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May 7, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
48:44
The Real Story Behind the Film Hollywood Tried to Stop | Mohit Ramchandani
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dave rubin
45:43
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Speaker Time Text
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
We had 100% amongst critics until all the people that joined, you know, the Vivecs and the Tonys, and you know, once they all joined, all of a sudden, we got smashed.
So, okay, so you get into one festival, but you're not happy.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
You feel like you're kind of being pushed out, but you got a nice film.
So what happened?
The current administration is allowing...
These kids to come across the border and they're being transported then to Uncle Juan in Arizona.
And we're now looking at the files going, we've sent 900 kids to Uncle Juan in Arizona.
He isn't an uncle.
They would ask me like, so how many Latinos were in front behind the camera?
And I'm like, well, it was shot in Mexico.
And how many Latinos were involved in the writing and directing?
And I'm like, oh, you want to go after me?
I'm like, I'm an Indian.
I'm an immigrant.
My father worked in a sweatshop.
And you're now saying that because of the color of my skin being different.
I can't tell this story.
We have this army of influencers.
Together, they had over 300 million followers.
Many of them were getting shadow banned for posting about City of Dreams saying, this is spreading misinformation about the election.
And I'm like, what?
unidentified
Tch.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Joining me right now in studio is the director and producer of the film City of Dreams, Mo Raman Chandi.
I said your name wrong.
Mo Raman Chandani.
You said it right before we started?
That's good.
That's good, Bill.
Where does that put us right now?
Very uneven.
And your hair is better than mine.
This is going to be a rough hour.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
I'm very glad to have you on.
And, you know, watching the trailer, which I've watched several times before, and I've seen a bunch of the clips of the movie.
The movie came out last August.
Correct.
Feels, in some sense, even more timely now, just relative to what we're dealing with, with immigration, deportations, all that stuff.
So we'll obviously get into all of that.
But just tell me a little bit about your story, what gets you to make a movie like that, how you got into this crazy biz, and then we'll dive into all of that.
Totally.
And at some point, I will say your name correctly.
Okay, no worries.
So, you know, I'm originally from India, and my father worked in a sweatshop when he was seven years old, so that was always, you know, at the back of my mind.
And as a kid growing up, I was bullied a lot and I saw Rocky and it changed my life.
And I realized that the media and cinema has power to affect people and affect their minds and their hearts.
And so I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I wanted to tell heroes journeys, you know, Joseph Campbell's hero with a thousand faces.
Like that was my inspiration.
And I moved to LA and I worked for a long time as a producer and I made a lot of crap that I wasn't proud of.
I suddenly read a case about 72 immigrants trapped in a house in El Monte, California, and they were being forced to sew.
Like, when you think of human trafficking, you think of, like, sex slavery.
And we're all a little indifferent to that because we go, "That doesn't touch us." Whereas we're all wearing something that was probably made in a sweatshop.
So I thought that was an interesting sort of subject matter, and that's where the idea sort of germinated.
I've always loved, you know, City of God and Slumdog Millionaire and those kind of movies with kids.
So I just wanted to tell the story of this kid who comes across the border illegally.
He's trafficked and sold to a sweatshop.
Before we dive into the specifics of the film, the hero's journey that you're talking about, we got to spend a couple hours together a few months ago.
And we were just going through all of the movies that we love that have influenced us and TV shows.
And basically, we have like a lot of the same stuff that really hit us, including Rocky, as you mentioned.
I met Sly Stallone at a mutual friend of ours house not too long ago.
And when I met him, he walks up to me, how are you doing?
And I go, champ, it's great to meet you.
That was the first thing that popped in my head.
He's champ to me.
unidentified
Totally.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And that kind of encapsulates what a good story will do.
That I meet the guy who created it, wrote it, fought Hollywood to do the whole thing.
And in my mind, he kind of is that character.
And that's really an incredible thing.
Absolutely.
And, you know, for me...
My parents, like when I was growing up, my dad was like, you gotta get straight A's, you gotta stay out of trouble, and you gotta marry an Indian girl.
And I was a D student, I was always in trouble, and no girl liked me, Indian or not.
So I was out of luck, and I really was a very depressed kid.
My neighbor brought over Rocky, and you see him sort of take a beating through the whole movie.
And, you know, in the final fight, he gets knocked down a hundred times.
And in the 14th round, his trainer even tells him, stay down.
And he gets up and he looks at the champ and he goes, come on, let's go.
That moment changed my life.
I was sitting there watching that as a 12-year-old going, why did my father not teach me this?
Never to give up.
Why is getting straight A's and marrying an Indian girl...
More important than that.
So, yeah.
Was that also the moment that you realized you wanted to make films?
Or was that just sort of the genesis of, like, get my shit together?
No, I knew 100% then.
One day I'm going to move to Hollywood.
I'm going to make movies.
I was living in Hong Kong at the time.
And, you know, people would laugh at me as a 14, 15-year-old.
I was like, I'm going to move to Hollywood and I'm going to make movies.
So you get to Hollywood.
Yeah.
And what was the exact...
Did you say crap?
I think you said crap.
unidentified
Yeah, crap.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
It was a lot of crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
So you start making stuff.
And I think that's what happens to a lot of people with the dreams of getting to Hollywood.
There's just crap that needs to be made.
It's just part of the machine.
So you're doing that stuff.
And is it as soul-sucking as we all think it is?
Is there any fun part of it?
Or at least you're making some money, you know?
Look.
That's the fun part of it.
You're making some money, and if you truly are an artist and you want to tell great stories, the sort of barriers to entry in Hollywood are so low on one side where anyone can say, I'm a writer, I'm a director, you don't need a degree in brain science, but...
At the same time, you've got to pay your dues.
And everybody has to pay their dues.
And for me, I didn't really want to pay dues.
And what I learned was those movies that we love, they exist in the upper echelon.
The Gladiators, the Rockies, you don't get to tell those stories until you first make a horror movie, until you first make something genre.
You've kind of got to fit into the system.
Like all these independent films that go to festivals, I mean, for me personally, none of them made it to the multiplex internationally.
They're all boring.
I don't enjoy them.
So you have to kind of play in that world, or you have to be a slave to the studio system.
Because when you're working for a studio, it's their movie.
It's not yours, you know?
And so, yeah, it was tough.
When people give Hollywood so much crap, and there's obviously lots of reasons that Hollywood deserves some crap, but when you talk about the system, in some sense I see it as it had to have a system.
And the system has changed over the years.
The studios used to basically own the actors and contract them for years and all those things.
But do you feel that the system had to exist in some sense?
Like, there was going to have to be something pretty regimented, because everybody wants to, the idea that you could just go somewhere and create, every person on Earth would rather do that than, you know, dig in ditches, etc.
So here's the thing, as we've, you know, we both talked about, Hollywood's now becoming decentralized, right?
And technology's helping with that.
There's a good side to that.
But there's a bad side to that.
unidentified
And the bad side is, there hasn't been a great movie made in 30 years.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And actually, the old system worked better for creating movies.
And I'm going to say simply why.
In the old days, a producer like Robert Evans would read a book like Rosemary's Baby, and he would go, I'm going to go hire a director.
I'm going to hire someone with a vision for this story, and then we're going to go get what actors are assigned to the studio.
Actors are designed to take on the vision of someone else.
They're not...
Necessarily, their training isn't to be stubborn and visionary about one thing.
You know what I'm saying?
A lot of them have become that way, unfortunately.
But it's to let go and inhabit these different characters.
Now the business has gone the other way.
The actor decides what movie to get made.
He hires the director.
And there's a bunch of people running around with money that want to support whatever star wants to make a movie.
And as a result, the quality of cinema has gone down the toilet.
30 years, that's quite a statement.
What would you say is the last?
I would say for me, the year that Good Will Hunting, Titanic, as good as it gets, like all of those best picture nominees.
What's that, about 97?
97. Am I right?
unidentified
Wow.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
You're totally right.
That was 97 and 2000 was Gladiator.
Yeah.
So Gladiator won in 2000 the Academy Award and it was a huge movie and 97 was that year.
I would say that was the end.
You know, Braveheart was 95. The 90s, for me, were my favorite, like, decade.
Can I give you one other movie from 97 that I hope you enjoyed?
Because I think it's one of the greatest movies of all time, Robert Zemeckis, Contact with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.
Absolutely.
Wonderful.
So something was cooking in 97, also Air Force One.
Commercially, pretty great.
Pretty great, not at all time.
Honestly, I love it.
I get it.
I get it, but we're not putting it in the top 100, but it's a great movie.
Okay, so Hollywood has shifted.
All these things have shifted.
We're in a shifting time right now.
Now you decide to make this movie, and this is to the backdrop of a lot of kind of craziness of, let's say, the last five or so years in America, maybe decade in America, and immigration, and build a wall, and all these things.
How does this even start?
Had he even come up with the script?
So I wrote it in 2011.
It was announced in 2011.
And at the time, Pierce Brosnan was going to play the cop.
Like, that's, you know, who I had had at the time.
And Alfred Molina was going to play the El Jefe character.
I unfortunately left.
I totally could see that.
Yeah, yeah, right?
Like, so El Jefe...
I mean, I left town for six years, between 2011 and 2017, because my mom had late-stage cancer, and I pretty much traveled the world and learned cancer and took her to all these different clinics and so forth, and then she passed.
And at that point, I was like, what am I going to do?
And I looked back, I had a bunch of projects, but I was like, I feel like I want to establish myself as somebody that...
I don't really want to make a statement.
I want to move people.
Like, that was my goal.
And the story of this kid and what he goes through, I'd already written it, you know, before the border or anything was being talked about.
And I thought, I can raise money to do this.
So I pieced it together through friends and family.
I'd tried for years getting it made in the system.
It was rejected a thousand times.
So what do you make of that?
I mean, because in some sense, you kind of defended the system in some ways, that a system has to exist and there's reasons it makes sense, but you couldn't get your piece through.
I couldn't get my piece through, and I think the system has changed.
I think the system of the last 10 years is not the system of 30 or 40 years ago.
unidentified
You know what I mean?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
So I do think the system's changed, and I didn't like that they weren't willing to support me because whatever political ideology was in the movie, Didn't work for Hollywood at the time.
At the same time, there's no stars.
There's no werewolves.
It's not a horror movie.
You know, it didn't fit in those boxes.
I was told, dude, who wants to see a movie about a Mexican kid who sold to a sweatshop?
Nobody.
unidentified
And that's why I had to find money for it myself.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And I actually invested in the movie and worked on it for free.
So what's it like to put together a movie like this where you have to kind of...
Because you're creating art, but obviously you have to...
Do some deep dives on some pretty horrible stuff.
Yeah, I was lucky in what happened to me is when I started, I found this guy who's still a really good friend.
His name's Ruben Rosales.
He's now the head of the wage and hour division for the Department of Labor for all the West Coast.
And he was the head of like...
California, when I met him years ago, he guided me.
He was the one.
And funnily enough, you know, he's been in the labor department for 40 years.
And from the moment I started writing, I'd contacted him and he was sort of feeding me cases.
He was like, this is back in 2012.
He's like, you know, we just found like 30 migrant children in a garage in the Bay Area and they're making cabinets that are ending up at Marriott courtyards.
And at that time, the mainstream media wasn't reporting it.
At all.
It wasn't being talked about.
So I had a lot of help.
Like, from him, and I did my own research, and back in the day, like in 2011, 2012, you could walk to downtown LA, and there were these buildings, they're called the ANJAC buildings, the fashion buildings, and you could just walk in, and there's just rows and rows of Asians and Latinos that are sewing, and they've got their headphones on, and they're super afraid, and there's like a foreman, and they were all out in the open.
I mean, they weren't bonded laborers, they could go home, but they were being paid like a dollar an hour and stuff, and it was out in the open.
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What was the most shocking thing that you learned during this?
I mean, that's kind of shocking because it's not too long ago and you'd think we would have cleaned that stuff up earlier.
Yeah, we think of it as something that happens in other countries.
We think of it in China, but we don't think of it here.
Through all of this, by far the most shocking thing was in 2021, I was in Mexico City and I was working on the movie and this guy from the Labor Department calls me and he goes...
I'm going to tell you something.
He said the current administration is allowing these kids to come across the border and the kids are being processed by ICE and they're being transported then to Uncle Juan in Arizona.
And we're now looking at the files going, we've sent 900 kids to Uncle Juan in Arizona.
He isn't an uncle.
And he said, we're giving them meals and we're paying to transport them.
And he told me...
Mo, this is going to hit big.
This is going to come out in the media.
He told me two years before Hannah Dreyer's article in the New York Times that that was, for me, the most shocking thing.
The number of children.
You know what I mean?
Because you know this stuff is happening in India and Pakistan.
It should not be happening in California, in LA, and certainly not even in this country.
So why?
What was the reason they told you it was allowed to continue?
It was just a machine that was operating and nobody wanted to be the one to take the heat?
I guess.
And I was told they didn't know.
Like, for a long time, they were genuinely saying, okay, we're letting these kids in.
They're asylees.
You know, we're going to process them and we're going to ship them out.
Like, that's...
And it was really late on.
And then, you know, it doesn't matter what end of the political spectrum you are.
We all know political parties.
For the most part, will cover stuff up when they've made a mistake.
Everyone does.
I don't see politicians going, yeah, I made a mistake.
Like, there's always some kind of cover-up, right?
Like, yeah.
So that's what I think happened.
So you're writing the script.
So you're basically pulling pieces from lots of real stories.
How do you kind of make the narrative arc that becomes the fictitious arc within that?
So, you know, I drew on the experiences of my dad.
Really?
And I say all the time, I did, the movie was screened at the Academy, and in the Q&A, they were like, why did you make this movie?
And I was like, well, Jesus is my father.
Cesar, the guy who runs the sweatshop, is my father.
El Jefe, the guy who controls, they're all my father at different stages because he was, you know, an authoritarian in the house and it was get straight A's or you take the belt.
And so me and my brother grew up in this very almost slave type environment where there was a lot of beatings if we didn't comply.
So a lot of my personal story, a lot of my dad's story is where the characters came from and people I know.
Also in interviewing people and actually going and meeting sort of workers when they were out in the open and seeing sort of, you know, how they interacted.
And, of course, you take ideas from other movies, right?
So you finished the script 2011.
Yeah.
Now you have this six-year step away, basically.
You decide to come back.
You've got the script.
Now you have to raise money, right?
Now you're going to raise money.
But you didn't need a ton of money.
No.
What do you need?
Three million dollars.
You need three million bucks, which sounds like a lot of money to a lot of people, but to make a film is obviously...
On the very small.
It's very, very low side.
Yeah.
But not the easiest thing to do.
unidentified
No.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
When you're talking politics and borders, racism and children and trafficking and all of those things.
What was that like?
So, truthfully, it wasn't, when I was raising the money for the movie in 2018, end of 2017 we started, it wasn't that big a deal.
You know what I mean?
It wasn't this big, like, political issue.
It was more of, hey, Look at what's happening to these children, right?
And the way I did it was me and an old friend of mine who was the head of Viacom in Canada, he was sort of wanting to leave Viacom and become a producer.
We made a video where we talked about the issue and why we want to make this film and how films can inspire change.
And we made this, like, eight-minute video, and we were funded in 60 days.
That's what happened.
We sent it out.
It was banging down every door.
It was like, cousins, give me 50 grand.
That's how you do it.
So it's not exactly Rocky, which he wrote the script, but then was basically told, okay, maybe we'll take the script, but you can't be part of it.
But the journey to get there, he had a long, Sylvester had a long journey to get Rocky finally made.
So you have a long journey for a series of other reasons.
But okay, so now you've got the cash.
You've got the script.
You're ready to go.
You start making.
Was it technically your first feature?
Yeah, it was my first film as a director.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
I hadn't directed anything before.
I knew I wanted to, but I had written stuff that was much bigger.
Yeah.
And everyone was like...
Hey, kid, no one's giving you $50 million to make your first movie.
You gotta start, you know, with something like this.
So yeah, it was my first.
unidentified
But I had worked as a fix-it guy for a while.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
So what that means is producers would call me and say, hey, this movie sucks.
We want you to do two days of reshoots and re-edit the movie.
And it was like, I get to learn while at the same time being paid and while at the same time working on someone else's movie.
So I did that for a long time.
That happened because as a producer, I had sold a movie years ago off a trailer, and the movie wasn't good, and then I had to fix it.
So it was kind of known amongst town that, hey, this guy had done this.
And so I was brought in.
So I had a lot of experience on set by the time I went to shoot the movie, but it was my first film.
Right, so is that a weird thing, that your first thing is you're writing and directing your first thing?
Because you're saying sort of that's kind of the way it's done now a little bit more because of what you mentioned earlier with the actors, but that's a little different.
It is, and I don't...
Think of myself as, like, an average writer.
Like, I would love to go, you know, like, Steven Spielberg doesn't write.
He's not the greatest writer.
The stuff he's written isn't the greatest.
I couldn't get the scripts that I wanted.
I tried.
There was a bunch of scripts over the years that I'd read that I'd even bid on that I was going to pay for myself, but they went to studios, they went to bigger directors, and that's when I said, look, I'm going to have to sit down and write something myself or go make something crap.
That's someone else.
Because CAA and William Morris are not sending Moe, War of the Worlds.
That's just how it is, right?
So, yeah.
Okay, so you get the money, you're writing, you're directing, you complete the film.
Did you feel, were you like, all right, we did it, we're good, now let's go to market and see what happens?
Because this is where the story gets a little sideways, which I think will really get in the minds of my audience.
Exactly.
So, first of all, making the movie was...
An odyssey.
So I just want to say that, like, it wasn't a normal, like, a normal independent film shoots for, nowadays, anywhere between 18 and 23 days, right?
We shot for...
unidentified
Is that right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
18 to 23. Yeah, that's how, for independent films, because it's expensive, so you have to, you know, box everything down.
I shot for 70 days, and it was kind of a joke amongst some of my crew, like, this guy thinks he's making Apocalypse Now, you know, like, so...
It was shot over three years because what happened was I started shooting and I ran out of money.
Like, while I was shooting, and again, it was kind of like the universe I felt was guiding everything.
Right before I was running out of money, Alfonso Cuaron's producing partner, Gabby Rodriguez, who was, you know, who produced Roma and all of his movies, she was on set, and she told my producer, wow, this looks amazing.
You should support this director and give him whatever you want.
So he came up to me, and I was like, well, I need another million bucks.
Like, you know what I mean?
You always need another million.
Yeah, you always, exactly.
Exactly.
So it sort of kept going.
We finished.
In the fall of 2022, and at that point, we've gone through the pandemic, we've gone through the Me Too movement, we've gone through George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and nobody wanted to see this.
Also because it's considered a dark subject matter.
I don't consider it to be dark.
I consider narcos and euphoria, the celebration of drug dealers and teenage sex is not dark, but you know, this seems to be dark.
It sort of was driving me insane.
No one wanted to see it.
I couldn't get anyone to see it.
And I was in Mexico City and I was mixing at this very famous stage called Chiribusco where David Lynch mixed Dune, the original Dune.
I was there and I recognized this guy.
He had like long red hair.
And his name's Luis Mandoki, and he's a very, very sort of famous Mexican director.
He directed When a Man Loves a Woman and Message in a Bottle with Costner.
You know, he'd done this movie called Gabby that was Mexico's entry to the Oscars.
He'd done a movie that inspired City of Dreams called Innocent Voices about child soldiers in Chile that was also Mexico's entry to the Oscars in 2006.
I walked up to him and I was like, will you watch my movie?
I'm a big fan, but he watched it and he was like, wow, I love it.
How can I help?
And I was like, I don't have any money.
I need you to promote it for free.
And he was like, okay, I'll do it.
And then he brought in Yalitza Parisio, who had just been nominated a couple of years prior for an Academy Award for Roma.
She was the lead actress of Roma and kind of an icon to indigenous people.
Brought her.
She watched the movie and she was like, I love this.
What can I do?
And I was like, I don't have any money.
But I need you to promote this for free.
And she was like, great.
I came back to the States, end of 2022.
No one cared.
It was like, okay, so you've got this Mexican director and this woman.
Who cares?
Like, everyone's doing bigger things.
It was also just a very weird time in the country.
I mean, it's the backdrop of a couple of things that you mentioned, BLM and COVID.
It was just like a bizarre cultural time.
Nobody understood what the hell was going on and everything else.
Yeah.
And I think I didn't, again, I didn't fit in the box.
And one of the things that...
Absolutely hurt me in Hollywood was that I wasn't Latino.
And I will tell you that when I got back from Mexico, there was a few...
I would love to mention their names and just throw them under the bus, but I'm working on diplomacy, so...
You could just write them down.
Yeah, yeah.
They run these organizations, these Hispanic media organizations, and I got on Zooms with them.
And they would ask me, like, so how many Latinos were in front and behind the camera?
And I'm like, well, it was shot in Mexico.
And it's 90%.
Okay, how many Latinos were involved in the producing?
Well, we have Luis and Yalitza.
And how many Latinos were involved in the writing and directing?
And I'm like, oh, you want to go after me?
I'm like, I'm an Indian.
I'm an immigrant.
I was born in India.
My father worked in a sweatshop.
And you're now saying that because of the color of my skin being different to yours, I can't tell this story?
Sorry, brother.
You're a shade of brown don't count.
Yeah, I was like, are you kidding me?
Were you genuinely shocked?
Yes, yes.
Because me hearing that, I'm like, of course that was going to happen.
No, I couldn't.
I was so naive because what had happened was the film had been rejected by every film festival.
And I didn't.
I didn't get it.
And initially, you know, I'd signed with an agency and they had said to me, look, the film industry is recovering and the festivals, they want big star movies.
Like, all of a sudden, Harrison Ford is going to Cannes and Tom Cruise to promote their...
That's not what was being shown at Cannes 10 years ago.
And at the same time, they were like, your film doesn't fit into what they're looking for.
And I'm like, what are they looking for?
And they're looking for specific...
You know, ideologies, and your film doesn't fit that.
And I heard many times, Mo, because you're not a Latino, like, if you had a Mexican last name, your film would have gotten into Sundance.
Like, I don't know if any of that's true, but it drove me insane.
Yeah.
Because how can no festival?
Like, no festival took us except one.
We got into one small California-based festival.
So that's when...
Yes, I was genuinely surprised.
I was hurt.
I was angry.
I didn't understand.
I thought about maybe I shouldn't be doing this.
It was a dark time.
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Now we're getting to the meat of the story here, at least for the release part.
So, okay.
So you get into one festival, but you're not happy.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
You feel like you're kind of being pushed out, but you got a nice film.
So what happens?
This is what happened.
This was the turning point.
I was...
When I get depressed, I start going to yoga every day.
I stop drinking.
I get health.
I'm going to yoga every day.
And one day, I'm in the changing room, and there's this old guy.
He's come out of the shower, and he's butt naked.
unidentified
And he's standing like this, and he's going, hey, kid, can you get me a towel?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And it just hit me.
I was like, yeah, I can, but I need you to do something for me.
And he's standing there naked, holding himself.
This story is going to get very weird.
No, no, no.
He's standing there going...
Are you going to get me the towel?
And I'm like, yeah, but I need you to watch my movie.
And he was like, fine, go get me the towel.
So I go, I get him the towel.
And he like, so he's standing there and he's like, so for the last eight years, you say hello to me.
And like, this is what it's all been about.
And I was like, no, I say hello to you.
But I mean, I know who you are.
And this guy, his name's Michael Phillips.
He produced The Sting.
He produced Taxi Driver, produced Closing Counters a third time.
He brought Guillermo del Toro to America, produced his first movie, Mimic.
I mean, he's a legend.
You know, there's been books written about his wife, Julia Phillips, was the first female that won an Oscar.
She produced The Sting with him.
So he was like, all right, I'll watch your movie.
And I was like, I want to set up a screening.
He's like, yeah, no.
I'm like, can I have your number?
He's like, yeah, no.
And I'm like, all right.
And, you know, Dave, you know me a little bit.
I can be pushy, you know?
You are not shy.
unidentified
No, no.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
It's kind of like how I roped you into having me on your show, right?
It's kind of that thing.
So, this guy agrees to watch a movie.
I sent him a link.
And it was a life-changing moment.
He calls me three days later and he goes, I got good news for you and I got bad news.
And I was like, all right.
And he goes, the good news is what makes a great storyteller is that he shows you a world in a completely unique way.
So you know what this world is, but he demonstrates it in a way you could have never imagined.
That's what makes a Scorsese.
And he goes, you did that.
And I was like, wow.
And he goes, here's the bad news.
Everyone in Hollywood is so ignorant and stupid right now.
They're not going to recognize this.
They don't care about this.
They would have cared more if Matt Damon was in your movie, whereas in the old days, somebody would have gone, oh my God, give this guy a seven-picture deal at Warner Brothers, right?
And so you're going to have a tough time, and I'm willing to help you in any way I can.
And I was like, great.
Write letters to Dinero, Guillermo del Toro, and he did.
He started connecting me, and through him, Mm-hmm.
in September, Mayor Karen Bass organized the screening of the movie at LAPD.
And through Michael Phillips, I met someone who met someone.
I got to Roadside Attractions.
And Roadside Attractions is the Oscar division of Lionsgate.
They did Margin Call, Mudd, Super Size Me, all these great films.
And I convinced the two presidents to come.
unidentified
Come and watch the movie at LAPD.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
They watched it.
They were blown away.
We sat down that night and they said, we want to distribute the movie.
We've got to deal with Hulu, blah, blah, blah.
And that was the beginning of the turn.
Okay, so now the movie's out.
No, now the movie has a deal.
Yeah.
Oh, I was jumping ahead.
Okay, does anything else happen before the movie comes out?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, okay.
I was going to the cancellation.
We have the distribution deal, but they don't want to give it a bigger release, right?
They're like, we want to do 50 screens.
I'm like, I want 500.
And they're like, we're going to need more money.
And so I then connected in 2024, literally three or four months later.
Wait, this is going to sound like a very amateur question, but why do they need more money for more screens?
For marketing.
Purely for marketing.
Purely for marketing, right.
So if you're going to go out wider, you've got to go in more markets, right?
Your radio and your TV ads and stuff.
So at that point...
I connected with one of the executive producers of Sound of Freedom.
And he was really moved by the film.
And he brought an investor who brought the money.
But more importantly, he said, okay, I want to build an ambassador program around it.
I want to get a bunch of people who support trafficking, who are known celebrities, to promote the film.
And I was like, great.
And it started with Linda Perry from Four Non Blondes.
She loved the movie and she'd written the song City of Dreams.
unidentified
And I was looking for a Latino to sing it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Because initially there were ideas of, you know, Chris Stapleton and Jon Bon Jovi, who all I love, but I was afraid that I'd get in trouble.
So I was like, no, no, no, we're going to get a Latino.
You didn't want to get an Indian to sing it.
I didn't want to get it.
No, so...
We got Luis Fonzi, who sang Despacito, and, you know, he's a huge star.
Lovely guy.
He joined.
And then, after that, I got a video message from Tony Robbins.
And Tony Robbins saw the movie and was really moved by it.
And I went to his house and I sat down with him and he said, okay, man, tell me who you want to watch the film.
It was like Christmas.
I was like, okay, well, I want Sylvester Stallone.
And he was like, oh, Sly's my buddy.
Like, I'm totally going to send it to all of these people, right?
Yeah, he's just the best.
No, he's right.
He got Dr. Oz to watch it.
He got all his friends, you know, Dana White and all these guys he sent the movie to.
He got involved.
And all of a sudden, all these people started joining.
Like, Mike Tyson became an ambassador, did a video for us.
And in the middle of that, Vivek Ramaswamy.
So this is all before the release, right?
Vivek Ramaswamy and I had a phone call.
And I was like, hey, man.
I was like, you're Indian, like me.
Like, I love that, you know?
And he was like, I love this film and I want to support it.
And at the time, I told him, maybe we should get someone who's a Democratic presidential candidate and who's...
And bring them in so that no one thinks.
Because for me, the movie isn't political at all.
And I wanted to balance it.
But we were so late in the game.
And Vivek agreed.
And I told Vivek, I said, look, I don't agree with everything that you say.
And he was like, well, Mo, but we can still sit down and break bread and discuss it.
And that's what I liked about him.
And I told him, I said, dude, I've been a Democrat my whole life, right?
You should know that.
And he goes, I don't care.
I love what you did with this movie.
So he joined as an executive producer and all the way up to it, released on August 30th.
And for me, the crowning moment where I feel my life changed is I'm driving home from Whole Foods two weeks before the release and Tony Robbins sends me a text message and he goes, Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, brother.
And I'm like...
It's like 3 o 'clock in the afternoon.
Is he drinking?
He doesn't usually send messages.
Right, right.
I was like, what's going on over here?
And he sends me a video.
That Sly has made, where Sly is endorsing the film, and I just started crying.
I couldn't believe it.
I was like, this is so crazy, you know?
And then after that...
I just got chills up my spine.
Right?
Yeah.
It was like just meeting the guy.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Wow, and here he is, your hero.
No, no.
From 20 years before.
From 20, but here's how much crazier it got.
So I then stopped the car.
I'm like bawling for about 10 minutes.
I leave Tony a voice note.
And I'm like, I just want to let you know, you know, like, I'm a 40-year-old man and I feel like I failed at everything in my life.
I'm a failure in every area.
I have no family, no kids, no wife.
And I said, but today, I don't feel like a failure anymore because the guy that affected me has been affected by something.
And I tried not to cry during this message, but I did.
And Tony got it.
And then I sent him another more polished, hey, sorry for getting emotional.
I just wanted to thank you for making this happen.
unidentified
Tony sends the message of me crying to Sly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And Sly then sends me another video where he's like, wow, that really touched me and I'm so grateful.
And if there's anything I can do, and I'm like, yes, post it on your Instagram.
And he did.
And he did.
So it was crazy.
And then you're going, man, am I smacking yourself in the face?
Like, am I dreaming right now?
I know.
It's been pretty crazy.
So the movie comes out in August of last year.
And I assume that day comes and you're like, holy cow, the long journey is finally, you know, well, you're just sort of at the beginning again, but here we go.
Got a little tricky after a couple of days.
Got a little tricky.
This is what happened.
So this is when I knew something was wrong.
So leading up to the release is the most important week, right?
It's the week you do all the press and stuff.
Mira Sorvino, Oscar-winning actress, is one of our executive producers.
Now, Mira Sorvino is a staunch liberal.
Linda Perry's obviously a staunch liberal, right?
We've got people like Vivek who are staunch Republicans.
And it was great because I felt like we were balanced.
And Tony Robbins and I were invited to go on Jesse Waters and on Brett Baer.
And, you know, we did all these interviews together.
And Mira Sravino and I were supposed to go on Morning Joe.
And they canceled.
Like, last minute, they canceled.
And I was like, what is going on?
Like, that's kind of weird.
We didn't get invited to any of the mainstream media.
And it really hurt me because I was like, guys, I'm one of you!
Like, I am a Democrat.
I'm an immigrant.
You guys don't want to talk to me about this movie.
I didn't get it.
Here's what happened leading up to it as well.
All the, like, Mike Tyson's post and Stallone's post and, you know, Tony's.
We're all getting sort of limited engagement.
And we had this army of influencers that were Latin influencers, right?
Together, they had over 300 million followers.
Many of them were getting shadow banned on Instagram for posting about City of Dreams saying, this is spreading misinformation about the election.
And I'm like, what?
And I saw the screenshots, right?
And then, of course, we know that at the time, everyone said, oh, you're crazy.
This is just sour grapes because it doesn't look like you're opening up.
And then Zuckerberg goes from Joe Rogan and basically says, yes, we were told that we weren't supposed to allow certain things to grow.
Even though this had nothing to do with the election, per se.
It had nothing.
But I think, and we knew this, and I love the guys at Roadside Attractions, Howard and Eric, the two presidents.
They told me the election is either going to be a good thing, and it's going to explode, or it's going to be a bad thing, and it's going to crash us.
And we still did really well, but this is what happened.
Right as we opened, there was a bunch of conservative influencers that went online.
And started saying that they were going to theaters and the theaters were telling them the movie was sold out and the screens were half empty.
They started posting.
And again, I'm giving you secondhand information because I heard all this.
I mean, I've seen all of these examples.
You know what they did at the height of my last book tour, which was 20...
We had people that were buying tickets to my show that literally put the money for the tickets so that there would be empty seats in the theater, but then we had people overflow for every single show that took those seats anyway when they realized they weren't even coming.
Think how twisted these people are.
You're going to waste money so that someone has an empty seat, and then that didn't even work.
So I'll believe anything.
No, no.
And I was being sort of told this, and then this is what happened.
Because of those organic posts, AMC's stock price, Got affected.
And I believe the CEO of AMC called the head of the studio and said, you know, this is not true.
We want City of Dreams to make money in the studio.
There was a statement made, like the CEO of AMC and our two studio presidents had to come out and say that the, you know, rumors around City of Dreams were complete nonsense.
And, you know, I'm sort of, for me, I'm very scientific.
Like I want evidence, evidence, evidence, right?
For me, the evidence that I found was our showtimes.
First of all, we had like 600, I think 600 or 650 screens.
So many of them, the majority of them, were like hours away from where, like, you know, you would watch a movie.
I had people saying to me, I have to drive an hour to find a theater.
And then a lot of these theaters, like on a Saturday, the showtimes were at nine.
And at noon.
Who goes to watch a movie like this at 9 in the morning or at noon, man?
So that really affected our opening.
And what do you make of that?
That's an AMC issue?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
I mean, yeah, I mean, look, we booked with all the theater chains.
It wasn't just AMC.
So I can't say it's an AMC issue.
But I think in their defense, what they would say, and I don't disagree with them, is, look, this movie isn't Mission Impossible.
It isn't.
And so it's normal to give these sort of movies like...
You know, showtimes away from the main tickets where they need to fill theaters and they're guaranteed the house is going to go full.
I get that.
And I think the mistake in our strategy was, had we concentrated?
Like, our highest grossing theater was The Empire in New York, which was an AMC.
Like, we made the most amount of money off that theater.
And by the way, that's a very liberal, you know, right down in Times Square.
You know what I'm talking about?
So, I feel like we should have concentrated better rather than just sort of going wide.
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But this also is why when you told me this story when we met a few months ago, I was so interested in it.
Yeah.
Because people think of this sort of woke thing that we've just gotten out of in cancel culture as just about race specifically or just about gender, like the obvious ones.
And yet, even though there is a racial element, let's say, maybe to you directing and the Latino organizations not wanting it, there was also something else going on here just because of the nature of the topic.
Basically, or that something that, as you said, wasn't particularly political, at least partisan political, became political.
And I think that that's kind of fascinating.
So I definitely feel that now, looking back.
And I spoke to someone who is a president-level executive at one of the major studios, whose name I'm not going to give away.
And he said, look, I know what happened to you.
And the way he said it, I was like, he knows that this was somehow stopped.
And that's another thing.
I want to mention, we had 100% amongst critics until all the people that joined, you know, the Vivecs and the Tonys, and, you know, once they all joined, all of a sudden we got smashed by Variety, by, you know, Roger Ebert's site.
And for me, one of the greatest, like, where I really understood what they were doing, they were pissed off that I wasn't a Latino and so forth, was in the Ebert report.
They gave me zero out of four stars, right?
But this was the best.
They wrote, if this movie's mission is to raise awareness, done.
But it has achieved nothing.
Where is the website that tells you how you can help and shape this problem?
Where is this?
Where is that?
unidentified
And I was saying, I'm like, wait, wait.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Christopher Nolan makes Interstellar, which is based on science.
And you're going to give him crap about not having a website where he solves the space-time continuum?
Are you kidding me?
Like there was no website where they showed how gravity forced books to fall off the shelf with the sand and everything?
unidentified
I know, I know.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
So I was kind of like, that's when I relaxed and didn't take...
Because, you know, criticism hurts.
You work on something and these people are trashing you.
And you're like...
And we had a lot of...
I mean, you know, we ended up...
We're at 54% or something now, 53. But we went from 100.
Yeah.
We were at 100 right up until, you know, and we'd screened at a festival, so we had a bunch of reviews.
We'd won that little festival that we went to, you know?
So that was also very sort of telling.
So you're past the theater point.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
But it's now available all over the place.
Yeah.
It's on Apple, it's on Amazon, and I will say I really want to credit.
Like Tony Robbins, because I feel like he really pushed him.
You know, the movie came out, it did $1.7 million at the box office, which for a specialty film and roadside attractions is excellent.
For the expectation of what the film should have done in the light of Sound of Freedom and all the people that supported it, it was terrible.
So it just depends what light you look at it with.
Tony sort of really stuck with me.
And I remember I left him this voice telling him I failed everyone and blah, blah, blah.
And I got like an eight minute Tony Robbins seminar message back from him, you know, like, and he pepped me up.
And what he did, he brought me to Unleash the Power Within, which was his event in November, where he had sold out the Prudential Center.
He had 20,000 people.
He had 7,000 people on Zoom.
And I went with the lead actor of the movie and we sat right in the front and he introduced me to the whole crowd and he played the trailer to his crowd and had them go out and start organically post about it.
And I got a call from Lionsgate going around Thanksgiving going...
What are you guys doing?
We're seeing an 82% surge in buys on Amazon since our release.
So I'm really grateful because he really wanted to get the message out there and it has done well in these other sort of mediums.
Wow, that's awesome.
So what's next?
What's next?
So for me next, you know, I've been...
Looking at multiple projects, as you do as a writer-director and stuff, I am working on launching a company that makes, you know, it's called Impact Media, and it's focused on what I call filling the critical void in heroic cinema, in cinema that celebrates heroes that...
Are exemplary role models to children and don't have these nihilistic, apathetic points of view, which I think Hollywood is obsessed with now.
So I'm actually partnered with the former head of Dimension Films and Walden Media in going forward with that.
And I'm on my way to Cuba.
I'm actually, I wrote a movie about Havana Syndrome, you know, that whole thing.
And so I'm going to, but it is, funnily enough, it's a Harrison Ford movie in my mind.
It's The Fugitive set in Cuba.
That's what the movie's about.
All right.
Unfortunately, we have to wrap.
unidentified
Of course.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
We have a heart out here.
However, next time we do this, can we do an hour on why The Sopranos is the best television show of all time?
unidentified
Yes.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Agreed.
Agreed.
Yeah, we were honored on that.
Thank you so much for having me, buddy.
Absolutely.
unidentified
Thank you.
Jesus!
Jesus It's the right decision for the whole family.
Do you think you're going to go out to the field tomorrow?
No, no, no.
Any reason you roll through that stop?
I'm sorry.
Is that your son?
Yes.
Got any ID for the boy?
Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
*Burr*
unidentified
Watch the stops.
To a 2018 red Mustang belonging to a Rodrigo Ramirez.
Rise and shine, homie!
Rise and shine!
First shift 630.
Second shift till 30. Massive 211 and boom.
Lights out of midnight.
You'll crush it.
I know there's more of them in there.
Well, fake passport isn't gonna cut it.
Yes, sir.
These people have no criminal history whatsoever.
Kinda busy shin.
A busy kind.
We've got evidence that they're harboring illegals.
Plus, we're warrant denied.
Copy that.
I'd quit poking around.
Catch my drift.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
What is the truth?
unidentified
The truth is that as much as we want to be free, we live and we die together.
This is America.
This is America.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
If you're tired of the mainstream media circus and want more honest conversations, go check out our media playlist.
And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here.
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