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Jan. 9, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
58:13
Justin Baldoni vs Blake Lively!
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Time Text
So, you all can hear me just fine, I assume.
The light is going just fine.
And I am happy to take questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever is on your mind.
I'm happy to take it.
You've got to raise your hand.
And, just as we're waiting for all of that, I have a question.
Oh, I have a question for you.
Do you care?
Do you care about Justin and Blake?
Do you care about Justin and Blake?
So this is Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively.
They were in a movie that I actually reviewed called It Ends With Us.
And they are going through a pretty wild Me Too thing at the moment.
And it is a little bit of a rabbit hole.
It is.
My daughter's involved in a mock trial.
So...
It is interesting to me.
I've done some reading on it, but of course I want to make sure that it's interesting to you guys.
Just hit me with a why if you want me to.
Delve into that, because I think there's a lot of philosophical juicy content in that.
But it also may not be to everyone's tastes, and I'm kind of aware of that.
So you can let me know.
I'll just check here in the chat.
And again, if you have questions or comments, I'm happy to hear.
You've not heard of them?
What's going on?
We've got some yeses.
We've got some yeses.
So, it's a 2016 novel called It Ends With Us.
And Blake Lively, who is best known for Gossip Girl, I don't think she's much of an actress, but she's cute and has some charisma.
Blake Lively, of course, she's the wife of Ryan Reynolds.
And then there's this unknown guy.
Honestly, I think I'm a fairly decent judge of male attractiveness.
Because, you know...
I get to shave every day.
But Justin Baldoni, by the way, is a scrumptious Sicilian piece of tasty man meat.
He is a very, very good-looking guy.
He's got this whole Agamemnon, you know, Roman-Greek hero thing going on, great physique, and a really good actor.
He was a really good actor in that movie.
So when the movie was being filmed, it actually went on hiatus for a while because there was a massive amount of tension.
Apparently between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
Now, I think she's wanted to sue him for a while, but in order to launch a lawsuit against this kind of harassment stuff in California, I think it is.
I know they filed some in New York.
Some of the allegations take place in New York.
You actually have to file with their, like, board, their government board, and then they have, I don't know, 60 days or something like that to review it, and if they decide to go ahead then and only then...
I think, I'm no lawyer, but this is my understanding, then and only then can you actually pursue a lawsuit.
So that's going on.
Now, what is going on?
Allegations of sexual harassment and hostile work environment.
Let's just get through some of the facts, and then we will get into the philosophy, which I find fascinating.
So, Blake Lively has accused Justin Baldoni.
None of this stuff is proven, of course, right?
Of course.
She's accused Baldoni of creating a hostile work environment during the filming of the movie.
She says he engaged in inappropriate behavior, including showing nude images, discussing his alleged pornography addiction, making inappropriate comments about her weight, and entering her trailer uninvited while she was undressed.
She also alleges that Baldoni improvised unwanted physical interactions like kissing and lip-biting during filming.
So, after Lively raised these concerns, she alleges that Baldoni and his crack team of PR gnomes retaliated by orchestrating a social manipulation or smear campaign intended to damage her reputation.
So, they hired a crisis management team to spread negative narratives about Lively on social media platforms, including Reddit, and through media manipulation.
And there are these text messages between Baldoni's PR team discussing strategies to bury Lively's reputation.
She, like most pretty famous women, has some sort of hair product line or something like that.
And she says that it suffered like 40% or 45% or something like that drop in sales.
Because there's a funny thing.
I don't know if you can discuss this with the women in your life.
It's a little incomprehensible to me, but that's the glories of female life.
For a lot of women, in order to buy a celebrity's products, you have to like them.
I don't quite understand that myself.
I mean...
I don't have to like a surgeon.
I just need him to be a good surgeon, right?
I don't need to like my dentist as a person.
I don't need to agree with all of her values or his values.
They just need to be good dentistry, right?
But this lifestyle branding stuff, you have to have a positive image in the minds of women in order for them to buy from you.
And no matter how much they claim to, quote, love your products, if they have a negative view of you, they will stop buying.
Your products.
This is one of the reasons why this sort of cancel culture stuff has emerged, is that women won't buy from people they don't like.
And therefore, if someone is portrayed as unlikable, that harms that person's economic activity and also whoever hosts or platforms them there.
It's just a funny thing about women that they have to like someone's products in order to buy them.
Now, I kind of get that as a whole, in some ways, like if some real criminal, horrible organization, you can boycott them and all of that, but...
As far as this goes, right, this is just sort of a big deal.
Now, so Blake Lively, as I mentioned, she filed this formal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department and later a lawsuit in New York Federal Court against Baldoni, his production company, Wayfair Studios, and others for sexual harassment and retaliation.
Baldoni responded by filing a $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times for libel, because the New York Times wrote about this, claiming their article on Lively's allegations was based on cherry-picked and altered communications.
He also plans to countersue Blake Lively.
She manipulated her own narrative to salvage a public image.
So, I mean, I've been featured, three pictures of me featured on the front page of the New York Times Sunday edition, and I would not say that it was...
I would say my memories of what they were describing differed significantly from their portrayals.
That would be the nice way of putting it, right?
And it's interesting because...
The emojis, some of the emojis, according to Baldoni's team, some of the emojis were stripped, right?
So if you write, I'm going to kill Bob, and then you put a clown face in, obviously you're not serious, right?
I could just kill Bob, and then you put a clown face in, right?
Whereas if you take the clown face out, it alters the tenor significantly of the communications.
And it's a kind of funny thing, like in the modern world.
Emojis matter.
Emojis matter, right?
So some of the emojis were stripped.
Some stuff was taken out of context, right?
So, Lively says that Baldoni exhibited disturbing and unprofessional behavior on the set of the film.
Baldoni and producer Jamie Heath entered a trailer uninvited while she was undressed or breastfeeding.
Now, their defense is that they have a text from Blake Lively saying, I'm pumping, let's talk about the movie.
Like, I'm just sitting here pumping, let's talk about the movie.
So, who knows if there are other instances.
But, of course, if the woman says, I'm breast pumping, and come, let's talk about the movie, and then you come into her.
And then she later says, my God, you came in while I was undressed or breastfeeding.
That's not good.
I mean, whatever, right?
That's certainly not good.
Now, there was a scene in the movie, I don't know if it made it in the final movie, there was a film that was being seen, like some movies had 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 shooting to final ratio.
Blake Lively says that Baldoni improvised physical intimacy without prior discussion of choreography and without an intimacy coordinator.
I guess an intimacy coordinator is someone who keeps track of what's Who's touching what?
So there was a scene in the movie where there's a slow dance.
And it's a big heightened romance lovey-dovey thing.
And she says that he...
And there was no sound being recorded because it was just a dance and they added music later, I guess.
And she complained that he kissed her ear or something like that and whispered something in her ear and so on.
And that this was not discussed ahead of time.
In other words, he improvised kissing her and I think he...
Gently bit her lower lip or something like that and she found this appalling.
Yeah, I don't really know what to say about that.
If two people are supposed to have a passionate love affair, a hotly charged, sexually charged, passionate love affair and he's only supposed to touch a particular part of her face or he's not supposed to whisper anything.
I mean, you're supposed to get in the moment and Those little moments in movies, I'm not defending what he did, right?
I'm just saying that those little moments in movies, if she's not expecting something to happen and it happens, you can get these quite powerful and sometimes delightful moments in movies, right?
So there's a sort of famous bit in the movie Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Horsey McHorseface, what's her name?
Julia Roberts.
And Julia Roberts was kind of new.
I think she'd only done Mystic Pizza before.
I'm sad that I know these things, but I do.
And Richard Gere...
Offered her a necklace, and then when she was reaching for it, you know, he slammed the necklace box shut, and she really giggled, and that was a really charming moment.
She has got a great laugh, although she's full of proto-feminist rage, in my view.
She has got a great laugh.
Other things seem to go too far.
On the set of Last Tango in Paris with the Marxist director, there are allegations that the anal sex scene between Marlon Brando and the actress was not quite as faked as it possibly should have been.
Who knows what the truth is about that?
But that obviously would be an improv that would be absolutely terrible, appalling, evil, and immoral.
But, you know, if you say we kiss passionately and he nibbles on her lower lip and she finds this highly offensive and problematic, you know, it's tough.
It's a tough call, man.
If you're selling, you know, hot sex, sex appeal, romance, and devotion and excitement and all that kind of stuff, if the guy...
Nibbles on your lower lips, it's hard to view that.
In my view, right, just my particular opinion, it's kind of hard to view that as, you know, absolutely, absolutely terrible.
So, the other thing I've heard is that I think it came from the New York Times, and this is, you know, off memory, so forgive me if I've gone astray on this.
Maybe, James, you can check it out.
But I think that Baldoni was saying that he got an email, or the New York Times reporter sent an email, you know, late at night on Friday around Christmas, saying we're publishing.
Tomorrow, or whatever it was, and that he, you know, we've reviewed, the New York Times says we've reviewed thousands of pages of documents.
You can't possibly do that in time for the article to get reviewed.
It's not an uncommon thing among reporters to send you a message shortly before the article is published, giving you very little time to respond, if you're even checking your email late at night on a Friday around Christmas, and then say, well, you know, we...
Because they have to give you the opportunity to respond.
Say, well, we gave him the opportunity to respond, but he didn't.
So that's one of these things where the letter of the law is quite different from what is actually happening, right?
So, what does all of this mean?
There was a battle over the final cut.
Not the last Pink Floyd album, but there was a battle over the final cut.
Blake Lively had a final cut, and Jason Baldoni had a final cut.
I saw the one in the movie.
I don't know, you know, whose that was.
I think it was probably, I imagine it was probably Blake Lively's cut.
But, you know, there's a challenge, right?
There's a real challenge for actors, which is why you kind of need a director.
So the real challenge for actors is, and I'm not talking about these actors in particular, but, you know, just in general.
Let's just take a sort of parallel universe where it's a movie with a different title and different actors, right?
So...
In order for a story of abuse within a relationship to be meaningful and believable, it can't just be noblewoman bad guy.
Like, it cannot be that, right?
I mean, one of the brilliance of A Streetcar Named Desire is that Stanley Kowalski is quite admirable.
He's assertive, he's dominant, he's sexual, he's strong, he's outspoken, he's...
You know, there's some admirable qualities, some cheerful qualities to him, some charming qualities to him.
Because if the guy is just a complete asshole from start to finish and has no redeeming qualities, then it makes no sense for the woman to be with him.
He has to have some redeeming qualities.
And in abuse, in abusive relationships, there's often a cycle, right, where the guy is super nice, and then something happens, his mood gets worse, and then he ends up...
Assaulting the woman, if it's going this way, could go the other way, of course.
And then afterwards, he's really apologetic.
He brings her flowers.
She has all this power over him.
Maybe they have great makeup sex or whatever.
And then he's really apologetic.
I'll never do it again.
And he's really sorry.
And he may mean it, even within his own mind.
And then this sort of cycle begins again.
So the temptation for an actress who's concerned about her curating her popularity, the temptation for the actress would be, To portray herself as a noble, heroic victim who does no wrong.
But the problem is, that's not art, that's propaganda.
And that problem is, you really, really want to speak to the women.
Let's just take the traditional gender roles.
Again, I know they can be reversed.
You really, really want to speak to the women who are being abused.
And speaking to the women who are being abused, and saying that they are completely noble, heroic victims who never do anything wrong, It's not getting into the proper dynamics of abuse, right?
Because abuse is often verbal versus physical, right?
So the typical example would be the woman who verbally attacks a man, verbally abuses a man, and then he lashes out violently.
Now, I'm a free speech guy.
You should be able to say what you want to people.
You should never be hit for it.
So I'm not trying to talk about the ethics of it.
I'm talking about the mechanics of it.
A man's exit for a room and screaming in his face that, you know, he's a piece of shit and his mother is a whore.
Well, I mean, as a man, if I do that to a man, I'm going to get hit.
Like, I just, I mean, I'm going to get hit.
As a man, we understand that words lead to violence, which is why we watch what we say.
I mean, this used to be the case that if you insulted someone's honor, they'd shoot your kneecap off in a duel the next morning, right?
So as men, we know, we know for an absolute fact, If you say certain stuff, you're going to get hit.
You say, oh, well, free speech.
And I agree with all of that.
Absolutely.
But as a man, we know that.
We just know, right?
We just know that, right?
I think women know that too, but then they can more easily say, I was hit.
And of course, they were hit, and hitting is wrong.
Hitting is absolutely wrong.
But it's sort of like if I go into some biker bar and start screaming insults at the bikers, I'm probably going to get hit.
I mean, just hit me with a Y if you're a man and you kind of grok what I'm saying.
I don't want to over-explain it, but as a guy, if you run your mouth, you're going to get popped, right?
I mean, just hit me with a Y if that makes sense to you, if you kind of follow that logic, that if you're really verbally abusive and aggressive, if you really trash-talk people, if you go up to some guy, Who's maybe a little drunk and so on, and you say, you know, I saw your girlfriend running a train with the football team, she's a total whore, you're going to get hit.
I mean, we're aware of that as men, and women want to be equal, which means, now, whoever hits you is in the wrong.
I mean, please understand, I'm not saying that it's right.
I really want to be clear about this.
Whoever hits you is in the wrong.
In the same way that if I leave my wallet on a park bench in Central Park, For a long weekend, and I come back, whoever took my wallet is wrong.
You shouldn't take the wallet.
But I should also not leave my wallet for a long weekend in Central Park, right?
I mean, it's one of these things, and it's a kind of funny thing that people kind of know instinctively.
Like, in certain situations, maybe in certain neighborhoods, or among certain kinds of people, you know, like drunks or whatever, in certain situations, Your chances of being acted on criminally can be almost 100%.
You know, you walk through a really bad neighborhood carrying brand new, like, sealed PS5 in a box or a clear backpack full of cash, then your odds of being preyed upon, you know, virtually 100%.
You can do that kind of stuff in Japan maybe, but in certain rough neighborhoods, in certain places, you know, your odds of being preyed upon are almost 100%.
So, in order to really speak to the women who are being abused, we cannot just portray them as noble, heroic saints who are victims and never do anything wrong.
That might appeal to their vanity, but it makes them feel helpless.
We have to say that there is something...
That is wrong in your mentality that you stay in a situation where you may get abused out of nowhere.
You may also verbally provoke the abuse, which again is not to justify the physical abuse, but this is, as men, we just kind of know this stuff.
So if an actress has final cut over a movie, she's going to want to portray herself as positively as possible.
There was some movie with Barbara Streisand.
She was the director with Nick Nolte.
I can't remember what it was about abuse.
And, you know, the...
Endless shots of her looking pretty and her thin legs and I think her son played violin in it and it just turned into a Streisand fest, right?
So if the actress has the final cut, she's going to want to portray herself as positive as possible and make the guy as bad as possible and that's not a genuine deep human artistic exploration of the cycle of abuse.
Of the cycle of abuse.
So, Baldoni, I think, at the premiere had to sit in his basement, or in a basement with a bunch of other people.
He was the director, I think, of the producer, so it was kind of supposed to be his movie.
And it just didn't play out that way at all.
And I, again, let me just look this up, right?
Let me just check this.
Who got the final, who got the final cut in the movie?
It ends with us.
I never had the nerve to make the final cut.
Oh, that's right.
There is a...
Oh.
Oh.
AI-generated answer.
Please verify critical facts.
Wait, where's I? Oh, I don't want to do that.
The final cut of the movie It Ends With Us was reportedly influenced by Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
According to reports, there were two different cuts of the film, one commissioned by Lively and another by Baldoni.
It's not entirely clear which version was ultimately released in theaters, but it seems that elements from both cuts were likely incorporated into the final version that audiences saw.
So that's interesting.
So my guess would be that he wanted something which was more human, both people making mistakes, one person more outrageously, the other person more subtly, and she wanted her being a kind of real hero and all of that.
So, let's talk about some of the philosophy behind all of this.
So, again, I like Justin Baldoni.
Obviously, very charismatic guy, very good-looking guy.
I was tempted to say, I believe him because he's a man.
Believe all men.
I mean, that's obviously a bit trolly, right?
We have to wait to get data and facts, information, arguments, text, context, you know, no cherry-picking, no this, that, and the other.
So, But it would be, you know, to say, well, I just believe him because he's a man.
But the interesting thing about Baldoni is he made a movie about a female saint and a mean guy.
In other words, he made a very sexist movie about a bad man and an angelic woman.
Well, I guess he's learned something now, hasn't he?
Because if his defenses are correct, Blake Lively is abusing him through a variety of legal and quasi-legal and media mechanisms.
If, right, if, it's a big if, if his defenses are valid, then he made a movie about a terrible guy and an angelic woman, and then he ends up in real life with a terrible woman and an angelic guy.
If he's right, if his defenses...
Hold up, right?
If she has unjust allegations against him, then he operated in a realm of fantasy, of female virtue and male evil, and now he's being taught quite a lesson, if he's right.
And I'm sure, you know, he would make this case.
Well, this is the universe trying to teach people a lesson in its own way.
Obviously, I don't believe that in any literal way, but he's learning something now, isn't he?
If he was a bit of a gender betrayer, in other words, he was gynocentric and worshipped the women and...
The men are bad, the women are angels.
Well, then he cut the possibility of female corruption and female evil.
And if his defenses are correct, and if he's being unjustly accused, then he's learning something about female corruption and male innocence.
Right?
Which I think is pretty wild and pretty powerful.
And we'll find out.
Now, it's a funny thing, you know.
I think it was a 2018 interview or something like that.
But something happened, and I think the allegations are that Justin Baldoni's PR team, sorry, dug up this interview.
Let me just get the details on it.
Sorry, I forgot to get this one.
But it was an interview where she was perceived to have attacked a reporter.
and the reporter is an entertainment reporter and multimedia producer originally from Norway.
And she was, oh gosh, this is again probably, I don't know, six years ago or something like that.
She was in an interview, or she was interviewing Blake Lively.
Now, Blake Lively, let's see, the video went viral.
The title is The Blake Lively Interview That Made Me Want to Quit My Job.
So over the summer, Flower posted an old interview to her YouTube channel with that Titled, the video which went viral and has amassed nearly 6 million views since August was filmed in 2016. Sorry, not 2018. While Blake Lively was doing press for Woody Allen's Cafe Society.
Now you see, so she is very concerned about any kind of unpleasant director.
But Woody Allen is totally fine.
So Floss said Lively's dismissive behavior during the sit-down contributed to the most uncomfortable interview situation I've ever experienced.
So, let me just see here.
Sorry, I just want to get a little bit of this is all the stuff about all of this.
So, the interview is, she's saying, admiring Blake Lively's baby bump, right, back in sort of 2016, right?
So, she is complimenting Blake Lively's baby bump and Blake Lively rather nastily, in my humble opinion.
Snaps back, I like your baby bump too, even though this Norwegian reporter is not pregnant, and as far as I understand it, has had a great deal of difficulty getting pregnant, so that's not good, right?
So she congratulated Blake Lively, she was then 28 years old, on her little bump, and Blake Lively sarcastically responded, congrats on your little bump.
Well, that is something.
Now, I don't know if it's the same interview or another interview, but there's another interview where Blake Lively is upset by being asked about her clothing.
So she's upset about being asked about her clothing, and she's basically like, what, do you ask any of the men about their clothing?
It's like, because men could wear garbage lids and nobody would care.
Men are rarely asked how they...
Who they're wearing, right?
So, Fla, yes, she asked the duo, Blake Lively, and Fla then says she thought the film, set in 1930s Hollywood, was visually amazing, this is the Woody Allen film, and asks, did you guys like wearing those clothes in the film?
Oh, this is as if Parker Posey was in it.
And Blake Lively said, everyone wants to talk about the clothes, but I wonder if they would ask the men about the clothes.
I would, replies Fla.
Lively and Posey then begin chatting to each other about the costumes worn by the men on the movie.
It's not just the women that have the clothes, but I feel like the women get the conversation, Lively adds.
So, that's not very good, right?
And the fact that women, like when you're agreeing to do PR for a film, women are going to be interested in the clothing, right?
They are.
I mean, not men, but women are going to be interested in the clothing.
So, it's a female issue as a whole.
And, of course, immediately people dug up other Blake-like Lively interviews where she's happily chatting about the clothes she wore.
Right?
So, it's not some sort of big principle that she has.
Right?
So, whether this was part of this, I don't know, have people turn against Blake Lively, I'm sure that will all come out in the lawsuit as a whole.
But I find it interesting with this kind of stuff because...
Justin Baldoni is kind of an unknown.
I didn't know who the guy was, although I'm sure I dreamt about him when I was younger.
But I don't know who the guy was.
Again, he was very good in the movie.
Good actor, and great hair, great physique, and great...
He's got, like, world-class, intergalactic Olympic stubble.
I mean, that's, like, the kind of stubble that iron filings would want to mate with on a regular basis, and probably have, actually.
That's how you make battleships from that jawline.
So...
The idea that Justin Baldoni, in his first major starring role with a fairly certifiable B-list movie star, that he's going to intimidate her, he's going to make it toxic and uncomfortable and difficult.
I mean, come on, man.
I mean, Ryan Reynolds, her husband, is a certifiable A-list movie star.
And so it's, you know, one of the ultimate Hollywood power couples.
But they both have insanely high Q ratings.
So the idea that this relative unknown would be creating this hostile, toxic, weird, sexualized working environment for one of the, well, for one of the most powerful Hollywood couples post-Brangelina breakup, it's just kind of incomprehensible.
Like, why would he do that?
Why would he do that?
Now, men, all right, let's be frank here, right?
Let's be frank here.
We can talk.
Let us not talk falsely now, because the hour is getting late.
Okay, men.
I'm going to say yes.
I'm going to say yes.
Men, have you ever made inappropriate jokes in a work environment?
Have you ever...
I have.
I absolutely have.
Have you ever made inappropriate jokes in a work environment?
Yes.
So, men joke about inappropriate things.
And the reason that men joke about inappropriate things is that we are checking T-levels, right?
Because we need to know if...
A fight breaks out whether you have my back.
So if you're like, that's inappropriate, right?
Then you're not coming on the hunting trip and you're sure as shit and not coming to war.
So men have coarse jokes, and I write about this in the hunting trip in my novel The Present, right?
So men have coarse jokes because we need to check the masculinity of the people around us, right?
There was that sort of cold-eyed young blonde guy who was debating the people, the conservatives in the round and so on.
He was on some woman's podcast and she said the word retarded and he's like, well, we don't really, we don't want to use that word.
And he's like, oh, come on.
She's like, oh, come on.
Don't be ridiculous.
I'm going to say whatever the hell I want, right?
So, men will make coarse jokes because we need to know, we need to know whether or not people are fragile and low testosterone.
And this doesn't just magically change in the workplace.
And to be honest, I mean, the jokes that I've made, a couple of somewhat risky jokes over the course of my youthful career.
I'm telling you, man, some of the stuff that I've heard in the business world would make you faint.
I mean, it didn't make me faint because of the massive testosterone I got going on, but it would make you faint.
And the stuff you hear in the locker room.
And look, women can be coarse as well.
I get all of that.
And I'm not even saying that coarse is necessarily bad, right?
I mean, we are earthy, squishy, you know, fluid-based machines.
So I don't mind the coarseness, but some of the conversation, I mean, I remember having a boss once who, you know, I'm fairly okay with the risque jokes, but I was just like, holy crap, man.
You know, every time he opened his mouth when there was a woman around, I just wanted to take a toilet plunger and shut him up.
Although he knew when and when not, right?
But yeah, it's like some of the stuff can get really, really, like Canterbury Tales, ribald.
Ribald would be the word, right?
So, there's going to be coarse jokes.
There is.
Now, Blake Lively says that Justin Baldoni talked about his prior relationships and that he intimated that some of them were not fully consensual or whatever it is, right?
I don't know.
I mean, at this point, if she's saying that he came into her trailer, Without her permission when she was breastfeeding, but it turns out she invited him over because she was pumping, if that's the case, right?
There may be other instances, I don't know, right?
But then I wouldn't believe anything.
Like, there's a law principle, like if you lie in one thing, you're assumed to be lying in everything, right?
So if something is taken out of context, right?
If you say, well, in the Bible it says there is no God, right?
Whereas the actual quote in the Bible is, the fool in his heart has said there is no God, right?
So if...
You're found to be lying in one thing.
If you're found to be cherry-picking and taking things out of context in one thing, then you are assumed to be lying in everything.
That's a principle of law as a whole.
It could be the case that he was role-playing.
To be in a character that's quite different from yourself takes a fair amount of real concentration.
If you're in character, It's tough to go out of character and get back into character, right?
And this sort of famously when Val Kilmer was playing Jim Morrison in the movie The Doors, which should have been a whole lot better than it was, but when Val Kilmer is playing, he famously like stayed in character.
It's just easier to stay in character.
You know, he slouched, he scowled, he snarled, he sneered, all that kind of stuff.
Like if you were playing Mick Jagger in a movie, doing that sort of...
Skinny-legged peacock struck.
You'd want to stay in character.
You wouldn't want to jump out of it and then jump back into it, and just staying in character is a whole lot easier.
So maybe they were doing some ad-lib or improv where he was talking about his past relationships as the character who was sexually aggressive.
Maybe.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But the fascinating thing is, and this is something that Baldoni's lawyer has pointed out, is that, look, this is all on film.
I personally, personally, personally, I find it, Ridiculously precious if an actress says, well, I took on a job as the hot, sexy love interest of a guy who's sexually obsessed with me, but I can't have him nibble on my lip.
That's inappropriate.
I gotta tell you, for me, for me, I don't...
I mean, that's like an actor taking a role in a war movie and then complaining that there's some loud sounds and smoke around.
I just don't...
I mean, that's what you're paid for, and if you don't want to do that, That's fine, but then don't take the role.
Then you can play Mrs. Miniver or something like that, right?
You can go and do a Jane Austen story.
There's nothing wrong with that.
So, I find that odd.
Another complaint that she had, which I found somewhat bizarre, is that I assume that Justin Baldoni is religious and he was talking about his dead father and how, I assume, he communes with his dead father, prays to his dead father, and she found this creepy and she banned him from talking about his dead father.
Oh, okay.
I mean, this is who he is.
This is what he's talking about, right?
If it's a pornography addiction, right?
Obviously, he should not have been talking about his pornography addiction, right?
That's not a good thing to talk about.
It's not relevant to the movie, and that's not a good thing to talk about.
And, you know, I can't think of a particularly good reason.
As to why you would talk about that in the movie, so if that's the case, I can understand why that would be upsetting to her and troubling to her.
That would make sense to me.
But again, if you're a man, you've heard a thousand times worse than any of this stuff.
Oh, Tim says, I've heard people have difficulties working with Ryan Reynolds, too.
I mean, this is a guy, he's just enormous, enormous charisma.
And a good-looking guy, too.
One of these guys who can totally pull off glasses.
Which is admirable in its own pathetic, sort of silly way.
So, let me just check here.
Blake?
Lively?
I just want to check this.
Baldoni Father.
No, it's not Blandoni.
It's Baldoni.
Baldoni.
Baldersoni Gate 3. All right, hang on.
Baldoni Father.
All right.
All right.
There we go.
All right.
Yeah, so this is, they think is, the AI thinks is Justin Baldoni's father involved.
Crazy stuff, man.
So, yeah, Baldoni has outlined his allegations against Lively in an 87-page lawsuit.
And, of course, they're running in opposition to Lively's claims.
And this is a big question, right?
If you're publicly attacked, are you allowed to defend yourself?
So, Baldoni claims he was steamrolled on set by Lively's constant attempts to change things about the film and was aggressively berated by Lively's husband, Ryle Reynolds, over a misunderstanding about fat-shaming and said that Lively persistently tried to overstep Baldoni in the editing process.
Now, if you're hired as an actor...
Then you're hired as an actor, not as a director, not as a producer.
And I think she was an executive producer, but I also think in Hollywood, an executive producer is lower status than an actual producer.
It's just like a title that people give to try and get a point or two from the movie, right?
Now, I get that actors are supposed to advocate for their character, but you can't change the story as a whole, as an actor, the whole thing, right?
So, what else?
The lawsuit also claims, this is Baldoni's lawsuit, claims that Reynolds and Lively pressured talent agency WME to drop Baldoni, although the agency has since refuted the claim that the couple was involved in its decision to separate from the actor.
Yeah, I mean, the unfortunate thing is, it's just mob mentality.
It's all innocent.
The innocent until proven guilty stuff just doesn't matter.
So, Baldoni countered Lively's claims.
That he created a hostile work environment, instead alleging it was she who threw tantrums on set and issued ultimatums to studio executives, including the one that ended in Baldoni's cut of the film being shelved in favor of a version of the movie she edited.
So, now the weight thing is interesting, right?
I mean, actresses live and die by five or ten pounds.
Like, it used to be the case that if you wanted to be a stewardess, I don't think they still do this anymore, but you had to have a weigh-in, right?
You couldn't weigh more, because planes and fuel and all of that.
And, you know, just in general, The more attractive the woman is, the more compliant men are.
And so you want a more attractive woman in a flight taking care of possibly unruly men because men will be more compliant and submissive to more attractive women.
So it's actually kind of a safety issue to have slender, attractive women as...
I'm not saying it's right.
I'm just saying that that's just sort of a basic fact.
And I remember Uma Thurman in one of...
I think it was in the Kill Bill.
She had a kid and she just could not lose the weight.
She just could not lose the weight to fit in that sort of banana skin suit that she wore in the movie.
I've never seen it, but I've seen the posters.
And Shania Twain had to lose a bunch of weight in order to go back on tour.
This whole thing with...
And Jason Baldoni, again, he's got a great physique.
He's one of the guys who's actually allowed to have chest hair.
He's got abs.
You know, just a great physique.
So obviously he'd worked like crazy to be in...
Fantastic shape for the movie.
And, you know, she's had, what, four kids or something like that?
I get it.
It's really tough.
And, you know, it's really hard work.
But his concern was that, I think, right, so let me just double check this.
Justin Baldoni, he's a lot younger than her, right?
Age.
What is Justin Baldoni's age?
He is...
No, no, no, no.
He's just young looking.
He's just...
Young looking.
So he's 40 as of now.
So I guess he was 38 and she was 35 when they were making the movie.
But he looks very young.
And like, good for him, man.
Holy crap.
What is he?
Does he like sleep in a vat of Dracula juice or something to keep the youthful look?
And also, you know, having abs over 40 or having abs at 40 is pretty impressive.
So I think that there was some concern that she looked older than he did.
And so, and he obviously did not want her to be.
Overweight, because he's, like, in the movie, he's a doctor, and he's super good-looking, and so for the relationship to be believable, she's going to have to be very attractive, because he's not a virtuous guy in the movie, so he's not just going to be attracted to her virtue, he's going to have to be attracted to her physically, and you want that sort of hot, sexy, love affair stuff to make the abuse a little bit more, to make her attraction to him, despite his volatility, more believable, so did he talk to her about her weight?
Well, probably, because he's the director and producer and star.
So he probably is going to talk to her about her weight.
So, you know, if you're signing on for your sexiness, then doesn't it matter how much you weigh?
I mean, doesn't it?
I mean, do you think that Magic Mike, the guy who was in Magic Mike, do you think he got to just eat?
I mean, when they were filming, I mentioned this before on the show, they were filming Top Gun 2 and they did the volleyball scene and then they got the lighting wrong or the camera, something was wrong with the camera and then they had to basically starve themselves and be dehydrated for another week or two and, like, guys were half in tears because they had to go another week or two being that hungry and that dehydrated to look that good in those scenes, right?
So, do you think that...
Tom Cruise wasn't nagging at people to keep their weight low for those kinds of scenes?
Of course they were.
I mean, it's just a thing, man.
It's a thing.
What's that old line from Friends?
The camera adds 10 pounds.
How many cameras were on you at that time?
Right?
Yeah, it's a thing.
I mean, I feel not overweight, but, you know, every now and then I'll see a video of myself and I'm like, ooh, hey, little tumlet.
Right?
It's just, you know, it's a thing, right?
So, or, or...
In a movie with Meg Ryan and a very young Matt Damon, he was on a steady diet of nothing but fish, because he had to be super skinny for that role, and then you see him kind of chunk out afterwards because he likes to eat.
It's the same thing you see Harrison Ford in between movies, and he's got a pot belly.
So, yeah, lose weight for the movie.
Lose weight for the movie.
Lose weight for the movie.
That's a thing.
And for a woman who's getting by, I think, more on looks, in my opinion, more on looks than raw acting talent, You know, to say, oh, it's fat-shaming.
It's like, but that's the thing.
I mean, you don't think that happens in the fashion industry?
You have to wear a Donna Karan shirt in some New York fashion shoot or some runway?
You don't think that they're nagging you?
You don't think it happens in ballet or anything?
Like, my God, you've got to be kidding me.
I mean, fighters literally weigh in that important it is, right?
So I don't know.
I just find that stuff.
It's really precious to complain too much about this weight thing.
Yes, you're going to have to be slender for the role, and I get.
I mean, it's tough after four kids.
I sympathize.
But that's the deal, right?
If you want to not have that, then...
I mean, do you think that Jennifer Garner wasn't concerned about keeping Slim during her alias days, right?
Of course she was.
And there are contracts in movies, as far as I understand it, You're only allowed a certain variance in weight.
And that's also partly because if it's a four-month shoot and you put on five or ten pounds, then you're going to look different over the course of that shoot, right?
Because the camera's right in your nose, right?
So you have to maintain a pretty consistent weight over the course of a movie.
That's just a thing.
So the fact that she's like, well, he was fat-shaming me or he talked to me about my weight and so on, it's like, well, that's kind of a known...
That's kind of a known thing.
So I'm not sure why that would be, again, unless there's something going on.
What's going on with her?
Couldn't possibly tell you.
You know, there could be some anxiety about reaching the end of her youthful attractiveness phase and then what's going to happen next with her and so on.
You know that old joke in Hollywood that there's only three roles for women, right?
Young ingenue, district attorney, and driving Miss Daisy.
That's it.
That's all they get.
Maybe she's got some concerns about any of that, but yeah, it's just a mess.
It's a complete mess, and I'm just fairly thrilled to not be in the art world.
I mean, I wanted to be in the art world when I was younger, when I thought it was about art, but it's not.
It's not.
But yeah, it would be interesting.
I mean, you can try this as a social experiment, right?
You can try this.
If you're having conversations, and there are women around, and they say, well, what do you think?
You say, well, I believe him.
Well, why?
Well, he's a man.
I believe all men.
You could say that, right?
And if the women get shocked, it's like, ah.
Now, you know how we feel when we hear Believe All Women, right?
So, all right.
That's it for the explication of that exciting, which I think is quite an exciting story.
This has the potential to be some very interesting back and forth, and who knows what the truth is?
You know, maybe he is a complete psycho.
Maybe she's a complete psycho.
Maybe they're both dysfunctional.
I mean, I assume one of them is, or both, but we'll see over time.
But I do find this stuff quite interesting.
I do find this...
Interesting to parse out.
And what I find interesting is that as a strong, independent feminist woman, shouldn't she be able to handle this stuff in her stride and put, if the men were behaving inappropriately or badly or wrongly, just put them in their place and move on.
Right?
Put them in their place and move on.
Isn't that the most empowered thing to do?
To be tortured and sleepless and run to the government and run to lawyers.
It just seems like if the men are doing something that is rude and inappropriate, you put them in their place and you move on.
Again, I say this obviously not as a female, so I get all of that, but that's kind of what men are kind of used to doing.
So, if you want equality, like if women believe that they can, you know, take on 12 professional assassins and win, then surely they can put a rude man in his place and move on with the movie.
But it gets so complicated, it gets so wrapped up, so toxic, so allegations, counter-allegations and sleeplessness and lawyers and, you know, a quarter-billion-dollar lawsuit against the New York Times resulting from this article and emailing people if this is what happened, like, Friday night at Christmas for a next-day article, like, all of that kind of stuff.
Holy crap, is that complicated.
Holy crap, is that stuff wildly complicated.
And it sort of does beg the question at some point or another, I mean, can men and women easily and effectively work together?
I mean, it's an interesting question.
I mean, obviously, some men and women can.
Some men and women clearly can't.
But can men and women productively and effectively work together?
And in particular, When women are really basing their careers significantly on being super attractive, right?
Can men and women, particularly when the women are basing their economic value on being super attractive, right?
Can they work together?
I mean, when I was a young, attractive man, I had, as I mentioned before on the show, I had women say, basically, if you sleep with me, I'll get your play produced as a radio play, I will get your book published, and so on, right?
Like I remember, I knew a woman in the publishing industry, and she was living with a roommate, and she said, my roommate's being really difficult, and, you know, can I just stay at your place for a night or two just until I get my bearings?
And then she came on to me pretty strongly.
It turns out the roommate, at least according to him, was not being difficult.
So these are just complicated and difficult situations, right?
If you sleep with me, I'll get your book published.
If you sleep with me, I remember I had a radio play.
That I'd written, or a play that I'd written, and a woman saying, if you sleep with me, I'll make sure that the radio play gets produced.
I mean, there's a little tug of temptation, of course, right?
But then it's just like, shake your head, like, gross.
Like, ew, gross, right?
So, women also proposition men based upon looks.
It is not just the other way.
Of course, you won't really see that.
And of course, we can see this going on all across the spectrum in high schools, right?
In high schools, the number of predatory women preying on the boys is not tiny.
Now, men and women can work together in families.
Obviously, husbands and wives work together, and it's really just about the most productive thing.
That exists.
Is men and women working together to produce and raise children and run households and do the work and hunt and gather like some men and women in families can absolutely work together.
Men and women in the professional workspace?
You know, there are these jokes, right?
You've got your work husband and you've got your home husband.
And as I've talked about before, the problem with the home husband is the work husband takes precedence.
There was a great Kevin Samuels line where women on his show Would get really bossy and aggressive with him.
And he would say to them, just treat me with the same level of respect you would treat a white boss.
I don't know that the white thing was super important, but he's like, just treat me with the same level of respect you treat a white boss, right?
And I thought that was really interesting.
It's a really sort of powerful, multi-layered statement.
And of course, many of his statements were powerful and multi-layered, right?
It's tough for a husband when the wife is kind of bossy and bitchy with him, and then her boss, her male boss calls, and she's polite and deferential to the male boss.
It is really bad for a marriage.
It's really tragically not discussed, but it really needs to be.
Because when a husband is treated like a naughty, malodorous child, But then the wife's boss is treated with deference and respect.
As a male in authority, oof, you feel worse than the side chick.
It is an absolutely cucking experience.
When a man can't get his wife to agree to anything, but then her boss says, come in on the weekend, and she's like, sure, no problem.
And, of course, it works the other way too, right?
If...
The man is bossy and dominant and a jerk to his wife, and then his female boss calls up and he's all sweetness and light.
That is terrible for her as well.
Never treat your spouse worse than you treat a boss.
Never.
Never, ever, ever.
In fact, treat your spouse a billion times better than you treat your boss.
But it is profoundly destructive to the institution of marriage for people to treat Opposite-sex bosses with greater deference than their own loved ones, their own partners, the mothers and fathers of their children.
It's just terrible, and it's not something that really gets discussed much at all, but it absolutely should.
All right, well, I've had myself a good old yap fest, and we've got a bunch of people here tonight, so if you have any comments about this or any other topic that's on your mind, I'm obviously thrilled and happy to hear, so I will take a tiny break.
And give you all a chance to raise your hand and talk about what is on your mind.
Just need to raise your hand and then I'll allow to speak.
I will give you permission.
Going once.
Going twice.
It's totally fine if you're just here to listen, but don't forget freedomain.com slash donate.
Had a crazy ride with my internet provider today.
You know, I just, that sense of helplessness when you're just...
Dealing with people who aren't smart, right?
Just dealing with people who aren't smart.
So my internet went down over Christmas, and it was going to take like five days to get someone to fix it.
Then they booked five days, but then they came in three days without any warning.
My wife happened to be home.
They fixed something.
It was working fine.
And then this morning, it went out again, right?
So then you've got to call them again, and it's like, well, who are you?
Okay, here's who I am.
What's the problem?
Have you tried rebooting it?
You know, what's the serial number of this?
And what's the light on that?
And blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, no, no, no.
Like, nothing's changed on my router.
Somebody just came out and fixed it.
Whatever they did to fix it, did not take.
I need them to come back.
Well, if we come back, it's going to cost you.
It's like, I don't care.
Right?
And then it's like, oh, you call up these places and they don't seem to have any access to your service history, which to me is completely bizarre.
Well, I'll have to go and check.
I'll go talk to the team.
I'll go do this.
I'm like...
There was a guy here on Saturday.
He fixed something.
It's now Wednesday.
It's broken again.
You're going to have to send someone.
And then they're like, well, we'll send someone tomorrow.
And I said, no, you won't send someone tomorrow because I run a business from home.
I need my internet.
So you're not going to send someone tomorrow.
You're going to send someone today, right?
Because you made a fix.
The fix didn't work.
So you need to send someone today.
So then, you know, and then everything, you're 20 minutes, half an hour, you're on hold, right?
And they're like, okay, we'll send someone today.
So then, you know, five o'clock, I call them up.
I'm like, and then you have to go through the whole, have you tried rebooting yet?
The signal is strong from here.
I get all of that.
I'm supposed to have someone here today.
Where are they?
And, oh, I have to check.
And honestly, she came back, you know, I don't know, five or six times.
Oh, I just need another couple of minutes just checking with this.
And then she finally came back and she said, basically, oh, yeah, your ticket, somehow the system lost it, like your support ticket.
And so by then it was like 5.30.
I'd been on the phone for 45 minutes just waiting, right?
It's 5.30.
They say, well, we can't send someone out tonight.
And I said, you have to send someone out tonight.
I stayed home all day.
I stayed home all day waiting to get my internet fixed.
You have to send someone tonight.
Well, we can't.
There's nobody there.
I said, sure you can.
You can offer them a bonus.
You can offer them pay and a half.
You can offer them double pay.
But you guys promised me to get the internet fixed today.
I stayed home all day.
I'm not doing it again tomorrow.
Anyway, so...
Long and short of it, she doesn't have any capacity to change that, right?
And I don't think anyone does.
So then she said, well, we'll get you someone first thing in the morning, right?
And I said, okay, so what time will that be?
Well, we'll text you later tonight about what time that's going to be.
And I said, but you just told me first thing in the morning, so why do you need to text me later tonight?
It's going to be first thing in the morning, right?
That's why we're just doing not video, right?
Because my sad little phone doesn't have the ability to do video uploads in real time.
I maybe should get a new phone.
It's like seven years old or something.
Anyway, so you just feel this sense of helplessness when you just come into this wall of incompetence.
And I said, like, you guys lost my ticket.
No, no, no, the system lost the ticket.
It's like, no.
Now, of course, they're not going to say, I'm sure that the person I was talking to this morning, who wasn't the same person I was talking to now, I'm sure that they just didn't enter or didn't save or entered it wrong somewhere, but they're not going to say, yes, we messed up, right?
Right?
So...
Then I said, okay, so I value my time at this amount per hour.
You've now wasted this amount of my time.
You guys owe me a year of free internet.
You guys owe me a year of free internet.
I've spent two hours on the phone with you today.
I still don't have my internet fixed.
I now have to stay home tomorrow.
I've had to stay home today.
You guys owe me a year of free internet.
You do.
Because time is money.
If I cost you guys a lot of time, like I said, listen, you have this deal where if you send someone out and it turns out to be my fault, you charge me.
So if I waste your time, you charge me.
You're wasting my time.
I'm going to charge you.
So you owe me at least a year's free internet to make up for this, right?
Anyway, she'll check with her boss.
You know, maybe you'll get something maybe you want.
But in the face of stupidity and incompetence, the gods themselves rail in vain, right?
We're just going down this slow sinkhole of incompetence, right?
You can just see it.
You see it going down.
I mean, look what's going on in California, right?
Just this whole sinkhole of incompetence.
I mean, I'm frightened to fly now.
I really am.
I never used to think about that.
I used to basically, you know, I used to lecture everyone, flying is safer than driving.
It probably still is, but I got a certain caution about it now, because, you know, we talked about this, the great slowdown, like just things aren't working.
Things don't work.
We get the wrong thing delivered.
They don't take returns.
I ordered a little computer.
To do call-in shows, because I like to walk around doing the call-in shows.
I don't want some big, you know, that gives me carpal tunnels, I'm carrying some computer around.
Got a little computer, and I got a, it's got a little SD card slot, and after a month or two, the SD card slot, like, it just wouldn't read the SD card.
That's where I was saving the, because there's not much on the main drive, so that's why I was saving the call-in shows.
So I go online, and people are like, oh yeah, this is a known issue, the fan is too close to the, right, and just fries the, I was like, oh my god, oh my god, why?
Why?
Why?
it's a giant mystery alright well I really do appreciate you guys dropping by tonight to help out the show and I look forward to your comments questions don't forget you can go to to request a call in show
I'm sorry I didn't get too many of them done over Christmas but I mean it's not quite the way it used to be when it's in the business world where the two weeks between like pre Christmas and post New Year's is just an uncertain time where you wander around full of eggnog and strangely spiced cheeses not sure what day of the week it is but I'm back on the call in bandwagon so if you have you don't have to do a private call you can certainly do a private call but if you want to do a call in show freedomain.com slash call
I'm trying to claw my way through the backlog and the house was full from before Christmas to after New Year's so we just had a completely full house of people so I just didn't have much time for call-ins but I'm back on the wagon baby I'm back.
Back in the saddle.
So, freedomain.com slash call.
Don't forget, peacefulparenting.com.
You can share that.
It's not branded to me as a whole, so you can share that and get people interested in peaceful parenting.
And last but not least, out of the argument and freedomain.com slash books.
Lots of love, everyone.
Have yourself a glorious night.
I look forward to your support and your continued time and care and attention and focus.
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