The Extras - The Archive Guys Take Over the Podcast...AGAIN!

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Matt Patterson and DW Ferranti, aka THE ARCHIVE GUYS, are back for part two of their podcast takeover where they share more stories from their time working at the Warner Archive.  They also discuss the current landscape of physical media and streaming, share their insights and projections for the future, and update us on what they are currently up to.  It's another hour plus of laughs and insights and yarns that reflect their unique brand of humor and movie knowledge.Follow Matt Patterson on FacebookFollow DW Ferranti on FacebookThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifyWarner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm Matt Patterson. And I'm D.W. Ferranti. And we're here, what show are we on, Dan? Um, this is The Extras. Isn't this the show that kind of replaced ours? In the hearts and minds of most people, yes. We were on like about 400 episodes of the Warner Archive podcast with George Feldenstein, but now Tim gets to do it, and he's doing a fantastic job.

One might even say even better. And we're joining with him without George so Tim can find out what really happened over those 12 years. So join me and Dan on Extras. Where we go the extra mile. It's extra. All right, well, let's start that again because just to let the fans know we lost signal. So we're going to start this. And, you know, hey, if there's some repeat, Sylvia, you can always hit the fast forward on the podcast.

Don't you dare. No. So I think we were talking about what? Some of the format. Yeah. What was it? Well, there are a lot of format fans now, right? And this is something that Dan and I started to encounter

where there were people who wanted physical media in the age of streaming because they felt they could own it, right? And so Warner Archive was there to get more new release, less films, but more TV shows that just weren't going to wind up at like a Best Buy or Target. And now, you know, since Dan and I, I mean, there was a little bit of it there, but now people have really moved more into 4K.k dan have you moved to 4k uh well it's interesting you bring up the 4k thing and formats and streaming because

as we know this is sort of working from the current era backwards uh there's a lot of recent concern about how do you access films moving ahead because various services are – there was an idea that people had that eventually you would just – and I don't know if Tim remembers back in 2014 the so-called Streamageddon. Oh, Tim wouldn't. And I think that was 2013, to be honest. Yeah, but so it's funny because it all came true later. But right when we were launching Warner Archive Instant, the then streaming side for Warner Archive. Warner Brothers first subscription video on demand service. Warner Brothers' first subscription video on demand service. was moving into more original production and they wanted to become what they are now. So instead of being the online version of Netflix by mail, they were becoming Netflix the studio. So while we were

launching Warner Archive Instant, Netflix was dropping a lot of old catalog titles and people on the internet assumed that we were pulling the titles in order to artificially inflate Warner Archive Instant. And it became, you could do searches for it, it became known online as Streamageddon. And it was like, look at what they're doing to us to try to force us. You know, they got to understand people just want one streaming service. They got to understand people just want one streaming service. And then, of course, by 2023, we have more streaming services than you can count and even more growing fast channels. And catalog is still getting lost. And yet, on the other hand, it's worthy to note that shows that were designed to be fan friendly for streaming are now coming out on disc.

And at the same time, a blockbuster film was recently released on 4K. And Sony's had to tell everyone, don't worry, we have more coming because it's... Demand. Oppenheimer has actually sold out at a number of retailers. I mean, there's more coming. But the point being, there was always this weird idea that the pie was changing and you couldn't have these different slices. And it's like, no, the pie just grows.

All of this stuff is additive. None of it is, you know, it's not cannibalizing sales. You're growing different ways for people to experience stuff. You just have to make it all work together. That's such a great point. And you just reminded me, I remember not the day, but I remember sitting in marketing meetings and it dawned on us one day that, wait a second, putting the TV shows from the CW on Netflix, which we thought was going to be the death of our home entertainment income for those shows, it brought a whole new audience to those shows.

So the shows prospered because then the broadcast numbers the next year or the next season went up. But not only that, people then wanted to buy and own the show and go back. And it's like, well, but they could just watch it on streaming. Yes. But a percentage of them are physical media collectors and they want to own the shows. So it was that kind of the, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. And that's why I was always scratching my head a few over the last few years when people were cutting home entertainment departments. I'm like, well, you're just getting rid of the people who know how to keep making some money coming in. And we all know that the big thing for Wall Street is cashflow. Can you show cashflow? Home entertainment was cashflow. TV was cashflow. Films were a

tougher cashflow because they go up and down. But you could be like every quarter home entertainment is selling and you're cutting your cash flow. Yeah. And so it's a great point you bring up. Yeah. And in terms of it being a catalog business, you know, home entertainment allows you to refresh the catalog. And I mean that in a technical way

to make new masters that you're then paying for with the physical release. But those new masters then become an instrument you can use to spread it through commercial, linear, fast streaming, whatever. But you have a new high-definition master, you're future-proofing the catalog. And the catalog is, you know,

when you have 100 years of good stories, let them live. I mean, there's a thing I remember back in the 90s, you would hear back when if you went to Comic-Con, for instance, you would be probably 80% male and you would talk to comic book publishers and the marketing people would say things like, well, you know, girls don't like comics. And I would just sit there and go, it's a medium. It's not, you know, it's like, no, girls don't like your comics. And then, of course, you know, manga totally changed the dynamic there. And now it is solidly 50-50 because, yes, you know what? Everyone likes to read. It's like I had a friend in high school who used to say, I don't care for poetry as a genre. And I would just laugh at him because it doesn't make any

sense. It's like, you know, it's just stories. You know, people say things like, well, you know, young people don't like the pacing of old Hollywood films. And it's like, no, they're not used to it. Or, you know, young people don't watch black and white movies. Yeah. Because they've never seen them. It's just like all of this stuff is just let it be there. Let people discover it on their own. Make it easy to discover.

I was just on the radio today. They were interviewing the guy who wrote the TCM book on Christmas movies. And they talked about how, you know, speaking of we're living in an age where people are hiding movies as tax write-offs, which means nobody can ever see them, ignoring the fact that we have a history of movies like It's a Wonderful Life and Christmas Story that made all their money way down the line from theatrical release because they were just available on TV for people to find and enjoy because they're good stories. End of sermon.

Well, but in a side commentary, there is, as Dan was saying, a difference between format and content. a difference between format and content. And working in a traditional media silo, it trains you, right? Like if you're in charge of this format, then you're thinking of it format first, right? And not content first. And that, unfortunately, is a business. It kind of puts blinders on you without understanding that all of it is kind of cross pollinated and that, yes, people people want more stuff in the best quality for as cheap as possible right like that that's a pretty similar a fair description of a consumer yeah thank you this is my business book and uh but the studio's job is now especially that every single person is walking around with a device that can shoot, edit, and publish anything to a worldwide audience in minutes or in real time, right? Like they can real time stream it. The studio's job

is to figure out how to take their investment and feed it to the right person at the maximum cost at the right time. Right. And so that's windowing. And that's something that the business was very good at for a long time. But then just as we were starting, everybody's head exploded and they all decided that the best way to make the most money as possible is to be like the internet businesses and to grow your audience without growing revenue. And that's a different business. HBO was the most profitable television station because they understood windowing, right? And you bring content in, you bring it out, you spend this much money, and they were spending money on new content for just Sunday night. And people then decided it was worth $10, $15, $20, whatever they were spending a month,

because they were feeling like, oh, 15, $20, whatever they were spending a month because they were feeling like, oh, this is HBO. But the reality when HBO would look at what people were actually watching, they were watching things like Weekend Boobie Summer 3, right? But they'd say that they bought it because they wanted, you know, The Sopranos, right? And that difference was where they made all their money. But when the internet people business came in and demanded that you have Sopranos every night, and the people who are running HBO said, that is suicide and quit. Well, historically, they've been proven right, because you have to think about these revenue models. And when you have less revenue, then eventually you're going to have less higher quality content, right? And so it becomes

a loss for the audience as well, right? And, you know, so it's a business. Unfortunately, it's a business first, and it's a business first and it's art second. Well, I want to throw a couple of questions at you guys that I get a lot, that you probably used to get a lot, and maybe you still get a lot. But people who buy and are definite fans of the Warner Archive product. So, I mean, these are hardcore people. They're shelling out money. But they want to know why this movie now and why not the movie I want or the top movies,

you know? And it's like, if, if Warner Brothers has 50 movies better than this one, why are you guys releasing it this month? What do you, what do you have to say to people who have that? Cause you, I'm sure you hear it every month. You know, there's a story behind each one. And yeah, we would get hit with that all the time and you would try to explain them like look are putting out brothers grim actually has nothing to do with rain tree county like rain tree county is its own story and there's issues with the element and the film that will or will not come together over time based on technology and available things. This film is ready to go, has decent elements, and we're able to release it.

And then some other times it's like, oh, well, there was a list of films and they wanted to fulfill a thing and this was at the top of the list. I mean, there's really, really mundane answers and there's really, really technical answers. And it's all of the above, always. But the simple answer is these films are coming out because they can come out. Dan and I created a bunch of customer models. And there is a customer, and we sort of mentioned it with the burn pit minds was one answer that I think they seem to think that there was like a room and that you go and you pull a thing off a shelf and then you put it in a machine and hit a button and it's done. and it's done, right?

Like that it's very simple and easy and that the only reason why it's not all being done at once is due to greed. A more sophisticated customer will understand that difference. And very early on too, we said that like a physical media customer, like a hardcore customer was more like the person who would show up to a record store, right? Like a vinyl collector. And people who want vinyl want to hold a thing. They understand its value. Its value is not just for the music inside, but not just for the weight of the vinyl, although that helps, or the quality of the giant

package you get it in. But it represents something almost intangible to them that an MP3 cannot hold. And that customer is now your primary physical media customer. It's more like it's gotten kind of a little back to Laserdisc, right? Speaking of George. Yeah, speaking of George. By the way, we're at the, for commentary, it is the 40th anniversary of the first commentary this year coming up with King Kong king kong in uh 1984 the very first one piece of trivia very first commentary and it was on a laser disc yeah yeah for criterion and it was because they discovered that they could have on that format an additional audio track and you know could it was originally designed for multiple language support. And they were like, well, what if we get some dude,

like who's really knowledgeable about film history to just talk? And the concept took off, right? I mean, it's not rocket science to think, hey, people like this film and they've liked it for 40 years. Let's have somebody talk about it who can tell us something about it.

But the ability to technically put it together that's while you're watching the movie that was pretty cool you know okay i can go to a lecture about this or i can listen to it on the radio or whatever but while i'm watching the film for the up team time so i don't need to hear the dialogue they can talk about this scene what's going on here and the history behind it. And that, to me, that the first time you saw a commentary, you're like, that's kind of magical, you know, now we're all used to it. Amazing. Yeah. And, and the thing is that, and, and living in a big city, we, you know, in LA, you've always had access to special screenings where like the filmmakers would show up and maybe talk before or after the

film and what it was like to put it together, right? That's a live commentary. But if you live, you know, outside of New York or LA or maybe even Chicago, you don't, you never got access to that, right? Or you only got what was at the blockbuster people now with discs and with all these streaming services you know as long as you well as long as you have an internet connection you can get it streaming and if you don't have an internet connection because that's another large audience uh you can get access to all these you know all this material that you you could not have gotten in any way in the past if you live in the middle of the country. Yeah, and speaking of not having internet access, it's also worthy to note that to serve a broad audience of film fans as possible involves multiple avenues. Because I remember with Warner Archive, we would have the Blu-ray fans who wanted everything

as good a master as possible on the best format possible. And God love them, yes, especially for certain movies like Peter Weir's Fearless or something like that. You want to treat the movie the way it deserves. But then there was an older audience of monogrammed Western fans. They didn't need a Blu-ray. Not only that, some of them didn't want the Blu-rays. They were like, no, just DVD.

I have a DVD player. I don't want Blu-ray. I just want the DVD. And quite honestly, you know, there's room to serve both audiences and serve them well. And they're both physical media fans. The danger is when you confuse A for B. Right. Like somebody who shows up to the film forum with somebody who wants to relive their Saturday morning matinee. Exactly. Exactly. And like the format and the technology should be robust enough to serve both audiences well

instead of serving both of them not so well. And I want to take you back a little bit to the question that I threw out there. And I think that one of the thoughts is that somehow there's a, uh, a big room and it's, it's the library and it's like, which one should we release this month? And you're like, Oh, I'm gonna walk up here. I'm going to grab it. And this is the one we're going to release on Tuesday. And there's some mastermind and you, you talked about how that's obviously, you know, films are in different places. They're in different states of needing repair or restoration and, and all of these things. And

there's also the business side, which is, uh, our home entertainment group used to be broken into catalog, new release, television animation. And they would be like like we want to have every week or every month we want to serve x amount of the audience with releases so in order to do that we're not going to do all the top catalog movies in black and white from the 30s and 40s we need some stuff from the 60s we need some stuff from the 90s we need some tv and so all of this is going on and there's only so many resources so much time from marketers from the distributors to the to all the people who work there. And so you're only going to get one, maybe if you're interested, is in a specific area, one a month that really appeals to you. But that's because the company is also trying to appeal to all of these other parts of the audience out there, which I think you explained.

But I just want to kind of rehash that a little bit. No, no, that was good. And the other thing is, you know, and to be clear, there is another side to it, which is, for example, oh, what are we going to put out in October? What horror movies do we have in the pipeline that we can get done in time that there's an audience for? You know, let's have an 80s and let's have a 30s. And, you know, but even that selection, like, you know, they're going to sell because it's Halloween. And to this day, discs for Halloween movies pump up in October. So you want to get those in the pipeline.

But you also have to balance the cost of mastering versus the audience versus what's readily available, what's a bigger thing. Maybe we'll put this out as a test and then down the line we can actually do the full thing. I mean, all of that calculation is constantly going on and it is really more of an art than a science. But there is a science there, too. And that was George looked at it as programming, right? It's no different than a TV channel or, you know, like radio shows, right? Because it's like, there's only so much information and money, right, and time that a consumer has. And so the Warner Archive program, which is still going on,

you know, is now stretched into its second decade, right? Like, how do you sustain that audience over time? And so as you guys were saying, there's a variety of consumers, a variety of tastes, a variety of genres, and you want to capture people's attention, right? Because it's now an attention economy every week or every month and get people to engage with the product. And if you dumped a thousand movies at once, right? Let's just say that a thousand movies were dumped at one time, which would be kind of amazing in one sense, but how do I navigate it? One might even call that the streaming model.

Well, but yeah, with streaming too, that they have this problem. It's like, how do you navigate it? And the streamers try to do that through algorithm. And, you know, if you're on the Roku, roku they say this is what's at the top and there's even you know that i mean there is still not an algorithm that is equal to the guy at the video store that is able to go oh if you like that you're gonna like this the algorithm is just showing you variations on things you've seen. It's not showing you something you've never thought of seeing. You've really still, I mean, maybe AI will get there. It's not there yet. Right. Speaking of algorithm, and then we'll get back to that. So I was just posted on Facebook how the Maltese Falcon, which was on sale, showed in the algorithm, hey, if you like Maltese Falcon,

you're going to like Scream 6. I posted on there. I'm like, well, this is kind of a head scratcher. And, uh, I think what the algorithm was saying is, is this is on sale and this is on sale. Yeah. Well, that is not the way that the consumer is thinking. Right. So sure. Yeah. The algorithm is correct. A lot of people bought this cause it's on sale and they bought Sc scream as, as well because it's on sale, but that's not right though. It's not. And then finally, once the sale was over, it went back to promoting the right movie with a Mounties Falcon, but that's just kind of an interesting, funny side note. We can laugh about it, but that's where humans are better. Yeah. Oh, so not to brag, but a micro-budget film that I produced and co-wrote was just released on Amazon. It's in the pay window. It's called

Lunamancer, if you want to see it. But being part of Amazon, when you watch the film. And it's not a big budget film. There isn't a lot of information out there for the algorithm to digest. But it's very funny to see what they recommend, right, for that movie after you've seen it, what's similar. And the algorithm is so confused that it's just like, these actors were in these other things, so you may like, right? But they don't even say that. But one of the actors was in a movie, a notorious film from 1980 called Cannibal Holocaust.

So, but this movie has nothing to do with that, right? But their top recommendation is Cannibal Holocaust. But this movie has nothing to do with that, right? But their top recommendation is Cannibal Holocaust, if you like this film. And then the next two movies are also cannibal movies. And so Lunamancer has no cannibalism. Nobody is actually eating anything. But ironically, I'm wearing a shirt for The Beyond from Grindhouse Releasing, who also put out Cannibal Holocaust on Blu-ray. So, you know, if you're a fan, I recommend both of them. In fact, I recommend every single title from Grindhouse Releasing. They're fantastic. That's not paid.

You know, that's just you just. Yeah. Yeah. Not paid. That's not paid. You know, that's just – you just did that. Yeah, not paid. That's fan talk. Dan and I have a lot of fan talk, which we can now do that we are free of our very, very rigid corporate NSAs. Is that right, Dan? NDAs?

Oh, see, I don't even know anymore. I've got a non-sneeze. Yeah, the NSA would not be involved. What? Oh, shoot. Did I lose something? Well, to go back to what we were talking about, you know, how you want to have something for the different various audiences. remember one of the this time of year was very exciting uh at work because um i knew that either in december or january i think i would meet with marketing and they would lay out their plan for

the year releases and i'd be like oh i'm so excited for this meeting because they would tell me where the or tell us uh in the special features group these are the films that we're going to put X amount of dollars to. And these are the films that have a slightly lesser budget, but still good. And then these, we have no budget for extras, but we're still releasing these. We would, you know, usually you'd have lunch and they would talk about, and we would just sit there and we'd be so excited. I bring that up just to let the listeners and people know some of this planning is a year or more out because you, especially in television, you had so many episodes that had to be cleaned up of a show from the seventies or even eighties or fresh prints or, you know, whatever it

was that the plans had to be made, but they couldn't be made for this year unless they had been working on these TV titles for like two years before to get the episodes and find out what shape they're in. And the other thing that people don't think about for TV is all of the various languages around the world would have to be tracked down. And that was not always easy.

In other words, it was a long lead time for this stuff. It wasn't just like, you know, snap your fingers and it's going to happen because that information then had to be shared with retailers. Right. And they would come back and say, Ooh, we think that's a great title we'll pre-buy x number you know again this is for home entertainment where they're yeah they're already taking pre-orders and things a year out so yeah you know good yeah exactly so they would you know one retailer say we're going to take these many tens of thousands and another and then they would be like that would be how they would base their budget for extras. Like this is going to be a big title.

I mean, home entertainment was kind of like being a Tesla dealer and Warner archive is kind of like being Uber eats. We, we used to just making the joke. No, but when we worked for the digital division, we were one of the more successful products that they launched because their job was sort of to kamikaze, like try business ideas on digital and see what stuck. And this business was – it stuck, right?

They were very excited about it. No, and the great breakthrough and insight that Mike, our old boss, had was expanding Warner Archive out of WB Shop and making it available to all online retailers that wanted to sell it. And suddenly, the line grew by leaps and bounds. Just because it was niche doesn't mean it had to be in a corner. I can do a better job with that analogy. But yeah, but then like the end of 2015, Dan and I got rolled into home entertainment. And so we moved to a home entertainment floor and you know all this stuff

that tim where we would just kind of hear about what you guys were doing all of a sudden those meetings started to happen around us and we were like oh these guys like like because even though it had shrunk down by 2015 the system that you guys had was the, you know, like the $7 billion business system. I mean, just like going to the approvals meetings for like the packaging, I was just like, just nothing but sympathy for, you know, it's so complicated. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we're really like pulling back the curtain, you know, the Wizard of Oz here and getting, you know, give people a good exposure of how the business ran back then. But, you know, it doesn't run that way anymore. So we're not really sharing anything that is a secret or anything because everything has changed and it's never going to run like that again. No. Everything has changed and it's never going to run like that again. No. To the packaging, there would literally be, for television shows, where there's 12 or 24 episodes, the packaging would be like four inches. Yeah.

Because every page would be there and I have to look at the cover, front cover, side cover, back cover, each disc. So if there's 24 discs or whatever it is, depending on how many discs there are, I should say. Never 24. Let me back that up. There'd be like three episodes, four episodes, maybe if it's an hour to a disc. Yeah, it depends on the size. And then we would do this for DVD, for Blu-ray. And it would all be in this packaging.

You have to look at it and review and put your notes on there and everything. And it would all be in this, in this, uh, packaging and you have to look at it and, uh, and review and put your notes on there and everything. And it would make multiple rounds and you had X number of days where you had to move it to the next. It was quite a thing and, and whole teams of people, proofreaders and, and artists and other people working on that. So, uh, yeah, those stacks would pile up outside george's office yes uh and dan and i would be like oh my god i mean and it really was it took up like dan didn't it take up like two

chairs at one point like there was like an in and an out and i want to be careful in and how i'm saying this because i'm really it had more to do with the dinosaur-like quality of old business systems. For a long time, stuff was still being done on hard copy. The packaging would get printed out, and the proofreader would make notes, and then I, as the copywriter, would read the notes. There was a lot of stuff going back and forth on paper. And this system existed for years. But when I first came in, I was like, you know, why can't we just do this digitally? And then the proofreader corrects my copy. And then, and everyone, no one wants to be the person that is bucking the way things

are done. And literally like the year, two years before the pandemic and all of that, you know, I finally, you know, things had broken down to the point where, like, I actually got to know the proofreader was assigned to us quite well. We were talking, and then she was like, you know, it would be really nice if I could just get your copy and correct it, and then we could send my corrected copy out. And I was like, yeah, I agree.

And then it was like yeah i agree and then it was like oh let's do that and then pandemic yeah yeah yeah but it was this thing where like you know everyone on all sides of this slowly grinding millstone is going wait wouldn't it be smoother if we did this but no one can see each other no No one can hear each other. No one can talk. Everyone's just stuck in their corner, pushing it around. And then finally the wheel got small enough to see the person on the other side and go, Hey, let's move it over here. George was our guide to understanding your guys' bureaucracy level because nobody, there was no map, you know, like, like we didn't know who was,

because we'd moved from one division to the other, but Dan and I kind of needed that because it was, it was just kind of hard to know, but we, you know, we figured it out and it, it all, it all continued to work, which was, it was, it a very interesting experience. And the exciting thing for me, now being back in the position of being a fan, is thankfully George is there and it's still working. And, like, you know, this month I'm very excited.

There's a new Looney – not to promote, but I've promoted Grindhouse. I can promote Warner Archive. You know, I'm very excited about it. What do you think we do on this podcast, Daniel? What do you think we do on this podcast, Daniel? We promote Warner Archive titles, please. I'm super excited about Tarzan the Ape Man. Yes.

I mean, it's like at least once a week, I mean, once a month, George just gets a text from me going, oh, I'm so excited, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's coming up. Yeah, we'm so excited. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is coming up. Yeah, we're still fans. In fact, the reason why Dan got hired in the first place was people would start coming to me and asking me all these weird questions, not just about Warner Archive product, but about regular Warner Brothers product, because a lot of people didn't know how to find

the legacy packaging, right? Maybe how to find the legacy packaging, right? Like, like the, maybe they could find the VHS, but they couldn't, they didn't know at the WB shop. They wouldn't know if there was like a booklet that had come in, uh, in the packaging. And so they would come to me and I'd go, hold on. And I'd call Dan and Dan was home at the time with a newborn, uh, child. And I'd be like, Dan, can you open up your Babylon 5 season two? Is there a booklet? And Dan would be like, hold on. And I'd be like, yes.

And I'd go, thanks. And then I'd hang up the phone and be like, yes, there is a booklet. They'd be like, oh, thanks, Matt. And so they thought that I was like Dan, but then the time came where they needed a copywriter. And I'm like, here's the guy who you guys thought I was, but he, I was just calling him. Now you can have him sit here and ask him directly. So now, now the word, the truth is out.

You were writing Dan's coattails for years. Dan made me who I am today. Oh, you are. Yes. Well, that's so, you know,. Oh, you are. Yes. Well, that's so, you know, it's, it's some great stories, uh, talking about how the business was. Hopefully people are still listening and they find it interesting. You never know.

You never know. But the, the core of it all has been George. Oh yeah. And I think you just mentioned that Daniel, that it's like, thank God that George is still there. Because to your point, to your point there, Matt, you were calling Dan. But guess who everybody else calls? Oh, yeah. You pick up the phone and they're like, do you know where XYZ or do you know anything about?

And there's one person you can pick up the phone and you can call do you know where xyz or do you know anything about and there's one person you can pick up the phone and you can call it's george and if he doesn't know it click click click you hear his typewriter you know you hear the keyboard going yeah if he doesn't know phone in one hand other hand on the keyboard. Yeah. Exactly. Multitasking. And so it's like, we're so fortunate. And when people say, hey, why don't we get this? Why don't we get more of that?

Why don't we have this? Why is this? Why is there no extras? I say, you know, look, it's a battle. It's a battle. To get any title out these days, it's really a challenge because of all the obstacles and the fact that the staff has just been depleted for so much of this. And there's only so much time in a day, in a week and so much resources. So I think people might think, you know, wow, Tim's very optimistic. but I'm like, six titles, eight titles?

Are you kidding me? In a month? It was only a year ago we were having one title in a month. Yep. Yeah, it's going up. To be back to that kind of larger cycle is a great thing. Yeah, no. yeah no and and you know not to make it all about george but george's patience in deal because he's been through the up and downs of the studios and the systems and the format and he knows how to

play the long game really well the end game is always just to get the stuff out there yeah representing george has always represented the voice of the fans right and how do you represent that voice among the businessmen and that's a that's a it's really tricky and uh george has been doing it a long time dan and i would love when george would tell stories about like, like, as he got into the business first with 16 millimeter when he was in college. This is a funny true story is when I was a kid before home entertainment really was a thing, my brothers and I would save our allowances and the money we made working at my dad's camera store and all of that. And we would rent 16 millimeter films from Films Incorporated and we would show them in our

living room and we'd invite people over and everyone would put like 50 cents or a dollar in the coffee can and we would project like Rebel Without a Cause or Wizard of Oz, whatever. And we would rent these films. And these were like the 16 millimeter versions that we'd go to like colleges and high schools. And we would just rent them and show them at home because we had a 16 millimeter projector. And that was sort of the beginning of one of the beginnings of sort of my film fandom. And then lo and behold, years later, I'm having a conversation with George and George is like, oh, yeah, I had the Northeast. I did that catalog you guys were ordering from you.

You in point of fact, we're ordering those movies from me. Yeah, right. It's full circle. Yeah, which is and then he got into the early days of home video. And then he got into the early days of home video and he talks about working for Golan and Globos early on. And when and he does this fantastic story that, you know, when I first met him, he talked about working for those guys and how they'd be like, George, you have to sell Lemon Popsicle for $99.99. Lemon Popsicle would be, and George is like, what? But they would sell thousands of copies of Lemon Popsicle for $99.99. Because people wanted these movies, even if they were Israeli porkies, right? Like it's just, it's insane. And the reason why I found out that story

is when I first started, just the year before Netflix had just launched with their streaming service, which came free, I bought a Roku and I watched everything on it. But the film libraries then were insane. And they had Lemon Popsicle 1, 3, 4, and 7 on Roku. And I just brought it up. And then he starts telling the story. And he goes, well, they don't have a 2 and 5 because 2 and 5 are with this library and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm just staring at him like, oh, my God, he's the human pro-IMDB thing. Like, it's insane. The walking database. Yeah, and so I just was like, absorb, absorb. So it's just, but that scope of the business, right, is invaluable because

while it's changed, it always stems from that people want to see these films and they want to see them the best way they can that's it they want to not only see them they want to own them yeah that's the thing is that they want to hold them yeah and uh it's it's great i mean if you if you're you know like if you're short on shelf space a disc is this thin just remove the uh remove the art oh god no no no no take the art out of the blu-ray box if you need to yeah if you need the space and uh keep the disc if you know if you're really tight on space you're living in an apartment or whatever now you're you're like keep it but we know that just below the camera there there are boxes cases yeah i'm a future episode of storage wars now i say i say do that but i don't do that i

keep every every uh blu-ray in the disc because I like how they look and it keeps them orderly. If I take them out, then I'm like, aha, they're slipping all over. Dan knows that I love finding obscure formats of films and gifting them to people because we found a shelf full of HD DVDs of Alexander. And when people just see that, that red HD DVD of that fine film, and they say, what am I supposed to do with this? That's what I live for. Wait,

what's HD DVD? Do you mean 4k? Oh no, Dan. I, I, there was, I remember remember there was two three years when there it was between a blu-ray versus hd we would have to we would literally have to do separate menus we'd have to do separate masks i mean like it was a pain to do that and nobody was like well we don't know which one's gonna win they did and it was just

beta max so w1 because they got a billion dollars from sony to to cut off hdvd and that was on the they were on the eighth floor at the time that business unit because uh i made and this is one of my most beautiful website designs a website called called redtoblue.com for Warner Brothers, where you would exchange your HD DVD for a Blu-ray disc. Okay. All right. Yeah, it was a service. Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah.

It was crazy. The behind the scenes mechanisms of corporate, you know, corporations and the money that's exchanged. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. I remember that like in leading up to that, you know, Blu-ray versus HD DVD, there was, you know, behind the scenes, if you were following stuff in the forums and things, there was a real effort to get everyone to agree so we wouldn't have a format war. Everyone knew that that was not the good solution. And even with all this knowledge, we still had a format war. Yeah.

Yep. Well, hey, we've been talking a little bit about the smaller, more more obscure, you know, titles that you have interest in, Daniel and stuff. And I was thinking that there are quite a few boutique labels now that are putting out a ton of product. And even though people are like, oh, what was me? The end of physical media. It's like, really? OK. I mean, when it comes to are you selling, you know, the millions of copies of the newest release? Maybe not. But that's in part to do with theatrical changes as well, not just home entertainment changes, if you ask me.

that went straight to streaming that didn't do anywhere close to the numbers that it used to do in theatrical either. So there's a lot more to it than just, you know, the physical media purchase. The whole industry has changed. COVID hit and theaters were shut down. Like there's a lot. And we'll never be able to go back and untangle that web. But in the now, there's a lot of stuff being released. What are your thoughts on that? There's an audience. And as long as there's an audience, someone is going to move in to fill that audience's needs. And if it's too small or the perception is that it's too small for the big players to do it, then the boutiques are going to come in and thank God because

these catalogs are sitting there and they know how to get it out. And the work that they're doing, it's great. And as long, I mean, here's the thing is you've got someone like George ensuring that what gets mastered looks as good as it possibly can, which then, you know, the guys at Vinegar and the guys at Arrow and the guys at Shout, you know, the guys at Vinegar and the guys at Arrow and the guys at Shout, you know, who are licensing the material, A, they're getting access to better masters. And then when they're making them themselves, they have, there's a, everybody's raising

each other's standards. And, you know, the stuff that like Arrow and Vinegar and Shout, all of these guys are doing, there's really, really good stuff all in the pipeline that's all coming out, which is kind of surprising for a dead format. Right. Like, what is your company's value add, right? And so Warner Brothers, it was our catalog. And so the value add that we had is, you know, it was in some kind of format.

We remaster it and release it. And if it didn't have any extras, the value was it looks better than before. Right. But now that you never could get it. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Sorry. Yes. But then if you license that master to somebody like a shop factory, what they're going to do, their value add is all of their extras that they can put that in front of people who, like, you know, Dan and I might have been able to reach them, right? But they have a dedicated audience who wants all that material and that imprature.

And it works. And there's a reciprocal relationship, like when, you know, this stuff gets licensed out to a boutique label and the boutique label does a new, like, 4k scan, that 4k scan doesn't disappear. You know, it stays with the title and it enters the greater ecosystem. And suddenly moving ahead, people have access to a new form of digital preservation that has higher resolution. And, you know, as the technology changes, whatever it becomes, you know, there's a new format which gives it longer legs, which gets you into the next decade and the decade after

that. And then, you know, eventually, eventually the televisions will be beyond what our human eyes can take in. And then we're going to have to wear special goggles. But that's that's for the Sonys and the Samsungs to handle. for 4k you're starting format distribution yeah yeah but 4k has allowed a new level of mastering that and um and a sales window right like even if from a 4k you can get it uh even a better blu-ray than before. And, you know, again, as Dan was saying, it's an ecosystem.

A label that I like to follow is AGFA, the American Genre Film Archive, which is a nonprofit. Not only have they been taking, in working with like Alamo and other people, right, some of these labels, like a shout, will maybe release it physically, but then Agfa will take that and distribute a 4k theatrically, right? So you can get a day and date theatrical release to, you know, markets like in Texas or whatever that can coincide with your disk and or digital release. And also, they have partnered with some people who don't have the ability to release a disk and partner together and release 4Ks. And then because they're a nonprofit, they've turned around and used that money that they've raised to go into forgotten libraries by forgotten or underserved filmmakers and start digitizing these very unknown, very on the edge, almost lost films, which only existed in Whispers and releasing it.

And that's an incredible maturation of, you know, because at first it was like, hey, a Danny Kaye film is available, right? Like people kind of know who that is. But when you go out to an artist who made a film for regional drive-in theaters in Texas about like horror houses, and it was released in two theaters, and then the negative sat in someone's garage, right? And nobody saw it now. You get distribution for that. Like that's such a huge jump and just really fascinating. Well, I think the observation I've made is that the quality of the Warner Archive releases is probably unmatched or unsurpassed by anybody. And it's funny you should say that because when we started, all we heard was the opposite.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. It took a long, long time. The most common thing we would hear and became something we would say at work because we heard it so much online was if we were putting something out and it was announced, then online. You're going to say the word. In the forums, it was oh my god, it's relegated to the archive.

And it was, you know, people were very upset that we were putting it out. And it was... And not you guys. Oh, it's the main homeowner. It needs a proper release. You know, we were the bad news bears and you guys were the Yankees.

And it was like, why are they sending red dust to the Bad News Bears? But, you know, thanks to a lot of hard work of George and Terry and all the labs, all the labs, you know, eventually the proof was in the pudding they cooked. And then everyone went, oh, these are actually really good. Right, right. But it took a long time to get there, both in terms of being able to deliver the product, but also the perception. The perception curve was much longer than the actual delivery. I had a director when we were releasing like an out of print DVD, right? Like he had a release through HBO and we were re-releasing it because it had been out of print for like five

years. Which is, you know, one of the benefits of the way we did stuff is something that went out of print. We were able to bring it back into print so people could get it. And he said to me, well, I'm a little disappointed that it's coming back in print from you because you don't have any extras. And I looked at him and I go, wait, do you think, like, if we took the extras off the disc, that would actually be very expensive to do. We're just taking your disc and ripping it and re-releasing it. We're not taking anything away. It's just back in print the way it was. But that's part of that perception process, right? People just thought that somehow it's like a stripped down version.

But it doesn't even make economic sense. But if you're not in the business, you don't know how these things are made or how they're manufactured or burned or not familiar with ISO files, you could see how emotionally people would react to it. It was an understandable reaction, but it just – Dan and I would you know, would forget that people weren't living this literally every day of their lives. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I think the big thing that I take away from seeing all these other companies, even if the quality of their master is not the same level of Warner Archive, is that I think if we go back to the dark ages of not offering films to people, you know what they're going to do? They're going to pirate it. Oh, yeah.

The studio spent so much money fighting piracy, trying to get people to understand, please, these are valuable works of art. Please don't pirate them and show them in this low res format and sell that. You're robbing us. It's illegal. And piracy is no good for the business. If you hoard stuff, if you don't release it, if you, you know, whatever, people will rip it to get their own physical media copy. So it does no good for the industry or the fans to do it.

And, you know, time has proven that the best way to combat piracy is to make the stuff available easily in a good quality format. People will choose not to pirate like that if you just make it able for them to access it. It's when you pull stuff away. It's when you hide it. It's when you bury it. It's when you don't put it out that they- Is that a print? Yeah. Yep. And then suddenly there's weird additions on eBay that you don't know where they came from, or people are going to Russian sites and getting their computers full of viruses. And I think that the streamers have not maybe been down that road quite the same. I know there's password sharing and other things they have to deal with. But if you see a show on Max or Netflix or something that's an original and they never release it on physical media

and you really want it, not only are they losing out on potential revenue, but they're just setting up the basis for piracy in the future as well. So if you have an audience for a show, release it. You can wait a year or two if you want, but eventually, please release it. Let people own it. And people will wait for that and buy it, even if they have seen like a crappy quality floating around. I think an example of that is The Mandalorian, which is very popular on Disney Plus. I love that show myself. It took a few years. Yep.

And part of it was for various reasons that they were holding back. But it's got some beautiful artwork. They're releasing it. It's coming out if it's not already out by the time this is aired. And people are going to gobble that up and people want to own it and you can still go back to disney plus and stream it if you want to tonight and people are are noticing that this stuff actually still looks noticeably better in its physical format by far by far when i put it on my 4K monitor, and it's a Blu-ray or a 4K, obviously, I'm getting the best quality right there.

And then the audio. Well, that's like all of them. There's a whole other too long conversation. But so much of what people perceive visually is actually the audio system. Like Matt and I just saw the new Godzilla Minus One. Fantastic film. And we saw it in IMAX. But, you know, what really made that film great visually was the sound system.

Right. Yeah. We came out of it. I'm like, well, you don't have to see it in IMAX. But the sound was a character, right, in IMAX. And there's a critical moment in the film this is not a spoiler because it's just about the soundtrack but the soundtrack goes silent and it's so powerful and so noticeable because it's like you all of a sudden you just kind of

realize like i was and and you and you focus right on the screen. Right. Like and it's and without such an amazing sound system, it would still work. But the impact in the theater, because all the vibration, right, everything just stopped. So good. Like that's what I want to package up. And yeah, and that's that just clicked in my brain we're coming up on oscar season and last year when they removed having during the live broadcast some of the categories like sound and i was you know along with the people who actually did the work but as just a fan i was like are you kidding me a huge part of the experience is the sound. If you pull out sound editing and relegate them to something else, people will not understand the importance of the sound editing,

the score, all of this stuff that you don't see, but it's a part of the movie. I am so not jealous of the people who put on the Academy Awards because that is one heck of a show to produce. Like, what do you show? What do you not show? And everybody's eyes are on it. Right. But, but yes. And you know, that and the musical numbers and stuff are part of the, the live show, right? The show itself is like about all the different parts of what goes into movies

yeah the movie's day and uh yeah you know what dan i'm speaking about sound on the studio tour dan and i we did the gravity yeah they did they had a similar thing at the academy museum where they you it was the opening sequence to um uh raiders of the lost ark and as it was running they layered in each layer of soundtrack so like yeah you heard you know the wild sound and then you know eventually at the end they you do in the score and it was really great. It was also funny because I was like, Oh wait, that's Alfred Molina. But, but yeah, when they're layering in the music and it was the same thing with gravity on

the studio tour where like you take everything away and one by one by one, you add each sound component, you realize what an important part of a film sound design and sound editing. And you're in an environment designed for sound, right? You're also in the perfect place for it. And it really hammers it in for anybody who is not a sound designer, how important it is. Well, we'll bring this back to the Warner Archive as well with the sound, because we're talking about how great the picture is looking with these restorations but uh george hammer's at home and i do too when i remember to do it that there's been a sound restoration and at times i'm not as familiar

with some of the really old movies like 20s and 30s and i'm listening to them and i'm i might be a little critical because my sound system uh well you can hear some of the static and things of that nature. But then you think, this is over 90 years old? Are you kidding me? Of course, the sound is going to be not pristine. But the fact that you can actually understand the words, these were very early days of sound recording in many of these films. These were very early days of sound recording in these films. And so that restoration to make it just so you can put it in and actually understand and see and experience it is pretty, pretty amazing.

And really, that's a reason to own because you get you can watch it on TCM. That's fine. But you're not going to get that if you have a surround sound at home like I do. You're not going to get that whole thing. Plus the movies and all of the extras that are on there. And, you know, the technology is such these days that you can go big and have your Atmos at home. But, you know, soundbars are getting so good. You can get pretty close on a budget and still have that experience at home. That's me. Soundbar.

Well, I have both. I have one room, you know, where I have a surround sound and then I've got a Sonos in the living room and it's great. It really is. So even that, but yeah, I understand things are expensive and everybody has, you know, limited budgets. But the fact that you could own a movie from 1929 or 1932, and you paid $19 for it, and it's been fully remastered and sound as 30 minutes worth of

extras. Are you kidding me? Right. I mean, I understand people want to wait for a sale. It'll drop three bucks, but please support the archive so they can do the good work of getting it all done. And don't just wait for sales. Like if six titles come out, kind of like you guys said, in a month, only three may interest you and you may only have the money to buy two. Understandable, you know?

Or one. Or one. And so you have to wait until you can afford to buy it. And then maybe by that time, maybe it will be on sale. But if you could try to at least, you know, support the industry and what's being done by buying some at full price that that helps um the work that you're doing full price is 20 bucks it's just like come on people it's been the same full price for 30 years because you know it's 20 bucks now. You know, yeah. Yeah. When you track back, what what is twenty dollars is now, unfortunately, just under an entree price at a restaurant.

Yeah. You know, Lord, just going to fast food. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Dan and I used to say like, oh, a download price should be around what somebody's paying for a cup of coffee. And since we said that, the price of coffee is higher than a download. Yeah. It is not unusual for somebody to get a tall holiday drink at Starbucks for $7. A download to own is $, right? It's like cheaper than a holiday

coffee. And that money, you know, goes, a lot of it goes to Amazon, but a lot of it goes to the studio. And even that's like helpful. Like it's, it's just, um, you know, like there's there's all different ways. There's no one correct way to enjoy a film, but there are the corrector ways. with all the way that home entertainment has gone in the last 10, 15 years, that there's more stuff now out there than has ever been available for more before and more cheaply than ever. And that just means the love of film and TV, especially history, can spread. And that is actually a good point, maybe more succinctly made, is since everyone started talking about the death of physical media, more stuff has been released on physical media than had been released previously.

And that's true. Yeah. I just, Warner Archive alone, when Dan and I left, it was like 3,700 titles, I believe, were still in print, right? Like that's, that is more than a lifetime of material. Dan and I know because we watched over half of it for preparation for the podcasts. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that the more people say the death of physical media, the, it's almost like the bad press is better than no press kind of a thing. It keeps it in front of people. Yeah. Part of it too, though, Dan, is that there's been very little coming out in theaters. Yeah. And so it's like, hmm, between these three choices in theaters, would I want to watch any of those?

Or what's on the streaming services? Or would I just rather watch a movie I know I love that I haven't seen in a year or two and I can pull it off my shelf or, Hey, it's now out on Blu-ray. I want to buy that and enjoy it. And you know, if you go to the movie theater here in LA, it's about $15 or more, unless you go on a half price Tuesday or something. And you're a member of one of these theaters or something like that. Yeah, ticket price. That's almost the same as buying the Blu-ray. Yeah, it's almost there.

It won't be long before it will be, probably. I've been loving the streaming services because, believe it or not, there are a lot of classic films from other studios that I haven't seen, you know, or like maybe we'll say like A-list titles that you guys would release, but always were passing me by. And so I've been able to catch up on like all these movies that I've been putting off watching because, you know, we were watching so much stuff for work and it has been fantastic for me. I have enjoyed it. I've been going on disc sales. Like, it's very liberating as a customer to just follow my fancy. And have a useful.

You know, for literally for years, Matt's had to hear me say, like, eventually physical media becomes vinyl. Yeah. And the people that really love it are going to, and it going to be vinyl it's going to be thought of vinyl and with the most recent round of death of physical media stories in the media already there's been like two or three stories where somebody has said well maybe it's going to be like vinyl. And it's like, it kind of already is. There are VHS only stores here in LA. They have VHS screenings. Hasn't it been for the last few years

that vinyl has outsold CDs when it comes to music? Yeah. Which is like, what? That's shocking. And yet it's not shocking. You know, the analog experience that people still want to enjoy. And yet it's not shocking. You know, the, the analog experience that people still want to enjoy. And yet no one's running around saying, Oh, don't put anything out on vinyl. They can listen to it on Spotify. They do both. You know, I have a daughter who's in Daniel,

you have a son or daughter and daughter. Yeah. And she wants to listen to the older music. And you know what was interesting is she's like, Oh, I know that song. I know. Yeah. And she wants to listen to the older music. And you know what was interesting? She's like, oh, I know that song. I know that song. Like, it's from the 70s, 80s, 90s. I'm like, how do you know that song? She goes, it's in one of my games on Redline. She said, they use...

She goes, yeah. She goes, when you're going around, I don't know which game it is. She's like, they play snippets of these songs. They must have the rights. They pay royalties for it, obviously. I'm like, so you know the song. I'm like, so let they play snippets of these songs. They must have the rights. They pay royalties for it. Obviously. I'm like, so, you know, the song I'm like, so let's play it. And we've enjoyed more music of, uh, you know, that she didn't grow up with that. I, that I love, um, because of that game, which is interesting. So in other words, anytime you put the lid on something, somebody

else blows it off and, and uses that in some modern video game do you remember when uh when uh uh was it rock was it yeah rock band and the rock band you know how popular that was and people were playing songs from the 60s young young kids they didn't know the song until they played the game and a whole bunch of heavy metal bands found a second life because people discovered their music. I had oddly the reverse experiences that I was playing it and I learned all the music of 2006 of what is popular. Well, there's that too. And it's wonderful. And I know all the words because I would do the singing, right? I love that game so much. do the singing right i love that game so much but uh kids are very good now and um following the rabbit hole right they they find something of interest and they've learned to research themselves very quickly so if they encounter something in a video game or a show or even like

a youtube video or discord they can ping pong their way through like stuff that would have taken us, you know, years to accumulate and get an understanding of. And that's very powerful. And they're free to follow their fan, right? And their special interest and it can become theirs. They have ownership of that. And because of YouTube, now you can see snippets from movies for free, not the whole movie, but you can see snippets. You can see some of the trailers. Trailers.

And then, of course, for music, my daughter, if she is interested in a song, she'll pull up the old music video. And some of them don't look that great. They haven't aged well. But around Halloween, you know, you've got all the thriller and all of the old, you know, videos for the horror movies and things and Ghostbusters. And it's fun. It's actually fun for me to watch with her. I think the point that I was trying to get to that is that that's at one age as she gets a little bit older, she gets introduced to some of the older movies. And I'm not talking about 90 year old movies. I'm talking

about pre 1990. Right. Those movies, she's going to be in a, you know, she's going to be falling in love with some of those movies too. I mean,, Home Alone, pre-1990, we watch every year. Yeah. You know, Christmas Vacation. There's still some because they're seasonal that we watch. Beetlejuice. So it's a great way with the physical media to go back. And the streaming provides for that, too, of course, opportunities where they have it.

Yeah. It's a fine future. Well, guys, this was a lot of fun. opportunities where they have it. Yeah. It's a fine future. Well, guys, this was a lot of fun. I have no idea how I'm going to promote this episode. Good luck. We'll promote it. Wait, wait. Speaking of promotion, Matt, earlier you mentioned you had a film you worked on on Amazon.

What was that film called again? Yes, that is called Lunamancer. You can go to lunamancer.com to find out where it's playing. It's right now on Amazon, and it'll be on Google Play as soon as I get a file over to them. And what are you going to do right after we get off here? You're going to get that file over to them. Yeah, it's on my to-do list to follow up on that. I have nothing to promote but myself.

No, you do. So look for me on LinkedIn. No, Dan. Dan and I were doing Archive Guys podcast. We stopped doing it when Dan and I took a project that is still going on right now. project that is still going on right now. It's been a little over a year of us working on a fast TV channel for Conan O'Brien. Dan and I made, well, by the end of January, we will have made 340 half-hour clip programs of Conan O'Brien, 10- year period over Conan O'Brien's career, which is the number one channel still on Samsung TV+. It's been very interesting, but we haven't had the time to

continue doing the podcast. But Dan, that's what we're going to be doing when we're done. Are you excited, Dan? We're going back to podcasting. We're going back to podcasting. I didn't know that. All right. to podcasting. We're going back to podcasting. I didn't know that. All right. It tastes so much better. I just announced. Well, you know, hey, you can thank me later for putting the promotion two hours into the podcast. Nobody is listening. We love to bury the lead. We'll say skip to the end for Dan and I, where we talk about what we're doing now.

Yeah, listen to the end for Dan and I, where we talk about what we're doing now. Yeah, listen to the end for a somewhat special announcement. Well, it's good to catch up with you guys. Now, finally, people can stop emailing me or posting and saying, what happened to those guys? And then let's get George on and all three of us can talk about Warner Archive movies for 40 minutes, which would be great. I can't remember. And if you're still listening, the person who first said to me, hey, I have a suggestion. Why don't you get Dan and Matt back on? And I'm like, well, that's a great idea.

But they have their own podcast and they're very busy. And then, you know, lo and behold, we run into each other the other day at that book signing. And I find out that you guys actually do have the time. And it was great fun to reconnect. Turns out Dan and I are really approachable and very easy. You'd think we'd be in demand. But, you know, there were a lot of strikes recently. I don't know if you're aware of that.

Well, is that why you couldn't go on? Yeah, we're in support. But, you know, there were a lot of strikes recently. I don't know if you're aware of that. Is that why you couldn't go on? Yeah, we're in support. We'll work for discs. Oh, God. Which is basically what you did before, right? Yeah. It didn't hurt much.

Nothing's changed. I got so many discs. Well, it was a lot of fun. I know I learned a few things and had a few laughs. So that's what it's all about. We just want you to laugh. Right. That's the goal.

All right. Well, thanks, guys. Thanks, Tim. Thank you, Tim.