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March 22, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:22
Jason Blum | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 87
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Hollywood created a certain way information is consumed.
One of the reasons Trump, President Trump, was elected was because The way that we consume information has been changed by the media industry across Hollywood and New York.
A couple sets up a camera in their home to capture a supernatural presence haunting them.
A family fights to survive the night when the U.S.
government makes all crime legal for 12 hours.
A black man goes to his white girlfriend's house and discovers their sinister plans for black people.
These are just a few of the high-concept films produced by Blumhouse Productions, founded by Jason Blum.
At 35, Jason Blum moved to Los Angeles and found himself producing a micro-budget horror film called Paranormal Activity.
The film ended up being made for only $15,000, and then soared to over $190 million at the box office, making it one of the most profitable films of all time.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and Jason's production company, Blumhouse Productions, holds many of these staggering box office records, Academy Awards for Whiplash, Get Out, and Black Klansman, as well as the record for the biggest wide-release box office flop from the major studio.
Jason credits his success and his ability to take risks with his business model of low-budget, high-concept films, generally of the horror variety.
He likes to stay relevant and stay political.
His latest film, The Hunt, focuses on a group of wealthy elites hunting deplorables for sport.
The original marketing of the film received a ton of backlash, even garnering flack from President Trump himself.
Following the awful news of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas last August, Jason pulled the film from its original release date.
But there's been tremendous buzz about the film ever since, now being marketed as how quote, the most talked about movie of the year, is one that no one's actually seen.
Today in our conversation, we talk all about the controversy surrounding the release of The Hunt, how liberal biases affect Hollywood, and the trial of Jason's colleague and former boss, Harvey Weinstein.
Hey, hey, and welcome.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show, Sunday special.
Very excited to welcome to the show today, Jason Blum.
Just a reminder, we'll be doing some bonus questions at the end with Jason.
The only way to get access to that part of the conversation is to become a member.
Head on over to dailywire.com, become a member, and you'll have access to all of the full conversations with every one of our awesome guests.
Jason, thanks so much for joining the show, dude.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Braving coronavirus and everything.
Corona, corona, corona, corona.
And by the way, the fallout from coronavirus will probably not be anywhere near as bad as the fallout from you actually being here in the first place.
Correct.
I think that's absolutely true.
I'm ready.
I'm ready for a wave of hatred.
I mean, really, I have to ask you, how are you going to deal with that?
Because we have had Hollywood figures who have come in here in the past.
And some of them, like Larry Wilmore was on the show, no problem.
He was totally fine with the blowback.
And we've had some Hollywood figures who have come in here, and I've warned them, keep it on the down low.
And then they sort of let the cat out of the bag.
The world collapses in on them, and they freak out.
I guess, not to turn it back to The Hunt, but it will naturally go back to The Hunt.
The Hunt is about just that.
The Hunt is about, the country is so polarized.
And I had, you know, I did a lot of research on you before I came in here because I was told that.
And I looked at what you've said and done.
And all you've expressed is a conservative point of view.
I believe a lot of things that are different than you.
Probably we have many more things that are in common and share many more beliefs than our political beliefs.
And the idea that we can't talk to each other or I can't go on your show makes me furious.
So I want... I've been looking forward to it.
I'm ready for the blowback because it doesn't... I am on the other side of the aisle that you are, but there are people who are on my side who are, I think, way, way too far out there, and people who are on your side are too far out there, and we gotta kinda...
Come together and talk to each other, even if we disagree about things.
That's my belief.
That's why I made a hunt.
That's why I'm here with you.
Well, I mean, I really appreciate that, because obviously that is something that I believe, too.
It's one of the reasons we do the show, and it's one of the things that was so amazing when you first released the trailer for The Hunt.
It was perfectly obvious.
I mean, really, just from the trailer.
This was not meant to be what a lot of people on the right, including President Trump, immediately took it to be.
So for those who don't remember, the trailer for The Hunt comes out.
It is very obvious from the trailer for The Hunt that it is basically a comedic remake of The Most Dangerous Game with Folks on the wild left hunting down rednecks on the right, hunting down the red state Trump supporters.
And it's not supposed to be a wish fulfillment of the left.
It is, I mean, obvious from the trailer.
And the right immediately takes that as, no, no, no, this is just typical Hollywood wish fulfillment.
It's a bunch of people rooting for Hillary Swank playing the Upper West Side liberal, shooting down these good, noble Americans from the heartland.
And it was clear that wasn't what it was from the first place.
Were you kind of surprised by the reaction?
Yeah, I was totally surprised.
I was totally taken off guard.
If I had anticipated the reaction, we would have had different marketing materials because the reaction was so strong.
We took the movie off the schedule because of current events, but the current events were magnified by the politics around it.
We weren't looking for controversy.
The Purge is a very controversial subject, but people see that as a movie and it's this crazy scenario that would never happen.
And for some reason, the hunt hit a nerve that we didn't anticipate.
And yeah, we got massive blowback from the right.
And what I was frustrated about is that no one had seen the movie.
People ask about the president.
I said, I'd love the president to see the movie.
And the second time around, the way we introduced it is we showed it to the media before we did our marketing.
So I think people understood the movie and the movie really makes fun of both sides.
The movie does not take sides politically.
No, it really doesn't.
I want to get into a little bit more of that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so let's talk about the hunt itself.
So, again, I hadn't seen the movie.
It was obvious from the trailer what it was and what it was not, but then I saw the movie and then it was clearly what the trailer was, meaning it makes fun of both sides.
The way I've described it to people is it's basically a Mel Brooks film with extraordinary levels of violence.
That's right.
And for conservatives who have been complaining for years about the standards of political correctness in Hollywood, have been complaining no one will ever make Blazing Saddles again, nobody will ever be able to make The Producers again.
This is a movie that really sort of revels in the stereotypes on both sides, and is making the argument that those stereotypes are basically stupid.
That there are people who live up to the stereotypes, but that is not the majority of people, and that if you see everybody as the stereotype, then you're missing the entire point of the American debate.
I think that's a fair way of characterizing the film.
A hundred percent.
That's exactly how I'd characterize it.
And I would also say that I...
One of the things I agree with The Right about is that I think a lot of Hollywood, including myself, I would say, is out of touch with America, with the taste of America.
And that bothers me, too.
And that's another reason I love this movie, because it felt like every so often there's a movie that's like a red state movie.
This is not that.
And they're movies like Clint Eastwood, for instance.
And there shouldn't be red state, blue state movies.
There should be good movies, you know?
And so, I don't know.
That spins around in my head, and that's why I wanted to make Well, I mean, that does bring me to a question about how the movie process works in terms of politics.
So I wrote an entire book a while back about bias in Hollywood, particularly in TV industry.
There are a lot of folks in Hollywood, some who actually will openly acknowledge that they won't hire conservatives, that they will be just perfectly open about that.
The complaint from a lot of folks on the right is that the system in Hollywood is systemically biased against conservatives, that you can't make conservative film, that if you are openly conservative in Hollywood, there will be blowback to you.
What do you make of that critique of Hollywood in terms of its political insularity?
I think that there's... I mean, I can't believe that someone would admit to not hiring a conservative, first of all, but also, secondly, just not hire a conservative.
I mean, if you said that about anything, anybody, any other kind of group of people, you would be arrested.
So I think that's very sad.
I think there is somewhat of a bias.
I think that that's true.
And I think that the bias doesn't take into account the audience.
And we try and take that into account.
I mean, that is clear from the movie.
Some of the jokes in the movie are really over the top, and they're meant to be over the top.
And now that people have seen the movie, what has been the reaction?
I know my reaction was the same before and after I saw the movie, because it lived up to what I thought it was going to be.
Were you surprised by some of the media reaction to the movie?
Because on Rotten Tomatoes, it's hovering in the sweet spot of where actual good movies live, which is somewhere between 50 and 70 percent.
It's getting close.
It's getting close to fresh.
On Rotten Tomatoes, I have a rule.
The rule is that with very few exceptions, if it's between 95 and 100 percent, the movie's terrible.
If it's between 0 and 45 percent, the movie is also likely terrible.
If the movie is between 45 and 60, there's like a 50-50 shot that it's actually pretty good.
If it's between 60 and 80, that's the sweet spot of, you know, it's going to be an actual good movie.
Right.
I like that.
I think that's funny.
We're close to your sweet spot.
Yeah, we're about 55.
Actually, I thought the movie would be better reviewed.
I really did.
I thought we'd get better reviews on the movie.
You were too fair.
I mean, I'll be honest with you.
I know why.
Why?
Really, the answer is because you made jokes about people who don't like having jokes made about them, right?
The movie actually is making fun of the critics.
I mean, a lot of the critics have viewpoints about Red State America that are actually the parody of what It's exactly what you're parodying.
So a lot of people see that and they go into that high dodging, that's not funny kind of stuff.
But of course, it is funny.
All the stuff that the right finds funny.
It's a movie that is geared to please no one and piss off everyone in a certain way.
Exactly.
Which I think is the point of the film.
And that if you can get past that and just enjoy it, then we'll be a better country for it.
And I totally agree with that.
If you can laugh at yourself and laugh at the other guy, you're going to be better off than otherwise.
And you'll listen to each other more.
I think we've stopped listening to each other.
Both sides, no one listens.
Everyone talks at each other and no one listens.
And I think one of the ways to get people to listen, and we're not going to accomplish big things unless we're working together, and one of the ways to get people to listen is to make jokes.
And if you can make jokes and laugh at yourself and laugh at the other side, just like you said, you start to listen and maybe find a way, some kind of compromise to work forward on different things.
I mean, frankly, one of the reasons I was impressed with the film is because, so it's written by Damon Lindelof, who obviously is of the political left.
And then I don't know Nick Hughes' politics.
He's Carlton's son, correct?
He's a Republican.
Okay, so right.
So I've met Carlton before.
I actually interviewed him briefly.
And so the cross the aisle writing of it, that's evident.
Like I was going to say, if I were a Democrat, I would have been And we weren't interested in doing that.
We weren't interested in lacerating one side.
like who wrote what part of the film.
Right, right.
And it really, it does hit on a lot of those themes.
And so I wanted to congratulate you on that because it's so easy to fall into the trap of only making jokes about one side.
This is really, really well done on that score.
Yeah, oh good, yeah.
And we weren't interested in doing that.
We weren't interested in lacerating one side.
We were interested in lacerating both.
So I want to talk about sort of the movies that you produce more broadly.
Sure.
Also, so you have a unique film production strategies, which is you don't make these huge 50 to 100 million dollar blockbuster movies.
Your strategy is to pick good scripts that don't cost a fortune, then just make a fortune off of them.
So how exactly did you hit on the strategy?
I mean, because you have the money, obviously, the cash flow.
How did you hit on the strategy of making movies that are in this sort of low budget to mid budget sweet spot, as opposed to the big movies, the big tentpole flicks?
Yeah, so I was Working in the movie business for about 15 years, from 20 to 35, and I kind of had one foot in independent film and one foot in studio film.
And really what you're talking about is the difference between independent and studio movies in terms of budgets.
Average independent movies, 4 or 5 million dollars.
Average studio movies, 75 million dollars.
And I never was comfortable in either space.
And I was really frustrated by the way studio films are produced, but I loved the way studio films were distributed.
I made a crazy, I'm not crazy, I made an unusual movie for me called The Tooth Fairy, starring The Rock, right?
That's the only studio film I ever made.
And I had this very frustrating experience making the movie, but I saw how a studio distributed a movie.
I thought that was amazing.
Because my only experience in distribution had been independent distribution.
Independent distribution is broken.
It's one person kind of drawing a DVD box and making the poster and making it's just so it's so hard to compete with the studios.
And at that time, when I was 35, two movies that I worked on, very different movies, Paranormal Activity and The Tooth Fairy, came out at the same time.
And the great and lucky thing that I had to happen to me during my career was that Paranormal Activity happened to me after I'd been at it for 15 years.
And after I had that hit movie, Hollywood says, because Hollywood is addicted to money, Hollywood says, if you have a hit, make a more expensive movie.
That's what every agent tells their director.
You directed a $20 million movie, now you're ready for an $80 million movie hit.
And I think that's garbage.
I think the larger the budget of a movie, like I said, I didn't like doing bigger, but the more every creative decision is by committee, the way you choose movies when they're $100 million plus is they have to be like other movies that were successful, and they have to feel like those movies.
Three successful movies have to feel like that in the last five years.
When you make low-budget movies, it's the opposite.
You can totally take risks.
You can hire directors who aren't hot.
You can hire actors who aren't famous.
You can tell stories where the lead character gets shot 30 minutes into the movie.
You can take creative risks.
So to your point, obviously I could make expensive movies now, but I don't have any interest in making expensive movies.
I like working with low budgets and doing subversive Crazy things.
And sometimes they're like The Hunt or Get Out or Split and they really hit.
And sometimes they don't.
But when they don't, we don't have to close our company.
We just keep going.
We release the movie straight to streaming and we keep moving on.
And I love that.
I mean, this seems so obvious.
Why hasn't the rest of Hollywood caught on to any of this?
Why are they banking on these 200 million dollar movies that the Doctor Dolittles of the world when they can lose their shirts on?
Well, I think it's a complicated, a little more complicated than this, but a big part of it is ego.
And this idea of success means expensive.
Like, if you're a big hot shop producer, you should be producing $150 million movies.
And as silly as that sounds, that's a big part of it.
Now, obviously, tentpole movies are a big part of the movie business, and Marvel movies, and Pixar movies, and Lucas, you know, Disney, it's a big, important part of the business.
But it gets too much attention.
I think because Hollywood thinks bigger is better.
How do you make choices about which sort of movies you want to do?
So one of the big critiques of especially a lot of tentpole films now is that there almost seems to be a quota as far as we need this many women in the movie or we need this many minorities in the movies, that we need to make movies with this particular level of messaging in order to please the critics.
And so you end up with this sort of These movies that are politically designed to please everyone and end up actually pissing off everybody, right?
It's in the Marvel movies where they'll sort of say, OK, well, we don't have enough gay characters, so we need a gay character.
So we'll throw in this little hint of a gay character right here, just enough so that GLAAD won't be on our ass.
And then not enough that it actually pisses off the 13-year-olds who are coming to the movie, or their parents, more importantly.
So how do you decide how to make, because you're making controversial films.
I mean, films that have something to say about our politics.
I would say The Hunt is pleasing to people on the right, but obviously the politics of Get Out.
I mean, I did a review of Get Out on my show.
I said it's a beautifully made film.
I mean, the politics enraged me.
I thought the politics of Get Out, I was like, I don't understand what, like, I had serious problems, obviously, with the politics of Get Out.
I mean, I thought that the racial themes of it were deeply off-putting to me.
But you're taking those kinds of risks, so how do you decide which scripts you're interested in doing?
Well, I think, to your point, when you're making a movie that, when you're making movies that are that big, they have to appeal to four quadrants, you know?
So, very specifically, we have a meeting on Monday morning, we look at a script, we all come in, we talk about it on Monday morning.
Someone has to love it, I have to love it, or someone at the company has to love it.
We have to think it's scary or unnerving in some way, because that's kind of what Blumhouse means to us or to me.
But then the fourth thing is, which is what I was talking about before, which is very different from how a studio greenlights a movie, is it has to feel new and different.
And if a studio has a movie for a hundred—if I was running a studio and it was a $100 million movie and my executive head of production said, this feels great— It's new and different.
I'd say for a hundred million dollars over my dead body.
Right.
So I'm not, it's the only way it's not the studio system.
It's just if budgets are that big, it's irresponsible to take risks creatively, big swings creatively, but you can take them on low budget movies.
So right now, obviously, we're watching as coronavirus unfolds.
Theaters in China are largely shut down.
That obviously provides an enormous amount of money to Hollywood.
You have theaters in the United States likely are going to shut down.
If not en masse, then people are just not going because big crowds are bad right now.
So, how does this change the model of Hollywood?
Hollywood is already suffering with the movement from theater screenings to streaming.
Streaming is an absolute threat to theaters, obviously.
The revenue is moving in that direction.
It's unclear whether that's even sustainable because Netflix is shelling out billions of dollars in making, basically just throwing anything at the wall that they hope can stick.
Where do you see the future of Hollywood going?
You see it fragmenting into a bunch of streaming services.
Do you think that theatrical film is basically going to die?
Where do you see all this going?
I think it's not realistic to think all the studios are going to wait four months before they put a movie at home.
They just can't compete with, they're going to have to compete with Amazon and Netflix and Apple in a different way.
So I think that's changing.
I think in the beginning of your question, I think, I don't know what's going to happen, but definitely, you know, one of the funny Corona is going to have much bigger effects on a lot of other things.
But in terms of to answer your question, it's going to fundamentally, I think, affect the movie business because of not just while it happens, but when we're through it, which hopefully will be sooner rather than later.
There are going to be shifts.
There are going to be shifts.
The consumer is going to be more used to staying at home.
Something is going to give.
There has to be something that's going to happen post-corona.
I don't know what it is.
We're one day, two days into it.
But I definitely agree with you that the movie business will look different after the coronavirus.
With all that said, how does that impact genres like horror?
So horror is a genre that almost demands to be seen with other people because the feeling of dread that exists when you watch a movie on your own, like if you're streaming a movie and you can just pause it at the scary part and go to the bathroom, that obviously radically changes how you film, how you see any of these films.
The horror movie experience does require somebody in the back of the theater shouting, don't go into that, don't open that door.
So how does that change the movie making from your perspective?
Well, I don't think theaters are ever going to go away.
I think people are going to go to movie theaters to see movies, just like people go pay $300 to see live theater when they could go to a movie, or people still go to the movies when TV was invented.
I think the collective experience of going to a theater and taking in a movie, I think that's going to be around for a long time.
I think there'll be less movies in theaters.
There'll be maybe less of a selection.
Or I should say, there'll be many, many fewer movies in theaters with a window.
And I think there may be many more movies in theaters, but they only last for a week or two.
And I think horror, it was going to continue to work.
I think I'm safe anyway.
For better or for worse, kids are going to want to go collectively to a movie theater to be scared at a horror movie.
And to your point, horror specifically is, people watch it on streaming, but it is almost impossible to be scared watching a horror movie on streaming.
Less for the break, but more because almost any other genre, other filmmakers would be very mad if I said this, but almost any other genre, you can look down and look at an email and look up, you're not going to miss too much.
But the way, you might, maybe on comedy with a joke, but maybe I think even horror is more.
The way a scare, a good scare, the way James Wan or Lee Wannell does a scare, it's super choreographed.
You have to be paying attention all the way up to the scare for the scare to work.
And if you look away for 10 seconds, a minute before the scare happens, the scare won't be scary.
So in that way, you know, you're really right.
Like watching a scary movie at home, it's never going to be scary or never going to be nearly as scary as it is in the movie theater because people don't lose their focus when they're in the theater.
I mean, horror is immersive in a way that other genres just don't have to be.
Because as you say, like you could look away from the screen on any of these other movies.
You do that like right before the jump scare and you miss the entire jump scare.
Yeah, exactly.
Or even if you look So looking forward to sort of what the streaming services are experiencing.
So if you look away five minutes before the jump scare, then you see the jump scare.
You're not going to think it's scary.
So looking forward to sort of what the streaming services are experiencing.
So there are a lot of folks right now who are saying, you know, now's a great time to buy stock in the streaming services.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, because everybody's going to be spending tons of time at home and they're going to be streaming everything.
But at the same time, right, I mean, just before this coronavirus panic happened, there was a lot of talk about whether Netflix was even going to be viable into the midterm, just because how are they even making their revenue?
Like there are only a certain number of people on planet Earth who are going to be paying into that service.
And they are expending such enormous amounts of money to bring new content all the time.
And also because of the binging effect, you have to generate so much content.
Because everything is now generated in 10 hour blocks as opposed to two hour blocks, how can you continue to pay people this much money in terms of production fee and then continue to maintain a studio?
Something has to give here. - I don't know on Netflix.
They had their first mover advantage.
There's a lot more people left.
They're going to have 200 million subscribers.
It's a lot of revenue.
They were smarter than everybody else for so long.
No one took them seriously.
They ate everyone else's lunch.
And in a recession, I don't think you're canceling your $12.
You're not going to go to the theater.
But you're definitely not canceling your $12 subscription to Netflix.
So I don't know.
I think they're here for the long run.
They haven't been profitable yet, though.
And that'll be interesting to when that when that has to happen.
It'll be interesting to see how it changes.
And I do wonder if, you know, they because of the first mover advantage, they did have that significant advantage.
But now you see other services.
I mean, you've got Hulu out there, which is now part of Disney Plus.
And you've got you've got Quibi.
I mean, like literally a thousand different versions of streaming.
And and so you're basically duplicating your cable package.
Exactly.
Sixty five dollars a day.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So that is sort of the worry for Netflix.
I suppose that could generate a lot of competition for some of the movies that you're making from all these services.
Yeah.
I think the worry for Netflix, too, is as you have so much choice in streaming, why are you not going to subscribe to Netflix for a month, watch what you need to watch, cancel, then do Apple.
Oh, there you go.
So I think they're going to start seeing that, too.
And we don't know how that data is reported when they say X amount of subscribers.
Does that mean they're subscribing all the time or part of the time?
Maybe that's public.
Like, I don't know. - So you obviously like doing films with a political orientation.
What drives you towards sort of the controversial and the political as opposed to just the art?
'Cause you've made stuff that really is not political. - For sure.
- And is wonderful.
I mean, I've been a huge fan of the film Whiplash since it first came out.
- Oh, thank you. - I bought it on DVD, I then bought it on streaming.
I mean, it really is fantastic.
- Love it, thank you. - I've recommended it to everybody.
I put it in my top 10 list of the last 10 years.
- Wow, thank you.
It's fantastic.
- Fantastic, so what makes you want to do political film and step into the hornet's nest? - I don't, I wanna do good, scary, entertaining, visceral, fun movies, that's first and foremost.
If there happens to be kind of a, I'm a political person, if there happens to be a political bent to it, I'm attracted to that, but it's not a priority It's not a mandate for the company.
My executives aren't sitting with filmmakers saying, like, what issue do you want?
Issue-oriented movie do you want to do?
There are companies that do that.
We do not.
I would even go so far as to say if I'm sitting with a director and they say, like, you know, you made Get Out.
You made The Purge.
You made The Hunt.
Like, I want to do a political movie.
I want to do it about X.
Topic I want to do about global warming.
I say we're in trouble because You can't I think it's virtually impossible to make a fun entertaining movie and think of the topic first I think you have to think of it.
What what's in your heart?
That's like super scary and whatever and if you can fold politics into that Jordan thinks about race all the time clearly He was he was brought up by mixed-race parents And so he thinks about it's something that is on his mind all the time So get out came out of his head, but right in the key and peel sketches, obviously Yeah, clearly.
Obviously.
Obviously.
But I don't think... It has to be organic to the artist.
It can't be like...
Just like I said, I want to make a story about global warming.
I'm going to make a scary story about it.
I'll tell you a funny story.
Where we did exactly that is Barry Levinson lives on the Chesapeake Bay, which is very polluted, and he wanted to make a documentary about the Chesapeake Bay.
And his agent said, you know, you should make a documentary.
You should make a horror movie about the Chesapeake Bay, and many more people will see it.
We made it.
It's called The Bay.
Nobody saw it.
So it doesn't work.
It's funny you should say this, because this has been my lead advice to conservatives who say they want to get into film.
So one of the great complaints of conservatives about Hollywood, again, is not only that it's politically biased, but why aren't there more conservative films that get made?
And what I always say to them is because conservatives have kind of a dolphin brain when it comes to entertainment, which is they say that they are interested in conservative entertainment, but then when it comes time to fund it, they're like, well, I'd actually rather invest in fracking.
And then when it comes to what they want to watch, what they actually want to watch is the same stuff that everybody else Wants to watch.
And so, the only kind of films that you can get conservatives to pledge to see are either openly religious films, so it's basically an altar call, or politically overt films where, again, it's sort of, like, you'll do better off a documentary that's openly conservative than anything that's subtle.
Because there are films that have fairly conservative themes.
I mean, one of my colleagues here, Andrew Klavan, famously suggested that The Dark Knight had some pretty conservative themes about government surveillance and the role of government surveillance in American society and all of this.
But conservatives, Who are interested in film tend to think of the thematic first, because they're thinking through that prism.
They should think of their childhood first, or their, you know, some intimate story, or some story that they're attached to.
And then, if they're interested in getting conservative values out there in entertainment, that will bleed through.
But they have to think of the story first.
So how did you get into this industry in the first place?
I graduated college in 1991, and my roommate was Noah Baumbach, who's a writer-director.
He and I were roommates in college, and we were roommates in Chicago.
We lived in Chicago.
I sold cable TV door-to-door to support myself, which was amazing.
Commission only, I would say.
I learned more about producing from doing that than anything else.
And Noah wrote this script, which was initially called Fifth Year, which is about four guys who loved college so much they made up excuses to say they're an extra year.
It was clearly about all of us.
And I got that movie made through various hustling.
I got the movie made.
And that kind of started, it came out, it was called Kicking and Screaming.
We changed the title.
And I'm an associate producer.
And it got me a job at a little company called Arrow.
And that's how my career started.
How did that progress into what you do now?
I mean, you're the head of one of the biggest studios in the-- It progressed.
Let's see.
So I worked at Arrow.
I graduated from cable television to real estate.
I got my real estate license in New York.
I rented apartments in New York, which I also loved, which was also great training to be a producer.
A producer is really a seller.
After I left Arrow, I went to work for Miramax.
I worked for Miramax from 1995 to 2000.
I always wanted my own company, and I moved to L.A.
in 2000.
I produced a bunch of independent movies, most of which were really, really not good.
And then this connects to where we started, which is I got to being 35.
I got lucky enough to get involved with paranormal activity and kind of forced the tooth fairy to happen.
And that was the genesis of Blumhouse.
When those two movies came out, I stepped back.
I said, hey, I think that what I want to do is make low budget scary movies because you can get a studio to release them, but make them weird and different and subversive.
And I always say that we kind of sneak these Sundance dramas almost into the skin of a genre movie to get them distributed.
And that's that's what we do.
We do 50 percent of our business now is movies and 50 percent is television.
But our television company really only started about three or four years ago.
So that's relatively new.
But now I spend about half in TV and half in movies.
Were you always a horror guy?
I mean, in terms of the stuff that you liked?
No, no, I wasn't.
I was always a, a funny thing is I was always a horror guy in my heart.
In other words, I have a lot in common with people in the storytelling horror world with our directors.
I'm weird.
I'm here on your show.
I do things against the grain.
I was kind of, I was not kind of, I was definitely a loser in high school.
You know, I did weird, collected my fingernails when I was a kid.
Like, I was a weird kid.
And horror, people in horror are odd.
So in that way, I was always a horror person.
But I did not grow up loving horror movies.
I loved movies.
I loved, Friday the 13th scared me to death, you know.
But I found, it was funny, when I did Paranormal Activity, I was like, oh gosh, this is what I should be doing.
This is where I belong.
And you know, when I have the opportunity now to do Um, movies that sway away from it, um, I have occasionally.
I always think they're a little connected.
Even Black Klansmen, you know, they're about dark subjects.
They're about scary things.
Roger Ailes, to me, scary.
Maybe less scary to you.
Um, and, uh... It depends which part of Roger Ailes you're talking about.
Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.
I just found my home with scary stuff.
So who are your own creative influences?
Like what were the movies that you were going to go in?
Hitchcock is the...
He's our great, you know, when I think of a model movie and the movies that we're trying to...
I don't want to say...
I guess tip our hat to.
It's always Hitchcock movies.
Regardless of your feelings about Get Out, I feel like Get Out was very...
Oh no, it's a beautifully made movie.
Beautifully made movie.
There are shots that are obviously straight from it.
I mean, there's a vertigo.
The famous shot of him falling through the darkness is obviously directly from vertigo.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So it's a very Hitchcockian feeling.
So we have to talk about your politics, since obviously we're talking about the politics of the hunt.
So you look at the state of politics in America right now, and you said earlier that you think that there's more that brings us together than sort of divides us.
It's a contention that I think is largely true.
I used to place a lot of my faith in people who are politically oriented for the future of the country, and now I think that all the people who pay no attention to politics are basically That's our future.
The only hope for the country.
I agree!
I think so too!
I think so too!
The more informed you are, the more you hate the people on the other side.
Yes, I think so too.
I agree.
I completely agree with that.
So, where would you characterize your own politics?
Me?
I'm definitely, I'm a Democrat for sure.
That's what I believe in.
I believe I should pay higher taxes.
I think rich people should pay more taxes.
I'm rich.
expenditure side or more on the social policy side?
I believe I should pay higher taxes.
I think rich people should pay more taxes.
I'm rich.
I think I should pay more taxes.
I think the government should provide a safety net, which I know is different than what Republicans think.
I think if people can't manage in society for what whatever reason, they're lazy or any other reason that you could come up with, if they're on the street, we should take care of them in the most basic way.
But everyone in this super rich country should at least have a room to live in and a hot meal or whatever.
And I would be more than happy if me and all my rich friends paid more taxes to help that happen.
So California is the perfect state for you.
So how's it going out here?
Not going very well.
I have grown up here my entire life.
It's not going very well.
I was happy to live here until I got hit with that 13.3% top tax rate, and I looked around at the fact that the government services that I supposedly am paying for have not materialized in any actual way.
It was going better a couple of years ago.
It's not going very well.
It's very frustrating.
California is extremely frustrating.
They have the biggest tax base, they have more money than everybody else, and we have terrible social problems.
I mean, it is pretty horrendous.
And I mean, again, I think on principle, very few people disagree with the idea that we need to take care of people who literally can't take care of themselves.
For any reason.
So there's the difference.
There's the reason.
I think if you're lazy, it's on you.
If you're lazy and you want to live on $20,000 a year...
I think you should be entitled to live on $20,000.
I think if you're lazy then you should get off your ass and get a job.
That's where we disagree.
This is our main divide right here.
That might be our main thing.
You may have a slight incentivization problem.
Andrew Yang and you, you'll get along.
I love Andrew.
I love Andrew.
The only charming person left in American politics.
I agree.
I loved a lot of his ideas.
of a lot of his ideas.
And actually like a real person.
Like we asked every single Democratic contender to come on the show.
Not a single one would except for Andrew.
Good for him.
And he was great.
He was great.
I think he's terrific.
I loved him.
I have big hopes for him in the future.
Yeah, no, I hope that he runs for mayor of New York.
Me too.
I think it would be a lot he'd be better than de Blasio.
I mean, it's hard to think.
I do not like the mayor of New York.
Well, it's on the slate You have a bunch of movies that are coming out.
On the slate is, so we have The Purge later this summer, I hope, subject to corona.
And then we have the next Halloween movie.
We're going to do three Halloween movies, so the middle one is in October.
And then we have one more next year, which I'm super excited about.
On the TV side, we have this show about John Brown called Good Lord Bird.
Super pumped about this.
And I told you before the show, I wrote a script on Sean Brown.
I'm super into the John Brown story.
Amazing.
And you showed me a little bit of the preview.
It looks unbelievable.
Yeah, secret show of the trailer.
Ethan Hawke plays John Brown and I think, I'm really excited about it.
I think it's going to be really cool.
Well, Ethan Hawke as John Brown is just fantastic casting because he is slightly off.
He is a little John Brownish.
What you showed me in the preview is just amazing.
Oh, good.
It's pretty crazy.
I cannot wait for it.
You get a lot of A-list actors to join up on these low-budget films.
How does that even Well, now it's very easy.
Hollywood is famous for pretending to share and not sharing.
We give net profits and you never get paid.
I was on the receiving end of that.
I have net profits of 10 movies.
I never got a single penny.
So I always said, if I have my own company, I'm never going to do net profits.
I'm going to say, In Variety.
You used to open it, but now you get it on your phone.
When you're looking at Variety and the movie's done $30 million, I'm going to give you $100,000.
It's done $40, I'm going to give you another $100,000.
So I actually deliver the checks myself to FedEx.
I've done it for years.
So when our movies hit certain thresholds, we pay immediately and I film it and I send it to the recipient of the check.
We've done that for a long, long time.
And over the years, I've paid out an enormous amount of money in profits to third-party participants, to actors and directors who've worked on our movies.
So now, it's very easy to get famous people to work for nothing up front because we have a great track record of paying them.
I mean, are you the only honest person in Hollywood?
I mean, everyone's heard of Hollywood accounting and double bookkeeping happening here.
So were you the only person who just decided to not cheat people?
No, definitely not.
But I'm the only...
One of the only people who insisted on keeping it super, super transparent.
And that's what we do.
And that's what we still do.
Okay, so I promised that I would get back to President Trump.
And I didn't delay it long enough for the suspense to build.
I really should build it longer.
And I really, I tossed it to, I mean, I just, I showed all my cards when I said I was so relieved you stopped doing it.
I know.
- I know, and then you basically obligated me to ask you more questions on this specific topic.
- I know, I know.
- So President Trump, there are a few, Hollywood obviously despises President Trump.
One of the things that is very weird about that is just that Trump is a Hollywood creation in the first place.
- All true. - Like the fact is that Trump is a person who was not wildly successful at business, Hollywood decided to portray him as wildly successful at business and excellent at firing people.
It turns out that he actually, it's actually one of the things he's worst at as president.
Yeah, he can't do it.
He can't do it to his face.
He'll find ten different ways to get people to try and fire themselves.
He'll fire people while they're on the toilet.
He'll fire people in ways that put him in impeachable territory.
Hollywood created President Trump in a lot of ways and then became very, very sad that they had created President Trump and Frankenstein's monster came back to the castle.
So, what words do you have for Hollywood for having brought President Trump to the world?
Let's start with that.
Now, that's too far-fetched.
You cannot blame Hollywood for President Trump.
You really can't.
You can try and blame, but you cannot blame Hollywood.
You could maybe, you know, you can't even blame New York City for President Trump.
I can't accept that.
I can't accept the premise of the question.
I will not, I will not, I refuse to answer that question because I don't accept the premise of the question.
I'm going to force you to accept the premise of the question.
So here's the reason being.
One of the things that's fascinating about President Obama... Hollywood created a certain way information is consumed.
And I think Trump, one of the reasons President Trump was elected was because The way that we consume information has been changed by the media industry across Hollywood and New York.
I think that part is... The building up of his image.
I mean, he was on the Emmy Awards.
It was the Tonys, rather, singing Green Acres like 10 years ago.
No one was building up his image with the plan of making him president.
Well, right.
But actually, this gets to sort of a deeper point, which is one of the things that's fascinating about the interaction between Hollywood and D.C.
is that in D.C., People from Hollywood are the celebrities.
In Hollywood, people from DC are the celebrities.
And there is this feeling in Hollywood, I mean, again, I've grown up here my entire life, that the people that Hollywood people want to meet are not really other Hollywood people.
They're politicians.
They're politicians.
So President Obama was actually more of a Hollywood star to Hollywood than he was even just, you know, a statesman or a politician or anything.
He was, in a certain way, Trump's entertainment persona is almost like a bizarro Superman version of Barack Obama.
I mean, President Obama was very media savvy.
President Obama was very heavily involved with Hollywood.
President Obama campaigned with movie stars.
He brought movie stars to the White House.
He was very camera friendly.
All of which is true, and now he's a producer.
Right, and now he's a producer.
So what do you make of sort of the merger between entertainment and politics that really does precede Trump?
I mean, people now sort of pretend that Trump was the font of this, but he clearly was not.
No.
No.
Fox News was the beginning of it.
I mean, Fox News really started to blur the line between information and news and entertainment.
Now CNBC, now they all do it, by the way.
I'm not suggesting that Fox News is the only company that does it now.
Now it's across I'm talking slightly different than what you're saying, but I think one of the things Hollywood is very guilty of is blurring the lines between news and entertainment or truth and fiction.
And that, for sure, is something that Hollywood did.
What do you think Hollywood's attitude toward intervention in politics should be?
So we've seen this kind of break out into the open with, for example, Ricky Gervais just hammering people at the awards shows, saying, listen, you're a bunch of Hollywoodites.
You know, you're going and doing business with China.
Tim Cook from Apple, while you're sitting here bitching about President Trump and his policies toward China.
Everybody in this audience is very rich and has spent five minutes reading a book, and now they're talking politics.
I think there's a lot of Americans who watch that and agree with Ricky Gervais.
What do you think that Hollywood's attitude should be toward political involvement?
And not even just being involved politically on a personal level, but in terms of sort of promulgating political messages more broadly?
Well you asked a lot of questions there.
I think Ricky Gervais, if you're saying do I think Hollywood is hypocritical, I think wildly, wildly, wildly.
Do I think Hollywood is out of touch?
Yes.
Do I think Hollywood should probably dip its toe less into politics and more into keeping its eye on the prize, which is entertaining people?
Absolutely.
That's the first thing that you asked.
What was the second thing you asked?
I mean, that really was sort of the question.
I think Hollywood would do fine with getting into politics less than they do.
I want to refrain that.
I think Hollywood is entitled to be political.
What I don't like is when Hollywood gets preachy, and that bothers me.
I try not to do that, and that bothers me.
I think when Hollywood gets preachier, and when Hollywood says, we're right and you're wrong, That irks me.
So in a second, I want to ask you about an area where Hollywood finally did get it right, but originally got it wrong, namely the Me Too movement, because you've come up as somebody who Harvey Weinstein was afraid of, something you should be inordinately proud of.
I mean, if I were you, I'd be more proud of this than any movie I'd produce.
Yeah, now I'm worried that people are saying, now here's where people don't read the facts.
I'm worried you saying that I should be proud of it.
Some people, some people are not going to understand it.
Right.
So let's just make it very clear.
Hollywood had a red flag list for people he was worried about who were talking badly about him, and I was on the list, and I'm happy that I was on it.
And you should be inordinately proud of that, obviously.
Everybody should have been calling out Harvey Weinstein for what he was for years.
Why do you think it was that he wasn't called out for years?
I mean, the fact is the casting couch, unfortunately, was a way of life in Hollywood for a hundred years.
But why do you think that Weinstein was able to get away with it?
- The second part of what I was gonna say is, I wish that it was true, what he said about me.
I wasn't doing that because I didn't know, and I think a huge majority of the people around him didn't know it.
I mean, I was relatively close to him, and I remember even a couple of lawsuits being settled.
And I remember being very clearly told, you know, I mean, I was young.
I was 28 years old.
So I guess I was impressionable.
But I remember being told like, look, Harvey's a very big person, big, famous person and big, famous people are often taken advantage of.
And a couple of assistants took advantage of him and he paid them off.
It never occurred.
I said, make that make sense.
I bought that totally.
So I don't think there was this big conspiracy protecting Harvey.
I just can't believe that that's true.
Do you think that Hollywood, at least parts of Hollywood, turned a blind eye to it?
I mean, people were making open jokes about this, right?
Seth MacFarlane made a joke about it at the Oscars, his reputation with regard to women.
He had a terrible reputation with regard to women, but that's very different than being a rapist.
Or someone who does sexual assault?
Definitely.
I mean, I think, you know, he was a brute, tough guy.
But I don't think Seth implied he was breaking the law.
I think there's a big difference between those things.
So I want to ask you sort of what you think are the misperceptions that conservatives have about Hollywood generally.
So, you know, I've brought a lot of sort of the conservative critiques of Hollywood to you and laid them at your feet and said, answer these questions.
But what are the things that you wish that people in the middle of the country, that you wish that conservatives who are maybe anti-Hollywood, almost in knee-jerk fashion, knew about the Hollywood industry and the way that it works and the people who staff it?
Well, the biggest thing, I think, and the most important thing, and the reason that I'm doing your show, is that all of Hollywood is not the same.
You know, we're different.
I can be a liberal, but talk to you and be on your show and make a movie called The Hunt and make a movie for— I'd make even a movie with— if there was an amazing horror movie that came to me and it pushed a conservative value, I would make it.
So I think that's probably the most important thing.
One of the things that I've often said to conservatives, because I grew up in this area and I know a lot of people who are in Hollywood, is that you'd be surprised the number of people who either are conservative in Hollywood or who at least live normal conservative lifestyles, even if they politically disagree with you.
Right.
I mean, I guess that's the other misconception is this idea of like, Hollywood is like, you know, snorting drugs and stuff like that.
I have the most, I have two little kids.
I have the most, I have literal, I live, Talk to anyone who works with me, I live the most conservative lifestyle.
I go to bed at 10 o'clock every night.
I take my kids to school.
I put my kids to bed every night.
Like, I live what is the archetype of a conservative, although I'm not a conservative.
So do you have hopes that with movies like The Hunt that people will actually learn to laugh again?
Because it seems like the biggest problem here, and this was true in the original reaction, then it seems true from a lot of the critics now, is that people just don't want to laugh at this stuff because they're almost happy with a world in which you can't make a movie like this.
There's a whole group of people who seem happier not being able to tell jokes to each other and instead sniping each other on Twitter, which is just a garbage fire of dunking and being dunked upon.
Do you think that there is going to be a reawakening of that mentality?
There has to be a reawakening.
It's too stifling.
There has to be a reawakening.
And you see it in the art that's being created.
People are so afraid of being taken down by the right or being taken down by the left.
Both sides are equally vicious.
That they're curbing what they do.
And I would say we, you know, and I really push hard not to do that.
I say, you know, if you do this, this is going to happen.
I say, if I do your show, X, Y and Z is going to happen.
I say, screw it.
I'm going to do the show.
Same thing.
If you make this movie, if you make this, if you do this, do you really want to deal with the controversy?
I 99 times out of 100, not every time, but almost every time I say yes, because I think you have to keep Doing things and get the controversy until they realize that the controversy is not helpful.
It's not productive.
It's it's it's Making people afraid to speak.
And I think that's terrible.
I think people make mistakes.
I think people say things they don't mean.
We're all human.
And the idea that everything has to be so rehearsed and you can't say anything without being attacked if it somewhat offends some group of people.
I don't know.
I can't stand that.
It's going to definitely change.
I hope it changes sooner rather than later.
The pendulum is going to swing back.
In the positive side of it, the pendulum, there's an argument to be made, the pendulum had to get all the way out here.
And I would even say this about the president, which is, in my view, we had to have someone for a Democrat.
We had to have someone like him or not as extreme.
You could definitely agree he's extreme, he's unusual.
There's never been a president like our current president.
Never, ever.
Inarguable.
And we needed Even the Democrats needed that to be shaken up to say, hey, listen, you know, it's it's super important to me.
Like, hey, listen, you're so foolish.
You care which you're helping for people.
You're not.
You're helping yourself.
You're helping New York and L.A.
You're not listening to what people in the country need.
And guess what?
We're trying someone else.
And I think we needed that to be shaken up eventually.
Eventually.
Now it's going to be like, we're quoted as, we needed President Jason.
But I was relating that to, you know, there's part of the noise that's good.
You know, it's good.
You can't, you know, women live in a much safer America today than they did two years ago.
That's good.
Getting there was sloppy and messy and not fun.
Yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree with this and I think that that is the fine line is between obviously there are some people I've been hit on the on the right for saying that there are some people who I think are indeed outside the Overton window.
I don't think that means that they should be deplatformed or that they shouldn't be able to say what they want to say.
They should be able to and then we should be able to talk about how dumb they are.
But there are people who are clearly not within sort of the mainstream of public rhetoric.
The problem is that we are shrinking that mainstream so small that if you don't fit inside this very tiny box than who exactly does.
I mean, and that's been one of the problems for the right.
I think that there's still litmus tests in Hollywood.
I think it's a problem for the left, too.
Yeah, well, it's certainly a problem for the left in terms of the right, I think.
I mean, it seems like there's still some pretty significant litmus tests in Hollywood politically.
Less so, I think, on sort of the pro-life, pro-choice stuff.
I think I know some pro-lifers who are working in Hollywood.
I think that, do you think Trump is a litmus test?
How many people do you know in Hollywood who are working who will admit to openly have voted for President Trump?
I think that is still a litmus test in Hollywood.
Three. - Hey.
I mean, there are probably very, very few.
But what's your point?
My point in saying that is that the Overton window in Hollywood is obviously still incredibly operational.
If you were to lead, I get a lot of questions from people in my audience who say, I really want to work in Hollywood.
I love storytelling.
I'm afraid that because I was a member of Students for Trump, that now I'm going to go to Hollywood, and that's on my Facebook page, and I'm not going to get a job.
You have to come to our office.
We'll give you a job in a second.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe, you know, I don't know.
I think that that's that's a problem.
But I think that that's going to change.
But I think that you're right.
I can't tell you that that's not true.
So in a second, I want to ask you a final question.
I want to ask you, of all the movies that you've made, what is your favorite?
If you had to pick one, one of your babies.
But if you actually want to hear the final answer from Jason Blum, then you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
You can hear the rest of our conversation there.
Be sure to check out Jason's new film, The Hunt.
Jason, thank you so much for stopping by and get ready for The Deluge, my friend.
I'm ready.
All righty.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate producer, Katie Swinnerton.
Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynor.
Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingaro.
Editing is by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Caromino.
Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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