Christian Toto, founder of HollywoodIntoto.com and a 20-year conservative film critic, dissects Hollywood’s November flops—$150M+ bombs like After the Hunt (Julia Roberts), Christie (Sidney Sweeney), and Die My Love (Jennifer Lawrence/Robert Pattinson)—blaming streaming saturation, woke storytelling constraints, and star culture overexposure. He praises horror films (Weapons, Sinners) for originality over messaging and calls for R-rated comedies with heart and narratives about underrepresented struggles, like Venezuela’s oppression. Hollywood’s shift from universal hits (Jaws, The Godfather) to niche, ideologically driven films risks eroding its cultural influence, demanding alternative voices and direct audience engagement to bridge the gap. [Automatically generated summary]
I will tell you that I was in meetings in Hollywood where I or someone else would say, you know, faith-based movies are making a lot of money.
Maybe we should make some of those.
And people go, no, no, no, we don't do that.
Hey, everyone, it's Andrew Klavan with this week's interview with Christian Toto of HollywoodIntoto.com, one of the very, very few sites where somebody of a conservative bent talks about movies and arts who knows about movies and arts.
The two things don't always go together.
Sometimes you have conservatives talking about movies and arts.
Sometimes you have people talking about movies and art who know about it.
You rarely get those two things together.
He's an award-winning journalist, film critic, podcaster, more than 20 years' experience covering Hollywood.
And the Hollywoodintoto.com.
If you've never been there, you really should go because it's just an entirely different look at mostly the movie business, but sometimes the other arts as well.
And Christian Toto has been referred to by one of my favorite podcasters as our favorite film critic.
Oh, yeah, that was me.
I'm sorry.
Christian, it's good to see you, buddy.
How you doing?
Good.
Did you get my check for that?
Because I did pretend it was a while ago.
Yeah, where the hell is my check?
I'm waiting for this.
So we're coming to the end of the year.
So I wanted you to come on and talk about the year in pictures.
Before I do that, I have to read a little bit of this New York Times article from November by Brooks Barnes.
It had the headline, I'm sure you read it.
25 movies, many stars, zero hits.
Hollywood falls to new lows.
And the opening is, some were heavily marketed.
Many were championed by critics.
Most had star power.
But not one of the 25 dramas and comedies that movie companies released in North American theaters over the past three months has become a hit, certainly not in the way that Hollywood has historically kept score.
Some have played to near-empty auditoriums, including After the Hunt starring Julia Roberts, Christie with Sidney Sweeney, and Die My Love featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, which I have to say until I read this article, I had never even heard of.
All right.
So, of course, they go through the usual thing where everybody, you know, we're in a weird shifting technological landscape.
And so everybody's always blaming the weird shifting technological landscape.
And I'm sure it has something to do with it.
But I've just felt that this has been one of the worst periods for filmmaking specifically, but also for novels and other art forms ever.
Am I missing something?
I think you're at very, I think you're partially right.
Okay.
At worst.
Listen, I think there's some great TV shows that have been in production and made over the last few years.
And maybe some of the great talents are kind of edging into that arena.
It's more hospitable to them on multiple fronts.
But yeah, listen, there are a lot of things that are hurting Hollywood significantly.
It is streaming.
I can just sit home and watch movies that are almost brand new, practically brand new, or actually brand new.
There's that.
There is, you know, so many years of Hollywood stars insulting a lot of people who are watching us right now.
That never hurt, never helps.
There is a lack of imagination for sure.
There is sort of the byproduct of woke.
I think for years, the storytellers just weren't able to tell the stories they wanted to fully.
They had to kind of follow certain unwritten rules.
That doesn't help.
And also, just the movie star era is over because it's just not where the culture is.
They're overexposed.
You know, if you see Tom Hanks eating hot wings and pitching his new movie, then next week it'll be Scarlett Johansson or maybe Hugh Grant or something.
So we see the stars everywhere.
They're not special anymore.
So I think there's so many reasons for this lack of box office clout.
At the same time, we're seeing movies like Zootopia 2 making a gazillion dollars and the new Avatar film is coming in a few days.
That will make a lot of money.
So there are, you know, messages of hope for Hollywood, but certainly a lot of doom and gloom mixed in.
Yeah, yeah, no, it really is strange.
And I do think I can't help but feel, you know, if you remember that movie, Hale Caesar, one of my favorite movies of the last few years, you know, the effort that went into protecting movie stars' reputations from making them seem greater than they are.
I mean, I remember once seeing Catherine Hepvern on Fifth Avenue in New York in person.
And I think it may be the only time, maybe when I saw the president of the United States, maybe the only time when I actually stopped and went, wow, that's Catherine Hepern.
I mean, if I see a movie star, now, what do I care?
You know, I know everything about him.
I know what a sleazeball he is and all that stuff.
So what did you like in the movies this year?
Was there anything that you really loved?
Yeah, you know, quite a few films.
And I think horror is having an interesting moment right now.
Weird, yeah.
Good storytellers, both Weapons and Sinners.
Sinners had some flaws, particularly toward the end.
But, you know, listen, I love horror movies.
It's my favorite genre.
You know, I go where you fear to tread because I don't mind the horror and the blood and the guts.
But I think that some of these storytellers really know what they're doing.
And with Ryan Kugler, he just scared me in ways I hadn't been scared before.
And he was able to create a mood, a sense of rhythm that most horror movies just don't go near.
And I think Weapons is another example of that as well.
So I like those quite a bit.
And I don't think you've had a chance to see it yet, but Jay Kelly is coming soon.
It's George Clooney, in a way, playing George Clooney.
And shocking, he's pretty darn charming at it, but it really does, it's such a quiet evisceration of Hollywood and stardom and fame.
I found it really compelling.
So good movies this year, but you really did have to scrape to find him, to be sure.
A lot of drech.
Yeah.
And George Clooney, you know, obviously conservatives love to hate him.
He's a very liberal guy, very involved in politics, but he's good.
You know, he's good at what he does.
And, you know, I think he's he's kind of a construct because nobody goes to see a George Clooney movie because it's a George Clooney.
So he's not really a movie star, but still, he's very charming and intelligent actor and intelligent director and all that.
So yeah, I would go to see that.
I'm interested to hear that you said that.
I got to back up here for a minute.
Yeah.
Because I've noticed like the percentage of movies that are horror movies is insane.
I mean, it's like, it feels like it's over 50%.
It can't be that many, but it feels that way.
It feels like every week there's a new horror movie.
And I'm not a big horror fan.
I love ghost stories.
I love creepy stories.
I liked Weapons.
I thought it had a lot of good stuff in it because that was not the kind of horror story that I hate.
Why is that your favorite?
I did not know until this moment that you and I have talked movies a lot, but I did not know until this moment that that's your favorite genre.
Why is that your favorite genre?
You know, the couple of reasons.
One goes back to my childhood, what I really was attracted to as a filmgoer.
Also, in recent years, I think you and I talked off mic about my wife had breast cancer a few years ago, and then the pandemic came along.
And I, in a way that oddly changed me as someone who loves films, I gravitates toward genre films now.
I need that sort of burst of adrenaline.
And I don't know why it is.
And there are certain horror films that I like that I can't defend and feel badly for liking them.
But there's something about the experience that really kind of grabs me by the scruff of the neck.
And I've always enjoyed that.
And I can even enjoy a mediocre to poor horror film if it kind of delivers in a certain way.
And I guess right now, they don't play by the rules as much as other genres.
Maybe that's my intellectual defense.
They go in different arenas.
They're not afraid.
They're not as formulaic as some things.
And I think, you know, in the 80s, it was slasher films and you kind of knew what to expect.
But I think some of the more modern storytellers, you know, Jordan Peele for a New York Minute did some different things and exciting things.
And also, I think when they're filled with messaging, it's done in a way that doesn't kind of hammer you over the head.
Like, okay, I get it.
Jordan Peel's Get Out is talking about racism and things like that.
But it was putting the story and the characters and the horror first.
And then I could sit back and examine what they were trying to say.
And I like that as well.
Yeah, but you know, the funny thing about that movie is I was still working in Hollywood at the time and I went to Blumhouse shortly after it came out and it was a big hit and they were all thrilled.
But I thought that movie was about one of the greatest of American subjects.
It was about assimilation.
Everybody feels, you know, you assimilate, you kind of lose a piece of yourself and, you know, still that piece, that ethnic part of yourself is still in there waiting to break out, which is why I thought that was so effective.
And they said to me, oh, we really feel we've invented a new genre, race horror.
And I thought, well, you'll never make a good, Jordan Peel will never make a good movie again if he thinks that's what he made because what he made was an American horror film.
I thought it was really, really good.
I want to stick with this for a moment only because my mind has gone over it.
I have, listen, I love action films and action films can be so trashy.
And I don't know if they can make an action film trashy enough that I wouldn't like it.
I feel the same way about gangster movies.
I saw one with Ben Affleck once.
I was sitting there going like, I can't believe that I'm still watching this film, but I just love gangster movies.
I love action films.
So it has nothing against genre.
But it does bother me a little, not that it's your favorite genre, but that it seems to be so popular.
I mean, it worries me that that means something that maybe it shouldn't mean.
Why Comfort Matters00:03:23
Well, I think there's a couple of reasons why.
One is they're very profitable.
You don't need a big star to anchor them.
You don't need necessarily an IP, although they've been kind of leading heavily on sequels at this point to make them successful as well.
It's also when you talk about the theatrical experience, it's comedy and horror that had that, oh, the people behind me are laughing.
Oh, the people next to me are cringing in their seats.
That's a communal experience that is hard to duplicate even at home.
So I think that's one of the reasons why you want to go to a theater to see a horror movie.
But I think it's a profit motive that has really come into play.
And also people like Osgood Perkins, who did Long Legs and Keeper and The Monkey.
He doesn't always hit him out of the park, but he's someone of consequence.
I mean, he has a vision.
And I think Jordan Peele briefly, I think, had that as well.
Craig, oh gosh, I forget his name.
He just did weapons.
I think he's got some, I think he's got something there to share that's more than your typical horror storyteller.
So I think for all those reasons, and also we're living in weird times.
It's uncomfortable.
We're fighting with our neighbors.
I think that kind of visceral experience, like the, you know, the amusement park ride, I think that's why we go to the theater.
I think that's part of it too.
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So, people, one of the things that people blame, as you said before, for the empty theaters is streaming.
You can stay home and watch.
And, you know, I mean, I have a TV that's roughly the size of Michigan.
You know, it's like, you know, you put it up there and you're sitting, you're not sitting that far away.
So, the actual ratio is almost the same as being in the theater.
Why Directors Prefer TV00:03:41
And you're missing, yes, you're missing the group experience, which is can be good if people are polite and don't talk and don't use their cell phones and all that other stuff.
But, but in terms of the fact that it's visual storytelling, films, filmed storytelling, is it a major loss if we only go every now and again to the theater, but there's good stuff on TV?
Or have we lost something really important?
I know what you're saying.
You know, the bottom line is that for most people, they will see a movie at home.
There's a very small segment of society that will see the theater, the movie in a theater.
So, if I see a great movie at home, I don't feel like I've lost anything substantial.
There are exceptions.
The new Avatar movie I've seen, I can't officially review it yet, but it's 3D.
It is a visual cornucopia.
I mean, just Cameron knows how to do that.
So, there are a select group of films that you need that experience.
I think it's putting it in context that we live on our phones, we live at home, we're not talking to people.
I've got a teenage son who he's hanging out with his friends, but he's doing it via Fortnite.
He's not actually with his friends, and he considers that a social experience.
And he's not technically wrong.
So, I think losing that element feels a bit sad.
It feels like a cultural misstep.
And also, you know, again, we're at each other's throats.
So, just sitting in a room with strangers and having a singular experience matters.
And it's also nostalgia.
We all grew up watching movies in theaters.
It's part of our childhood.
But today's kids don't necessarily have that.
You know, some do, many don't.
So, I kind of a complicated answer, I think, for me.
Yeah, yeah, it's tough to say.
I mean, I do, when I go to theaters, I once was away from movies, a movie theater for something like six months, a really long time for me.
And then I went and saw Blue Velvet.
And I just remember sitting there going, Wow, this is amazing because it was just so big and all that.
Speaking of streaming, what do you like?
What have you liked this year on TV in any form?
You know, it's funny.
I don't watch as much streaming as I do movie movies, but I have caught some titles which I've enjoyed.
The first season of Landman was exceptional, I thought.
The second season is solid.
It's Taylor Sheridan.
It's the Sheridan universe.
It's Billy Bob Thornton, who's just as good as it gets.
And is it great art?
Maybe not so much.
At times, it can be, but rigorously entertaining, well-written, beautifully acted.
And just a, you know, what Sheridan does is he looks at the culture and says, okay, they're not making stories about this or that or this.
And I'm going to introduce those stories into the marketplace and see what happens.
And even Tulsa King, which has gotten fairly silly in its third season, that's Paramount Plus with Sylvester Stallone, is really sort of guilty pleasure television because he's so good in that role.
I've also enjoyed the first season of Nobody Wants This.
The second season feels like an obligatory season, like they needed to make it because the first one was successful.
It was about a Jewish rabbi who falls for a shiksa, as they say, a non-Jewish gal.
And the first season was charming and funny and romantic and all the things you'd like in a rom-com, but you rarely see.
So those are just a couple that come to my mind.
Yeah, I watched last night, actually, the first episode of Pluribus, which is Vince Gilligan.
And, you know, I could criticize it, but just having watched the first episode, I'm actually going to watch the rest of it, which is really rare for me.
After the first episode, I'm usually like, yeah, I forget it.
I've seen this before and I'm out of there.
But this is actually quite well done.
Even though you've seen a lot of it before, it's also fresh.
And Gilligan's, he's just good.
You know, he's just good at what he does.
Why It's Hard to Connect00:15:33
That's an example of why wouldn't he or shouldn't he or couldn't he be making movies right now?
He is sticking to the small screen, having great success, probably having all the creative freedom he could possibly want.
He's able to tell the stories on the canvas he picks.
Maybe he doesn't want to make movies.
Well, you know, for writers, I mean, the movies are bad for writers.
You know, you have no power.
You know, you sell the script and then they do anything they want with it.
And directors, God love them, but they are visual people.
They do not care if stories make sense and they have all the power.
So when they say to you, oh, I'm going to have this happen, you think like that can't happen.
You know, it's against every principle of the story.
You have no way of stopping them.
So I think in TV, you're the man.
You know, if you're a writer, you're the man.
My big objection to TV is the story never ends.
You think like, you know, it's three episodes.
Give me three episodes and get me out of here.
But that's not the way the economics work.
Yeah, well, the Brits had it right.
They would do great shows and they would end them pretty soon after they began.
Amazing.
They became classics.
Yep.
Yep.
And they would just say, like, that's the end of the story.
I remember I was living in England and going, what do you mean?
There's still a nickel to be, you could still get a pound out of this thing.
So every time I see you, I feel like I'm asking you this question, but I still think it's an important question.
Sorry.
Do you see any chance of the movie business opening up to new voices?
I mean, I think the people who have been successful are the Christians.
And they were successful because they made absolute garbage that people loved.
And now, because the audience is there, more talented people have started to make things like the Jesus iPad story.
What's it called?
It slipped out of my head.
But, you know, the one.
The Chosen?
The Chosen.
The chosen, yes.
And things like The Sound of Freedom.
And they're just better.
So I think that's improving, but you bring the audience in first and then the talent shows up.
But do you think there's any chance of this absolute stranglehold that the left has on the culture changing anytime soon?
Yeah, I mean, it's the ultimate question.
And I think my answer is actually going to be a little bit more positive than it used to be.
You know, obviously the Daily Wire has kind of broken through in certain ways.
MIRACE has was a sensation.
But these are just very, very tiny examples of this larger picture.
But I think the real hope is in, I guess, maybe even the rise of AI, giving people who have the know-how and the wit to tell their stories without having the budgetary restraints.
But also looking at what's going on right now with David Ellison at Paramount, you know, it's, I don't follow the business side of Hollywood aggressively.
It's just not my skill set.
But it sounds like he is a person who is not against the right, is sort of has an ear with Trump.
Obviously, his dad, Larry Ellison, much more so.
And he may not be averse to telling stories that haven't been told.
He may not be averse to stories that speak to the heartland.
You know, this whole hullabaloo over rush hours back, rush hour four, you know, Jackie Chan's over 70.
You know, why do we need this?
What role did Trump really have in making this a reality?
But, you know, those movies were fun.
They were rollicking and they kind of poked fun at culture in a way that was never mean-spirited, but it did evoke that sort of 90s sentiment where we can just laugh at each other and we can kind of, we were all in on the joke.
And I think that's been missing for the culture.
So the Ellison factor is fascinating to me.
You know, in addition to all these different offshoots, you know, we just came off the Dude Bro podcast election where, you know, certain candidates were willing to talk to Joe Rogan for three hours, certain ones weren't.
So I think I'm more hopeful than I've ever been.
But again, it's a David versus Goliath on steroids story still.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's really interesting.
My friend Cyrus Nawasta made this lovely little film, Sarah's Oil.
And, you know, I'm watching it and it just seemed like, you know, why wouldn't people like this?
It's a family movie.
It deals with serious subjects.
It's got a little edge to it, you know, but it really works all the way.
And Zach Levy is fantastic.
I never know.
Is it Levi or Levy?
I'm not sure which it is.
I think it's Levi.
Levi.
He's terrific.
It's the best I've ever seen him, actually.
I thought he was really great.
The New York Times reviewed this.
And I was interviewing Cyrus to promote the film and all this.
And I looked up the review and they said, oh, it glorifies fossil fuel and it has a black girl depending on the protection of a white man.
And I felt like, could your mind be any smaller?
I don't know how your head would just collapse in on itself if your mind were any smaller.
But at the same time, on Rotten Tomatoes, it has 98% on the audience side and a good solid 83 or 85% on the critic side, which I never look at.
I always want to know what the people think of it.
But still, I mean, there does seem to be an end run in terms of the prestige.
I mean, you can't win an Oscar.
You're not going to win any awards, but you can reach the audience now around little cranks like that woman at the New York Times.
No, I agree.
And, you know, one of the impediments against people on the right or even just sort of center-minded folk breaking through in Hollywood are those reviewers at the New York Times and people like that.
You know, whenever there's a project that goes against the grain, Sound of Freedom was a great example.
The media reaction to Sound of Freedom was unlike anything I've ever seen.
And I thought I was pretty savvy in the space.
It was mean.
It was cruel.
It was wildly unjustified.
But they don't like anyone encroaching on the left-owned space of culture.
So, you know, that is another roadblock along the way.
And I agree with that.
Sarah's Oil.
It's a very sweet film and Levar is great in it.
But these opportunities do exist.
And another impediment, which it's not fun for me to say, and I think you might agree with me, is that conservatives sometimes don't fight in the pop culture wars.
I will mention something on Twitter saying, hey, if you want more of this kind of art, maybe go to see Sarah's Oil opening weekend.
Send a message.
And I'll say, oh, I'll see it on streaming.
I'm busy.
Okay, but then don't complain when every other film is a lecture from the left.
I mean, you can't have it both ways.
I mean, the one that gets me is when people say, I just watched TCM.
And I think, well, that means that there's no audience for a guy making a new film.
And you're absolutely right about this.
It's so hard.
It is so hard to convince people.
You know, even like, you know, I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the best mystery writers in the country.
I've got the awards to show it.
I've got the sales to show it.
But you say to conservatives, you know, go out and buy the book.
It's very tough.
It's very tough to get them to move.
And like, I'm not sure why that is.
I got asked, I was teaching a, I was visiting, teaching a class in Hillsdale on ghost stories.
And somebody asked me about this, and I've been talking about it for 20 years.
Why don't conservatives participate?
And I said, well, blacklisting accounts for some of it.
But at the same time, I think there's this unwillingness to deal in the world of emotion and the world of passion and all the things.
You know, art is cultural critical.
Art basically is always saying that there's a struggle between the individual and the society.
And conservatives like to think there's some system that's going to make everything all right.
And there's not.
You know, I mean, life is tough, and that's what makes for drama.
I don't know exactly what it is.
I mean, I still don't.
And also, maybe we've just been excluded for so long.
We're, you know, we're like the dog who winces when the owner comes by with the rolled-up newspaper.
I don't know.
That could be it as well.
You know, by the way, I mentioned Sidney Sweeney on social media.
I said, you know, not that she's MAGA, not that she's conservative, but she refused to bow to the woke mob during a pretty important situation with the dumb American Eagle Jeans ad.
I said, wouldn't it be cool if we went out and supported her movie, which flopped spectacularly.
That was Christy, which, by the way, was actually pretty good.
Was it?
And I got a lot of blowback for that.
Like, oh, what do we, why do we care about her?
Well, you have to support people who actually stand up for themselves and show some spine.
It's the least we can do because she could have very easily said, I want to be an ally.
I am not against, I'm against white supremacy.
And, you know, the culture would have been hurt by that.
I know it sounds silly, but I truly believe that.
And she didn't do it.
Yeah, no, of course you're absolutely right about this.
I mean, I remember that Tom Hanks film, Greyhound, I think it was, which is Tom Hanks reading the Bible and killing Nazis.
That's the whole movie.
He reads the Bible, he kills Nazis, then he goes back and reads the Bible again.
And I thought, everybody should be watching this movie.
You got to turn up when he does something like that.
And you always get this thing with conservatives.
It's like, no, once in 1962, he kicked a fascist.
By the way, one of the other dirty little secrets about the industry is that when a mainstream secular actor does a faith-based film, I try desperately to interview them.
And not because of me, because they're not going to go anywhere near a right-leaning outlet, even though they'll go in the view, which isn't even really an audience for their film.
So that's another issue in play.
Yes, yes.
Well, this is the issue of infrastructure, which is another drum I've been beating for more than 20 years, is that there are not a lot of sites like Hollywood and Toto.
I mean, it's one of the reasons I think people should be going to your site, hollywoodandoto.com, because at least, you know, they may disagree with you from time to time.
They may want to give you crap, you know, which is fine.
That's part of your job, is taking the flack.
But still, you know, this is part of the infrastructure of the culture that we need.
We need people to review films, who watch films.
You know, it always drives me crazy when I'm reading a conservative venue and some guy who covers, you know, economics, you know, municipal economics is saying, well, I went to a movie and here's my review.
And I thought, yeah, I've seen all the movies.
I want to talk to somebody who's seen all the movies before I hear his review.
What are you looking forward to, if anything, in the next year in the movies?
Oh, gosh.
You know, one movie I want to promote because I think it's really good is called Marty Supreme.
It comes out on Christmas Day.
It's a Tennessee family.
And it's mesmerizing.
It's beautifully written.
It's original.
It's fresh.
He's terrific in it.
I think he's going to win the Oscar.
I think it's sort of his time after his Bob Dylan performance.
And it really, a few films in recent months have kind of revived my, oh my gosh, maybe Hollywood isn't completely dead.
There's a sign of life in the corpse.
I just thought it was a wonderful film and original.
It's based loosely on a true story.
And also another film, I can't really review it, review.
It's called Is This Thing On?
It's from Bradley Cooper co-wrote and directed it.
And it stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern.
It's about a marriage breaking up and the fellow decides to go do stand-up comedy as a lark, but it's kind of his therapy for going through his breakup.
And it's really beautifully told.
So, you know, this is ostracism.
We have those films and Avatar Fire and Ash is coming soon.
Can't review that one officially, but it's just pure spectacle.
And the 3D is glorious.
And I loathe 3D, but James Cameron, the only guy who really unlocked the puzzle that makes 3D possible.
He's the only guy.
So let him do it.
Everyone else should stay far away from it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is there, if you could start, if you could make a list and somebody came and said, well, you know, I've been reading your website and I run a studio.
What do you want to see made?
What do you want to see made?
I mean, what would make a difference?
Because you've been very broad-minded.
You know, you have to be in the arts.
You have to accept that sometimes the leftist makes a great film.
And a lot of left-wing actors are absolutely great.
You know, Sean Penn, one of the great actors of his generation, you know, it's like you just have to have that kind of open mind.
But if you could pick and choose, what kinds of things are missing?
Well, two quickies.
One, I'd like a really R-rated comedy that just plays by zero rules, that just has a lot of fun and also has some heart.
You know, the great R-rated comedies in the last 20, 30 years had a sweetness to them.
I mean, even American Pie or 40-year-old Virgin, sorry, spoiler, he loses his virginity on his wedding night.
You know, I mean, that's kind of a sweet and decent message within all the craziness.
But also, I want the stories that aren't being told.
I want stories out of Venezuela where people of goodness and kindness who are struggling under the regime and trying to, you know, fight for their freedom and being suffocated.
You know, I think there are so many stories of oppression.
And I don't want to be kind of dour and gloomy, but these stories go out there and they change public perceptions of things.
And I think that's what the left does constantly.
And I don't want to lecture, but I think if you told these stories straight, I think that affects the culture as well.
I mean, I think we should know about them.
It shouldn't just be, you know, people watching the show who understand these stories that are harrowing.
It should be feature films giving rich characters that actors should be killing to play.
That's what I like to say.
Yeah.
I mean, I have to say for myself, the thing that I miss most is women who are actually women.
I mean, I think like I watch, I watch women.
I think I've never seen a woman like that.
I've never met a woman like that.
I've known a lot of women.
You know, I've never, I've never met a woman who could outrun a perp who's male.
I've never met a woman who could punch a guy and knock him down, you know, all of that stuff.
And I just, I just think like you can't write a story if you don't have men and women in it.
That's the whole story of life.
You know, that's what life is basically about, where most of our pain and suffering and joy comes from.
Yeah, I mean, that's the woke hangover where you can't write reality.
Yeah.
You've got to bend it to certain needs and certain wishes.
And then all of a sudden you have stories that don't resonate.
You know, I get so many email pitches for movies coming soon, and a lot of it's very niche.
And that's perfectly fine.
You should make every kind of movie.
Yeah, sure.
But so many of these movies or so few of these movies really say, oh my gosh, I can't wait to see that.
Or that speaks to me and what my life is, or I can appreciate that lesson.
It's always these sort of obscure, odd, unremarkable angles to stories.
And again, God bless you for making them.
But, you know, movies that really rally all of us matter.
Yeah, this is the thing.
Like, I can remember standing online at a movie, you know, like around the block, you know, just getting to see Jaws or The Exorcist or The Godfather.
I mean, these were things that brought in everybody.
I guess Barbie was a little bit like that, maybe, you know, but like I didn't like that movie very much, but I understood why it caught people's eye.
But it almost never happens anymore.
Is there a way, is that because we're so fragmented or is it because the people won't do it?
Hollywood will not do it.
I think it's a little bit of everything.
I didn't like Barbie either, but I didn't like the fact that it became a sensation that people really rallied around it and they had fun going to the movies and they dressed up.
I mean, as a movie person, I just, I couldn't help but applaud that.
I like that too.
Yeah.
You know, years ago, Hillary Clinton famously went on her listening tour before she ran for Senate.
And I almost think that the Hollywood studios, the filmmakers, the executives should go meet the public, should go maybe even go on some of the YouTube channels that are more niche-driven, that are more kind of genre and geek friendly, and talk to the hosts and talk to the audience and find out what we're missing, what we like.
I mean, I just think that's, it seems like a very obvious thing.
And maybe they have marketers who do that, but I don't think they know.
I think there's such a profound disconnect between Hollywood and America that if they kind of actually reached out, they may be surprised by what they hear.
Yeah, you know, I got to stop here, but I will tell you that I was in meetings in Hollywood where I or someone else would say, you know, faith-based movies are making a lot of money.
Affecting Minds, Hollywood Style00:01:15
Maybe we should make some of those.
And people go, no, no, no, we don't do that.
All right, Christian Toto, a really interesting site, HollywoodandToto.com.
If you like reading about the movies, it's the place to go.
We need guys like you.
We need more of you.
We need an entire infrastructure.
It's just not going to happen if we don't support it and show up.
It's great to see you, Christian.
I hope you have a great holiday season.
I'll see you again soon.
Thanks.
Right back at you.
All right.
All right.
One more time, HollywoodandToto.com.
And I understand people have other things to do than go to the movies and worry about the culture, but I do think it has a bigger effect on anything than it has a bigger effect than whether somebody, a Republican or Democrat wins in Ohio or some congressional district or something like that.
I think over time, the culture, as I've always said, is like when you stand on the shore of the ocean and the waves come in and they eat the sand out from under your feet.
That's what the left has been doing with our culture.
It takes a long time to win back the culture.
It's not going to be one movie.
It's not going to be one book.
It's not going to be anything like that.
But I still think it's so important that we at least think about the stories that we tell because they are going to affect the minds, our minds and the minds of our children.
And you can hear even more fabulous stories on the Andrew Clavin Show on Friday.