情发生，事情变得有点失控，你可以说这真实反映了事情变得多么失控，或者你可以说他可能有点得意忘形。但它就是，它直接，它如此直接地与我们的时代互动，以至于对我来说，它就像，“哇，我真的在银幕上看到了我们的世界，”而不是这种虚构的、不存在的世界的制造视图，或者这种精心修饰的视图，其中这些话题变得不可触碰。所以无论如何，我的希望是它是一个浪潮的开始，有如此多的素材。这是老汤姆·沃尔夫 (Tom Wolfe: 一位著名的美国作家和记者，以其对美国文化的尖锐讽刺和新新闻主义的风格而闻名) 的观点，汤姆·沃尔夫的术语是什么？他说的是什么，是80亿只脚的野兽还是什么？是人类大众。他有一个术语，他就像，汤姆·沃尔夫总是有这种观点，这位伟大的小说家兼记者，世界上最有趣的话题是人类。地球上80亿人的集体行为是世界上最有趣的事情。地球上80亿人总是做出最疯狂的事情。如果你想写出伟大的小说，他总是告诉那些想写小说的人，“如果你想写出伟大的小说，你就要走出去，和人们在一起，真正观察正在发生的事情。”这太疯狂了，如果你只是把它写下来，那就是你写出伟大的美国小说的方式。你就是这样做的。

Marc: He would famously do this. When he did Bonfire of the Vanities (汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，描绘了1980年代纽约社会各阶层的冲突与腐败), he immersed himself in Wall Street. When he did A Man in Full (汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，背景设定在亚特兰大，探讨了男性气概、种族和商业文化), he immersed himself in Atlanta real estate. When he did Back to Blood (汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，背景设定在迈阿密，探讨了种族、阶级和文化冲突), he immersed himself in Miami culture. He would go do this. His critique was, the new generation novelist, they sit in their apartment in Brooklyn with their typewriter and they introspect. That's why there's no more great American novels. Ari is the filmmaker who got that. I don't know if he ever got, you know, read Wolfe or not, but he understands that. He's like, "Oh, go immerse yourself in what's actually happening in real life and translate that." He was uniquely able to do it. Uniquely able to get away with it. I'm hoping he's the beginning of a wave of these. They don't all have to be about COVID or the Floyd riots or whatever. There's many, many other topics you could do, but there should be a great movie for every significant social cultural thing that happens. Those opportunities are just laying, there's hundreds or thousands of those opportunities just laying on the ground right now for the creatives who can go pick them up. Every creative writing this or hearing this is going to say, "Yeah, no, but will the studios greenlight it and pay for it?" That would be my other hope, which is some combination of the bolder executives at the streamers and at the studios, David Olson, who's clearly a very brilliant guy, taking over Paramount and maybe buying more studios, guys like him are in a position to greenlight an entirely new generation of movie that could be both commercially successful and could be true art.

Marc: 他会经常这样做。当他创作《虚荣的篝火》(Bonfire of the Vanities: 汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，描绘了1980年代纽约社会各阶层的冲突与腐败) 时，他沉浸在华尔街。当他创作《一个完整的人》(A Man in Full: 汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，背景设定在亚特兰大，探讨了男性气概、种族和商业文化) 时，他沉浸在亚特兰大的房地产界。当他创作《血色归来》(Back to Blood: 汤姆·沃尔夫的小说，背景设定在迈阿密，探讨了种族、阶级和文化冲突) 时，他沉浸在迈阿密的文化中。他会这样做。他的批评是，新一代小说家，他们坐在布鲁克林的公寓里，用打字机内省。这就是为什么不再有伟大的美国小说了。阿里是理解这一点的电影制作人。我不知道他是否读过沃尔夫，但他理解这一点。他会说：“哦，去沉浸在现实生活中正在发生的事情中，并将其转化出来。”他独特地能够做到这一点。独特地能够逃脱惩罚。我希望他是这一波浪潮的开始。它们不一定都与新冠疫情或弗洛伊德骚乱有关。还有许多其他话题可以做，但每一个重要的社会文化事件都应该有一部伟大的电影。这些机会就在那里，现在有成百上千的机会摆在地面上，等待那些有创意的创作者去拾取。每个正在创作或听到这些的创作者都会说：“是的，但是制片厂会批准并为此买单吗？”那将是我的另一个希望，那就是流媒体和制片厂中那些更大胆的高管们的某种组合，大卫·奥尔森，他显然是一个非常聪明的人，接管派拉蒙，也许还会收购更多制片厂，像他这样的人有能力批准全新一代的电影，这些电影既能取得商业成功，又能成为真正的艺术。

Eric: Yeah. I know. So, I guess is it your view that we'll have this five to seven-year window of musty films that people kind of pretend are decent, but then we kind of get the Edingtons as well where you're going to see things open up again. So, we'll have this sort of nice period of weirdness. I actually think looking back 50 years from today, it'll be fun to look back at these films and be like, "That was wild that that was what we were at the time." So your view is that it is going to open up, that there will be more Edingtons, there'll be more extremes, and it's not just going to be "One Battle After Another," kind of the message.

Eric: 是的。我知道。所以，我猜你的观点是，我们将有五到七年的“陈旧电影”窗口期，人们会假装它们还不错，但同时我们也会看到像《埃丁顿》这样的电影，你会看到事情再次开放。所以，我们将迎来一个有趣的“怪异”时期。我实际上认为，从今天往回看50年，回顾这些电影会很有趣，会觉得“当时我们所处的状态真是疯狂”。所以你的观点是，它会开放，会有更多的《埃丁顿》，会有更多的极端，而不仅仅是像《一个接一个的战斗》那样，传递某种“信息”。

Marc: Yeah. So just quickly one more thing on "One Battle After Another." The critics are rapturous about this movie. If you read Rotten Tomatoes, the critics are, it's like 98% or whatever. The critics are just like, "This is the most brilliant movie of all time. This completely captures, yes, this is the ultimate chronicling of America's descent and it being the Fourth Reich. Yes, this is absolutely glory. Yes, absolutely revolutionary violence should be glorified." The critics are all in. The movie critic community has gone hard in on this, just like so many other critic communities. So they're all in. This movie, I don't know if it's going to, but it wouldn't be surprising if it sweeps the Oscars. It's just like, "The best, the best, the best movie ever made." But everybody who has been through this spin cycle for the last eight years, I think people are on to it, including the audience. I think even the people participating in what is already kind of an orgy of hyper-exaggerated critical admiration are probably all realizing that they're fundamentally being dishonest. But Katherine, to your point, that machine, the message machine, that machine is continuing to spin for now. It's just very clear that there's smoke and parts flying off of it. It is going to rattle to a stop. If you talk to people in Hollywood, basically what they'll tell you is, independent of people's politics, what the people in Hollywood generally all say is, "Yeah, the cultural fever has broken. You can now get movies greenlit today that you could not get greenlit two years ago." Specifically, and this is amazing, and this is good, but you can have comedies again. They actually say this like they're like, "We can now make comedies." You can have funny movies. Because to have funny movies, you need to poke a sacred cow. The thing that makes comedy funny is when it's subversive, when it touches a nerve. That's what great adult comedy is. You just could not make a funny movie for the last eight years. It was impossible. It was way too risky. What they're saying now is that you can.

Marc: 是的。那么，关于《一个接一个的战斗》再快速说一点。评论家们对这部电影赞不绝口。如果你看烂番茄，评论家们，比如98%之类的，评论家们都说：“这是有史以来最杰出的电影。它完全捕捉到了，是的，这是美国堕落并成为第四帝国终极编年史。是的，这绝对是荣耀。是的，革命性暴力绝对应该被歌颂。”评论家们都投入其中。电影评论界对这部电影投入了巨大的热情，就像许多其他评论界一样。所以他们都投入其中。这部电影，我不知道它是否会，但如果它横扫奥斯卡奖，我也不会感到惊讶。它就像是，“有史以来最好、最好、最好的电影。”但过去八年经历过这种循环的每个人，我认为人们都明白了，包括观众。我认为即使是那些参与这种夸张的批判性赞美狂欢的人，可能都意识到他们从根本上是不诚实的。但凯瑟琳，就你所说的，那个机器，“信息”机器，那个机器现在仍在运转。只是很明显，它正在冒烟，零件四处飞散。它会嘎吱作响地停下来。如果你和好莱坞的人交谈，他们基本上会告诉你，无论人们的政治立场如何，好莱坞的人普遍都说：“是的，文化狂热已经结束了。你现在可以获得两年前无法获得批准的电影。”具体来说，这很令人惊讶，也很好，但你可以再次制作喜剧片了。他们实际上是这样说的，他们说：“我们现在可以制作喜剧片了。”你可以制作有趣的电影。因为要制作有趣的电影，你需要触碰禁忌。让喜剧变得有趣的是当它具有颠覆性，当它触及痛点时。那才是伟大的成人喜剧。过去八年你根本无法制作一部有趣的电影。那是不可能的。风险太大了。但他们现在说你可以了。

Marc: Then maybe the other signal indicator, Katherine, of what's happening, which is Mel Gibson finally got greenlit to do his sequel to Passion of the Christ, which is the resurrection movie, and which he's making right now. My friends in Hollywood are like, "Yeah, that never would have happened." That never would have happened under a Kamala administration. That never would have happened without the election result. Again, these are not even people who are pro-Trump. It's just, "Okay, the national mood is shifting." Mel Gibson of all people being one of the clearly great filmmakers of our time, and having all of the issues that Mel Gibson has, like, "Yes, that guy should get to make a movie."

Marc: 凯瑟琳，也许另一个正在发生的信号指标是，梅尔·吉布森终于获得了批准，可以制作他的《耶稣受难记》续集，也就是复活电影，他现在正在制作。我在好莱坞的朋友们都说：“是的，这以前绝不可能发生。”在卡马拉政府执政下绝不可能发生。没有选举结果也绝不可能发生。再说一遍，这些人甚至不是支持特朗普的人。只是，“好吧，全国的情绪正在转变。”梅尔·吉布森，作为我们这个时代最伟大的电影制作人之一，尽管他有各种问题，但“是的，那个人应该得到拍电影的机会。”

Eric: And specifically that guy should get to make that movie.

Eric: 而且特别地，那个人应该拍那部电影。

Marc: And that's an example of what I'm talking about, that that's possible this year in a way that wasn't before. The other thing that I think yesterday Young Washington came out, the trailer, which Angel Studios, which again is not Hollywood, it's based in Provo, but has proven that they can make very successful films for a different pocket of the actually likes patriotism. I think in some ways, the Top Gun success story, yes, it's nostalgia, but the fact that it did so well at the box office shows that there is an appetite for totally different content. 50% of the country would love to see movies that are patriotic or about something really interesting about George Washington. So I think in some ways it's like there's this business case too of, "Wow, if the 50% of the country that's been starved for the content they want will actually pay to go to the theater, and maybe we should support them."

Marc: 这就是我所说的例子，今年这种情况成为可能，而以前是不可能的。另一件事是，我认为昨天《年轻的华盛顿》预告片发布了，那是Angel Studios制作的，它也不是好莱坞的，总部设在普罗沃，但它已经证明他们可以为另一部分真正喜欢爱国主义的观众制作非常成功的电影。我认为在某些方面，《壮志凌云》的成功故事，是的，是怀旧情怀，但它在票房上表现如此出色，表明人们对完全不同的内容有需求。这个国家50%的人会喜欢看爱国电影，或者关于乔治·华盛顿的一些非常有趣的历史传记片。所以我觉得在某些方面，这也存在商业案例，即“哇，如果这个国家50%一直渴望他们想要的内容的人真的会花钱去电影院，也许我们应该支持他们。”

Eric: To that end, Mark, do the executives underappreciate the Rotten Tomatoes phenomenon or just how distinct the critics or even their own staff are from the actual audience?

Eric: 就此而言，马克，高管们是否低估了烂番茄现象，或者评论家甚至他们自己的员工与实际观众之间的差异有多大？

Marc: Yeah. So they live it. They live it. Like I said, for the last eight years, it's basically been a reign of terror. Because these critics and the people these critics represent had the power of life and death over people's careers. They know the critics kind of went nuts, but this is the problem with, there's not that much they can do about it. The critics were able to succeed in their own field. It's just like everything else that happened in media. The critics were able to succeed in their own field by going arbitrarily wild. There's basically nothing that if you're a movie studio executive, there's really nothing you could do about it. What do you do about it? If you ignore them, they attack you. If you engage with them, they attack you. If you attack them, they attack you back. So there's been very little to do. Hollywood, like Silicon Valley and every other industry, there is insularity to it. There's this self-referential thing. When the mood, when opinion shapers move against you, it becomes a real problem. In Hollywood, people get fired. Every studio executive kind of knows that at some point they're going to get fired. People get fired off of projects all the time. When people get fired off of projects in Hollywood, they may not eat, they may not get another job for two years or five years or ever. It's a high-tension environment.

Marc: 是的。所以他们身临其境。他们身临其境。就像我说的，过去八年，基本上就是一场恐怖统治。因为这些评论家以及他们所代表的人，对人们的职业生涯拥有生杀大权。他们知道评论家们有点发疯了，但问题是，他们对此束手无策。评论家们能够在自己的领域取得成功。就像媒体界发生的其他所有事情一样。评论家们通过任意狂野地行事，在自己的领域取得了成功。如果你是电影制片厂的高管，你基本上对此束手无策。你该怎么办？如果你忽视他们，他们就会攻击你。如果你与他们接触，他们就会攻击你。如果你攻击他们，他们就会反击你。所以几乎无能为力。好莱坞，就像硅谷和所有其他行业一样，都存在孤立性。存在这种自我指涉的现象。当情绪，当舆论领袖与你作对时，就会成为一个真正的问题。在好莱坞，人们会被解雇。每个制片厂高管都知道，在某个时候他们都会被解雇。人们总是被项目解雇。当人们在好莱坞被项目解雇时，他们可能没有饭吃，可能两年、五年甚至永远都找不到另一份工作。这是一个高度紧张的环境。

Marc: I also think that especially the Boomer executives, the Gen X executives, they'll also tell you the same thing you'll hear that you heard in the Valley and in Washington and elsewhere, which is, "Wow, the young staff is really radicalized." So they're also afraid of their young staff. These are mostly public companies. They're also afraid of their boards. The boards are afraid of the public shareholders. The public shareholders are radicalized. So it was a very similar phenomenon to what happened in tech, which is this collective wildness or this intensity thing happened, and then it really couldn't be openly discussed for a long time, and probably still can't. They probably still really can't talk about it in the public. A few of them are starting to, but not really. For the most part, the conversations are in the background, but against that, it's just like, "Okay, that's broken a bit." Part of it also is just the business aspect of it. The classic is, the big money maker in Hollywood for the last 20 years has been superhero movies. Let's just say coincident with the beginning of the message is the results in those movies collapsed. At some point, they need to go sell some movie tickets. At some point, they need to deliver revenue. I think they've gotten the message of the message, which is if all you are is on board with the social trend, especially when that social trend gets old and is no longer salient, you can't run a public company based on reviews. At some point, butts do have to show up in seats. So I think that's also kicked in, and so the financial pressures are very painful right now. They're probably not helpful. I don't know, the financial pressures in Hollywood are, it's hard to say, because on the one hand, when there's financial pressures in Hollywood, the argument is fewer movies get greenlit, and then the executives become more risk-averse than the kinds of movies they're willing to greenlight. But I think it also means that they are also less willing to greenlight projects that are being greenlit only for political reasons or only for social cultural reasons or only out of a sense of fear. So I don't know exactly how that balances, but hopefully things get more exciting.

Marc: 我还认为，特别是婴儿潮一代的高管、X世代的高管，他们也会告诉你同样的事情，就像你在硅谷、华盛顿和其他地方听到的那样，那就是：“哇，年轻员工真的被激进化了。”所以他们也害怕他们的年轻员工。这些大多是上市公司。他们也害怕他们的董事会。董事会害怕公众股东。公众股东被激进化了。所以这与科技界发生的情况非常相似，也就是这种集体的狂野或这种强烈的现象发生了，然后很长一段时间都无法公开讨论，而且可能现在仍然不能。他们可能仍然无法在公开场合真正谈论它。少数人开始这样做，但并非真的如此。在大多数情况下，对话都是在幕后进行的，但与此相反的是，“好吧，那有点破裂了。”其中一部分也只是它的商业方面。经典例子是，过去20年好莱坞最大的摇钱树是超级英雄电影。姑且可以说，与“信息”的开始同时，这些电影的票房结果也崩溃了。在某个时候，他们需要去卖一些电影票。在某个时候，他们需要带来收入。我认为他们已经领会了“信息”的“信息”，那就是如果你只是迎合社会潮流，特别是当那个社会潮流变得陈旧不再突出时，你不能仅仅依靠评论来经营一家上市公司。在某个时候，观众确实必须出现在座位上。所以我认为这也发挥了作用，所以现在的财务压力非常痛苦。它们可能没有帮助。我不知道，好莱坞的财务压力，很难说，因为一方面，当好莱坞存在财务压力时，论点是获得批准的电影会更少，然后高管们对他们愿意批准的电影类型会变得更加规避风险。但我认为这也意味着他们也更不愿意批准仅仅出于政治原因或仅仅出于社会文化原因或仅仅出于恐惧而获得批准的项目。所以我不知道这到底如何平衡，但希望事情会变得更加令人兴奋。

电影业的未来：AI的机遇与挑战

Marc: By the way, of course, the other big topic in Hollywood is AI. That's the 800-pound thing. To their credit, they're highly aware of it. They're highly alert to it. There are a bunch of filmmakers, including some folks that I know, that are super excited. There are, including some, I know of like two triple-A list director filmmakers, top-end people who are very excited about what's possible and are going to fully embrace it. There's a bunch of other people who are very excited. So there's going to be an embrace by at least part, but there's also, Hollywood has always had a fear-driven reaction to new technologies. There's some of that. Then there is this attachment, and Hollywood is actually very acute. There's this attachment of AI politics to woke politics. If you're still super woke, you're also super anti-AI. There are these, basically it's basically like the woke activists have picked up AI as the new thing that they're going to agitate about. They're mounting basically already pressure campaigns on the studios to vow to never use AI. At least so far, the studios, to their credit, are like, "No, we're not going to do that." We, the studio executives, have all been consistent, which is like, "Look, we've always used technology." The movie camera itself is technology. Special effects, we've always used technology. Videotapes, DVD, streaming, these are all technologies. Every movie has CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery: 电脑生成图像，指使用计算机图形软件创建或修改图像和动画), one of my little fun facts about history of movies is Tron (一部1982年的科幻电影，以其开创性的计算机图形应用而闻名). Tron was the first, there's a big sequel for Tron that's out this week. The original Tron was 1988 from Disney, and it was the first movie that had integrated use of computer graphics, which was the big thing at the time. As a consequence of that, Tron was disqualified from the Oscars because they cheated by using computer graphics. To go from that world to the world in which every movie has CGI, and for the most part, you don't even know that there's CGI in it. You just see a romantic comedy, and they're using CGI to do all kinds of things in it, and you don't even notice, and it's just taken completely for granted. I think the studios understand that. I think they're going to actually embrace it enthusiastically. There's going to be this, there's going to be this, at least there's an attempt to gin up a moral panic around it and try to keep it out, and I don't think it's going to work because I think the economics are too compelling.

Marc: 顺便说一句，好莱坞的另一个大话题当然是人工智能。那是重中之重。值得称赞的是，他们对此高度警觉。他们对此高度戒备。有很多电影制作人，包括我认识的一些人，都非常兴奋。其中甚至有我认识的两位顶级导演，他们对可能性感到非常兴奋，并将全面拥抱它。还有许多其他人也感到非常兴奋。所以至少有一部分人会拥抱它，但好莱坞也一直对新技术抱有恐惧驱动的反应。这方面有一些。然后，还有这种联系，好莱坞在这方面实际上非常敏锐。人工智能政治与觉醒政治之间存在这种联系。如果你仍然超级觉醒，你也会超级反人工智能。基本上，觉醒活动家们已经把人工智能当作他们要煽动的新事物。他们基本上已经在对制片厂施加压力，要求他们发誓永不使用人工智能。至少到目前为止，制片厂值得称赞的是，他们说：“不，我们不会那样做。”我们，制片厂高管们，一直都保持一致，那就是：“看，我们一直都在使用技术。”电影摄影机本身就是技术。特效，我们一直都在使用技术。录像带、DVD、流媒体，这些都是技术。每部电影都有电脑生成图像 (CGI: Computer-Generated Imagery: 电脑生成图像，指使用计算机图形软件创建或修改图像和动画)，关于电影史的一个有趣事实是《电子世界争霸战》(Tron: 一部1982年的科幻电影，以其开创性的计算机图形应用而闻名)。《电子世界争霸战》是第一部，本周上映了《电子世界争霸战》的大型续集。原版《电子世界争霸战》是1988年迪士尼出品的，它是第一部整合使用计算机图形的电影，这在当时是一件大事。因此，《电子世界争霸战》被奥斯卡取消了资格，因为他们使用了计算机图形作弊。从那个世界到现在每部电影都有CGI的世界，而且在大多数情况下，你甚至不知道里面有CGI。你只是看一部浪漫喜剧，他们用CGI在里面做各种各样的事情，你甚至没有注意到，这已经被完全视为理所当然。我认为制片厂理解这一点。我认为他们实际上会热情地拥抱它。将会出现这种，至少有人试图围绕它制造一场道德恐慌，并试图将其排除在外，但我认为这不会成功，因为我认为经济效益太具吸引力了。

Marc: But then the other thing with AI is, of course, AI is going to be super helpful to existing filmmakers, but the other thing is AI for sure, and we see this especially in this last couple weeks with the new version of Sora (OpenAI开发的一个文本到视频生成模型), and a lot of these other new things that are coming out, AI is going to make a whole new kind of filmmaker possible to exist for the first time, which is the filmmaker with no visual skill, or access to a set or to a camera or to actors, but with an idea. People are going to be able to make, it's going to start with shorts and animated things and so forth, but it's going to work its way up to full movies. People who otherwise would be limited to only being novelists or being maybe people who do graphic novels, but are creative geniuses, are going to be able to actually make full movies with AI. I think that's a reason for profound optimism. I think we're going to get completely new kinds of film and entertainment from people who otherwise never would have been able to access the medium. I'm very positive on that.

Marc: 但人工智能的另一个方面是，当然，人工智能对现有电影制作人将非常有帮助，但另一个方面是，人工智能肯定会，我们尤其在过去几周看到了新版Sora (Sora: OpenAI开发的一个文本到视频生成模型) 以及许多其他新事物的出现，人工智能将使一种全新的电影制作人首次成为可能，那就是没有视觉技能，或者没有机会接触片场、摄像机或演员，但却有想法的电影制作人。人们将能够制作，它将从短片和动画片等开始，但它将逐步发展到完整的电影。那些原本只能成为小说家或可能制作图形小说的人，但却是创意天才的人，将能够真正用人工智能制作完整的电影。我认为这是一个深刻乐观的理由。我认为我们将从那些原本永远无法接触到这种媒介的人那里获得全新类型的电影和娱乐。我对此非常乐观。

Eric: Can we end, because you brought it up, on comedy? I know you saw the new Naked Gun film. What were your thoughts on, is comedy working? Is it, does it have to be nostalgic for it to work? Maybe tell us a little bit about that film and whether it's a reason to be positive on comedies in the future.

Eric: 我们可以以喜剧作为结尾吗，因为你提到了它？我知道你看了新的《裸枪》电影。你对喜剧是否奏效有什么看法？它是否必须是怀旧的才能奏效？也许给我们讲讲那部电影，以及它是否是未来对喜剧保持乐观的理由。

喜剧电影的复兴：《裸枪》

Marc: Yeah. So I thought Naked Gun was actually a little bit of a minor miracle for a couple of reasons. One is, look, it's a sequel to movies from 40 years ago. How many people even remember the original Naked Gun movies? It actually turns out a lot of people do. They're beloved movies, but also it turns out you can make a great comedy. It's a fantastic comedy. It's very funny. It worked commercially. It worked artistically. It honored the original material, but it was also deliriously loopy in its own way. I highly recommend it. It's very funny. But actually, striking to that point, it also, like Edington, it's also a post-message movie. This is actually, and maybe this is a reason for optimism, which is again, if you go back through the time scale, that thing was greenlit no later than '22, probably in '21. So at the height of every movie has to have the message, that movie was still greenlit, and it got all the way through and out the other side, and there's not a trace of it in it. It's a pure comedy. It's like the original movies. It's a pure absurdist, modern studio style comedy. Liam Neeson, of course, plays against type and is a brilliant comedian and just kills it. Pam Anderson, the great icon of 1980s femininity, it's her big starring role, and she just absolutely is fantastic. She's hysterical. She's just like, and she's just like there as a person, and she's not, she's not wearing, she's just like, she's just like full woman in natural form. It's great. There's no, there's none of the casting, let's say, aspects that cause problems. There's no script. It's just an extremely well-executed, it very easily could have been made in 2012 or in 2008 or in 2002. It doesn't move the artistic ball forward. It's a very well-executed example of a genre. But it is a movie that it was somehow able to escape all of the traps that all of these other movies have gotten into and was able to make it out and to be a big commercial hit. Again, I think the executives are very encouraged by that. The audience is still there for that. I'll just give you the, it doesn't really have any racial politics or whatever, but it does have one thing, which is for people who haven't seen it. It was famously a movie originally that one of the major stars of it was O.J. Simpson playing a character named Nordberg, who got into all kinds of unlikely trouble. They do this scene where I'll just spoil one thing because it was extremely funny. Liam Neeson plays the son of the original main guy, Leslie Nielsen, in the movie. So Frank Drebin, and then Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. Then Liam's sidekick plays the son of Leslie Nielsen, the sidekick in the original movie. Then there's a young black guy on the team. Normally in a movie, it's like, "Okay, of course there's a young black guy on the team," but they do it really well, which is that they've got out in the hallway of the police station, the movie, they've got Leslie Nielsen's photo up on the, he passed away, so they got his photo up, and Liam Neeson does this thing where he kneels down and he's like, "Oh, father, I'm trying to live up to your expectations and trying to be a great police officer," and he's sobbing, and there's tears. Next to it is his sidekick with the sidekick's photo, and he's like, "Oh, father, I miss you so much, and I want to be a great cop." Then there's the black kid, and he's looking up at a photo of O.J. and he just looks at the camera and he just goes,

Marc: 是的。所以我觉得《裸枪》在某些方面简直是个小奇迹，原因有几个。首先，你看，它是40年前电影的续集。有多少人还记得原版《裸枪》电影？结果发现很多人都记得。它们是备受喜爱的电影，但事实也证明你可以拍出一部很棒的喜剧。它是一部精彩的喜剧。它非常有趣。它在商业上取得了成功。它在艺术上也取得了成功。它尊重了原版素材，但它也有自己那种令人眼花缭乱的荒诞感。我强烈推荐它。它非常有趣。但实际上，说到这一点，它也像《埃丁顿》一样，是一部“后信息”电影。这实际上，也许这是一个乐观的理由，那就是，如果你回顾时间线，那部电影最迟在22年，可能在21年就获得了批准。所以在每部电影都必须带有“信息”的巅峰时期，那部电影仍然获得了批准，并且一路顺利地制作完成，里面没有一丝“信息”的痕迹。它是一部纯粹的喜剧。它就像原版电影一样。它是一部纯粹的荒诞主义、现代制片厂风格的喜剧。连姆·尼森当然是反类型出演，他是一位杰出的喜剧演员，表现得非常出色。帕姆·安德森，80年代女性魅力的伟大偶像，这是她的大主角角色，她简直棒极了。她歇斯底里。她就像，她作为一个真实的人存在，她没有，她没有穿着，她就是，她就是以自然形态出现的完整女性。这太棒了。没有，没有那些，比如说，会引起问题的选角方面。没有剧本。它只是一部执行得非常出色的电影，它很轻易地可以在2012年或2008年或2002年制作出来。它并没有推动艺术向前发展。它是一个执行得非常出色的类型片范例。但它是一部不知何故能够逃脱所有其他电影陷入的陷阱，并成功制作出来并成为一部巨大的商业成功的电影。再次，我认为高管们对此非常鼓舞。观众仍然喜欢这种电影。我只是告诉你，它并没有真正的种族政治或其他什么，但它确实有一点，对于那些没看过的人来说。它最初是一部著名的电影，其中一位主要明星是O.J.辛普森，他扮演一个名叫诺德伯格的角色，他卷入了各种意想不到的麻烦。他们有一个场景，我只剧透一点，因为它非常有趣。连姆·尼森扮演电影中原版主角莱斯利·尼尔森的儿子。所以是弗兰克·德雷宾，然后连姆·尼森扮演小弗兰克·德雷宾。然后连姆的搭档扮演原版电影中搭档莱斯利·尼尔森的儿子。然后团队里有一个年轻的黑人。通常在电影里，你会觉得，“好吧，团队里当然有一个年轻的黑人，”但他们做得非常好，那就是在警察局的走廊里，电影里挂着莱斯利·尼尔森的照片，他去世了，所以他们挂了他的照片，然后连姆·尼森做了一个动作，他跪下来，说：“哦，父亲，我努力达到你的期望，努力成为一名优秀的警察，”他抽泣着，流着眼泪。旁边是他的搭档，旁边挂着搭档的照片，他说：“哦，父亲，我非常想念你，我想成为一名优秀的警察。”然后是那个黑人孩子，他抬头看着O.J.的照片，然后他看着镜头，然后他只是说，

Eric: Perfect perfection.

Eric: 完美，完美。

Marc: Absolutely perfect. Yes. So, yeah, comedies are good. Let me put in a plug for one more movie, "Fantastic Four."

Marc: 绝对完美。是的。所以，是的，喜剧很好。我再推荐一部电影，《神奇四侠》。

Katherine: No.

Katherine: 不。

Marc: Probably not. Fantastic Four is the most pro-family movie in Hollywood since I can't even remember. Katherine in particular, I think you'll be astonished.

Marc: 可能没有。自打我记事以来，《神奇四侠》是好莱坞最支持家庭的电影。凯瑟琳，我尤其认为你会感到惊讶。

Katherine: It's incredible. Come out.

Katherine: 太不可思议了。上映了。

Marc: What's that?

Marc: 什么？

Katherine: Did it come out?

Katherine: 上映了吗？

Marc: It came out this summer. It came out this summer. And Marvel, just for context, it's one of the big, it's one of the new Marvel tentpole properties. The Marvel machine did incredibly well from Iron Man in 2008 through Avengers Endgame in 2020. But for the last five years, many of the big Marvel projects have not done well, both the TV shows and the movies. You could argue different reasons why, but Critical Drinker would tell you it's because they became consumed by the message. Fantastic Four is, it's, and look, it's a diverse cast. It's got a lot of the modern stuff in it, but however, it's 100% pro-family in a very actually quite deep and moving way. So again, it's just, it's a little bit like, "Wow, they greenlit this thing in '20." Maybe again, maybe this reason, maybe I'm actually too cynical. Maybe in 2022, the filmmakers already realized what was happening, and so maybe they actually had their own version of the underground movement where they're like, "All right, it's time to start planting the seeds for what is going to come out of this whole thing when the panic subsides." You could say like Fantastic Four is a true audience-pleasing blockbuster from a studio that has been obsessed with the message that comes out and doesn't have a trace of it in it at all. Furthermore, it's 100% above. I wouldn't say it's not, I mean, it's a superhero movie, so it's not a political, I wouldn't say it has political content, per se, but it's 100% pro-family in a way that's very touching.

Marc: 今年夏天上映的。今年夏天上映的。漫威，就背景而言，它是漫威新的主要支柱IP之一。漫威机器从2008年的《钢铁侠》到2020年的《复仇者联盟：终局之战》都表现出色。但过去五年，许多大型漫威项目表现不佳，包括电视剧和电影。你可以争论不同的原因，但批判性饮酒者会告诉你，那是因为它们被“信息”所吞噬。《神奇四侠》是一部，而且你看，它有一个多元化的演员阵容。它有很多现代元素，但它以一种非常深刻和感人的方式，百分之百地支持家庭。所以再次，它有点像，“哇，他们在2020年就批准了这部电影。”也许再次，也许这个原因，也许我实际上太愤世嫉俗了。也许在2022年，电影制作人已经意识到正在发生什么，所以也许他们实际上有自己的地下运动版本，他们会说：“好吧，是时候开始为当恐慌消退时，这一切将产生的结果播下种子了。”你可以说《神奇四侠》是一部真正取悦观众的票房大片，它来自一个一直痴迷于“信息”的制片厂，但这部电影本身却丝毫没有“信息”的痕迹。此外，它百分之百地超越了。我不会说它不是，我的意思是，它是一部超级英雄电影，所以它不是一部政治电影，我不会说它本身具有政治内容，但它以一种非常感人的方式，百分之百地支持家庭。

Katherine: We'll put on the list.

Katherine: 我们会把它列入清单。

Marc: Do you think your kids will love it? Your kids love it. I took my 10-year-old, and he was as close to crying in a movie as I've ever seen him.

Marc: 你觉得你的孩子会喜欢吗？你的孩子会喜欢。我带我10岁的孩子去看了，他是我见过看电影时最接近哭泣的一次。

《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》：一部被回避的经典

Eric: Wow. Do you think Atlas Shrugged (艾茵·兰德的小说，探讨了个人主义、理性利己主义和自由放任资本主义的主题) or The Fountainhead (艾茵·兰德的小说，探讨了个人主义、理想主义和建筑师与社会冲突的故事) could get made today? And do you think there'd be an audience for it?

Eric: 哇。你觉得《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》(Atlas Shrugged: 艾茵·兰德的小说，探讨了个人主义、理性利己主义和自由放任资本主义的主题) 或《源泉》(The Fountainhead: 艾茵·兰德的小说，探讨了个人主义、理想主义和建筑师与社会冲突的故事) 今天还能拍出来吗？你觉得会有观众吗？

Marc: You know, it's funny. It's so funny. Especially Atlas. Atlas Shrugged has become, people who don't know, it's the famous Ayn Rand (一位俄裔美籍小说家、哲学家、剧作家和编剧，以其哲学体系“客观主义”而闻名) novel. It's her most successful novel. It's the novel that basically, it clearly is a great mythic American novel. It clearly clears that bar that we were talking about earlier. It is one of the great American novels. It's of a time and place, which is the 1950s, but it's written in a way that can be deliberately timeless. It's actually interesting how it's written because it's obsessed with railroads on the one hand, which makes it kind of look back to the 1800s. But it also has science fiction elements, and she did that, I think, deliberately so that it would have this timeless kind of, she's really talking about, it's a novel about people and the behavior of people. She does this thing where she abstracts the specific content of it in order to try to make it timeless, and I think it works quite well. The Fountainhead is another version of that. Atlas Shrugged basically is about American dynamism. It's American dynamism the movie. It's about industrialization and progress and science and going to the stars and achieving great things, and the societies that do that. The Fountainhead is more about, I would say, artistic achievement and artistic purity, and is similarly evocative. Both those novels are high up on the list of novels that will be very influential in 100 years. Both of those novels have been absolutely scathingly hated by every good cultural commentator and critic for the last, basically since they came out. Those novels are just attacked in the most vicious possible terms. Absolutely. In fact, famously, Whitaker Chambers (一位前共产主义者，后来成为保守派作家和《国家评论》杂志的编辑) , the reformed communist, reviewed Atlas Shrugged for National Review (一份美国保守派杂志，由威廉·F·巴克利创办) when it came out in the 1950s, and he basically called her a Nazi. In National Review, Whitaker Chambers, who became this famous right-winger, basically calls Ayn Rand a Nazi. Ayn Rand, of course, being a Jewish refugee from Russia. He said the novel quote "has the whiff of the gas chamber about it." Which by the way, it doesn't, but anyway, very unfair. But anyway, it's like your diversion to the Rotten Tomato scores of the critics versus the audience. Basically everybody who's read Atlas Shrugged loves it. Everybody who's criticized it for a living just despises it.

Marc: 你知道，这很有趣。这太有趣了。特别是《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》。对于不了解的人来说，《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》是艾茵·兰德 (Ayn Rand: 一位俄裔美籍小说家、哲学家、剧作家和编剧，以其哲学体系“客观主义”而闻名) 的著名小说。这是她最成功的小说。它基本上，它显然是一部伟大的神话般的美国小说。它显然达到了我们之前谈论的标准。它是伟大的美国小说之一。它有其特定的时代和地点，即20世纪50年代，但它的写作方式可以刻意做到永恒。它的写作方式实际上很有趣，因为它一方面痴迷于铁路，这让它有点回溯到19世纪。但它也有科幻元素，我认为她刻意这样做是为了让它具有这种永恒的特质，她实际上是在谈论，这是一部关于人和人的行为的小说。她这样做，将其中具体的内容抽象化，以试图使其永恒，我认为这做得相当好。《源泉》是另一种版本。 《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》基本上是关于美国活力的。它是关于工业化、进步、科学、走向星辰和成就伟大的事情，以及做到这些的社会。《源泉》更多地是关于，我想说，艺术成就和艺术纯粹性，同样具有启发性。这两部小说都在一百年后仍将具有巨大影响力的小说榜单上名列前茅。这两部小说自问世以来，基本上一直受到所有优秀的文化评论家和评论家的绝对尖刻憎恨。这些小说受到了最恶毒的攻击。绝对如此。事实上，著名的前共产主义者惠特克·钱伯斯 (Whitaker Chambers: 一位前共产主义者，后来成为保守派作家和《国家评论》杂志的编辑) 在20世纪50年代《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》问世时，为《国家评论》(National Review: 一份美国保守派杂志，由威廉·F·巴克利创办) 撰写评论，他基本上称她为纳粹。在《国家评论》中，惠特克·钱伯斯，这位著名的右翼分子，基本上称艾茵·兰德为纳粹。当然，艾茵·兰德是来自俄罗斯的犹太难民。他说这本小说“带有毒气室的味道”。顺便说一句，它没有，但无论如何，非常不公平。但无论如何，这就像你转向烂番茄评论家与观众评分的对比。基本上所有读过《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》的人都喜欢它。所有以批评它为生的人都鄙视它。

Marc: What's interesting about it, and maybe this is the importance of the novel, to your question, that aspect of it has lives today. Anybody today who, every time I've ever talked to anybody who's read Atlas Shrugged in the last five years, and they're like, "Wow, it's the novel about the world we live in." It's like, "Oh, I know that guy, and I know that guy, and I know that guy." These are all people, these are all archetypes of people we know who these people are, we know what they're doing. It's amazing how perceptive it is 60 or 80 years later, how primal she made it that it has that relevance. It is tremendously entertaining, and it's this sprawling narrative, and it's these incredible characters. So yeah, it very clearly ought to be a three-part movie or a huge budget, or it ought to be an eight-season, 10-episode, 80-episode total, lavish HBO show or something. But the cultural overlay of that, what it would take in Hollywood to do that, and the level of attack that you would come under, the level of savagery that you would encounter if you're the executive or the actor or whatever, I mean, it would be every bit as intense today as it was in the 1950s when the novel came out. That would be the great indication that we're in a really different world. I've talked to some folks in Hollywood about it. They all know it. They all understand this. They all know the novel. They're all very familiar with it. They all, by the way, love the idea of doing things that have pre-existing brands and audiences built in because that really reduces the risk. But if you really talk about it, it's a little bit like a hot stove, step away. It's very striking that a novel from 1953 can still be generating the hot stove reaction in 2025. It's pretty amazing.

Marc: 有趣的是，也许这就是这部小说的重要性，就你的问题而言，它的这一方面至今仍然存在。今天任何读过《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》的人，每次我与他们交谈，他们都会说：“哇，这本小说写的就是我们生活的世界。”就像是，“哦，我认识那个人，我认识那个人，我认识那个人。”这些人都是我们认识的人，都是我们知道他们是谁、他们在做什么的原型。令人惊讶的是，60或80年后，它仍然如此敏锐，她将其塑造得如此原始，以至于它具有这种相关性。它非常具有娱乐性，它是一个宏大的叙事，它有这些令人难以置信的角色。所以，是的，它显然应该是一部三部曲电影，或者一个巨大的预算，或者它应该是一个八季、每季10集、总共80集的奢华HBO剧集之类的。但它的文化覆盖，好莱坞要做到这一点需要付出什么，以及你将受到的攻击程度，如果你是高管或演员或其他什么，你将遇到的野蛮程度，我的意思是，它在今天会像20世纪50年代小说问世时一样激烈。那将是表明我们处于一个真正不同世界的巨大标志。我与好莱坞的一些人谈过这件事。他们都知道。他们都理解这一点。他们都了解这本小说。他们都非常熟悉它。顺便说一句，他们都喜欢做那些拥有现有品牌和内置观众的事情，因为这确实降低了风险。但如果你真的谈论它，它有点像一个热炉子，要避开。一本1953年的小说在2025年仍然能引起如此强烈的反应，这非常令人震惊。这相当惊人。

Katherine: And the flip side of that is because it's such a cult classic that people would come out in droves. It would make a lot of noise in a good way.

Katherine: 而另一方面，因为它是一部如此受欢迎的邪典经典，人们会蜂拥而至。它会以一种好的方式引起很大的轰动。

Marc: It would be the Silicon Valley version of the Minecraft movie. It would just be like, "Yep, we're all going."

Marc: 这将是硅谷版的《我的世界》电影。就像是，“是的，我们都要去。”

Marc: I don't know. Maybe it's not a big enough audience or whatever to, maybe that's not a big enough cult classic thing, but it, by the way, it sells, it's one of the bestselling novels of all time. It sells enormously well today. It sold well basically since it came out. It sells far better, I mean, it's one of these things, it sells far more copies this year than any well-reviewed novel that The New York Times Book Review talks about. And yet it is just so completely politically unacceptable that it's off the map. That would be the ultimate test. I would love to see it happen. I don't know. And by the way, maybe the answer here is AI. Maybe what we need is an AI system where you feed the novel in and it makes the movie. Which by the way, now that I say that, for sure that's going to happen. So maybe that's actually the answer.

Marc: 我不知道。也许受众不够多，或者说它不是一个足够大的邪典经典，但顺便说一句，它销量很好，它是有史以来最畅销的小说之一。它今天销量非常好。它基本上自出版以来就一直畅销。它的销量远超，我的意思是，它今年卖出的册数远超《纽约时报书评》提及的任何一部广受好评的小说。然而，它在政治上却完全不可接受，以至于被排除在外。那将是最终的考验。我很乐意看到它发生。我不知道。顺便说一句，也许这里的答案是人工智能。也许我们需要一个人工智能系统，你把小说输入进去，它就能制作电影。顺便说一句，我现在既然说了，那肯定会发生。所以也许这实际上就是答案。

Eric: Yeah. We were laughing offline about how someone was using Sora to make something that we thought was better than South Park. So it'll be interesting to see if a whole new crop of filmmaker democratizes the industry a little bit, that it's not just Hollywood, but it's people from all over, and studios don't have this monopoly over creation of high-quality stuff. So yeah, we'll see.

Eric: 是的。我们私下里开玩笑说，有人用Sora制作出我们认为比《南方公园》更好的东西。所以，看看新一代电影制作人是否能让这个行业稍微民主化一点，不再只是好莱坞，而是来自世界各地的人，而且制片厂不再垄断高质量内容的创作，这将很有趣。所以，是的，我们拭目以待。

《南方公园》与早期病毒式传播

Marc: Yeah. So South Park, let's close closing this, but just briefly on South Park. South Park was very much like what you're seeing with AI filmmaking right now, but in 1993. I remember when South Park, the original South Park came out in 1993, and it was significant. It was the first internet viral video ever. It was the first video, and this was pre-streaming, pre-YouTube, years before all of that. So it literally distributed at the time as a QuickTime movie. It was Apple's QuickTime (苹果公司开发的多媒体框架，用于处理数字视频、媒体剪辑、声音、文本、动画、音乐和交互式全景图像) video format, and it was a downloadable thing. If you wanted to download it on a modem, you had to leave the modem on for an hour or something to download this thing. What it was was it was a digital scan of a video Christmas card. There was an executive in Hollywood at the time that wanted to make his friends a special kind of Christmas card. So he hired these two basically scrappy young film students, Matt Stone and Trey Parker (美国动画师、编剧、导演、演员和作曲家，以共同创作动画情景喜剧《南方公园》而闻名), who had no credits and they were just kids and hadn't done anything yet. He hired them to, and he basically said, "Make the most offensive three-minute video Christmas card you could possibly imagine." With these kids, it was a technology at the time. What they did was they camcorders, digital camcorders are brand new. So they used digital camcorder, but then they did stop motion. They had no money, so they did stop motion animation using little cardboard, using literally construction paper characters. The reason the characters look like they do is because literally in the original thing, they were cut out of construction paper, and they were literally moved by hand frame to frame. Then the two kids did the voiceovers. But it was from the very beginning, it was the same characters, Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny (动画情景喜剧《南方公园》中的主要角色), in South Park, which is the town that these kids grew up in. It was a three-minute Christmas card, and it was Santa Claus versus Jesus (《南方公园》的早期短片，以圣诞老人和耶稣之间的功夫大战为主题). Santa Claus versus Jesus ended up in a full kung fu fight, complete with blood and body parts. So it was intended to be maximally offensive, but it was really funny. Somebody got, and literally it was sent out on videotape. Somebody actually scanned the videotape, which is actually hard to do, and then it went super viral on the internet and became big. So it's an example of everything I just described, the camcorder, that was the AI of its time. It let these kids who had no access or no knowledge even necessarily of traditional animation production methods to do this. When those kids actually then got their, they actually, it's a full studio now. It's been tremendously financially successful. They now have a complete state-of-the-art studio production facility. What they've used it for is they've used it to hyper-optimize computer models of the optimal recreation of the aesthetics of the construction paper. If you watch South Park episodes today, you see actually the characters have, there's actually a depth to the animation that shows the layers of the construction paper. It's all produced digitally today, but they've used state-of-the-art digital tools to reconstruct the physics of construction paper, 30 years later. So they were able to do that, and then obviously, they were maybe the most successful animation duo of the last 30 years. I think that the AI thing is we're right on the tipping point of that. To your point, maybe we actually just saw the first one. It's so toxic that it's hard to recommend that people watch it. But it is a South Park caliber level thing created in AI by somebody who didn't use any of the traditional techniques you use for animating anything. It was created entirely with Sora scene by scene. As a demonstration of technology, it's just obvious that that moment has now arrived. To your point, Eric, I do think for example, there's now actually a new form of political propaganda.

Marc: 是的。那么《南方公园》，我们用它来结束，但简单说一下《南方公园》。《南方公园》非常像你现在看到的AI电影制作，但那是在1993年。我记得1993年原版《南方公园》问世时，它意义重大。它是史上第一个互联网病毒视频。它是第一个视频，这还是在流媒体、YouTube出现之前，早了这些很多年。所以它当时实际上是以QuickTime电影的形式发布的。那是苹果的QuickTime (QuickTime: 苹果公司开发的多媒体框架，用于处理数字视频、媒体剪辑、声音、文本、动画、音乐和交互式全景图像) 视频格式，它是一个可下载的东西。如果你想用调制解调器下载它，你必须让调制解调器开着一个小时左右才能下载这个东西。它是一个视频圣诞卡的数字扫描件。当时好莱坞有一位高管想为他的朋友制作一种特殊的圣诞卡。所以他雇佣了两个基本上是穷困潦倒的年轻电影学生，马特·斯通和特雷·帕克 (Matt Stone and Trey Parker: 美国动画师、编剧、导演、演员和作曲家，以共同创作动画情景喜剧《南方公园》而闻名)，他们没有任何作品，只是孩子，还没有做过任何事情。他雇佣他们，他基本上说：“制作你能想象到的最冒犯人的三分钟视频圣诞卡。”对于这些孩子来说，那在当时是一种技术。他们做的是，数码摄像机是全新的。所以他们使用了数码摄像机，但随后他们做了定格动画。他们没有钱，所以他们用小纸板，实际上是用建筑纸制作的角色，做了定格动画。这些角色之所以看起来像现在这样，是因为在原版中，它们真的是用建筑纸剪出来的，而且真的是一帧一帧地手工移动的。然后这两个孩子做了配音。但从一开始，就是同样的角色，卡特曼、凯尔、斯坦和肯尼 (Cartman, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny: 动画情景喜剧《南方公园》中的主要角色)，在南方公园，也就是这些孩子长大的小镇。那是一张三分钟的圣诞卡，内容是圣诞老人大战耶稣 (Santa Claus versus Jesus: 《南方公园》的早期短片，以圣诞老人和耶稣之间的功夫大战为主题)。圣诞老人大战耶稣最终演变成一场全面的功夫大战，血肉横飞。所以它旨在最大限度地冒犯人，但它真的很有趣。有人得到了，而且它真的是通过录像带发送出去的。有人真的扫描了录像带，这实际上很难做到，然后它在互联网上超级病毒式传播，变得非常流行。所以它是一个例子，我刚才描述的一切，摄像机，那就是它那个时代的人工智能。它让这些没有接触过，甚至不一定了解传统动画制作方法的孩子做到了这一点。当这些孩子后来真正得到了他们的，他们现在实际上是一个完整的制片厂了。它在经济上取得了巨大的成功。他们现在拥有一个完整的、最先进的制片厂生产设施。他们用它来做什么呢？他们用它来超优化计算机模型，以最佳方式重现建筑纸的美学。如果你今天看《南方公园》的剧集，你会发现角色实际上有，动画实际上有深度，显示出建筑纸的层次。它今天都是数字制作的，但他们使用了最先进的数字工具来重建建筑纸的物理特性，30年后。所以他们能够做到这一点，然后显然，他们可能是过去30年最成功的动画二人组。我认为人工智能这件事，我们正处于它的转折点。就你所说的，也许我们实际上刚刚看到了第一个。它太毒了，很难推荐人们去看。但它确实是人工智能创造的《南方公园》级别的作品，创作者没有使用任何传统的动画技术。它完全是Sora逐场景制作的。作为技术演示，很明显那个时刻已经到来。就你所说的，埃里克，我确实认为，例如，现在实际上有一种新形式的政治宣传。

Marc: At Lucent the World, which is the basically the custom produced, basically South Park-ish, video series, and AI is going to make that so easy for people to do. You're going to be able to do, anybody in any electoral race is going to be able to hire some kid to do things like this. So it's going to be like this, I don't know, decentralized satire or something like that.

Marc: 在Lucent the World，它基本上是定制制作的，有点像《南方公园》风格的视频系列，而人工智能将使人们做这件事变得如此容易。你将能够做到，任何选举中的任何人都可以雇佣一些孩子来做这样的事情。所以它会像，我不知道，去中心化的讽刺之类的东西。

Eric: And so, yeah, the moment has arrived, the art form shifts again.

Eric: 所以，是的，那一刻已经到来，艺术形式再次转变。

Katherine: On that note, we got to let you go. But this has been a fantastic episode of "Monitoring the Situation." Thanks so much for coming on, Mark.

Katherine: 话虽如此，我们得让你走了。但这期“监控情况”节目非常精彩。马克，非常感谢你的到来。

Marc: All right. Fantastic. Situation monitored.

Marc: 好的。太棒了。情况已监控。