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Jan. 15, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show
01:28:40
Backstage Premiere: RUN HIDE FIGHT
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Hey, Michael Knowles here.
The latest episode of Backstage is right around the corner.
This is a massive event for The Daily Wire.
We will finally premiere The Daily Wire's first movie, Run, Hide, Fight.
Be sure to join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clayton, Matt Walsh, The God King, Jeremy Boring, and special guests as we discuss Hollywood and this fantastic new film.
Don't miss it.
You know, if there's any chance that conservatives or freethinkers are going to survive what's happening right now, it's by building our own institutions, making our own movie, and redefining the culture, and I'm thrilled to be in the fight with you guys, and I love the movie.
Wow, I just saw Run, Hide, Fight, and I've got to say, it's an intense movie, but it is exactly what we need to take back the culture for conservatives.
It is really well acted, a lot of great tension, well done, well directed, great pacing.
It's one of the most intense movies that I have ever seen.
I am not kidding.
And just be prepared to have your heart pounding the entire time as you watch Zoey kick some ass.
Run, Hide, Fight.
Great movie.
You gotta see it.
However, now I have decided not to send my kids to high school.
I'm excited to see what The Daily Wire is doing.
Moving into entertainment, we have to change the culture.
It had me on the edge of my seat the entire time.
I can promise you it is unlike any other movie you have ever seen that has been made by conservatives.
Quite honestly, it's a game changer.
This may be one of the first times there is a conservative production for a piece of content that's actually worth watching.
Do not believe those elitist snooty reviews you've come to expect from Hollywood This film is amazing.
I don't think I blinked the entire time that I was watching it.
I just did not expect to be as emotionally impacted by it as I was.
I think it is a credit to the filmmakers and the actors how immersive and real all of that footage feels.
I was completely blown away.
I made the decision during the movie that I will be naming my firstborn daughter Zoe in honor of the coolest character in any movie I've seen in a long time.
You gotta go see it.
The action was crazy.
Special effects were top notch.
We conservatives need to stay engaged in our culture and not surrender it to the far leftist in Hollywood.
So keep up the good work.
And all I've got to say is you guys, watch this movie.
I would highly recommend you watch this when it comes out.
Go check it out.
I absolutely recommend that you check it out.
Check it out, everybody!
Welcome to the Daily Wire backstage, the Run, Hide, Fight premiere.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Stand up for your digital rights.
Take action at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
Ben, that's expressvpn.com slash Ben, because they never make it slash Jeremy.
We're so glad to be with you here for the premiere of our first feature film, Run, Hide, Fight.
It's a monumental day for us at The Daily Wire, a day we've been working on, honestly, since, well, since before we even started the company.
As far back as when Ben and I first started collaborating over a decade ago, and every one of us here on this stage has been talking about doing something like this for about as long as we've all known one another.
Conservatives are severely underrepresented in pop culture, and as our friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart once observed, politics is downstream of that culture.
For too long, we in conservative media have devoted, well, too much of our energy to criticizing art and not nearly enough energy to actually making it.
We focus our energies on the short-term political conflicts in front of us.
It's easy to do, but almost none of us spend our time and energies on the generational cultural struggle that actually defines the Overton window in which our politics take place.
That's a recipe for long-term political defeat.
So, that's why we're here tonight to celebrate an incredible movie and its incredible cast and creators, and I promise that we'll get to that and give it all the time it deserves, which is a lot.
But before we do that, there's something else that I want to celebrate, and that's the commitment that we at The Daily Wire have decided to undertake.
This year has shown us more clearly than ever before that for the people...
For all those people who seek to rule us, there's just no limit to what they're willing to try to take from you.
They'll take your money, they'll take your job, they'll take your reputation, your right to assemble.
I mean, unless that assembly actually aligns with what they've decided is appropriate for you to believe.
They'll take away your right to speak freely in public, on social media, but perhaps the least obvious but most pernicious right they want to take away from you is just your right to be entertained.
They'll still let you watch their movies, of course, their TV shows, their news, their sports, but you'll have to do it knowing that everyone who made that content, at least everyone at the top, hates you.
You have to watch it knowing that every dollar you spend on theater tickets, on cable bills, on streaming subscriptions is going to the people that hate you, funding their hatred of you.
Not only that, but they're going to spend every day on Twitter, every spare moment at every award show, and just about every second of every show that they make, reminding you of the fact that they hate you.
They'll let you watch it, but they won't let you enjoy it.
That's what's changing here tonight.
Tonight we're taking the first step on a long and long-awaited journey.
And listen, we have big dreams.
We have big plans.
We have delusions of grandeur.
But we're not crazy.
We're not going to change the culture with one movie.
We're not going to change the culture overnight.
What this is about is the beginning.
You know, Netflix has something like 200 million subscribers.
These people are working to make the kind of entertainment that punches you in the nose.
We're working to make the kind of entertainment that you want, the kind of entertainment that you can enjoy, that speaks to you without speaking down to you.
No leftist sucker punches in the kind of content that we're making.
Entertainment that you can not only enjoy but be proud of, knowing that you helped change the culture.
And ultimately, that's the key.
That's the commitment that we're making.
We're going to do everything in our power to realize the goals that we've set.
But I won't lie to you.
We need you in order to do it.
Not just you.
We need you and your family and your friends and the people who say that they're friends of yours but don't actually like you and the family that has abandoned you.
We need all of them.
They're friends too.
Or nothing is going to change.
We need every single person who shares our values to be in this fight.
You have to demand that your voice be heard.
You have to demand that we give attention to your needs.
And candidly, you have to spend some of your money.
Hollywood has amassed an absolute fortune against you.
They have studios and networks and production companies.
And we have...
These four director's chairs.
That's all we've got.
These four director's chairs and a dream.
We need you to complete our mission.
We need to compete and we have to have your subscription in order to do it.
We need you to pay for the content from us the same way you pay for content from the people who hate you.
We need you to subscribe.
As I said, Netflix, 200 million subscribers.
They're spending $17 billion on content this year alone.
Shows like Cuties, that's what gets their attention.
Disney Plus has close to 75 million subscribers.
HBO Max, 12 million subscribers.
They have Peacock and CBS All Access and Showtime and Starz and Hulu and, and, and, and, and.
If we're going to compete with them, we have to have you in order to do it.
So please, head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and become a member today.
The more people subscribe, the more content we'll make.
That's how simple it is.
And the more content we make, the more the culture will start to reflect our values and not just theirs.
Our politics will surely follow.
I'm joined this evening by all my friends, screenwriter Andrew Klavan, screen actor Michael Knowles, Hollywood aficionado Ben Shapiro, also Matt Walsh, and of course, the lovely Elisha Krause.
Elisha, walk folks through what we have planned for them for tonight.
Good evening, gentlemen, and hello to everyone watching at home.
I am so excited to be able to join in for this big premiere tonight and want to welcome all of our viewers that are joining us as well.
I've seen on Twitter and Instagram today that some of you are even having watch parties, which is super fun.
I'm also excited to let you know that we will be holding an extended The God King promised it would be an extended Q&A with all the guys tonight after the movie.
So, for all of our members watching at home, simply type your questions into the live chat box to the right of tonight's stream.
And be sure, for those of you who have questions but are not yet members, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to become a member and get access to the chat box.
Because we'd love for you to be able to ask all of your burning questions about Run, Hide, Fight and The Daily Wire's plunge into the entertainment world.
And The Daily Wire administration will be collecting those questions throughout tonight's event, so stay tuned until after the movie for our special post-premiere Q&A. Thank you, Elisha.
And roll opening graphics.
Well, thank you again for joining us tonight for the Daily Wire premiere of our first feature film, thank you again for joining us tonight for the Daily And, you know, it's probably important to say, because we keep saying, our first feature film, our first feature film.
We didn't make it.
This film was made by people far more talented than us, and you're going to get to hear from the creators of the picture, a few of them, a little bit later after the screening of the show.
We have the producer of the film, Dallas Sunye.
We have Kyle Rankin, the director of the movie and writer of the film.
They're going to be joining us.
The cast of this film, unbelievable.
It was a target of opportunity for us.
Candidly, we always thought that when we would get in the entertainment industry, it would be with something that we made.
Dallas approached us.
He had this project, and I was skeptical.
Ben actually called me and said, you know, Dallas has this film.
We should look at it.
I thought, eh, I don't want to release somebody else's movie.
Hollywood, if they were making the movies that were right for our audience, what's our argument?
But Dallas sent over the picture, and I was just blown away.
The picture premiered at Venice, had a great response there, and Hollywood just wasn't interested because the film, well, is just chock full, as you'll see here in half an hour.
It's chock full of our values.
And so we decided to take a dive, to speed up our plans a little bit, and to leap into the abyss, and here we are.
Drew, I think you and I were probably talking about this before any of these young'uns...
I remember making speeches about this at conservative gatherings and getting this look.
I used to describe it to my wife as the look she gives me when I explain to her that when you buy something on sale, it still costs money.
A look that says, you know, I always liked you and you're very cute, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
And that really was the reaction.
And now, suddenly...
My phone is ringing and people are saying, you were saying something about the culture, but how do you spell that?
And it's enormously exciting.
It's enormously exciting because we're dealing with people in this room who understand that we don't win the culture by making conservative films or conservative books.
We make the culture...
Take the culture when conservatives can make anything they want.
And that's what we're starting here.
And that's why we don't care about the censorship.
We don't care about any of that.
We just want to let conservative artists work.
And that's how you change everything.
Well, I mean, you know, Jeremy and I met now about a decade ago, maybe more than a decade ago at this point.
We were so young and so handsome.
I know, right?
And so poor.
And we met in my two-bedroom condo, and we were talking about making movies and how difficult it was to get conservatives to understand that we actually need to challenge in the culture.
And over the We've seen as the culture has moved further and further left, as more and more people are shut out of the, not only entertainment industry, but out of sports, out of journalism, as we saw today, and out of virtually every area of American life, how there's a blue tsunami that has come and washed through all of our institutions.
And we've been talking for a long time about how we need to fight back on this level.
One of the things that I have to say here is nothing but love for our audience.
I mean, seriously, nothing but love for our audience, because what we're doing here is truly something audacious.
I mean, because there's a gap that has always existed in the conservative mind between the stuff that we say that we want to watch and then the stuff that people actually want to watch.
A lot of conservatives, if you ask them, what kind of TV do you want to watch?
And they'll say, well, like a Hallmark film, right?
Something that I can go to church and feel good that I've watched.
Remember Little House on Exactly.
And then when it comes time to sit down with the wife or sit down with the husband and sit down with the boyfriend or girlfriend, then you just flip on Netflix and whatever everybody else is watching, that's what you're watching and you're giving your money to people who really despise your values.
Well, what we've decided to do here is start with a film that is about as edgy as any film is.
I mean, this is an R-rated film.
It's got cursing.
It's got violence.
I mean, so be forewarned if you're sitting there with your 11-year-old.
This is not appropriate for your 11-year-old.
And it's meant to be not appropriate for an 11-year-old because the reality is that if you want to win the culture, you have to start with teenagers, you have to start with young adults, you have to start with people who are actually looking for that sort of material and are not going to be put off by that sort of stuff.
So we are starting with this deliberately edgy.
And our audience has gone right along with it.
They understand what we're doing.
The trailer to this film has well over 1.1 million views on our YouTube channel alone.
It's got another half million views between a variety of other YouTube channels.
People are responding because they understand not only what we're trying to do, but the trailer is also really damned good because the movie is really damned good.
I think that you're hitting on something really important and something that, you know, there's a risk that we're taking because we are challenging probably some people in our audience.
You know, the film, we're all friends with Kurt Cameron.
He's not in the movie.
One of the things that we said from the very beginning is if James Dobson approves of the film, we probably failed because the sort of attitude the conservatives took up during the moral majority, the 80s and 90s, that is sort of carried through until today is essentially don't participate in the culture that is sort of carried through until today is essentially don't participate Kind of remove yourself, make content that people should want instead of content that people do want.
Listen, there's a missional quality to what we're doing.
Right now, we don't have a great value proposition.
We have one and only one film, and we're asking you to subscribe so that we can make more.
So we understand that is a mission.
We're asking you to do something because you believe that it's good.
We're not asking you to watch the film as part of that mission.
The film demands that you watch it because it is quality.
It demands that you watch it because it's entertaining, because of the power of Isabel May's performance as Zoe Hull in the film.
I'd put her up against anybody in the industry.
It's terrific.
It's a terrific film.
It's a terrific performance.
You're really going to enjoy it.
We're excited to present it to you.
And we're excited that you're willing to come along with us on this journey and spend your hard-earned money with us while we spend our time trying to present content that is actually going to change the nature of the cultural debate.
Because I think what everybody has learned over the last several years is that if we're going to rebuild America, we're going to have to start from the ground up.
And that begins with culture.
I mean, things have been raised to the ground.
And now it's time to start building and building some alternative replacement institutions for all the institutions that hate our guts and want to see us excised from the public debate.
When I first watched Run, Hide, Fight, I was expecting conservative propaganda.
And that's fine.
I've seen a lot of conservative propaganda, so I sit down and watch it.
Some might say you make conservative propaganda.
Some might say I make conservative propaganda.
And I'm watching it, and it's not that.
It's a real movie.
I thought...
Why is this a problem in Hollywood?
And I thought, well, it's obviously not conservative propaganda because it got into the Venice Film Festival.
You don't get into Venice.
You don't do well at Venice.
But the movie is politically incorrect.
The movie doesn't tow all the woke party lines.
And I thought, my goodness, has the culture gone this far that they demand, the left is now demanding, agitprop.
The left is demanding poster and slogan style.
I was just rereading Chairman Mao.
I was reading about political correctness.
Light reading there.
A little light reading.
I'm reading Mao's Little Red Book.
He's trying to affect a leftist cultural revolution.
And he says, we need good art.
But all you communists are making this crappy slogan poster art.
But we need good art in order to inspire people.
And he's struggling with this issue because he's obviously leading this ideological campaign.
And I'm so, so pleased that the first movie that we're taking on...
It's a real movie.
I'm just so pleased it doesn't star Michael Knowles.
If the last one has taught us anything, it's that, well, you need to be using a VPN. You may say, no, that's not the takeaway.
That's not the message.
It's taught us, you know, don't go to rallies if you don't know who's up at the front.
No, no, no.
It's taught us that you should be using a VPN, and here's why.
The left obviously wants to silence and remove voices that they don't agree with.
It's just that simple.
Twitter, Facebook, they're supposed to be open platforms that encourage people to express their opinions.
Remember back when Jack Dorsey used to say, Twitter stands for nothing if not free speech.
That was true.
Who's right?
It stands for nothing.
Not anymore.
So instead of letting social media sites revoke your practical ability to exercise free speech, how about revoking their access to your data?
That's how they make their money.
You could just deactivate your social media accounts, but that would be giving the left exactly what they wanted in the first place.
Instead...
We use ExpressVPN.
You ever wonder how free to access social media sites make their billions and billions and billions of dollars?
By taking your searches, your video history, and everything you click on, and then selling that information to ad companies against your valuable data.
I mean, good for them.
It's a free market.
But you're not free to give them your, I'm sorry, it's a free market except for you because you don't actually get to say anything.
And you're not, you're free not to give them that data when you use ExpressVPN.
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Michael, I said I was glad this movie didn't star you, and of course that's true.
But you actually, before you became a political commentator, you were an actor, a working, professional actor, soulless, shouldn't be welcome in polite society.
Yeah, on the level of the lowest regs of society, absolutely.
That's right.
So you probably have...
Once again, being paid for something you weren't good at.
Yeah, wait a second.
Hold on a second.
You probably have a perspective that the rest of us don't have, which is how difficult it is for an outspoken...
You were working on campaigns at that time.
Yeah, yeah.
How difficult it is for an outspoken actor.
Yeah, it was tricky.
It was a tricky thing because I was living this double life.
So I've been working in political campaigns and in politics since I was 18.
But I'd been working in plays in New York and some movies and TV and stuff like that.
And I just hoped...
You know, thankfully, if you're in these kind of smaller things, people just...
They're so narcissistic in show business anyway.
They're not Googling you.
They're just thinking about themselves all the time.
And so I remember I was in this play...
The last kind of big play I did was with these fairly well-known actors and actresses, all to the left of Lennon.
Very nice people.
We had a great relationship.
But...
I did notice I get a lot of invitations.
Go to this fundraiser for a Democrat.
Go to this left-wing organization.
Go to this.
And I knew that if I would go, I would have a much better shot at a role.
Friends of mine who did go got cast in this TV show or in this movie.
And you have to make this decision.
Do you want to have integrity or do you want to live a life?
Even in my career, I had a film set up with a very well-known actor who was my producing partner at the time.
We were taking this film around.
We weren't set up.
We were taking it around to all the studios.
We took it to one of the most important indie film studios in Hollywood.
We had the best pitch meeting that I think I'd ever had up until that time.
We weren't even negotiating over money.
We were negotiating over dates.
When could we make...
And that night, this was in 2007, and that night I got an invitation to a Barack Obama fundraiser that the head of the studio was hosting.
I didn't even know who Barack Obama was.
This is how early in the process all of this happened.
And I just thought, well, I'm obviously not going to go to some rando Democrat senator's fundraiser.
I'm just going to ignore the email.
I'll just pretend I didn't get it.
I pretended I didn't get it.
We had a meeting on the books to talk to the guy again.
Two days later, that meeting got canceled.
And at that point, I thought, you know, meetings get canceled, especially meetings with muckety-mucks.
So I called in to see when we were going to get back on the books.
Never got a return call, ever.
It really is, in some instances, pay-to-play in Hollywood.
And it's not pay-to-play in the sense that you give the studio exec money.
He's got all the money.
It's you support the things that he cares about.
And if you don't support it, you're not part of the club.
Hollywood's a very close-knit community.
It's a very small town, right?
It's a big city, but a small town.
And you're either a part of it or you're not.
And they really do look down their nose at people in the middle of the country, which is why I want to ask the only person on this set who doesn't actually hail from Hollywood or has spent any time in Hollywood, what does mainstream America think, Matt Walsh, about all of this?
I'm not a screen actor or screen writer, but I'm a screen watcher, so I have that at least.
I spend a lot of time watching screens.
And the one question that I've gotten from people when we announce this movie is, you know, they want to know, well...
Do they have some of the PC stuff?
Do they feel like they have to do that?
And what I like about this movie is that it doesn't.
Now, you said the movie's politically incorrect, which it is, but you don't get the feeling like they're trying to be politically incorrect.
They're just telling a good story.
And I think that's what people want.
They just want...
Just tell a good story.
And, yeah, there are some aspects of it that if you're into the PC stuff, you'll like.
Like, the protagonist is a woman.
But you don't get the feeling like they felt like, oh, we've got to put a woman in this role.
It's just, she was the best for the job.
And it works, too, because there's this father-daughter relationship.
So, the way I always look at it is you want...
You know, you can have a movie with a great message, or you can have a great movie with a message also.
And I think that this is the latter, where there is a message, but it's also just a really good movie.
And so you just sit down and you enjoy it.
And at the end of the day, you can go back and reflect and think about what you learned from it.
But that's not the point, really.
Yeah, I actually think great art doesn't make you like the artist.
It makes you like yourself.
It makes you more like who you are.
It exposes you to ideas.
It gives you things to contemplate.
I talk about it all the time.
I'm sure he doesn't love it.
Who am I kidding?
He's never watched any of this or heard of me.
But Don Henley's music helped me kind of make my way when I was a teenager and figure out who I was.
Now, who that music helped me become isn't more like Don Henley.
I mean, Don Henley and I probably don't agree on much of anything politically or religiously.
But he was asking questions that were interesting to me, and I asked them too.
I may have come to different conclusions, but that art helped me do it.
And that's what I think is what separates art from propaganda.
This film is filled with our values.
It exposes people to things that we think are important.
I think people of good faith could watch this movie and come to different conclusions than we have on some of those issues.
And I don't think that that's something to be feared.
No, that's right.
Art is an experience.
This is one of the reasons I've never minded watching atheist art or left-wing art.
I like it.
I like being inside the mind and inside the vision of people who see things entirely different.
Differently than I do.
But now, because of these restrictions, there's basically no way that anyone can get inside our minds.
There's no way that they can experience what it is we see.
Because look, the fact of the matter is, there are nice people on left and right, you know, in the real world.
And there are artists on left and right with talent who can express those visions.
But we're not allowed.
And the stuff that you're saying about pitch meetings is absolutely endemic to Hollywood.
I mean, I've been in Lots of pitch meetings, and the pitch meetings start out with a conversation about how awful George W. Bush is, or how wonderful Obama is.
And if, as I frequently do, you know I've got a big mouth, and I would frequently say, well, I'm kind of on the other side of that issue.
That was the end of the pitch meeting.
And so that creates the atmosphere where everything dies that we want to say.
When I was a wee lad, you know, a young actor in a very prestigious acting studio, a very serious place, this was not where we were just gabbing about politics or whatever, but it came out.
Somehow someone saw something I put on Facebook.
This was years and years ago.
It came out that I was conservative.
We all kind of giggled about it.
And the acting teacher called me aside at the end of the class.
He goes, Michael, this is just, I'm just giving you a little professional advice.
It was a professional, you know, conservatory.
I said, Never.
Never admit that.
Never say that.
Never admit that.
And I sort of laughed at her.
She goes, it's not funny.
And she wasn't conservative.
She was a liberal, too.
But she was helping you.
And she was helping me.
She said, never say that.
You won't work.
I know conservatives who have said that to actors.
You know, conservative actors who pulled people aside and said, you know, my friend, keep your mouth shut.
100% right.
And I think that most Americans are feeling that now.
I don't think that it's just relegated.
I think what started off in Hollywood and was relegated to Hollywood and the universities, unfortunately, has now spread through nearly every aspect of society.
I mean, you dealt with some of it today.
Well, yeah.
I mean, the new rule is that in 2021, I will trend every single day.
I'm going for the three.
I'll repeat tomorrow.
So I trended yesterday over something dumb, and then I trended today because I wrote the playbook for Politico, which is very bad.
I'm not allowed to do that.
225 news journalists got on the line to rail at the editorial team for allowing me to write, which is kind of ironic.
And they didn't even write me to the call.
I know.
They're the objective news journalists, right?
Your objective journalism media saying, how dare the op-ed page print something that we disagree with?
Well, hold on.
Aren't you the objective news journalists?
That's right.
I mean, that's kind of insane.
You're the ones who are just supposed to be covering the facts, and here you are.
It is one of the great revelations.
One of the great revelations of 2020 is that journalists now oppose the First Amendment.
Oh, yeah.
The people for whom the First Amendment was essentially created are now the people most against it.
In fairness, it was a traumatizing article, though.
It was.
I watched it and I barely could emotionally, I read it and I could barely emotionally recover.
He was literally shaking.
I was literally, I'm still shaking right now.
But this is the thing.
We've been, as conservatives, progressively locked out of every single institution, every single one.
And so when people say, how do we fight back?
The answer is, you can't fight back in one area.
Conservatives have basically abandoned every institution and they say, okay, but we'll give money and then we'll vote.
And it turns out that that's not enough because where people make up their minds, where people are shaped is in the culture.
And you know, all this is very highfalutin, but we should just remind you that conservatives can make kick-ass content.
This is a kick-ass film.
You're going to love the film.
It's great.
And you are going to be doing something good by not only watching it and sharing it with your friends and giving us your membership, you're going to be helping to change all of that because these institutions have to be open and they're not going to open of their own accord.
Alternatives have to be built.
Replacements have to be built.
And you're Again, it sounds like an NPR fundraiser, but it is.
I mean, we need your help.
Just like NPR requires both your tax dollars and your donations to propagandize to you on the left, we actually do need your help to produce the kind of very expensive content that this movie represents and get the message to your kids in a way that they're actually going to want to watch.
And we're going to be producing a wide variety of content.
That's our hope.
That's our dream.
This is just the camel's nose in the tent, which is why you're going to see, I predict over the next week, people react with extraordinary, extraordinary viciousness with regard to this film, with regard to us, with regard to the producers.
There's going to be an attempt to quash the film, just like there's an attempt to quash everything else in American life right now that crosses the woke left.
And it's time for us all to stand up together and not only say no, but to fight back by building all of these alternative institutions.
That's why, listen, I'm...
I'm not primarily an entertainment guy.
I love entertainment.
I've seen every Oscar-nominated film since 1933.
I'm a TV addict.
I wrote a 400-page book on television called Primetime Propaganda.
I'm very into this stuff.
But that's not primarily what my job in life was to do.
Jeremy started off in Hollywood.
Clavin started off in Hollywood.
Noel started off off-Broadway.
Off-off-off-Broadway.
Well, it's Brooklyn, actually.
It was in Staten Island.
Yeah, exactly.
At the local repertory theater in Cleveland, Ohio.
But the bottom line for me is this.
If you are into politics, if you care about our values, you have to go where the eyeballs are.
You have to go into every institution.
You have to go into corporate America.
We've got to build alternative institutions, right?
We can't let Amazon Web Services dominate.
You know, ownership of the means of distribution.
We have to build an alternative source of media.
That's why Daily Wire exists.
That's why our podcasts exist.
We have to get into the universities and we have to provide alternatives.
We have to provide apprentices.
But most of all, the easiest way for people to engage, and the thing people engage with most, this is what people forget.
The single thing that people engage with most in this country, above politics, above church, above anything, is entertainment.
If you just look at their clocks, People spend hours and hours and hours a day engaging with the kind of content that we are the first to provide on the right.
And we're really proud of that.
I think you should be proud of that too because you're part of the project.
So the film is coming up in 7 minutes and 50 seconds.
It's that precise.
They just told me in my ear.
In 7 minutes and 46 seconds.
We're definitely going to show you...
The first film that we're releasing, Run, Hide, Fight.
But first, I want to talk about our friends over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
True story, we moved eight weeks ago, maybe, to a red state after, for me, a little over 20 years in the People's Republic of California.
And listen, I love California.
I think it's a...
Beautiful state, beautiful weather, and it used to be the center of the world.
That's why we lived there.
It was the center of the cultural world.
It isn't any longer.
So I was happy to be there, and now I'm happy to be out.
One of the first things that I did, though, when I got out was started thinking about, how do I acquire the firearms that I was not allowed to own?
When I was in California, I think you have a responsibility to own firearms as a man in this country because we have the right, and the right is only protected by the expression of that right.
I think you therefore also have a responsibility to own a rifle.
When the founders wrote the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government or by Twitter.
The second thing they did was secure the right of the individuals to protect that speech and their lives with force if needed.
Owning a rifle is a heavy responsibility.
Building rifles is no different.
Bravo Company Manufacturing, or BCM for short, they build a professional-grade product that's built to combat standards.
That's because BCM believes that the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether or not you're a private citizen or a professional.
The people at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life or death situation by a responsible citizen, a law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
overseas.
I take it very seriously and I can tell you that since moving to Tennessee, I've purchased some rifles from Bravo Company Manufacturing.
These things are absolutely fantastic.
The mid-16 that they produce is as capable a weapon as made by any manufacturer out there.
The people at BCM feel that it's their moral responsibility to Americans to provide tools that will not fail the end user when it's not just a paper target, but someone coming to do you harm.
BCM also works with leading instructors of marksmanship from top levels of America's Special Operations Forces, from Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance to US Army Special Operations Forces, connecting them with other Americans.
These top instructors teach the skills necessary to defend yourself, to defend your family, and to defend other people.
That's what the Second Amendment is all about.
It's not about hunting, Second Amendment.
I mean, the idea that you couldn't use a gun to get food wasn't even a concept at the time of the founding.
That's not what the Second Amendment is about.
It's about your right to protect yourself, to protect your loved ones, to protect your neighbor, and to protect your rights.
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com where you can discover more about their products, see some amazing videos, some special offers, some upcoming events.
That's bravocompanymfg.com.
If you need more convincing, well, go watch those videos.
You can find out even more about them and the awesome people who create their products at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa.
There's no slash bin.
There's also no slash bin.
Jeremy.
So guys, we're just four minutes and 40 seconds away from the Daily Wire premiere of Run, Hide, Fight.
I don't say the world premiere because it actually premiered in far more prestigious locales than this at the Venice Film Festival.
A lot more people are going to see it tonight.
A lot more people are going to see it tonight.
And almost none of them speak Italian.
No.
It's like one.
Yeah, one.
A lynch.
What I want people to be prepared for going into this film, and we've talked about it before, but I want to speak a little bit more explicitly about it.
This film is meant to challenge your notions of what it means to be conservative entertainment.
This isn't a movie that you're supposed to watch.
It's a movie that we think you will want to watch.
It's going to challenge maybe some of your sensibilities about what content should be.
The movie is not rated R because that's an MPAA standard, but it's TVMA for mature audiences.
As Ben said, if you're watching this with your children, this is not the film for them.
Please change that plan.
Send them out of the room.
This is a film for young adults and adults that deals with incredibly difficult subject matter and puts very real people into very difficult situations.
And we get to see the kind of decisions that they make in it.
That said, it does contain our values.
And we're very proud to present the movie to you.
We wanted to push the envelope in a way to sort of define the new terms of what we're trying to do.
Listen, every film that we produce will not be TVMA.
Every television series that we go on to produce, we have a TV series in development right now.
We have feature films in development right now.
Some of them will be rated much lighter than this.
Some of them will appeal to a younger, more family-friendly audience.
But we wanted to come right out of the gate and say, this is kind of the outer boundary of what we think can be competitive in the world of entertainment.
Because again, we want to make things that people want to watch.
We want to compete.
For people's time and money when they think about what kind of entertainment they want to engage with.
So please bear that in mind as you watch the film.
That's in no way an apology.
We're proud of the film, and we were very deliberate in choosing this to be the first film that we were going to release.
And we took all of this into consideration when making our determination.
It's probably not what you might think of as a Christian film, but it's more like if you were to actually make a film about the Bible.
Which is about real people who went through real challenging and difficult situations with varying degrees of success.
We could not be prouder, again, of the film.
And again, we couldn't be prouder of our audience who's come with us on this journey.
I mean, we started this company literally in a pool house.
And now this company has over 100 employees and is producing expensive mainstream entertainment for you to enjoy and for you to spread to your friends.
We'd love your help if you've not already become a member, if you're already a member.
Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.
And again, we're ecstatic to bring this to you.
It's the culmination of a journey for a lot of us and just the beginning of another journey that I think is going to allow us to really challenge moving forward into a new and difficult era.
We're going to have to challenge on every front.
I keep saying that over and over, but it's true.
There is a wall, and we have to start beating against that wall with any hammer we can find.
And this is a big hammer, and we are just beginning to beat away at the wall that the left has built for us to keep us in.
It's also essentially a tech play because what we're trying to build is an SVOD platform, a streaming video on demand platform like HBO Max, like Hulu, like Netflix, like Disney+.
We have a long way to go to catch up with those guys in terms of the quantity and quality of their entertainment.
We're bringing on all sorts of new entertainment, right?
We've got Candace's show coming, and we're going to be producing new content with me, and all sorts of brand new stuff.
So it's an exciting time.
It is.
So head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Thank you for joining us here this evening for the Daily Wire premiere of Run, Hide, Fight, the first feature film that we're offering, directed by Kyle Rankin.
You're absolutely going to love it.
It's a legitimate piece of art.
We couldn't be prouder to be here.
Couldn't be prouder to have you with us on this journey.
So, sit back, relax, enjoy the film.
We'll be back right after to discuss the movie with you.
We avoided spoilers.
Oh, my God.
You're serious about your film watching.
In a movie theater, that would cost you $400.
Let's do this.
Here we go.
This is high school.
Nothing that happens here matters in the real world.
Get down on the ground!
Very disturbing news out of Vernon Central High School.
Zoe...
Take a shot.
Is it safe to say that this might be our guardian angel?
Do you want more people to die?
Isn't it ironic that after all your hard work, people aren't gonna remember you?
No.
You're gonna remember me.
Well, welcome back to the Daily Wire backstage and the Daily Wire premiere of Run, Hide, Fight, the first feature film that we're releasing as part of our new entertainment initiative.
We are joined now by the film's producer, Dallas Sonnier, and the film's writer and director, Kyle Rankin.
Guys, congratulations on an awesome film, and our condolences on having to release it with us.
Thank you.
It's a terrific film.
We had over 70,000 people watching the film live, probably got up to 100,000 by the time it hit its peak.
And so far, all the comments just overwhelmingly supportive.
I think one thing that happens on our side of the political conversation is if anyone talks to us at all, we're fairly happy.
So we appreciate you guys sharing your talents and sharing your film with us.
Talk to us a little bit about how the picture came to be.
Yeah.
Kyle wrote a script and it was really well received by a lot of people in Hollywood, including a bunch of big studios.
And the way it's been told to me by his agent was one of them was about to make a big offer to put the movie into development and production.
Parkland happened.
They backed away like Homer Simpson into the bush.
And that's when I get the phone call.
That's when I always get the phone call.
Yeah.
When the script is great, the agent is confident, but they need someone crazy enough to make it.
And so that's when I read the script.
And I read it, and I just loved it.
It had such a connection to some of the personal tragedies in my own life.
And I basically put my whole career and my company and my reputation as a producer...
I heard you mortgaged your house?
I have mortgaged my house for movies before.
But in this case, I literally raised money for the movie to do it as independently as humanly possible because I knew we couldn't have any input from Hollywood, from big Hollywood mainstream producers.
And I was able to sort of create a sandbox for Kyle to give him as much creative control as humanly possible.
And I think that's why the movie is so good.
It's a really daring piece of subject matter.
I mean, obviously, so daring that it didn't find a home in Hollywood despite the quality of the script and what went on to be the quality of your directing.
What gave you the sort of confidence to tackle something like this as a writer?
Probably my wife reminding me.
She would say to me that I kept bringing it up and talking about different scenes.
This one percolated maybe for five or six years.
And I was a bit scared of it.
I was worried about it being taboo or being seen as disrespectful to victims of shootings and that kind of thing.
I would see different movies released that tended to follow the shooters and their horrible family lives, and those were received well, and I didn't really understand that.
I was kind of like, why are we following the perpetrators?
That didn't jive with me, so...
Yeah, it just felt right, and she gave me the confidence to, you know, to dive in.
It is one of the beautiful things about the film is it's not sympathetic to the shooters.
One of the things that drew Ben and I to the movie when we first watched it, and we're trying to decide does it make sense for our platform, The Daily Wire was one of the very first publications in the country to announce that we wouldn't publish the names of school shooters or mass shooters generally.
So many of them are after notoriety.
In some ways, we feed that.
Which is one of the themes of the film.
Obviously, a huge theme in the film is how social media tends to generate this kind of horrific behavior and reward this kind of horrific behavior.
How much were you thinking about that when you wrote and directed the film?
A bit, you know, I wish I could take credit for, you don't know, and I don't know if you feel this too, Drew, but you don't know where your ideas come from sometimes.
You know, I remember waking up at like two or three in the morning and just scrolling on the bedside table, they're not going to remember you, they're going to remember me.
And then falling back, you know, I don't know where the heck it came from, but I was sure glad that it came.
And When I'm writing something, you know, you very much just get, you're thinking about it all the time, and it's always, it's a program running, you know, in the background kind of thing.
So I guess they're gifts, and I'm just thankful that some of those lines come.
Drew gets off his ideas from me.
It's a little different.
It's true.
I creep into his bed and take the notes off of you.
I could have sworn I scrawled something.
I have run into, myself, the absolute lockdown on the idea of school shootings, which is just a kind of groupthink in Hollywood.
They'll make a movie about the Holocaust, which was pretty bad.
You know, that's a bad thing, and school shootings are a bad thing.
But for some reason, school shootings were absolutely taboo, and they would tell you out of the gate, don't do it.
Had you run into that before you wrote the script, or did you know?
No, I think in my ignorance I didn't talk to enough people who said no.
Like I said, my wife encouraged me and I kept the idea very secret.
I knew I didn't want to pitch the idea because then someone can just dismiss it out of hand.
I'm like, I want a really great script that gets someone turning pages.
My manager gave me a great piece of advice, and he's like, I know you're going to direct it, but write it for a director that you admire.
So I kind of wrote it with Kathryn Bigelow in mind.
I just thought she'd be great.
So it was cool to any screenwriters out there.
It's just a cool thing to...
I'm like, I want Kathryn just turning every page.
I'm like, where is this going?
And that was really fun.
And I found that...
Yeah, I fell in love with it along the way, too.
Dallas, the casting of the movie, how did that go?
Because there's a lot of people in this film that people have seen, there are a lot of people people haven't seen, and some of the newcomers are just, they blow you away with the performances.
I mean, the guy who plays the villain is unbelievable, and obviously Isabelle's unbelievable.
Where did you come up with these folks?
Yeah, I mean, it all started with Thomas Jane, who has become a friend of mine.
He was a big fan of the movies we've made, like Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, Dragged Across Concrete, the Zoller movies.
And so he really anchored the cast.
And once I had him, I was able to propel some of the money conversations and things like that.
He validated the cast in the movie to other cast members, especially younger people.
We have the greatest casting director in the world.
His name is David Guglielmo.
Don't steal him from me, guys.
But he's terrific.
And he set up auditions, brought Kyle in the room, just like a traditional casting session.
But we had already had our eye on Isabel for a while.
She had come in on other movies of ours.
And we saw a real talent in her.
Oh, yeah.
And so we were excited when Kyle responded so positively to her, and she quickly became Zoe.
What has Eli done before this film?
So Eli Brown, who plays Tristan, the villain, he has been on a couple of sort of the younger teen shows.
He's about to be on the new remake of Gossip Girl.
Hmm.
But really, so many of these kids were extremely young.
Their credits were not very deep in terms of their IMDBs and things like that.
A lot of newcomers, things like that.
But we just put them all together and we gave them some time to sort of get to know each other and become friends.
And they would hang out in the hotel together every night and stuff like that.
So there's a real camaraderie and they're still all best friends.
They're all...
Texting and tweeting each other tonight.
So they're really proud of this premiere and really happy.
Can I ask, you've made a couple of pictures that I just have really enjoyed.
Bone Tomahawk, you mentioned, and Cell Block 99.
Really enjoyable film.
But those are films, you must have known coming out of the block that you were going up against the Hollywood wall of political correctness.
Did you know that?
Or were you...
You were saying that you were surprised you actually kept it to yourself.
But you must have known that you were going up against the wall.
Yeah, I don't keep it to myself.
That's one of my strengths and greatest weaknesses.
I grew up in the 80s on the Jerry Bruckheimer movies, and although I wasn't around, I was very inspired by Robert Evans and reading Kids' Days in the Picture and all those And those great movies that he oversaw.
And so I stayed the same.
The world went left, right?
I stayed here.
And so I'm simply making the movies that I grew up loving and continue to love as an audience member.
But there cannot be a compromise.
And so my goal is to set up the production and the financing in a way with foreign sales and a domestic deal and certain formulas on what the marketing and the budget's going to be so that I can transfer absolute total creative control over to the filmmaker.
That is the way it was done, in my opinion, correctly in the past, long ago in the past.
And the corporatization of Hollywood has really messed that up.
So I think there's been some great stuff out of Hollywood over the past several years.
But really, to me, I seek his movie, not my movie, ever.
And I think that's my flag in the sand.
That's very smart.
Yeah, our first telephone call, you said the magic words where you're like, I have no notes.
Let's just make your script.
That's a lie.
Now I can't use it anymore.
Yeah, that's effective.
You subtly make your notes over time.
I got my eyes on you.
So we're going to speak to Alicia Krause, who is talking to our DailyWire.com subscribers and taking their questions throughout the night.
We want to be sure and answer some of their questions there, who made it possible for us to release the film.
If you're not a member, you can head over to DailyWire.com slash subscribe and become one right now.
The more people subscribe, the more films we're going to make.
We think that this is the next frontier for the Daily Wire and definitely a part of the political fight.
From our point of view, it's not what you guys got into it for, but from our point of view, it's a part of the political fight that we're waging, that we need to bring some balance into the culture.
And that's what we hope to do.
Do we have you, Alicia?
Yeah, I'm here, guys.
Thanks so much.
And I hope that everybody enjoyed the premiere as much as I did.
First question, if I can toss it over to Dallas.
Somebody wants to know if this film was meant to carry a conservative message from the start, or did the storyline and messaging just kind of happen naturally?
And maybe Kyle could, you know, give feedback on that, too, since he's the guy that wrote the script.
Sure.
I am a proud, openly conservative movie producer, and I never intended to be that vocal about it, but such is life, and I'm enjoying the ride.
I never would make a movie for political purposes.
I feel like movies have been political for generations, but I feel like when things get overtly political or agenda-pushing, I tend to believe that it hurts the artwork.
So, again, my goal is to keep everything level playing field, focus on the movie itself, make great entertainment.
If the audience...
Yeah, there's no propaganda in the movie.
Our intention was to make a great movie, and that's what we did.
So if the marketplace or the audience determines that the movie is more conservative in its values or matrix or DNA, then so be it.
That's fine with me, but it's not a goal of mine to make conservative movies per se.
Somebody has to be a conservative filmmaker.
I am who I am.
I think the themes in the movie are big human themes.
To my mind, they're above politics, or as you guys might say, they are upstream, maybe, of politics.
But I wanted to write something about bravery and selflessness and self-reliance and...
Putting others ahead of yourself.
Something that I love about the movie is it's not just Isabel's Zoe.
If you watch the movie and just look at all the bits of bravery, there is the woman in the cafeteria.
The lunch lady is actually one of my three favorite moments in the film.
Yeah, mine too.
It's such a selfless moment, and she delivers it very well.
Yeah, and I love her friend outside when she's like, a lot of them don't know.
She's like, okay.
It's like, what?
You're just going to come with me on this potentially deadly mission.
I'd love that.
Like Mr.
Rogers would say, look for the helpers.
I believe in the human spirit and a lot of people are out there ready to be heroic if given the opportunity.
So I wanted to highlight that.
Personally, I'd love to start a third political party called the Contrarians.
You'd be in the right place.
We can't agree on a time to meet, though.
But, you know, this is one of the things I actually loved about the film.
I have no idea how you vote.
I don't want to know.
I don't care.
I really don't care.
But I just don't want voices silenced.
I don't want characters cut out.
I want all the people who are in this country and in this world to be on the screen.
And that's what you did.
You gave us all the people.
And that's all I think real conservatives are looking for.
I took a great screenwriting course 20 years ago, and the instructor said, you know, write three pages about a real pet peeve of yours, something you really feel strongly about, you really hate, and you wish people would stop doing.
And I think mine was on three pages on littering.
And we all showed up ready to turn it in, and the instructor was like, okay.
I don't even want to see them, but now write three pages about the other side.
You're now pro whatever you just wrote.
And the instructor was trying to teach us to...
I do think it shouldn't matter, and I will never be one of those Hollywood people that talks my personal politics.
I would like to be above and between them and see all sides.
Because that exercise taught me that when I had people, you should be able to steel ban all sides as a writer so that you can have people arguing and shooting off in different directions the way people do.
And I'm far more interested in the gray of life, not just the...
Everyone is so scared of the gray, and I think we need to lean into that.
Elisha?
Alright, the title font of the film, according to another Daily Wire member, they said was very Red Dawn, which of course is another iconic movie about high schoolers versus bad guys.
Was that intentional?
I don't know about the title font, but I love John Milius.
I love Red Dawn.
I remember watching with my brothers, you know, those paratroopers coming down in the back of the history class.
I mean...
Would John Milius even be working today?
He's amazing and he should be, but the atmosphere is...
Well, I mean, they remade Red Dawn and then they wouldn't even make it to Chinese, right?
They made it to the North Koreans just to please the Chinese movie market.
That's right.
They shot the film with the Chinese.
With the Chinese, and then they went back and they revised all the footage.
What if a country whose entire adult population is starving?
Somehow invaded the life.
I do think, though, that, you know, first of all, I love the internet because only on the internet does someone connect the font choices from this film to another film.
And what I love about it, too, is that it's probably true on some unconscious level.
We've all been informed by the art that we've consumed over time.
And there is a connection between this film and Red Dawn.
Maybe on some...
Some far off level...
Jordan Peterson would definitely do more work than this.
Alicia?
Alright, can you guys name a couple of your favorite movies that have inspired you as filmmakers?
Sure.
Night of the Hunter.
I tend to really cleave toward things in the 70s, and I think because the studios gave the filmmakers the keys and said, maybe you guys know better.
And then in the late 70s, they ripped them out of their hands.
But there's five easy pieces.
I do think when you're...
I don't watch a lot of modern things.
I tend to go back to the seminal things.
And before I did shot this movie...
And I gave a list to Isabel and to Ollie, who plays Louis.
You know, things on there like Deliverance and Dog Day Afternoon.
A lot of things that these young actors had not seen.
And it was so fun because Isabel...
I remember we were in the ravine when she was...
The final scene with Tristan, with Eli, and she's like, oh, I watched Deliverance this morning.
I think we were in this freezing ravine, and I was like, it's awesome.
It's so fun.
One of the most enjoyable moments of 2020 for me And I know it was a terrible year for almost everyone, but it's like maybe the best year of my life.
You know, my business did well, my marriage did well, I adopted a kid.
I had a great time in 2020, other than just all the chaos.
The end of the world.
Other than that, nothing else matters.
It was good for you.
You know, that's the important thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But one of the great moments was that our friend Jon Voight had stopped by our office and sometimes Jon would just stop by and bring you a treat, like a nice cheesecake or something.
Hey lad, I brought you a cheesecake.
Hey Jon Voight, thank you for the cheesecake.
Anyway, and we got to visiting about deliverance a little bit.
And Jon started pacing out, moving furniture around the break room at our office in LA and explaining to me how they staged sundry shots in the film to let the camera...
Just be so voyeuristic.
Let the camera just sit here and all the action plays out in front of the camera with no movement.
And he reenacted three scenes from Deliverance in which he played all of the roles.
And I just sat in the break room and thought, holy crap, what an unbelievable life we get to live.
He played the Ned Beatty role?
Yeah, he played all of the roles.
Fabulous.
You know, I'm interested, the films that you reference are all 70s films, which was this amazingly creative, I mean, you go back, you probably don't agree with this, but I go back and I look at Five Easy Pieces, which I loved at the time, and I think, like, this is another planet that they're making.
They would never make that movie today.
What about the films before that?
Because I happen to love movies just like this, small, tight thrillers that work.
I mean, but the ones that I go back to are Films like The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden.
I can't remember the name of the film where he robs the racetrack.
I don't remember, but it's just a great, great movie.
Stanley Kubrick, I think.
Yeah, what the heck is the name of that?
Is it called The Heist?
That was one of his...
No, it's not.
Something like that.
But anyway, do you go back to those?
Or is that before...
You just think that's another...
My wife and I, we were watching North by Northwest.
It just came out on a new Blu-ray just last night.
So we...
Yeah, and if you named some of your favorites, they'd probably be mine, too.
I'm not great at always having a list in my head, but how about you, Dallas?
Yeah, I mean, I've done a major deep dive over this year into the late 60s, early 70s, because it's been so inspiring to me and sort of building my company and brand and things like that.
There's a fascinating Criterion Collection called America Lost and Found the BBS Story.
And BBS stands for three producers who made Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Last Picture Show, and so on.
And they worked with Jack Nicholson.
And so I highly recommend this.
The movie that's inspired me the most, so my favorite filmmaker of all time, is Michael Cimino.
Just the excess of his filmmaking, but also his storytelling and writing and things like that.
He's known, obviously, for Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate and things like that.
But his masterpiece is actually a very unknown film starring sort of a pre-surgery Mickey Rourke called Year of the Dragon, which is co-written by Oliver Stone.
And just do yourself a favor.
There's your homework.
That movie is a masterpiece.
I actually don't know that film.
1984, 1985.
I know of it, but I've never seen it.
Elisha.
Alright, I just have to ask a question.
It's a girl from southeastern Oklahoma.
Are you a paying subscriber?
Yes, I am.
Thanks.
And so is my mom.
It's a girl from southeastern Oklahoma.
My ears perked up a couple of times when you mentioned a place where I have been a time or two.
Broken Bow.
I mean, how the heck did you know about Broken Bow?
We were searching for a state and...
I really just wanted to be right in the center of the country.
I wanted the culpability to kind of be on everyone's shoulders, because it's an American problem.
So I thought, let's go right into the center of the country.
And then my family, I'm from Maine originally.
We have a camp in Maine.
And I don't even know if you would say camp for just like a cabin on a lake, but I picked Broken Bow.
I just pointed at it when I was writing, found it on a map.
Yeah, we vacation there every year.
Lots of people from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Despite the Red River rivalry, we will take your money.
So, next question comes.
We also love our members' money, and we'll get back to their questions right now.
Have there been any people that are criticizing this film as exploitative?
You guys kind of touched on that a little bit in the top, but a Daily Wire member wants to know.
Mm-hmm.
In the press that I've seen so far, I thought that that would be the number one criticism of the film.
I actually haven't run across a lot of accusations of exploitation of you.
I would say there's a beautiful...
There's a beautiful effect of us releasing this movie with The Daily Wire in that I think it found the audience it was always intended to find in many ways.
Audience that wouldn't be offended by it, that could handle it, that didn't need a safe space to watch it.
And while I think we hope that more people will come to the movie and be open to it and things like that, The voices on the extreme left have not been open to the movie.
In fact, they've been almost resistant to it.
When they review it, I don't want to ever single out an individual review because I don't like it when filmmakers do that, but I saw a systemic...
There's a sort of system in the reviews where it felt very much like a concerted effort to sort of review the subject matter and perceived politics rather than the actual movie.
I've made 35 movies.
I've made some great stuff and I've made some doozies.
And this is a great movie to get the critical reaction.
I'll say, from the point of view of the political space that we occupy, if it ever seems like there's a conspiracy on the left to create a unified talking point, there isn't.
Because there doesn't have to be.
Because they've done such a great job of populating every single piece of the...
every single institution that makes up the culture with people who think exactly the same.
You know, like...
In the early Obama years, you'd have these listservs, and every now and then you'd find out, oh, there's some listserv, and every journalist in New York is on them, and they all conspire around.
They don't have to do that anymore.
They just wake up, say exactly what you think, and every other journalist will say exactly what you think.
Well, then that's worse, because then they're all thinking the same way.
Oh yeah.
This is the...
I'm very proud of myself because this is the first time I'm reading nothing.
I'm just reading no...
I haven't read a single review.
I'm trying not to read any comments.
We premiered in Venice and the audience really loved it.
It was a beautiful night.
And, you know, we're having champagne on the Lido and it was a dream come true.
And then, oh, I heard some reviews are starting to drop and I just felt an arm on my shoulder...
Don't read any of them.
Okay, and you know, and you can, you know, on Google, it'll say whatever, we have a 14% Rotten Tomatoes thing, and I'm like, that's just patently false.
I mean, this young cast is so incredible.
Oh, yeah.
That's just incorrect.
Again, that's one of those things on Rotten Tomatoes where you can really see this massive gap, particularly with films that are perceived as political, between what the critics say and then what the audience says.
And you see this routinely.
You'll see it on everything from The Last Jedi, where the audience really didn't like it, but the critics absolutely loved it.
And called fans toxic, because the fans didn't particularly like it.
To Wonder Woman 1984, just the last couple of weeks, where people were like, this is not very good.
But the critics were like, yeah, but it's super important, and so we're going to pretend that this movie's actually awesome, even though it's not good.
The first Wonder Woman's a good movie.
Wonder Woman 1984 is not a particularly good movie.
But it feels the same way with regard to this film, because the film is just, it is a good film.
And as far as the kind of Accusation that it's exploitative.
Listen, everybody at the Daily Wire is super sensitive to the idea that anything would be done to glorify school shooters.
Again, one of the things that we were...
I was very, personally, extremely early and hard on the idea that we were not going to...
Print their names in the Daily Wire.
We're not going to give them any sort of attention in the Daily Wire because that's precisely what they're looking for.
One of the things that drew me to the film was that the film was making exactly that point in many ways, which is the more attention these people are looking for attention, the more attention you give them, the more of these you're going to see.
And so we need to actually deprive them of attention.
We need to treat them for the villains they are.
It can't be all about their tough childhoods, as you were suggesting, or the sort of crippling circumstances they went through.
Look how tough life is for them.
The focus in this film is really on the victims.
It really, really is on the victims.
The film also talks about the people who perpetrate these events in a more honest way.
It's funny because it's fundamentally a piece of entertainment.
It's a piece of fiction.
It's not a documentary.
And yet it has a more honest take on the people who perpetrate these crimes than most even news articles or documentaries that you see.
You very, very rarely hear about the prevalence of people who hear voices.
You'll find, if you go around looking on the internet, you will find these stories.
And it's in so many of these mass shootings that people claim to hear voices that it's always buried down on paragraph 30 of the story.
Because I think the media doesn't know what to do with that information.
We have a very...
Secular media.
We have a very cynical media.
They don't know how to touch things that they don't fully understand.
The desire for notoriety, another huge component of it.
Also, the sort of cult-like draw of Tristan as a character for these weaker-minded people around him, which all the way back to Columbine was such a The untold story of Columbine, I think, is in some ways the power of the one shooter to really draw in the other into his plans.
So in that way, you really took kind of an unflinching look at the evil that you were seeing.
It is funny.
I've always thought about the fact that when people hear voices, the voices never say, you're a great guy.
Why is that?
Elisha.
Alright, what did each of you guys take away from the movie after your first viewing?
Well, in some ways this is a question for the three of us.
Right, because you guys made it.
But I actually think the more interesting answers are going to come from the two of you.
There's nothing so surreal as watching your own film.
Oh, um...
Well, there was no first.
I mean, I was there with every edit.
Yeah, of course.
Going frame by frame.
So I don't know when a first time.
So you didn't have an editor do an editor's pass and then you came in and saw the rough assembly for the first time.
You were there at every step of the way.
Yeah, I mean, I have an awesome editor, Matthew Lorenz.
He's great.
I collaborated with him just like with every cast and crew member.
But yeah, I get into it and we both do.
What was your experience watching it with an audience for the first time Yeah, Venice was amazing, and I did something in Venice.
Tonight, a bunch of your employees were watching it, and I tend to leave the room and just walk around, because I can't...
I love the movie.
I adore it, and I will defend it until the day I die, but...
I don't always want to be in the room when it's...
I perfected it so that it can go have a life.
And it is no longer mine.
It's no longer Dallas's.
It will go out and unfortunately, like a child, be judged and run into people who are mean to it.
And that'll really annoy me, which is why I won't read anything.
I care for it deeply, but now it is everybody's.
One of the things, I watch films, there's always a part of my head that's picking scripts apart, and I watch especially thrillers, which is a genre I've worked in a lot, and I'm always watching a movie rooting for the writer.
I'm always thinking, like, go ahead, you're almost there, just keep going.
And that was one of the things that I took away from it.
It works, you know?
It's not a small thing.
Films don't work.
So many films don't work, and this film works.
And I was just really happy as you got through it.
I know this is not what most people are taking away from a movie, but I can't help it.
I watch the movie and I just think, like, I can see so many ways you can go wrong here, and yet you're on that line and you're keeping to that line.
It's a wonderful thing to see.
It is, just technically.
Yeah, thank you.
So for me, there are a couple things that pop out at me.
So one is Isabel May's performance is just terrific.
I mean, she's just first rate.
And I think that for the vast majority of people who watch it, because the camera is so in love with her, I mean, she's just amazing on screen, that that will be sort of the surface takeaway.
But then the second time, actually, is kind of when I get more of the message.
The first time you're just watching to see the plot and you're drawn into it.
The second time, where we were kind of popping in and out tonight, like watching various scenes, there was one scene that popped out of me, and that's the scene where Tristan is asking one of the girls, who's religious, about free will.
And she drops a little sermon about free will.
And I thought, that's something you will never see in any other film.
Really, you're not going to see it.
That's the point that she makes about free will, where she says that bad people are allowed to be bad people so that they can be judged.
That is as good a 30-second explanation of free will from a religious perspective as I can imagine.
And it also is a theme running throughout the film, which is you're going to be judged for your own behavior and that you're going to need to be held accountable.
For that behavior.
So I thought that that was...
It's a beautiful and I think will be an underappreciated scene because it's kind of off the beaten track of the film.
It's not the conflict between the main characters, but it really is wonderful.
The film does have a sense of justice.
The character Kip...
It's a wonderful thing you did as a filmmaker where you let him be redeemed, but he still has to die.
He did do the thing and you wouldn't be satisfied to watch him come through this.
It's only one example.
My big takeaway when I watch any film, I like paternal relationships portrayed well in film.
My favorite, it's not a film, obviously it's a miniseries, but Lonesome Dove is my favorite.
Thing that's ever been shot.
And it's because it's the relationship between two men.
And I love those kinds of relationships.
My favorite moment in this film is the scene in the chemistry lab when Isabelle is being just beat to a pulp and her father saves her.
And I love it.
I love everything about the scene.
I love that she's inventive with the gas.
That she's still being inventive about how to protect herself.
I love that.
I actually thought when they're just about to obviously be in a physical confrontation, I thought, this movie's about to lose me because they're about to give me the obligatory scene in which an 85-pound girl takes on a 6'2", 200-pound man and somehow beats him.
No, I mean, she gets pummeled because in boxing you're not allowed to fight someone at 5 pounds.
Because that's how the world works.
And then for her father to be there in that moment almost as a Like an angel.
He's beyond her experience at that moment.
She doesn't know that he exists.
And then he's there to save her.
It's just the most beautiful moment.
You have three children.
I have three children.
I think any parent would...
Would I take that shot?
Absolutely.
100%.
I love that scene as well.
Ben, the scene that you mentioned...
I attend this spiritual men's group in Los Angeles and I'm the youngest member by 30 years.
It's really interesting.
And that got brought up, you know, basically, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people got brought up one night.
And one of the guys was like, free will.
And I didn't fully understand the conversation, to be honest.
My wife is religious.
I am not practicing any religion.
I came home, I said, what does this mean?
Can you please explain the world to me, honey?
And she was like, oh.
And she's like, I think...
Yeah, she basically just dropped that line on me, and she's like, God allows the wicked to do their wickedness so I can be judged.
And I'm just like, that's going in verbatim, and I almost fell over.
But it annoys me that even though I was raised as a Catholic, my dad didn't attend.
My mom would kind of drag us every Sunday, and I'd be like, I want to be whatever dad is, because he gets to mow the lawn and stay home.
I want to do that.
But it annoys me that Hollywood is...
They have forgotten that this is a religious country completely.
I mean, if you put religion in a script, I have seen that, Drew, when you were mentioning, like, oh, that's taboo.
But why is...
Even though I'm non-practicing, I'm starting to kind of revisit the Bible and be like, there's a ton of wisdom in here and some amazing ideas and quotes and things that now are inspiring me that I'm kind of approaching it on my own.
So that is a lesson that Hollywood could learn to kind of...
Revisit some of that stuff.
And fatherhood.
Back to the other scene.
The generation in which I grew up, every single father who's been represented in my lifetime is just a doddering boob who's being bailed out by his wife or his children who are much smarter and much more capable than him.
I feel like Thomas Jane gives a great performance in this.
As a father who's Probably not been physically present for a lot of Isabelle's lives.
And probably hasn't been emotionally present either.
And yet this tragedy has almost given him the opportunity to be probably the father he always should be.
And out of that pain, he's emerged as something more complete.
That's really beautiful.
Yeah.
These actors, guys like Thomas Jane, Treat Williams...
Treat Williams I see on Blue Blood, so I assume he's a conservative.
But Thomas Jane...
I don't think Treat Williams is a conservative.
Don't slander Treat.
Oh, sorry.
I just wondered...
Don't end people's careers.
Well, that's what I was going to ask.
That's what I was going to ask.
Do they hesitate at all to be in a film that might...
What I love...
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, I mean, go ahead.
What I love about Thomas Jane is he's like...
I think he said, let's ruffle a few tail feathers.
He wants to do things that scare him.
Treat, maybe, is similar.
I heard a lot of like, I'm scared about this script.
I'd like to do it.
And all of the young cast, too, when we narrowed it down, I took them into another room and just gave them the speech of like, I don't know how this is going to be received.
You're just starting your career.
Go home and really think about it.
And they all, you know, some of them didn't need to leave the room before.
No, I don't care.
I want to do it.
But I'm more worried for...
I can be canceled.
I don't really care.
But I am worried about these amazing guys and gals that are just starting their careers.
Yeah.
I honestly think that while we know that the industry can blacklist people, we know that the industry can cancel people, these kids are too talented.
And it's not their fault that they wound up on the Daily Wire.
You know, they...
They gave their best effort to a film, and we happen to be the ones who came along to release it.
I don't know the politics of any of them.
Maybe some of them share our politics.
I'm certain a lot of them don't.
One of the things that Ben and I talked about when we first acquired the film was...
If any of these kids feel like they have to speak out against us in social media, we can't respond.
They didn't sign up for this.
They're hugely talented.
God bless them, and I hope they all have great careers.
I think based on what they delivered in this film, they will.
They have been along...
Since the beginning for the ride, right?
They came and made the movie against all odds with us, right?
Fought every day on set, you know?
They came with us, you know, into post-production.
It helped, you know, do these amazing performances that got the movie into Venice Film Festival.
It came, we brought them to Venice.
They saw the movie...
Get absolutely slaughtered by the critics, but absolutely applauded in the room.
And they came along with us for the ride as we ended up doing a deal with Daily Wire, and not a single one of them complained.
In fact, I don't...
I think they're necessarily, you know, this is not what they certainly signed up for, but also they were so impressed by the way that we carried everything through together.
And so ultimately, the movie above all, and the movie is in great shape.
The movie reached more people tonight than it ever would have any other way.
And it will continue to reach more people.
The trailer numbers were off the charts.
So this is a chance of a lifetime for all of us.
And I'll just say this about Isabel May.
She is such a talented actress, but an even better human.
Kindness and happiness.
She's such a happy person.
strict moral code, but very private about it.
And I just adore her.
And I think whether you believe in divine intervention, luck or fate, hers is to be a giant, giant, giant movie star.
Yeah.
She might not even want that, but it is her destiny.
And I'm excited that we could all be a part of it, you know, early on.
I really think that people are going to look back in 10 years and they'll be like, all these names were in that film.
Like, really, there's so many talented performers.
You know, that's...
That's the most moving thing that anybody said to me tonight, that the actors didn't balk.
Because it's unfortunate.
Being an artist, as you know, takes a lot of courage.
It means you're betting your life.
You're betting your life.
Most artists are intelligent enough to go to law school or to do something else, and they bet their life on what they do and what they love.
And to have to also have the courage to stand up against small-mindedness and censoriousness and deliver what you have to deliver, the talent that you've been given by God, that's a beautiful thing.
And if you found actors who are willing to do that, then you have laid the foundation for a genuine movement, I think.
Dallas, Kyle, thank you guys for spending time with us.
We're going to bring Matt and Michael back on to close out the night.
And Elisha, if you'd tell everybody at home how they can continue to support this film and the future entertainment projects from The Daily Wire.
Absolutely.
As the God King Jeremy Boring said earlier in the show, this is a film that we want everyone to watch and see.
And if you didn't watch it live tonight, it's not too late.
You know how sometimes, pre-COVID, you could go to the movie theater?
Well, now, on the comfort of your couch, you can be sure to become a Daily Wire subscriber.
And be sure to sign up over there.
So if you missed tonight's live stream, it's not too late because you'll be able to watch the film on demand at the Daily Wire website, mobile app, or streaming apps like Apple and Roku TV. But only if you're a Daily Wire insider member or above.
So, as Jeremy stated earlier, politics is downstream from culture, and tonight was The Daily Wire's first step in taking back the culture.
And we believe that conservatives can be in this fight without making stereotypical or boring or Christianese-type content.
We can make stories that spark conversations that the left doesn't want to have.
And Hollywood only wants to stand unchallenged on their moral high ground, and they have owned entertainment for a very long time.
But the Daily Wire is going to change that.
They are ready to do more than comment.
But if you want to see them take on this fight, then we need you to join us.
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And in entertainment, Starz has 9.2 million subscribers.
HBO Max has 13 million.
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And of course, as we've seen, Facebook has a lot of power and over 255 million monthly active users just in the United States.
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If you believe in what we've done so far, we need you to step up and help us win.
So become a member today at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
That's dailywire.com slash subscribe.
And be sure to submit your questions tonight and your comments, not just on social media, but another great thing about a membership is that community in the chat box that you can get to know.
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So remember to type your questions into the live chat box to the right of tonight's stream.
Be a part of that Daily Wire community.
Make sure you become a member because we are going to try to answer as many questions as we can because we couldn't do this and we would not be here at this exciting digital movie premiere tonight if it wasn't for all of you.
Thank you, Alicia.
Fellas, we're rejoined now by Bearded James Bond and our waiter.
I'd love to hear from the two of you what you thought about the film tonight.
Well, first of all, I think Michael and I have done a really good job tonight.
Some of our best work all year.
I thought, just to echo everything that's already been said, really, but first of all, it's escapism.
So it's a movie that you watch and it's just entertaining and you feel like you're in it and you forget that you're watching a movie, which is what movies are supposed to be, but so often they're not these days.
And I also like that The bad guy, Tristan, was a really interesting character, but he's not the most interesting character because it's so hard, it seems like, to write a good guy who's also compelling and who you want to know more about.
And there's layers to the good guy or good girl in this case.
So that's what I like.
It's a movie where there's virtue and heroism, and the good guy wins, but the good guy's also interesting.
And it's just a compelling, compelling film.
You know what I like about it?
Is that the quality is good.
And I know this seems like a basic thing, but how many of us, how many, we know a lot of people in Hollywood, and we've seen a lot of movies that were made on a shoestring, and, you know, they'll say, well, look, yeah, maybe the writing was bad, and the shooting was bad, and the acting was really bad, and, you know, the editing got awful, but, you know, the idea was really good, so give us credit for it, right?
You say, that's not how movies work.
And you watch this movie, And it works.
It fits together.
It's good.
Very often, you know, acting can suffer.
I thought the acting was really...
Like I'm sure, Drew, when you watch movies, you watch it, I imagine, largely for the writing.
I do.
And I watch it primarily for the acting.
It's the only thing I know anything about in movies.
And the acting was excellent.
Particularly the protagonist's performance was just stellar.
You know, it was just a really excellent performance.
And I'm just so pleased after...
There's a lot of schlock that's come out of Hollywood and even out of people who want to do something in culture.
And I just felt this was really, really strong quality stuff.
To be honest, when I heard about the movie, I was terrified that it would suck.
I was really worried that we'd have to pretend to like a movie that was bad, especially doing this right now.
But it really doesn't suck at all.
It's a very good movie.
You heard it here, folks.
It really does.
That's my quote.
That is his highest.
I'm coming from Walsh.
It doesn't get better than that from Walsh.
But it is certainly true that I have been at movie premieres where I have been friends.
Drew knows this.
I have been friends with people who made the movie.
And then I have been roped into a situation as a quasi-famous person where they ask for an endorsement on camera of the film.
They literally just shove a camera in your face.
They put me up against a step and repeat and they put a camera in my face.
So what did you think of the movie?
And I'm friends with all the people who made it.
I'm like, well, it really got its point across.
It had cameras.
It was like on a big screen.
Noel Coward used to say, he would go back and say, darling, good just isn't the word.
It is an absolutely true statement that the unfortunate reality is the majority of things that you engage aren't great.
And so to be able to be a part of something that is great, that is both a quality film and a film of quality, it has quality values, it has a quality story, and it was delivered with quality is a pretty special thing.
Every time that anyone pulls off a film, Even if it's a terrible disaster, in some ways they just have my, if nothing else, they have my sympathy.
Because it's such a brutal thing to produce a film.
I imagine that when you see a woman with like five kids, and you know that after each and every one she thought, I am never doing that again.
But in the end, having a kid is so much better than having a kid.
It's the same with making a movie.
Having made a movie is so much better than making a movie, which is just like fire and brimstone desolation coming your way from every direction.
Anybody who makes it through has a certain amount of my respect.
But to make it through and actually deliver something of quality, it's a It's an incredible...
Listen, we're the ones who, you know, are in on the film.
So what our audience thinks is actually what matters.
And so once again, we're going to tell you that if you really enjoyed the content, if you want your friends to know about it, if you want your family to know about it, then we would really appreciate your membership and joining the broader cause of getting us into the entertainment business so we can compete with the much bigger players who will spend literally 100 times the budget of this film on making a movie that is 100th the quality and also hates your values.
So if...
You know, the other thing that you said that is actually important is if you're completely disappointed in this film, if you don't like it at all, if you object to it, shut up.
No, seriously, this is a funny thing.
I believe in speaking your mind, but as you just said, when you're going up with your friends, You do something kind, you know?
And you don't lie.
You don't say this is a great movie.
But if you love this film and you had objections to it, that's great.
We want to hear it.
We want to talk about it.
That's what movies are for.
They're disgusting.
But if you just feel like, oh my God, they cursed and I don't want to know it, your opinion is not that important.
Just keep it to yourself.
No, seriously.
I'm absolutely serious.
This is a moment when The Daily Wire is doing something beautiful.
It is doing something beautiful.
We're not going to always be right.
We're not going to always do the best.
You know...
Give us a break.
Give us a break.
We're happy to hear your opinion if you liked the film and you had objections and you want to talk about it.
That's wonderful.
But if you're just going to run us down, you know...
The good news is that, just looking at Twitter, the comments are like 100% positive.
Which is amazing because the comments are never 100% positive about anything, especially if, you know...
Wait, people say mean things on Twitter?
Yeah.
Not to you, of course.
I've only had positive experiences.
It is true that we've taken quite a risk here.
Not only a risk of money, because it's quite expensive to get involved in a project like this by the economic standards of a company our size.
But we've taken a risk with our audience, because we are challenging them.
We're challenging them to actually watch art, to watch entertainment, to From their side that they would readily accept from the other side.
And this is one of the problems that you often run into when you speak to a largely ideological audience.
They will not give us the same level of grace that they will give people who hate them.
So they'll all go watch Marvel movies that have themes that they don't like or that have language that they don't like or that...
But they don't care because they don't feel invested ideologically.
They'll watch something that we produce.
They'll say, oh, it had bad language or it had nudity in it or it had violence in it.
And they will feel that somehow that was a betrayal of them.
When watching something even...
Game of Thrones.
And what they don't know, what they don't realize is I was advocating for much, much more nudity.
I mean, you remember.
Knock down drag outs.
We had to cut Michael's nude scene out of this program.
Out of this program.
We had to cut it out of this program.
It's like, put on your tuxedo, Dan.
You know, we talk about challenging the audience.
The truth is that we wouldn't have done this if we didn't trust that the audience was going to understand what we're doing.
Because we know our audience better than anybody else.
And our audience knows what we're doing.
Our audience is sophisticated.
They are smart.
They recognize exactly what the challenge is.
And they recognize that if nobody moves into the space, then the space will remain unoccupied, but not for long, because it's being occupied by the left.
That's right.
And you can't say, oh, why have we lost the culture?
And then penalize anyone who actually tries to get involved in the culture.
Right.
And I don't think our audience...
The evidence demonstrates very strongly over the last couple of weeks that thanks to your support, that is not the case.
That you all understand what we're doing.
And we really, honestly, thank you to you guys.
We really, really appreciate that.
We appreciate your grace.
We appreciate your adventurous spirit in coming with us on this journey.
And we're counting on you to help us allow us to do more of this sort of stuff.
Yeah.
Wow.
I made a piece of content one time and somebody ideological came up and said, I'm so disappointed that you had this bad language in your film.
And I thought, you just don't know me at all.
How could you possibly be disappointed?
I'm a bad, bad man.
I don't know.
Well, thank you guys for joining us for the Daily Wire premiere of Run, Hide, Fight.
This is, we hope, the first of many pieces of entertainment content that we're going to bring to you.
Entertainment that you watch for the sake of entertainment, not for the sake of the mission.
We want to make content that you want to see, not content that you think you're supposed to see.
And with your help, we're going to continue doing just that.
We'll be back probably to talk about politics here in a few weeks, but thanks for going on this adventure with us tonight.
To talk about something that's more important than politics, something from which all politics actually eventually stems, and that's culture.
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