Remembering Music Legend Clive Davis

This episode is brought to you by Holiday In by IHG. Everyone knows Holiday Inn, right? Or they think they do? Be though they have the same name, they've got a whole new energy They kept the global icon status and upgraded pretty much everything else We're talking modern rooms with real reset mode vibes Spaces that feel like your living room, just a little more low key chic And dining done right from breakfast to dinner and drinks Whether you're traveling for work or getting away for a minute, it's comfort that hits different. So yeah, holiday in It's a new day and a new st. Book your next day at holidayin. com This episode of the Town is presented by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, Max presents Hacks, the Emmy Aard winning series starring Ge Smart and Hannah Einbinder. In the aftermath of mistaken news reports that Deborah passed away She and Ava return to Las Vegas, determined secure Deborah's legacy as a comedian Don't miss the series Variety is Cing one of TV's best comedies ever Pax is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now It is Monday, june twenty second. I broke some news last week in my PUuck newsletter that has definitely reverberated around town and beyond Amazon MGM Studios, the Hollywood arm of the big tech company, they decided to drop an already shot movie called Artificial, directed by the award winning filmmaker Luca Guanino about Open AI and it its leader, Sam Altman Why would they do this? Well, Amazon isn't saying exactly, but I read an early draft of the script for Artificial, and it's definitely not a flattering portrait of one of the most powerful figures in technology In fact, it's pretty scathing With Allman presented as a duplicitous backstabber who takes an altruistic nonprofit and perverts it to amass power and wealth for himself potentially disastrous consequences for the world Amazon told me in a statement on Thursday quote, We believe that artificial will be better served if that were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home Okay, very nice of them. But why does a studio abruptly dump a forty million dollars movie with big stars like Andrew Garfield and Monica Barbaro that it didn't seem to have a problem with a year ago when it greenlit the property I did write in my newsletter last year that I'm quote, honestly a little surprised that Amazon would make this movie But they did and now the cold feed Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Amazon recently did a fifty billion dollars deal with Open AI, one that was announced in February. As part of that deal, Amazon Web Services will be the quote, exclusive third party cloud distribution partner for Open AI frrontier So it seems pretty simple, right Or is it And now CIA is trying to place artificial at another studio. And as of this taping, several of the majors have passed, including Netflix, A twenty four and Focus features. I talked to one potential buyer this past weekend who saw the film and said it's so critical of Altman and the AI race, there's no way a major corporation will take a chance on it So is this movie just not great and not worth it for Amazon or these other companies? Or what does it say about the power of movie studios these days? Is bigig tech now off limits? And if so, what else is off limits That's today's show. O usual Monday guy Lucas is off this week for his wedding. So we've got Keich Hagy. In addition to being a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, she wrote a book last year about Sam Altman and open AI called The Optimist. Sam Altman, openpen AI and the Race to Invent the Future. We're gonna get into the artificial controversy, why Amazon feels it can't release this movie, and the bigger question, who if anyone will? From the Ringarn Puck. I'm Matt Bllany, and this is the Town Okayay, we are here with Kech Haggey, who's a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the author of The Optimist A book about Sam Altman and the founding and the popularization of Open AI. Welcome, Kech. Thanks for having me Okay, the reason I wanted you on the show today is because People in Hollywood look at this And they freak out. When will my movie get scrapped to please some tech oligarch Let's first contextualize this by explaining Amazon's relationship with openen AI and with Anthropic and other AI companies, including their own efforts So Amazon is an increasingly important partner for OpenAI. sort of a recent partner, right? And OpenA famously had this long relationship with Microsoft that felt a little tight for them. They wanted other options. And so they made this deal with Amazon to basically use their cloud infrastructure. And you know OpenIe is paying Amazon, like fifty billion dollars or something to use their cloud infrastructure But this allows opening eye to access like government work, Pentagon work, rememember that whole fight like a few weeks months ago with Anthropic in the Pentagon?ike what helped opening Eye kind of snatched that contract away from Anthropic was the Amazon deal right Because Amazon is right there with the intelligence community. Amazon seems to be pretty friendly with the Trump administration. They released the Melania movie and Bezos has made frequent trips there. although Trump has recently been quoted as making fun of the texts that he's gotten from Bezos and Zuckerberg and others, But Amazon's pretty cozy with the administration. I think that's fair to say. even beyond this administration, right? Amazon has been right there as like bedrock as a lot of government folks do their work on. And that is what opening I needed that relationship in order to be able to really access government work. So they had to do this deal with me. Amazon And it's increasingly important partner for them. They ticked off their longtime partner, Microsoft by getting kind of more in bed with Amazon. And I think it's like the future of opening eye is like Amazon's an increasingly important part. Although it's weird because Amazon is also a very important partner of their rival, Anthropic, an earlier partner of theirs. And you know, we've seen some very wild stuff in the last couple of weeks, right? where Annie Jassse of Amazon was the one who called up Trump administration and said, oh, you know anthropics mythos model or, Fabable model is not safe and got it taken down. of a strange thing for a partner to do to their partner. Well, unless you have a bigger, more powerful partner. I did raise an eyebrow. All right, so into this dynamic drops this movie project artificial. whichich I wrote last summer when Amazon picked up this movie and started casting it I was surprised. I literally wrote in my puck newsletter. I'm honestly surprised that Amazon would go for this because it It did it does touch so many third rails right now about what's going on with big tech And I've read the script I looked at it and I was like This is not a flattering portrait of Sam Altman. It is social network kind of on steroids because you add in The fact that not only these guys warping, you know, the culture, they could potentially end the world. And that's the message of this movie. I talked to someone who saw it this past weekend, one of the potential buyers who said It is grim It is dark goes there and makes you feel bad after watching it about the future of the human race and The fact that Amazon signed up gleefully for this last summer, What changed between then and now is the question. And the only thing that really changed is big open AI deal that they did Look, it's certainly true that those optics are there, right? They are. But you know, I also was familiar with the script like it was about a year ago that I saw it. and it seemed to me like someone had taken I Sn Rich great like funny writer, but had taken like the most emotionally salient part of the entire blip, which was when Ilia Sutzkver R. He had been he like voted to Al H Alman and then like over the weekend just like changed his mind. And that was that was insane. That was to story wise. And keep in mind just to say, the story takes place when During this period in twenty twenty three when Altman was briefly fired as the CEO and Altman is portrayed in the movie as being altruistic in the beginning and they were all on board. AI is going to help the world and Altman betrays them in the script and essentially takes control and is and changes it to a for profit enterprise for his own benefit. Right. So on one hand, I totally understand why you would choose it was kind of told through Elias Souths career as the main character, which was an interesting and I thought kind of clever choice, but it was like someone who had read the news stories and had no inside knowledge of what actually happen and then just kind of like, you know created like fictional connective tissue between a few data points, which I guess is okay, but that connective tissue was like you know, it was just imaginary, like imaginary darkness. And I remember coming away thinking like This liily did not need gilding. You know what I mean? Like it was totally a wild super dramatic story on its own. There was no reason to like overlay this like fictional even worse frame on top of it So it's not one hundred percent accurate in the opinion of someone who has written a book about Sam Altman And honestly, that could play a role because I remember during the social network frracis with Sony and at the time Facebook, that was their whole argument They're like, yeah, the entire point of the movie is about Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook to get a girlfriend when he was dating Priscilla, his eventual wife during this entire period So the entire premise that Aron Storkin built the narrative on in Facebook's view was a flawed premise. I covered that at the time and they went back and forth and they gave them the script in advance and they tried to work with Facebook. And ultimately Zuckerberg kind of laid off and said, o we're, you know, they had a screening of the movie and they kind of took it as a joke But I think that that movie did do damage to Facebook. The fact that it was good, that it won Oscars, that it was it sort of created in the public's mindset this image of Mark Zuckerberg as this maniacal kind of nerd who wants to take over the world And If I'm Sam Altman I'm looking at that and then I'm looking at this movie saying, is am I going to get social network here. Now, Sam participated in your book Do you think he's the kind of guy that would make a call and shut this down? I can see how he wouldn't like this movie, right? I mean it would pretty hard to come away from that script Like he's painted as a monster in the script that I read And not just a monster creating a social network, a monster creating something that could potentially destroy the world. Right. I mean, it's like stigakes could not be higher, right? So sure, I could see how we wouldn't like it. I have no inside knowledge about what he did or why this was killed. I honestly don't. And for the record, my sources involved in this say that he didn't make A call Who knows if that's true? Wh knows how this happened. But knowing Amazon as you do, How big a deal do you think this was? Be My sources at the studio are saying this was Mike Hopkins decision. He is the head of Prime Video. He saw this movie. It had taken a darker turn than they had anticipated. and they decided that it was not in the best interest of the company to release this movie. so they're going to help find it another distributor Do you think S Seattle got involved here? I really have no knowledge about that. I mean, it is possible the movie just like wasasn't that good ueight. I mean, others have passed on it since then. Amazon releases a lot of movies that aren't very good. Some would argue the majority of their movies. The question, what you're saying is that it wasn't worth it. that if this had hit the bullsseye and was the social network, they would have made the bet But since it's not then it becomes, is this worth damaging our relationship here for you know a company that we have a fifty billion dollars deal in in an industry in which we have hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. Right. If no Oscars are going to be coming your way, in this case, you know, like maybe not worth it And honestly, this is what happened two years ago with the Donald Trump movie The Apprentice which premiered to Can and got a huge response there. And I talked to people at the time there who said, yeah, it's fine 's good. It's not worth it It's not worth poking that bear for this movie And ultimately, I think they were kind of proved wrong because they got two oscar nominations for actor and supportpporting actctor. distributor that picked it up Tom Wortenberg's company. they didn't get a lot of box office out of it, but they did pretty well on PVa It turned into a good movie for them That was an instance of the fear factor throughout Hollywood, just nudging them towards the side of not worth it And ultimately, that's the big issue here. if none of these other companies are willing to pick it up. and so far, you know, as we are taping Big studios have passed on this, Netflix, Focus features. Disney was never going to do this A twenty four, A twenty four is an interesting one because they do release movies like this, but they have as a big investor, Thrive Capital who is also a big investor in openp AI. So they were never going to do this movie. It will likely go to a Neon or a MubBI or one of those distributors that is small independent. Maybe Orortonberg's company will pick this one up as well That's not Amazon. And if that is the future of movies that touch these third rails P peopleople in Hollywood are going to be pissed about this. It's really disappointing. Just today, A twenty four did this AI deal with Google where Google's going to invest seventy five million dollars to create AI tools for filmmakers. Certainly since your scoop, like last Thursday, I think was whatever that was. All my sources, this is what all that anyone wants to talk about, right? And there's this fear of a chilling effect. And like, oh Godd, now the tech guys have taken over Hollywood, right? Like that I've had a couple conversations like that. I'm not sure if this specific movie is the example to make that broader claim, just given like the creative. issues Young I agree with you I think The fact that Sony is going ahead with the social reckoning the sequel Social network which I know they're downplaying this, but does connect Zuckerberg and Meta to january sixth and the issues that that were raised around that with people organizing on Facebook and misinformation. I think that that is a good sign. ook and Met are not the same company as they were in two thousand nine, twenty ten, they're much more powerful. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg's's yelling at his cs people like how come we can't get this movie killed What are we got to do? We got to be a biger player in AI for Hollywood to be afraid of us I mean that's not did cross my mind, right? And the fact that that movie is being made, like suggests that like maybe you know, it's not quite as grim as people think. I don't know. I do think there's a big chilling effect here. Don't you? I mean, the studios haven't made a major movie with a North Korean or Chinese villain since the interview Fiasco at Sony. And Michael Linton The former headese of Sony came on this show and said that making the interview was the biggest mistake he made at Sony The message to the rest of Hollywood is is don't be like me Don't greenl lightight these risky movies that could potentially blow up in your face. Hollywood has become consumed with risk management So none of these executives are going to see this and be like, I want to place my reputation and my job on something that could potentially cause my parent company to have a major problem And it's not just open AI any of these big tech companies, I think If there is something that touches this this third rail of AI dominance or big tech dominance. I think all these companies are going to take a hard look and probably pass This episode is brought to you by Peacock, presenting the hit reality competition series The Traders for your Emmy consideration Emmy winner Allan Cumming hosts the treacherous murder Mystery game with a cast of reality stars and celebrities in the Scottish Highlands Time calls the series devilishly fun and addictively thrilling, with People Magazine adding that this season is unlike any that's come before. All episodes of the Emmy winning series The Triters are streaming now only on Peacock Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zetbound Terzepetide may be able to help. ZBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZepBound is approved as a two point five, five, seven point five, ten, twelve point five, or fifteen milligram injection Zeepound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepotide containing products or any GLP one receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medularary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type two Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop zipbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. if your' nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills Taking zepound with a sulfinyal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems T to your doctor. callall one eight hundred five four five five nine seven nine or visit zeppbounds. liily. com Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zbounds ter zepetide may be able to help. Zbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZPbound is approved as a two point five, five, seven point five, ten, twelve point five, or fifteen milligram injection Zepound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide containing products or any GLP one receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medulary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type two Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop zetbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. if your' nursing, pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills Taking Zbound with a sulfonyal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. T to your doctor. callall one eight hundred five four five five nine seven nine or visit zppbounds. liily. com twowo different things going on here. One is like, Like this particular movie was like person right? So there's a difference between like a movie that like criticizes AI and it's critical broadly and one that is like maybe like tiptoooing up to certain lines of defamation, right about like living people. So thats that's one, right? It's just it's I think We could still ha have entertainment that like criticizes text power without maybe that But I also think that there's like a lot of money that they're leaving on the table if youre if you're right because All the polling that's out there is There's a lot of concern about AI Yeah, all the polls suggest the public has turned on AI They don't like it. they don't want data centers They don't want them in their lives. Right. So you'd think there would be a broad audience actually out there and money to be made to harness that in the right way. So there are really two issues here though, because obviously, free speech, any company can decide what movie to make or not make theseese companies that passed on it Fine, more power to make what you want to make, don't make what you don't want it The question is, once you agree to make a movie The Within Hollywood has always been You back the artist and you see it through and even if it doesn't work out, most movies don't work out exactly as you want it to, you back the artist. And will there be backlash now If this movie either doesn't come out or gets buried because the nightmare scenario here for Amazon is that nobody picks up this movie. they are left with it and then they have to make the decision whether they Bury it, kill it or whether they essentially pay another company to release it. Yeah, none of those options are great, right for them? I mean, they're already going to give them a discount. They're like this is a forty million dollars movie Any distributor that picks it up is likely going to get a boost from Amazon to take it. So it's going to be a discount from what you would normally pay for a hot button movie with Andrew Garfield from an award winning filmmaker like Luca Guardaninho So good for them if they can do it, but again, maybe they won't and maybe Amazon will be stuck with this. And then I guess the question is can Amazon withstand blowback from the reat community Yeah for this kind of kind of thing. No one's ask Deny Vill Nouve what he thinks of this. He's directing James Bond for them. No one's asked Phil Lord and Chris Miller who just directed Project Haail Mary and is about to embark on an Oscar campaign for that movie. Every single thing they do, they're going to get asked. What do you think of Amazon killing their Sam Altman movie and I guarantee they're going to have an opinion. All of a sudden this snowballs into Amazon being creator friendly and that hurts them down the line. I do think it does It is a real risk and maybe to your point, right? Like the best outcome is for them finding a safe home that is not quite censorship. Yeah Not quite censorship. That's the goal here. becausecause ultimately We are headed into this world where most of the Hollywood studios are going to have been consolidated by big tech If you just look at the landscape Warner Brothers and Paramount are going to be owned by Oracle money. Netflix was incubated in Silicon Valley and is more tech company than it is Hollywood company. Disney has relationships with Open AI and others and if they want to be a player in this world, they're going to have to deal with these companies Same with the Universal and Comcast when they arere headed into this world where they have to compete with these companies Amazon obviously, Apple obviously Sony is owned by a Japanese technology company Um Doesn't leave a whole li left. I mentioned A twenty four, even the Indies. Doesn't leave a whole lot lagh And these are the conversations that your scoop sparked for me and my sources over the weekend, right? This exact thing that like it kind of woke everyone up like, oh my God, like the tech guys have completely taken over. All this consolidation leaves us with basically content having very little power whichich is a theme I know you've covered on this pod, right a lot and I do think that that is like part of the broader thing. do we do about it? Is there an opportunity here for an upstart be the non compromised distribution platform or studio. If you have a fearless a brand of like must see fearlessness and you can make creators flock to you and the distributors have no choice but to to buy it because that's what audiences want Theory. But as we've seen right now the way that I mean, it's the same in like in my business, it's crazy. We've been completely disintterediated. And pllatforms are like inccreasingly powerful. And are you guys suing is is are the Murdochs suing open AI No, the we have we have a partnership actually with with opening Ice at Times that's doinging. Yeah. Although it'll be interesting. You know, there's a Rupert Murdoch movie coming later this year called Inc from Danny Boyle. It's based on the play And that does not have a distributor yet. Rupert has a little less power than some of these AI platforms. I mean, there' have been a lot of Murdoch biopics and this and that around lately. There have, including an Emmy winning TV show. Yeah. There's no shortage of that. I think he secretly likes it. Maybe so. he enjoys journalism He does. I know. that's he's a complicated guy, but that's one thing I like about him is that he he values journalism overall. and not sure Sam Altman does, what the what do the AI people think of Hollywood What do they think of these content owners with their copyrights, their silly little rights that they have and all of this stuff that is potentially standing in the way of these models just dominated? I mean, we can see what they thought by the way that they made these LLMs, right? Like the entire industry of AI comes out of an academic milia. All these AI researchers come from this academic millia where it is just totally fine to take copyright material and feed it into your LM without permission, right? Common crawl, all that stuff It was just common practice. and universities were like hosting these datasets and stuff like that It was just like considered like, oh, it's for research, it's for research. You can just take any IP you want and without asking, no problem. And oh, are were going to make money from that research now? was it' across the board a culture of not respecting intellectual property. Yeah. I remember when Sora launched, I basically soiled myself And it was like, wait a second, how is this happening? How they're just doing this? And that was one at least they backtracked on it. I think the backlash was so significant. but the fact that Dizzy jumped into bed with open AI not six months later I thought was a pretty a pretty stark and depressing statement about where we are in this evolution I could not agree more. I was really stunned by it actually, considering how bumpy that whole thing was. And you know maybe when they had to sort of euthanize that whole project in the name of saving compute resources, I suspect there were a lot of like unsolved IP issues like bubbling underneath that surface, you know, And Bob Iiger, the former CEO of Disney, mister Content, mister Wrights, you know, protector, He's on the board of or he's an advisor to Thrive Capital, which is one of the big investors in open AI So that relationship there When you understand that, it made a little bit more sense. and now Eiger's going back drive capital. Yeah. I mean Dve is very important, right? It's a very important part of the opening eye story. you know, it's a really important investor for them. and more than that, right? Like they are they have these like investments in the creative world of A twenty four and things like that. So I think it' it was of an essential bridge builder. So where do you think we're going to land here What do you think the takeaway from all of this is, both for the Hollywood community and for the AI tech community? Well, like leaving aside what happens with this particular movie, I do feel like this was a wake up call for creators, right? that like, oh yeah, wait the tech guys are like totally in charge now. And that maybe Um That needs to be taken into account as people think about how to navigate projects dark, but maybe true Um As far as for the AI community, it's so it's so early, you know, in their story. Like I don't feel like their story has not really been told in a Hollywood way M at all, right? Yeah, there's an opportunity for a great Sam Altman movie. I don't know if this one is it There is an opportunity out there. Yeah, I mean, we're just the beginning of. this's a very, very, very big story. So I think I think there's money on the table. Yeah, I mean, Op AI just bought a podcast TPBN to be its official mouthpiece. Maybe they can just buy a studio. They have a few billion dollars laying around, although you know, they're not profitable yet. so The question is, is there any company in entertainment that isn't beholden to open AI and the other AI powers right now I don't know how beholden folks are to open AI, but the broader tech ecosystem if you count you know, Amazon and Facebook and basically they control in Netflix, right? like all distribution that matters. YouTube one hundred percent beholden to those to that larger ecosystem. So I don't feel like open AI is generally like a giant player in that world yet U rightight, The Disney deal is dead Yeah. So It's still pretty early. But they all want one. Josh Samarow wants an AI deal. All signs are pointing that direction. They feel they need to be in this business and frankly the stock narrative needs an open AI or some kind of AI deal because those are the growth businesses right now. All the entertainment and media stocks are languishing because there is not a growth narrative, including Netflix, by the way. How do you get to a growth narrative partartner with an AI company All of a sudden you're gonna be in a tech company. That's the dream. Yes. although the role that you are gonna be playing for that AI company is a pretty grim one, most likely, right? You'll just be like You're gonna be a You're going be the you know sentient beings that are harvested for their value the little batteryies in the matrix. Exact Exactly. Diszy could be a giant battery in the Matrix and you know what? it sounds like dystopian, but might be headed there. Totally. We shall see. All right. thank you, Keach. I appppreciate you coming on Thanks for having me We are back with the call sheet Crag, sad news we don't usually do death on the town, but Clyde Davis died Aazing legend in the music business like Very few people actually live up to the legend status. this guy leegend. was still doing it. Still hosting his party ninety four years old passed away today. Does Clyde Davis mean anything to you I mean as an entertainment industry icon, certainly. I've never been to one of his parties. I'm sure you've been to many. I go every year. It's I mean, he was always very nice to me. He you know turned into he was a player in the sixties seventies. He's known for discovering Whitney Houston and he played a big role in Bruce Springsteeen, Janis Chopaplin, Carla Sentana, a bunch of others But in the later decades when I interacted with him, he was really this like Abassador for music. The party every year was an official Grammy weeek party and everybody in town would go. they would sort of pay homage to him. It was one it's one of the stranger parties in Hollywood because it really is like almost like a Barminzva. He gets up there and he like calls out people in the audience like, Ohh, I'd like to welcome Barbara Boxer and I'd like to welcome Shakira and I'd like to welcome Alica Keys and then like crazy big artists perform at the event And it's always a nice event and I he will be missed Yeah, it feels like those moments were like like a little time capsule of like old Hollywood that still happen today Totally very few events in Hollywood feel like they could have happened fifty years ago and the Clyde Davis partarty is one of them. does raise the question and that is my prediction today of what will happen this party now that Clive has passed on. and I know that The Grammy organization, NarS, the National reccording Academy That's an official event and it's a fundraiser and they put it on. Clyde was the figurehead My prediction is I think the CEO of the recording accademy, Harvey Mason Junror, seems like perfect candidate for this. And I think he would probably want it They'll probably have