Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 802: Studios, Scores & Secrets: The Untold Story of Rotten Tomatoes with Patrick Lee

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IFH 802: Studios, Scores & Secrets: The Untold Story of Rotten Tomatoes with Patrick Lee · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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• 1:50
  Speaker 2: today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: On this week's episode, I'm going to talk to the
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: co founder of Rotten Tomatoes, very polaring website. We talk
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: about that, you know, it's the internet's leading film critic
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: source and almost and they're trying to get into film news,
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: but run Tomatoes it's, you know, depending on who you ask,
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: some people think it's great, so we will think it's
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: it's just terrible. But and the reason being, we're gonna
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: and Patrick and I are going to talk about all
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: that in this episode, about you know about bias, that
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: there is some you know what he's he's handled about
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: studios calling in and complaining about negative reviews.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: And all that good stuff with guests Patrick Lee.
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: Before Run Tomatoes, Mike co founders and I, we had
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: a design firm called Design Reactor, and originally we were
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: doing design work for anybody and doing any kind of
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: design work including you know, print, three D design and
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: web design, and eventually we decided to focus it just
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: around web design for the entertainment industry. So we managed
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: to kind of get a hold into our foot in
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: the door into Disney Channel and eventually grew that relationship
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: with them to the point where we were doing majority
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: of their web pages and games. We also started working
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: with a lot of other entertainment companies, including ABC, Warner Brothers,
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: Artist and Entertainment, MTVBH one, we made the online flash
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: game for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and so
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: from there we kind of ended up transitioning to Ron Tomatoes.
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: Our creative director at the time, Sen Duang, came up
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: with the idea Forron Tomatoes, so he created it and
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: this is while he was still at design ractor and
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: he ended up doing this on the side, came up
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: with the idea for Rotten Tomatoes. Basically, you know, if
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: you back then, you would open up a newspaper you
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: see a full page ad for a movie. He would
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: look like a movie poster and have a bunch of
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: quotes on it, except all tho quotes would always be good.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: And his idea was just like, what if I put
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: all the quotes good and bad on you know, one
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  Speaker 5: page in the similar format and kind of show you
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: the percentage of good versus out of the total. And
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: that's how he came up with I did for on tomatoes.
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: So he ran that for about a year on the side,
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: and eventually we're like, you know what, maybe this should
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: be the business. So we transition out of our design firm,
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: raise money for Rotten Tomatoes, and then pass our design
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: from mock to another group.
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  Speaker 3: So you know, I like that idea too.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: You know, you see everything on each side of the coin,
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: and you know that's that's just interesting with how everything
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: has become nowadays, you know, because like, yeah, I mean,
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you've seen movies nowadays where you've seen the
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: trailers and stuff like that where they've said, like rotten tomatoes,
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  Speaker 4: it's certified fresh.
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  Speaker 3: You know you've seen that, right, Patrick.
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So it's like a friend of mine and I were
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: talking the other day and he goes, Yo, why does
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: everyone mentioned rotten tomatoes and ads now?
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  Speaker 3: And I go, they have to. That's like the barometer now,
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
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  Speaker 4: It's like it's like if they even certified fresh, it's
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: like that's a state of approval.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, So originally we didn't have that. I mean,
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: it used to beat just a movie was fresh about
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: sixty percent or above. And the reason why Sen decided
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: on sixty percent was he felt like fifty percent was
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: like half half and he's like, oh, that doesn't seem
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: positive enough. So he decided, you know, three out of
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: every five, so sixty percent. And then we didn't come
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: up with certified fresh until years later, probably probably about
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: three or four years in. And it was actually our salesperson,
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: Evan Koit, who I think really came up with the
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: idea when he was talking to studios and they you know, basically,
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: we found that when a studio bought advertising with us,
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: if the movie ended up you know, fresh, they would
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: have a high chance of buying more. Obviously it ended
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: uproad and it was it was kind of a nightmare
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: and they would be very unhappy, but we couldn't control that.
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  Speaker 5: And so one thing that Evan kind of came up
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: with it was he's like, you know, maybe we should
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: create something kind of above us fresh and so you know,
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: and this is what I think it was when we
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: were talking with Fox Searchlight and they were like kind
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: of giving a similar feedback, and that's when we're like, yeah,
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: that might make sense, you know, if the movie's really good,
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: if we should kind of separate that out. And so
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: in that case, it's movies that are seventy five percent
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: are above so three out of every four. And then yeah, nowadays, yeah,
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  Speaker 5: I see it all over the place. You know, it'll
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: be on DBD, you know, cases and in trailers for movies,
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: and it's it's always cool when I see that.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: So when you mentioned all the studios, if they if
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: they if the movie ended up being certified fresh or
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: even fresh, you know, they would be more you know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: I guess, I guess dispositioned or if you will, you know,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: to buy more ads. But if the movie didn't, you know,
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: end up being rotten list says rotten, you know, they.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't buy more ads.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Was there ever a point in time where I mean,
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: you know, you said they were very unhappy. Was there
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: ever a time where it got like really bad where
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe they said, you know, hey, Patrick, you know,
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: I we just feel this movie is being like unjustly
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: you know, uh, sort of skewed.
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah. So studios and maybe other people in entertainment industry,
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: they they have a love hate relationship with On Tomatoes
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: depending on what the score is. You know, if yeah,
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: if it's fresh, they'll put it everywhere. They'll they'll do
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: marketing around that, which you know, creates more awareness for
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: On Tomatoes. But when it's rotten, they'll be really unhappy.
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  Speaker 5: We've had you know, studios, producers, et cetera, and marketing
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: people threatening to pull at campaigns or threatening to never
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: advertise with us again. And especially with a movie is
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: kind of like close to being fresh. So in the
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: fifties or high forties, they'll try really really hard to
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: improve the score. And you know, obviously we can't change anything.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: We don't write the reviews, but they'll go through and
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: they'll try and find reviews that we didn't include that
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  Speaker 5: are fresh or positive, and almost always like those are
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: not from professional critics. They'll be some you know, random
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: magazine or radio station or something. We're like, well, that
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: doesn't count. That's not one of our critics, so we
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: can't add that. But then they'll also go through read
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: all the rotten reviews and come back and say, like,
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: this one's fresh, and this one's fresh. You rated it wrong,
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: And in those cases, you know, we'll take a second look,
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: and in some cases it is wrong. We actually created
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: tools for the critics to submit themselves, and it's even
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: possible where we're like, hm, it does look like it
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: should be fresh, and we'll go back and ping the
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: critic and then they'll you know, say, oh yeah, like
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: it's fresh or rotten or whatever. And so studios will
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: try really really hard to change your score, especially if
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: it's something like you know, it's fifty nine percent and
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: ends up being you know, rotten. But if it was
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: sixty percent to be fresh, that's like they'll fight very
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: very hard at that point. And I imagine, I mean,
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  Speaker 5: it's been a long time since we ran it, Like
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  Speaker 5: we sold it in two thousand and four, it's been
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: fourteen years ago. But from what I've heard, it's this
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: still happens now, and it's I imagine it will always happen.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and also yeah, I was a question I was
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: going to have for you two, was you know what
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: what is considered a professional critic? Because you mentioned you know,
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: you have you know, different radio stations or your hell
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: even even me, you know, and they're probably like, you know,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: we don't care what Dave has to say about about
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: a movie, you know what I mean. And it's just
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: that that's why I always wondered, you know, because you know,
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: with with with media the way it is nowadays, you know,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: anybody can start a podcast or a Twitter Twitter account
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: or a YouTube channel, you know it. And that's where
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: you have to ask yourself, your word, you draw a
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: line between a professional critic and a non professional critic.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: Right, I mean when we started their word oh, podcasts,
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: as if I remember correctly, we have rules that don't.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: I haven't looked recently, so I have no idea if
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: they're the same. But back then, it'd be like ideally
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: you would have to have a certain amount of reach,
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: and it could be online or magazine or newspaper or
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: television or whatever, as well as a certain number of
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: reviews that you would do every year, because it wouldn't
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: be you know, an obvious sign is if you did
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: like one review a year, then you're you're pretty much
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: not a professional critic. It doesn't matter what your reaches.
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: We also would include things like, oh, if you are
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: part of a professional critics society, so like LA Film
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: Critics Society or New York or you know, things like that.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: So we had different criteria of what we considered a
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: professional critic. And the thing is anyone can still rate.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: So it's just that are you in a pool of
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: you know, a couple hundred people or are you in a
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: pool of you know, millions of people?
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then that's a that's a good point, you know,
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: because you know, reach, I guess it is technically subjective
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: because I you know, I see people who have Twitter
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: followers who were who have maybe six figures of Twitter followers,
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: but their actual reach, their actual engagement is so low,
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: and you kind of wonder where how that, you know,
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: did they buy the followers? Did they take over someone
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: else's account, and this is just kind of stagnant.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's definitely an issue, and I
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: I haven't looked, but I don't know if they actually
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: have professional critics that are primarily through Twitter or podcasts.
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: I think most of the critics usually have some site
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: or something where they you know, they're a full review
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: is printed or you know, online so that way users
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: can click over and read it.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like you know, like like Richard Roper and like
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Roger Ebert.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: You know, well Rodger Riebert obviously he's ceased, but he
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: still has the website ut where you know, he has
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: a critic circle and stuff.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: So you know, as we talked about, you know, the
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: unfair skew and stuff like that, I wanted to ask
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: your reaction, you know a couple I think when was
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: it when Batman versus Superman came out? I know there
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: was some kind of backlash from fans. I don't know
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: if you if you ever heard about this or saw this,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: but basically they were saying that the critics were always
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: being unfair to DC movies. Uh, it was it was
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Batman versus Superman, and then it was Suicide squad.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: You know when stuff like that happens and you start
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: to see this like online reaction, whether it be from
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: like fans or something. You know, generally speaking, there's rotten tomatoes.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: Like ever pay attention to stuff like that. Do they
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: ever say like, oh, maybe you know, maybe there is
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: a skew or at all, you know what I mean.
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: I mean, this all happened again after we've sold it,
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: But I believe there's a point in time when, I mean,
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: we had controversy even way back when we were running it,
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: but not as much because user reviews weren't. We introduced that,
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: but it wasn't as big a part of the site
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: as it is now. I remember, I think it was
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: Dark Knight was very very high, highly rated, and there's
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: like a few critics that gave rotten ratings and I
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: think they were getting like death threats or something to
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: a point where, yeah, it was like a big problem
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: for them. And there are even cases where there are
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: critics who will, as far as we know, purposely give
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: a rating opposite of everyone else just to essentially affect
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: the Tomatometer score. I think that happened recently with the Ladybird,
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: And there's a Creder, it was like a perfect hundred percent,
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: and then one critic gave it a rotten even though
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: his review should have been considered afresh and was specifically
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: because he was like, this is not one hundred percent
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: movie in his opinion. As far as d C, I,
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: from what I had read, like users were actually like
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: Rotten Tomatoes hates DC movies, which was funny because at
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: the time Ron Tomatoes was owned by Warner Brothers, which
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: owns DC. You know, like if it was going to
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: have any favoritism, it would actually you would imagine it
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: would be four DC. And even now I think under
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: it's owned by Fandango, but I think that's even I
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: think Warner brother still owns a decent chunk of it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: And yeah, and for DC movies, you know, outside of
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: Wonder Woman, recently, critics tend to be harder on them,
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: and there's a pretty big difference from the critic score
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: and the user's score. And in that case, you kind
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: of have to, you know, when you're like deciding about
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: whether or not you should see the movie you should see,
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: you should think about do you tend to agree more
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: with the critics or the or the general moviegoer when
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: the boat when they both agree, like it's both saying
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: fresh or both saying run, it's very very accurate when
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: they disagree, and you'll get that. When it's like an
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: art house movie, you can have tritis giving a very
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: high score and users giving a much lower score, and
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: vice versa. You know, when it's a comedy or or
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: you know, like a DC movie, critics can give a
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: low score and users can give a much much higher score.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: The other thing that you have to consider is two things. One,
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: critics have to see everything. That's why they're professional critics,
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: and so that's why that score. I think. You know,
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: critics do have a bias towards more art house, indie drama,
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: you know, that kind of stuff than an average moviegoer.
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: But they see everything, so it's easier to compare their
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: scores across. When it's users, well, number one, a user
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: doesn't even have to see the movie to rate it.
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: And this is true of any site that has user ratings.
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, I guess Amazon has verified purchases, but like
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: you go on IMDP, you go on rot Tomatoes, you
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: go on any of those sites, you'll see the user
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: rating is not really necessarily reliable. Even like yelp, you
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: can totally just go on there and put a rating
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: in for something that you've never been to. And even
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: assuming that that's only a small percentage of the total
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: number of user ratings, these users are willingly going and
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: paying their own money to see that movie, so they're
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: more predisposed to want to like it. And so when
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: the user rating is actually rotten, then it's pretty sick
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: to say that that movie is quite rotten. But when
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: it's the other way around, with the user critics are
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: giving it rotten and the users giving it fresh, then
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: you kind of have to be, like, am I the
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: kind of user that would like this kind of movie?
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: So I guess that's all the way ways to kind
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: of look at the scores.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, you know.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: And again with with Wonder Woman being the the one
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: DC movie that that's sort of been has has been
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: judged a little more you know, has been received a
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: little more better event by the critics and the public.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: I think I'm fairly certain that Batman Versus Superman and
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Suicide Squad, I'm fairly certain the critics hated both of
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: those and they fared a little bit better with the audiences.
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: I think they definitely did it better. Yeah, for sure,
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: go ahead, go ahead.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: I was gonna say.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: On a side note, Patrick, I actually, uh, Suicide Squad
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: actually gave me an impetus for an idea for another podcast.
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: I actually was doing like a test.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Version of it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: And you know, I was after I saw Suicide Squad.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: I was with some friends of mine. We were just
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: talking back and forth, and I actually got the idea
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: to start another podcast where basically I just you know
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: in the movie business, when you're when you have a
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: bad script or you know, it's called this is a
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: total rewrite, Like I'd give it. You know, if if
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: I came in your office, Patrick, you were the studio
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: head and you were like, look, look, Bullis this is terrible.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: This is a total rewrite, page one rewrite, I would, Uh.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: That was the idea for the podcast, is I would
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: actually take a movie that is sort of not done
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: so well and how would I have written it? And
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: so that's actually in the next phase of.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Something I'm going to launch probably sooner than later.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: But I've done some test versions of it just to
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: see how people played out, which is which is also
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: by the way, just something cool you could do.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: With the media we have have nowadays, you can do
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: like test versions and stuff.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: So it was actually pretty cool. But but I just
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: wanted to mention that as like a side note.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Oh that sounds cool. Yeah, for sure.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: So but but I'm sorry I interrupted. What were you
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: going to say?
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: Oh no, I was. I was saying, Yeah, I'm pretty
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: sure in both of those cases, the user scores are
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: a lot higher. And now from what I've been seeing,
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: there's actually almost like an anti Marble, anti Disney kind
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: of contingent that are I believe, trying to push the
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: user scores down for like Marvel movies.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's kind of like another kind of fandom,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: kind of like gang word type thing, you know. Uh so,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: and I just going back to the film critics.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: I want to mention this too.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: You know, we talked about they see everything because they
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: have to just by the nature. But also they they
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: have to dissect the movie. So I always say this,
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: you can dissect the movie with a surgeon scalpel or
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: a machete. When you dissected with a surgeon scalpel, you
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: have to discuss, you know, not only the performances, but
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: the writing, the lighting, the direction, everything, And that's where
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: you go through and you say, hey, what we know,
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: what is all this stuff?
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: You know what? What is the good?
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: The bad, the ugly with a machete. You're just kind
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: of saying, look, I didn't like it, and that's that.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: M So I think that's why critics. I think the
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: critics score like we were just saying that's you know again,
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: why why would weigh a little bit more than say,
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: you know, just having some person with the random podcast,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: Right right right. I think the other thing that a
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: lot of times people get like misunderstand about Round Tomatoes is,
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: at least when we were running it, the way we
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: looked at it was the percentage score. The Tomato meter
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: is basically the percent chance that you'll like seeing a movie,
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: because what it is is it's like what percent critics
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: of the critics recommend seeing it? You know, so if
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: it's eighty percent, you could be that eighty percent that's
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: going to like it, or you could be the twenty
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: percent that's not going to like it. So You'll see
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: people who always coming out to me and they're like, yeah,
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: this movie was like ten percent, but I still like
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: them like, yeah, you're the ten percent that would like it,
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: or vice versa. Hey this movie is ninety percent, but
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: I didn't like it. I'm like, yeah, you're the ten
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: percent that wouldn't like it. And for the most part,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: I feel like that makes a lot more sense because
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: we also show things like the average rating and stuff.
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: So a movie could be one hundred percent, but it's
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: average rating isn't necessarily a ten out of ten. It's
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: it could be you know, seven out of ten, where
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: everyone's like, yeah, it's not bad. I mean, it's not
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: like the greatest movie ever, but everyone agrees that it's
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: worth seeing, you know. Like typically Pixar movies will fall
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: under that. I mean I think they actually their abergrating
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: is also pretty high, but they're the kind of movies
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: that are close to universally like, yeah, you should probably
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: go see it, especially the early ones, like a Toy Story.
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: I think it was one hundred percent or I think
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: it is still one hundred percent, and it's the kind
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: of movie that back then everyone is like, yeah, this
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: is worth checking out. I imagine something like Matrix. I
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: haven't looked at the score in a long time, but
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: it's probably when it came out. It's the kind of
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: movie that's like, yeah, you should probably go check it out.
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: So I think that's one thing that people look at
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: the Tomato meter and they just assume it means, you know,
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: kind of like aberge rating, and they're actually kind of different,
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: I was actually talking about friends. I started talking with
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: friends about some of the highest ranted movies of Rotten Tomatoes.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: The Toy Story too, held the record for like the
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: perfect score until Lady Bird, and then.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Til that one critic we actually just mentioned.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: And now I think Black Panther has the record because
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: I think it's one hundred percent.
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: Now still I think is pat did Paddington two or
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: whatever get a negative review? Because I was reading some
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: articles not too long ago where it was actually the
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: new record holder.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Really I actually didn't hear that.
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: Let me let me let me look it up, see
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: if it's still one hundred percent. But yeah, no, it was,
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: which is weird because I never saw number one. I
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: don't even remember hearing anything about number one. But yeah,
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: now I'm actually curious to go see it, both of them,
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: because I'm like, how's up? Yeah, it's still one hundred percent.
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: That's set.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Paddington two, Yeah, oh wow.
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: What is? Let me look at what and the audience
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: scores eighty nine percent. Let me see what patting In
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: one is ninety eight and eighty. I guess they're both
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: pretty high. Yeah. When I mean, at least for me
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: when I I saw the Trail, it's not exactly type
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: of movie, other though I do like animated stuff. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: just kind of in my brain just assumed it was
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: like a Garfield or something.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: So Patrick, now you mentioned what are your type of movies? Like,
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: what type of movies do you like watching? Who are
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: some of your favorite directors?
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: So my two co founders, Steven and Send. Stephen was
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: our CTO. Sen was the creator and he handled the product.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: They were big movie buffs. Steven watches he'll watch like
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: art house stuff like the Oscars type, you know, best pictures.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: He'll watch all of them. Sen, I think, was a
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: little bit more into like sci fi, animation, kung Fu,
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: that kind of stuff, and I would say I'd fall
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: more on that towards Send, but even more casual. So
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: I'm like the summer blockbuster guy. I'll watch comic book stuff,
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: superhero stuff, sci fi fantasy, comedies, action adventure like that
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: tends to be my my thing. Like, honest, before they
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: went to ten movies a year on Best Picture, when
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: it was five, most likely I would have seen zero
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: out of five, and when they went to ten, I
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: might have seen like two, which is usually the ones
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: that are more like the sci fi fantasy kind of
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: ones that get thrown in there. Although I mean when
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: I do watch movies that are like highly rated that
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: are not in my typical kind of movies that I
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: would go do, yeah, generally I enjoyed. I just don't.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: For me at least, I just don't seek it out.
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: I tend to watch the movies that because I like
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: to watch movies in theaters, and I want to watch
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: the movies that go well in theaters, So you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: like the things like a Star Wars or Avengers or
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: you know something like that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I know exactly what you mean.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: And you know what has happened to me, is Patrick
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: is I've gotten kind of so burned out with the
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: superhero movies and the Star Wars and everything else that
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: you know, I honestly, and am becoming like, you know,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: I'm thirty years old, and I'm becoming like n I'm
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: thirty going on ninety, where I just want to sit
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: home and watch an art house movie now, and I'm
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: just like, good, like, I'd just rather watch this or
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: or you know, some some French foreign film rather than
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: seeing all these new blockbusters, you know what I mean.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: It's just I missed at that point man.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I actually watch a lot of movies.
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: I would say I watch probably like three two or
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: three movies a month in theaters. Maybe maybe you know,
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: kind of goes up and down depending on what's out there.
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: But yeah, like my cop enter is Steven and Send.
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: They're much more They're much bigger movie buffs. I was
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: more like the stewing company with friends doing something that
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: I felt was interesting. So I do like entertainment. I
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: do like movies, but they're much more like they can
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: talk deeply about directors and producers and all that stuff,
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: and I'm I'm like the surface level, like more like
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: average moviegoer. But I think in a way it kind
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: of worked for our company because I could kind of
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: come out at it from a different point of view
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: on things when we're talking about features and other things,
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: that I come at it much more like, Hey, I'm
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: a more like a regular user.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's good too, because as again we talked
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: about the craic versus the regular audience, you know, and
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: that that I think works out well just the same
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: because I mean, most people going to movies, they you know,
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: they they have they have their favorite parts of movies.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: They remember certain scenes.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: But I mean when you you know, have you ever
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: watched a movie with people who are in the film business,
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean, they start to us, they
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: start to talk about all these other sorts of things.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: And that's why I tend to have different groups of friends.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Like if I have friends in the film business, I'll
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: go see a movie with them, and it's a whole
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: different experience and it's a whole different conversation before and
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: after than if.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: I go with my regular friends who have other jobs.
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, totally. It's it's super different when you watch
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: with them. And for me, I just a lot of
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: times I'm just like, do I get like end up
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: believing like I'm in the movie, you know, and whether
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: it's acting and story and plot and for me. Usually
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: at the end, I'll be like, like things like plot
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: holes and stuff driveing kind of crazy. But yeah, when
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: you're with movie business people, depending on who you're whip,
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: all we be looking at the cinematography or with acting
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff, and generally like, as
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: long as the acting is passable, it doesn't bother me
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: too much. But every once in a while you will
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: see people who are like, oh man, they shouldn't be
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: in movies, or maybe they're just you know, very good
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: looking or something.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's uh not everything can be like the Room.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: You know, have you seen the Room?
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: No? But I yeah, I know, Okay, good what you're
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: talking about. Yeah, I'm actually kind of curious to see
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: both movies and you know, see how close it was
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: or you know, and there's a book about it and
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: everything too.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just asked artists.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, in my opinion, path I would see in the
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: order like to watch the Room first and then watch
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: the disaster artists and then you'll, I think you'll appreciate
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: a little more.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Mm.
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that probably makes sense.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: So you did see all the all the fun parts
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: of it. So you know, Patrick, you ended up selling
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: Rotten Tomatoes and he sort of started to move on
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: a different project.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: So so what are you working on now?
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: Uh So yeah, after we saw it, I went to
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: Asia for like nine years doing two different startups, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: then I came back and one of my friends that
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: I did my first company with before Rontaios, before Design
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: re Actor, this guy Lyle Fong. He he also did startups.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: He did a company called Litheum Technologies that did you
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: know quite well, and we were just like talking about
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: maybe doing something together and decided to make a game.
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: So we're making Hubble Labs make mobile games. We just
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: launched our game a week ago called Storm the Gates
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: and it's like it's like a multiplayer like a game
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: you play with other people against other people. So it's
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: a player versus player kind of game that you play
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: on your phone. And it's a role playing game. You know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: you have a little character and you can get spells
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: and get items and gear and stuff like that. And
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: the reason why I'm doing it is it's actually a
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: super tough industry. It's very hits. Bas So the game
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: comes out, it could be a total bomb or it
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: could be a huge hit. It's not always easy to
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: tell what it's going to be or it can just
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: be very kind of average, And it's just because my
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: co founder and I have loved playing games since we
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: were little, Like I'm actually a bigger gamer than I am. Like, well, no,
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: I guess I do like games. I like movies, and
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: I like music. But as far as being hardcore, I'm
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: probably more hardcore as a gamer then on the movies.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: You mentioned you went to Asia for nine years. Was
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: it primarily in China.
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: I went to China for three years, Hong Kong for six,
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: So I'm actually Chinese, but I was born in La
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: grew up in the States, so I was like, yeah,
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: you know, it'd be interesting to try and see what
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: it's like outside of the US. And I originally plan
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: on going for you know, like two or three years,
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: and next thing, you know, because I was doing companies
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: and everything, I just ended up staying there a lot longer.
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: And when I was in Hong Kong, I was actually
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: doing stuff in the entertainment industry where I was essentially
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: trying to make something kind of like a MySpace where
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: he was celebrities and artists over there to connect to
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: their fans. It was a lot of fun. Eventually it
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: didn't really get that big, unfortunately, but yeah, it was fun.
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: It is interesting because when I was doing that company
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: it's called a Lot of That Dad, we were much
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: more on the kind of like inside of the film business,
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: like working with actors and directors and producers and stuff
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: and being around them much more. Whereas when we were
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: doing Round Tomatoes, we were based up in the Bay Area,
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: you know, in this place called Emoryville, and so you know,
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: we were a tech company, but we weren't in San
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: Francisco or Silicon Valley. We were a movie site, but
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: we weren't in LA in Hollywood. So we kind of
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: were just happily working on the product, but we weren't
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: actually anywhere like connected with the movie industry. I mean,
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: even when we went to LA it was to meet
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: with marketing people to buy you know, to sell ads,
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: and we very rarely would ever interact with like a
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: director or an actor or a producer. I see.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: So, so you know, I was reading an article the
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: other day that basically said, you know, the future of
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: film is in China, not only just because of the
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: market share and the market size is obviously bigger than
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: anywhere else in the world, but also because you know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: they still have, you know, an interest in all of
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: these tempole movies where sometimes they bomb over here. The
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: biggest one, obviously is Warcraft Bombed over Here was a
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: massive hit in China that actually saved the movie, you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: actually made its money back. So I mean, so when
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: you were over there, you know, Patrick, you know what
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: was was that your impressions? Did you see like a
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: thriving you know, like film business over there, and and
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: you and and people just saying, you know this, this right.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Here is the future.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: Well, it was growing rapidly while I was there. You know,
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: they're adding tons of theaters, and you know these are
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: large theaters and very because they're new, they're good quality theaters.
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: I mean when I first got there going to some
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: of these theaters, they were really old and junkie. But
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: it very quickly started having these like you know, multiplexes
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: and stuff being built into malls and stuff. And I
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: remember one time I was trying to go see some
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: random movie and it was literally like sold out completely
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: for like three or four hours, so I just had
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: to I had to come back later. I had to
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: buy a ticket for like ten pm or something and
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: come back hours later to see it. So it be
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: even though it's in China, it's not cheap, but it's
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: something that you know, people do. It's going on a
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: date or make an event out of it. I mean,
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: I guess it's not even that cheap here for a
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: lot of folks as far as you know, versus watching
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: at home. And in China. Originally there was a big
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: problem with piracy, so tons of movies would be pirated
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: onto DVDs and you could just buy them on the
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: street or whatever. That's how people would watch movies. And
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: then the theater going became much more of like a
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: real experience, and especially for these bigger movies, and censorship
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: was always an issue, so very few movies, like a
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: dozen movies a year could come from outside of China
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: into China. I think it's been more relaxed, and also
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: people are doing co productions, so they'll have some of it,
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: some money or some other thing come from China and
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: then it's like kind of guaranteed that it can play
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: in China. I think Iron Man three was like that,
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: and yeah, Looper, but I remember one time I was
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: watching one of the Harry Potter movies in China because
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: I didn't have time to go out of China to
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: watch it. And it was weird because like they would
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: re edit it. I mean I was reading this sub
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: or now I was listening to it in English and
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: there was Chinese subtitles, but I knew it was edited
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: because there was a cut where I'm like, this is
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: something that makes sense. I mean it literally was cut
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: like mid sentence. And so yeah, they were very limited
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: on what could get in, and they would censor stuff,
• 34:22
  Speaker 5: and I think, you know, something like Harry Potter which
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: has like you know, which is essentially you know, they
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: would censor more heavily. But yeah, now it's it's huge.
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: Just there's I think it's the second biggest like a
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: box office outside of the US, and so you're starting
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: to see a lot more movies that can potentially do
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: well there. I mean there was movies I think like
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: Star Wars doesn't do well there compared to the US.
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: But then there's movies like Warcraft or I imagine like
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: a Pacific rim or something like that. I think the
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: ones that are more special effects that don't require like
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: extensive knowledge of a the background of the movie work
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: quite well over there. I imagine DC movies probably do decently,
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: but I haven't really looked. And and and because it's
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: it's a subtitled, you know, bad acting and stuff is
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: harder to tell. Like if you watch a sub a movie,
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: a four movie subtile in English, if they aren't great
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: in their natural language, you can't really tell at all.
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: Like if I watch something you know from Japan, I'm
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: not gonna know. I mean, I can tell maybe if
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: they're acting badly, but not based on what they're saying.
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: And yeah, and so what you're starting to see now
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: is movies that are designed with China in mind as
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: a as a secondary market. So for instance, there's this
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: actor Daniel Wu who he was actually one of my
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: co founders in when I was doing My Alive Not
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: Dead that is getting much bigger in the US. He
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: got cast for he was in Warcraft. He's one of
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: the voices, and I think that was partly why I
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: did well in China. There was the one recently called
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: Geostom that I think did very badly in the US
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: and actually did decently in China. And I think because
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: they marketed as a Daniel Wu movie. And he's also
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: one of the main leads in the New tomb Raider movie.
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: So you're going to start seeing more of that where
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: they're specifically trying to cast or make decisions with China
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: in mind, like, not as a private market, but as
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: a very important secondary market.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is, and I think at some point, you know,
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: because I think it's it's right now it's US China
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: than Japan is the third, and I think Great Britain
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: is fourth. So I think at some point the first
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: two are going to flip, and maybe even the third
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: and the fourth because Japan has a declining population and
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: you know, et cetera, et cetera. But but I think,
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: you know, it'll end up being you know that way. Actually,
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: though we didn't talk about India and India, my friend,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's that's destined. I mean, Bollywood produces more movies.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: They've do you know, since we've been talking, Patrick, Bollywood
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: has made one hundred movies.
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: I didn't know that, but I wouldn't be surprised.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: Since we've been talking one hundred movies, I guarantee it. No,
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: but they produced more movies than anybody else bar none.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: Then Hollywood and then the third is Nollywood, and but
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: I think eventually, I think China, with all the productions,
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: they're going to start catching up very very rapidly. I
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: saw somewhere that China's going to be spending like six
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: trillion in the next couple of years and infrastructure and
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: everything else.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: So you know, it's crazy, man, it is absolutely crazy.
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: Mmmmm yeah. Another movie I just remembered was Transformers. I
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: think Transformers is another movie that does pretty well in China,
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: and I want to say they even they definitely cast
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: some like Chinese celebrities for like cameos and things like that.
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: And I think one of the movies, one of the
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: recent ones, was actually cast or like set in Hong
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: Kong for at least part of the movie. Yep, huh yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: So that's a good example of one where they're looking
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: very very heavily at China, probably as much or more
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: than us. Yeah, you know.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: It's kind of funny.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm a huge, huge fan of of of
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Asian culture, by the way, especially China and Japan. And
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: I liked how you differentiated between China and Hong Kong
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: because because you know, you know, they I mean because
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: because literally Hong Kong up until nineteen ninety nine or
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: two thousand was under British rule, and then you had,
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: you know, China's slowly been you know, trying to sort
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: of say, okay, well you know you're.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: A part of us, you know what I mean?
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: And then you and and so I just I caught
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: that I actually no, no, And I know exactly where you're.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Coming from with that, because it is uh.
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: You know, I've had friends who go over there and
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: they even say the same thing, like you know, their
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: their their parents were Chinese or or Chinese, they came
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: over here, were born in America, but they went back
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: over and they always differentiate between you.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Know, China and Hong Kong.
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: That's why I always wondered if transfers was going to
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: be set in like Beijing or Sichuan or something like that,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: would the Chinese government be okay with them destroying the
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: whole city, but Hong Kong, you know, tightly packed, maybe
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: a little more leafway, if you know what I mean.
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: I I think they would be open to doing stuff
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: in China as well, and I think China would be
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: open to it too, But I imagine it's easier to
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: get things done in Hong Kong because I think the
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: Hong Kong film industry is pretty you know, mature, and
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: there's I imagine it's it's easier to get the things
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: you need, like you know, support staff for your film,
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: you know, anything like that versus in China. I think
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: it's it's a lot younger. And also in Hong Kong
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: a lot of people speak English, so I imagine it's it's
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: much much easier to film there than in China.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you do you speak Mandarin?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Flowly, We'll be right back after a word from our
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: sponsor and now back to the show.
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: Conversationally. But I don't, and I don't speak Kennedy's.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Okay, So well, I know because because Cantonese is mainly
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: in Hong Kong, right.
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and also Gwangzo like uh, the part of China
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: close to Hong Kong.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, I know. I know manner was supposed is
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: actually sposed to be like the natural language. And I
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: know I have friends who went over to uh to
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: China to teach, like Peter Marvel's been on the podcast
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: and uh, you know, they they've they've had to start
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: taking Mandarin classes to make sure there's a you know,
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: at least so they can get around and stuff. But
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: but you know, uh, you know, Patrick, I know we
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: we've kind of gone over.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: The time limit. I know you you're extremely busy.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: So just in closing, Patrick Gill, is there anything we
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: get a chance to talk about that maybe you want
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: to talk about right now or anything you want to
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: say to put a period at the end of this
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: whole conversation.
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: Let me think, Uh, I guess as far as Ron
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: Tomatoes goes, for me at least, I'm just I'm happy
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: it's still around and it's going strong. I think actually
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: it makes a lot of sense for it to be
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: with Mandango specifically because you know, one of the biggest
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: things we always had was this like love hate relationship
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: with the studios. Yet we were dependent like they were.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: Like half our revenue came from advertising, so we're very
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: dependent on the studios to scrive. And something like Fandango
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: or like a Netflix is what I always thought, you know,
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: made the most sense for like a Ron Tomatoes, where
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: the money that you make are from the people that
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: you're serving the best, which is the users like studios,
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: you're helping them half the time let's say, but users
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: you help all the time, regardless of the movie's fresher rout,
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: and you're still helping them, and so being able to
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: generate the revenue from those users is has always been
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: the best way of doing it. And we're running it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: We're a very small team. We were like seven people
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: most of the time. We didn't have the ability at
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: that time to go out and sell movie tickets or
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: you know, rent DVDs or rent videos or stream videos.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: But it's always been kind of like the natural fit
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: in my opinion, getting users, getting the money directly from
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: the people you're serving all the time. So that's those
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: are my main thoughts, you know, and also for people
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: who are looking at ron Tomatoes, you know, look at
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: all the different types of ratings within ron Tomatoes. Look
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: at the critics tomatometer score as well as the average rating,
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: look at the users tomatometer score as well as the
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: average rating. And if you look at all four of those,
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: you're going to have a pretty good idea of whether
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: or not you know it's the movie for you to see.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, Patrick, one more question, Where do you find you
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: out online?
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: I believe be up at Rotten doubt so rotten from
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: Rotten Tomatoes doubt do o ubt. I used to be
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: a very big no Doubt fan, so I just kind
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: of merged the two together. And that's kind of the
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: username I use for like Instagram, Twitter, everywhere I see.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: I actually thought it was like a double entendre for
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: the name, like you know, like you know, the movie's
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: rotten and your doubting, like you know what I mean,
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: like a rotten doubt, Like I doubt that's.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: Rotten, you know what I mean.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Well that's the other thing I liked about it
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: was it's kind of like a double negative.
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: So it's kind of like, yeah, see got me thinking,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: So it kind of it worked. Yeah, But Patrick Lee,
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: thank you so much for coming on, sir.
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having me. Dave.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: a great job on this episode. If you want to
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: head over to the show notes at any film uscle
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: Forward Slash eight No.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Two, and if you haven't already, please head over to
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave a good review
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Thank you again so much for listening to guys.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
• 44:18
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• 44:24
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