This isn’t the usual way you get out there to promote a movie you have just written and directed, but here is Jerry Seinfeld out on the promotion trail for his Pop Tart film Unfrosted saying that movies no longer have a cultural place of prominence anymore.
The comments came by way of a QA interview at GQ, but I have cut out the relevant quotes below to save a bit of reading time:
He starts being asked why he made the film at this late stage of his career:
Because they wouldn’t put me in Mad Men. I love that kind of comedy. I love office comedies. I love stupid people in suits. And it was Covid. I had nothing to do. So I got talked into it. It wasn’t my idea. Seinfeld wasn’t my idea either. I keep getting dragged into things and surrounded by the most amazing people.
He continues:
It was totally new to me. I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work. They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea.
And then…
…film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.
I don’t disagree with him - the general culture’s relationship with films feels so much more different today than it did when I first came of age in the late 90s, early 00s. But, is that a product of my priorities being different now? Maybe. But also, are they that different really?
While the way we talk about film has changed, I’d also suggest that we replaced many of those conversations with chats about TV, but even that mass conversation about TV culturally has really subsided. A “death of the mono-culture” thing? Yeah, I’d say so.
Jerry also goes on to discuss his relationship with the Seinfeld finale (it isn’t regret, but certainly I get the sense he wish it had played better with audiences). He also says of his role in the Curb Your Enthusiasm finale “I thought what we had done was just the coolest, wildest, most remarkable thing.” Note that he doesn’t say that about his Netflix movie. Again, weird for the publicity trail.
Speaking of (TV and) movies… The Fall Guy
Last night I saw a preview of The Fall Guy, the new Ryan Gosling film loosely based on the Lee Majors 1980s TV show. I say loosely as I’m not 100% convinced that anybody who made this movie ever did anything more than read the show’s synopsis on the imdb.
There is a more direct reference to the TV show in the closing titles, but you certainly don’t need to know that there even was a show to see this film. I’m not sure I have ever seen it - has it even been repeated since its original run?
Quickly - I had a lot of fun watching this film. It’s silly, disposable cinema that is a love letter to stunt men as much as it is the stunt-driven movies and TV shows of the mid-80s through to the early 90s. In other words, that Stephen J Cannell sweet spot. The show has an overt Miami Vice homage in it, but the vibe of the film is very much The A-Team, Magnum PI, Airwolf, and other 80s actioner shows, filtered through the cinematic eye of those early 00s Charlies Angels films.
A fun time, but certainly not a smart time.
But… why, Australian free-to-air TV industry?
I don’t understand the argument being made.
Sam Buckingham-Jones at the Australian Financial Review reports on the crisis facing Australian broadcasters over changing viewer habits and the protectionism put in place for sports.
In Australia, our free-to-air broadcasters are protected by what are referred to as anti-siphoning laws. In order to maintain widespread access to sports that are deemed to be of national interest, FTA broadcasters are given the first go at negotiating the rights - to stop the events being placed behind a pay television paywall. These sports include “Olympics, AFL, NRL, any Socceroos’ game, and the Australian Open tennis”.
But these anti-siphoning laws only relate to broadcast TV and not digital rights. So, a broadcaster may be able to bid for football rights, only to find that they aren’t exclusive and are also streaming via a competitor. For multi-platform exclusivity, a higher license fee will likely be required.
As Buckingham-Jones reports, streaming now accounts for 20% of all free-to-air viewing. Many new homes don’t have a TV aerial.
As an aside… back in 2017/18-ish, I had an NBN Internet installation put in at the house I was living in. The guy, without asking, just used the hole that the TV antenna was using and replaced it with the Internet connection. It was maybe another 8 months before I noticed that there was no TV antenna plug anymore.
I suspect my lack of reliance on the TV antenna connection isn’t an unusual case for viewers under the age of 50.
Lobby group Free TV have stated that they are concerned about the viewership drop-off for young viewers. It reports that there’s an 83% decline in broadcast viewership by teens.
That is a disaster for the broadcasters, Free TV chairman Greg Hywood said.
“Broadcasting is a component of free-to-air television. It is a piece of the technology,” he said. “Like newspapers are part of the news mastheads, the bulk of the audience is through digital devices. Free-to-air TV is going through that same transition.
“We live in a world where a substantial and ever-increasing number of people see the world through their internet connection. It is essential for the sustainability of the networks that they include the digital rights, not just the broadcast rights.”
So, the argument is that because viewership is plummeting, free-to-air broadcasters should have increased protections? I don’t want to sound like a free market warrior here, but there is a common sense consideration to be made. If viewers are dropping away from broadcast TV as a delivery mechanism, why does that mean we should double down on protecting them? Where’s the public benefit in that?
I’m much more in favour of opening up the protected sports to a broader range of platforms with a requirement that those protected sports be made available without a paywall. Already sports streamer Kayo does something similar with its Freebies sports access.
Also, quietly, I’m really not super enthusiastic about supporting companies who are crying poor about a lack of younger viewers, just a few years after they completely stopped producing children’s content the second the govt stopped mandating it as a requirement to keep their broadcasting licences.
Family Guy star Patrick Warburton on his mothers efforts to cancel the show
Marking 25 years of Family Guy (next week marks its fifth funny joke too. Stay tuned), voice actor Patrick “Puddy” Warburton was part of a PaleyFest panel chat about the show. He revealed that his parents hate the program and that they have actively campaigned to get it cancelled.
“My mother belonged to the American Television Council and they were trying to get the show canceled,” Warburton continued. “I was helping support my parents with ‘Family Guy’ money. She tried to get me to sign the petition [to cancel the show]. I said, ‘Mom, if you don’t think I’m going to talk about this publicly, this is the greatest irony. You’re laundering money, you’re laundering it to yourself.’ They hate it more today.”
Read more: Variety
35 years of Gameboy
Over the weekend in an anniversary that got by me entirely, it was 35 years since the debut of the Gameboy in Japan.
Keza MacDonald at The Guardian wrote up an article about it and I hadn’t really considered how much the Gameboy symbolised the changing relationship consumers had with screen-based media until I read this passage:
You could also play Tetris against a friend, due to the Game Boy’s most forward-thinking feature: a port on its side that let you connect consoles together with a cable. It was this that would inspire Satoshi Tajiri, a quiet programmer who had a childhood fascination with bugs, to create the Game Boy’s most enduring game: Pokémon. Out of pixels and pure imagination, Pokémon conjured a world packed with characterful creatures in which kids and adults alike could lose themselves, trading and battling over those link cables. Released in the dying days of the Game Boy, it nonetheless became a phenomenon.
It remains incredible to me that such a nerdy little game – Pokémon battles are largely about numbers and type match-ups – became the single most profitable entertainment franchise on Earth, more so than Mickey Mouse and Star Wars. It’s a testament to the creative vision of its creators – and to the imaginations of 90s children, who were unbothered by the rudimentary presentation. But it also tells us something about the power and intimacy of handheld gaming. On televisions, gaming was rooted to the living room or the bedroom; on the Game Boy, it became part of family holidays, long car trips, lunch breaks at work. Games became part of the fabric of everyday life.
It isn’t as though video games were a long-established medium in households when the Gameboy came out (it was about 1988 when our family first got a Nintendo Entertainment System and we were pretty early adopters in Australia), but the experience of playing those early generation Nintendo and Sega consoles was an extension of the lounge room TV. Our relationship with the TV screen may have changed, but it didn’t impact our lives outside of the confines of the household environment.
With the Gameboy, we brought screen media out into the world. Pre-phones or tablets or laptops, the Gameboy for so many people was their first always-available screen entertainment device. (That next evolution beyond what the Walkman delivered).
6 months of Brollie. TV section still embarrassing.
Back on 23 November the Australian free streaming service Brollie launched. In the 6 months since launch, there have been a few improvements to the platform. There’s now a shelf on the homepage with the 20 most-watched films on platform (they’re a mix of crowd pleasers like the Cannonball Run films and, uh, “late night favourites” like Showgirls, Viva, and Felicity.
I wrote about the launch in the newsletter:
How does Brollie look six months later?
The service seems to be chugging along well with its collection of films for cineastes and folks who enjoy movies a little askew from mainstream interests.
But two of the big problems with the site on day one persist:
There’s still no downloading or streaming available via the app. Streaming in only permitted while on a wifi connection. Why even bother having an app? (Users can stream via the web browser).
The TV library is a mere 2 titles larger than it was 6 months ago, bringing its library up to a whopping 14 TV shows. Seriously… why bother with a dedicated TV section?
I like that Brollie exists, but six months in it should have addressed its biggest problems. Maybe I’ll check in again on the first year anniversary…
The upcoming 14th season of Vera will be its last. Read: Variety
At no surprise to anyone, Huw Edwards has officially resigned from the BBC (he hasn’t been seen on screen since his 2023 scandal), apparently for medical reasons. Get well soon, Huw. Read: THR
UK culture writer Stuart Heritage scored a story by credit on the ‘Surprise’ episode of Bluey. He explains how that came to be (but never confirms whether he ever stepped out of that toilet, metaphorically or physically). Read: The Guardian
Apparently 10.4m viewers watched the extra-length Bluey episode ‘The Sign’ on Disney+. Read: TV Line
With a $3m Screen Queensland grant, Paramount and MTV Entertainment Studios will film the Australian version of Jersey Shore, ‘Aussie Shore’, in Cairns and north Queensland. Read: C21
Joko Anwar's Nightmares and Daydreams debuts 14 June on Netflix.
Unfolding over seven episodes, Joko Anwar's Nightmares and Daydreams presents a different story and a new set of actors in each installment. Viewers can anticipate discovering strange phenomena with each episode, leading up to a big showdown in the finale.
Power debuts on Netflix 17 May.
Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: power.
Garouden: The Way of The Lone Wolf debuts on Netflix 23 May.
On the run from a past crime, Juzo Fujimaki is blackmailed into joining an illicit tournament and has to face top martial artists in deadly match-ups.
Tales of The Shire debuts later this year on console and PC.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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A bumper edition of ABW.
Spot on with this Dan!:
"Also, quietly, I’m really not super enthusiastic about supporting companies who are crying poor about a lack of younger viewers, just a few years after they completely stopped producing children’s content the second the govt stopped mandating it as a requirement to keep their broadcasting licences."