YouSaid · the spoken record

Franklin Leonard

lines on the record: 86
first: 2020-01-31
most recent: 2020-01-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I am at Franklin Leonard on Twitter. The Blacklist is the BLCK LST, also on Instagram the BLCK LST, and I'm Franklin J Littard on Instagram”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He lost a lot in WeWark. Maybe they'll come over. But no, I think we can pick winners. I think we can pick, and they won't all be winners, but across a large enough slate, I think that we can pick movies that will impact the culture and deliver a return on the investment. At the end of the day, it's a pretty good goal.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have not watched mom. I have to admit it. I mean, you got good talent there. Yeah. And yeah, and then look, the other thing is, like I said, trying to raise a film fund because...”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she As extraordinary of an actress as she is, she may even be a better and more fun person. Oh, God. Like, I just can't tell me.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goodbye, Harvey. Bye bye. Or anyone that You know, the one that we're in post production on now is the one that I was most excited about making. It's a script from the 2018 blacklist by a young writer named Amanda Odoko. She's a Nigerian woman from the South Bronx who happens to write like one of the Cohen brothers. You know, we got Tate Taylor to direct it and got Alice and Janny to star. And I'm just really excited about Hal's going to turn out. It's called Breaking News in Yuba County I mean, she's just incredible. I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. But yeah, keep an eye for breaking your single accounting.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agree, and they've embraced Brandon in a way that I don't think the other companies have, right? People don't say, I'm going to go see a paramount movie this weekend. I'm going to go see an HBO movie this weekend. They may say that about television shows. But I think Disney and A24 are for me the companies that their company name means something and you know, generally speaking, what you're going to get, even if it could be something wildly different, you know generally like, okay, this is what I'm in for with that kind of movie.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought the rollout was pretty impressive. I'm a little biased because I have friends that are involved in it, but I guess I have friends that are involved in all of these companies on some level. But no, I actually thought it was really impressive. And I think that it's, look, they have a competitive advantage. IGR has built something truly remarkable.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was actually really impressed. And then, you know, HBL Next, we'll see what happens. Right, where you have to make choices. And then you're Right, or an old movie, or we'll jump onto Disney because we know there's a Marvel movie there.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, look, they went for Jennifer Anniston. It is a really good show, and I think it started slow, but by the end of that season, I was actually really impressed. And then HBL Next, we'll see what happens. But look, I think the reality is that right now it's sort of Netflix and everybody else chasing. And look, they had a massive head start. They executed well on their strategy. And I think the real question for them is how do you curate amongst the insane amount of content that you have to make people keep coming back because they know they can find something that they don't want to watch rather than sort of jumping into an ocean of content, some of which is good and some of which is terrible. And then you're like, you know what? Forget it. I'm going to go find something else.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like you might be getting me in trouble here. Look, I think Netflix is way out in front. I think that's pretty laps. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much inarguable at this point. I think that Amazon is doing a lot of interesting things from a sort of film and television series perspective. You know, Apple's on the scene now. We'll see how it goes. I think it's probably too early to say, but very traditional.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bias. So, if you had a stack rank blacklist tech companies, which ones are you most help, tech-oriented, Netflix would be a tech company, even though it's a company. How would you stack rank the companies that are now involved would be Amazon, Google? Facebook will be involved at some point, Netflix.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't think of another sort of corporate content producer that put out a black limited series and an Asian romantic comedy in the same weekend, much less or the same year for that matter. And I think that part of their business is being driven by that. And I suspect that that has to do with their approach to data where they're seeing the numbers that like, oh, a lot of people outside these communities like it, there's money to be made. So, you know, if they're doing the analysis, it should lead them towards greater diversity. And if they want to be successful, they'd be wise to embrace it. But like you said, sometimes even the greed doesn't overwhelm the bias. And we end up in the situation that we're in the industry.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't. I I will say two things one, if they're smart, they will embrace diversity because there's a real market opportunity there. And I think that Netflix has sort of laid that bare to some extent. If you look at the fact that, I mean, there was a weekend this year, last year when they put out when they see us and always be my maybe on the same weekend.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a Marvel movie. People are already second guessing the situation. What happens? Did these tech companies coming in help you? They don't have much of a record on this issue, by the way. They don't. They're not good at this, so maybe they'll not go along with the system.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wonder Woman is a great example, or you can't sell black people abroad. People outside of the US don't want to see black people on screen, which requires an assumption that people will listen to black music, support black athletes, want to be a part of black culture, but somehow the movie as an idea, they're like, I don't know. And I remember when Black Panther came out, the big question on everybody's minds that first weekend was, can it make $100 million opening weekend? That would be amazing. And, you know, my tweets, whenever a black movie comes out and people are like, well, this is the guess at the number. I would always like take the over because they always underestimate it. Black Panther made 240 in its first five days of release. And then it did incredibly well in China. And I was in Beijing last year and I was doing an interview and I was like, yeah, you know, a lot of people in Hollywood thought that Black Panther wouldn't do well in China. And the interviewer said, well, it's crazy. It's a Marvel movie.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Necessarily. I think what we all want to see is a bunch of good stories well told, and we want the full flower of the diversity that we live in day to day to be available to us. And I think in that scenario, you have more competition because everybody's competing for the same opportunities and a better opportunity to make better movies and make more money. And that's to say nothing of the industry is like failed assumptions about what can sell abroad. I mean, I was told coming up, female-driven action doesn't work. Now, I have no idea where that assumption came from, but I remember thinking to myself, well, Titanics kind of female-driven action, and that was the biggest movie of all time at the time. Right. And then obviously like Twilight showed up and Hunger Games showed up and all of a sudden everyone realized it's like, oh my God, young women really do want to see themselves as sort of powerful and world-changing.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The whole thing. Well, I actually think that people in this town do know what they could make. They're choosing not to make it. And the reason is because they're imagining themselves in the theater as a 12-year-old boy or as a 25-year-old man and saying, would I want to see this? And the fact of the matter is that most of the people who have the ability to green light something Phenotypically look pretty much the same. And so they're making movies for a group that is phenotypically similar. The irony is the money is in different audiences. The Latinx community that speaks Spanish at the home on average sees more movies per year than any other demographic group in America. Second is Latinx folks who speak English in the home. Third is African Americans.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't Absolutely. People think the diversity is incompatible, somehow with profitability or with quality even. And it's absurd. It's because their definition of quality is deeply flawed and very narrow. And they just haven't exposed themselves to the quality that exists outside of their very narrow community.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really interesting thing that it becomes an. It reminds me a lot of when I bother Silicon Valley people. It's such an interesting, like what gets created and who creates it is really important. And when you, I go to boards, which I think there's plenty of people of all kinds that can be on boards. You can start to argue about STAM enough people that are trained, that are people of color or women in technology. You can do that. And you can say, yes, there aren't as many as there are white guys. But when you get to board level, you can't. You can't. There's plenty. And so one of the things I had an argument with the head of Twitter about that, like how they had 10 white men on the board. And it was always like, well, you know, we have standards. And I was like, you didn't have standards. Like it only is brought up with women and people of color. We were making things that need to make money. I suppose that's the voice you hear here. You got to make some dough.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always do well. They always do well when you make a good movie. When you make a good movie, they always do well. And so the same thing with Little, I'm like, it's not a woman's movie necessarily. In this case, perhaps that is a book that a lot of young women.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the intersection of the two. Movies of the year The common humanity that we 100%. It's a really interesting dynamic that happens when a woman's film design, I think the woman is actually doing very well. Oh, it is, yeah. Very well. Or Black Panther or whatever. Everyone's like, oh, look, look, a movie with mostly Afro-American cats does well. Oh, what an unusual thing. And I'm like,”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seen the film. And that's unfortunate. And I think that, again, there are all these biases about what we think of as valuable, what we think of as an Oscar movie. And those have been traditionally these big canvas sort of masculine movies about violence and war. And that doesn't mean that movies like 1917 aren't extraordinary, but I would like for the industry and for people that are making content to be able to appreciate the extraordinary nature of something like 1917 alongside the extraordinary nature of portrait of a lady on fire. And it's interesting because I think that most of the people who are of color, women, have been trained to do that. When we watch movies, we have the ability to recognize the common humanity that we have with those characters. But if you've seen everything in your life has been about you, it's a lot harder for you to watch something like a D Reese film or an Ava film and be like, oh, yeah, I see.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the short answer is racism and sexism in the intersection of the two. But I'm also not saying that any individual is necessarily racist, though obviously we all have the same sort of biases that the world has and arguably the industry is sort of a buoyant cube of all of those things because at the end of the day, we're trying to make content that then we try to sell to everyone in the world. But I think the problem is manyfold. On the directing front, it's harder for women to get representatives as directors. It's harder for them to get financing for movies. It is harder when they make movies for them to get the marketing budgets that they need in order to have them be successful. And then even when they make things extraordinary as like portrait of a lady on fire or things like that, many of the academy members aren't even watching these films. Portrait of a lady on fire is one of the best reviewed movies of the year. She is, you know, as a filmmaker, a god walking amongst us. And I would bet that fewer than 50% of the academy voters have”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, look, anybody who follows me on Twitter probably sees a little bit of that from time to time. You're funny. I try to, I,”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, it's so ridiculous. I can't even imagine it. That's how far we are from that reality. And I thought it was a much better way to sort of lay bare the depth of the problem without being ragey about it. Because I find that argumentation is a lot more successful if you can entertain along with it, which is probably why I work in film.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You wrote, yeah. So I wrote the article that would exist if the circumstances were reversed, if there had been a long period of no white acting nominees and only female directing nominees. And it was sort of designed to be satire. But it was really just, it was designed also to make a list of these overlooked performances that people should check out if they were like, well, I didn't see anything that was great from any of these communities. It's well because you didn't look, here's a list of all of them. Put them on your to-do list and check them all out because they're all exceptional. But it also was designed to, if you were reading this and saying,”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Including Greta Gerbig for little women. And, you know, it continues a reality that's been the case as long as the academies existed of a general overlook of the extraordinary artistic contributions of women and people of color.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this year's Oscar nominees in the Akkin category, there were 19 white actors and Cynthia Arrivo, nominated for Harriet. And yet again this year, I think other than Greta's nomination for Lady Bird, no women nominated in the best director category, includ”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not going to be one. I also think it's not a coincidence that the only woman to win the best director award ever, Catherine Bigelow, made her name by directing these big badass action movies. Right. But I think it's a lot easier to understand no women nominated as director, no actors of color nominated in the acting category than it is 90% of the studio movies are directed by men, right? You know, women disproportionately get, I think it's 50% less funding for probably the same project. That's a lot more difficult and complex a dynamic to communicate than y'all can't even recognize the best of this stuff as being good.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And only one winner. Nominee. One winner sink in. One nominee. It's not, you know, and of course one of them said, you know, when there's a Marcia Zuckerberg, I was like, they don't get funded. Right.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really economical. It's not about the Oscars per se. Like if you think that the reason why we're having this conversation is because it's really important to me that Lupita gets another statue, like I'd like to see that. And frankly, I probably deserve one for us, but that's not why we're doing it. I think Oscar so white and the conversation around the Oscars is just the time of the year when the industry is most visible. And it's a lot easier to understand. No women were nominated in the best way that Oscar so male. Yeah, and Oscar's so white to be clear is not Oscar's not black. It's not Oscar's, you know. It is every Oscar's sohatt is an economical way to communicate all of these groups that are historically underrepresented. So it's a lot easier to talk about that and the fact that there's only been one female directing nominee in the last decade and only one winner ever nominee. One nominee in the last decade, one winner.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't need to get into that right now. It's a great question. So, this past year, actually, we started partnering with a number of affinity groups, the first of which was Glad, to do lists that are specifically targeted towards underrepresented communities. So we did two GLAD lists now. We'll announce another one at Sundance this year. We did a Latinx list with a number of Latinx.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do not disagree. And yeah, so, you know, I'm not going to claim first dibs. If we help a writer get identified and they want to take their movie to someone else, that is their right. But I will go to them and say, hey, we love your script. We are a pro writer company and we want to keep you involved in the process because you saw the movie in your head before anybody else. And so why would we not keep you involved? And we also have this reputation and these relationships that can help your movie get made. Would you like us to come and be involved? And, you know, generally speaking, people are very excited about that opportunity. But I think it would be...”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think so. We'll see. And, but yeah, we're producing movies now, the first of which premiered at South by Southwest last year. We have another one that's in post-production right now with Alice and Janie, me lakunis, Regina Hall, Golden Globe Winner, Aquafina, and a bunch of other folks.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business then. So we have a lot of, we also do a bunch of incubation stuff with these scripts. So we have three screenwriters labs, two of women in film, specifically for women. We have live script readings that we do on stage, and we have a podcast that we're bringing back where we'll do sort of radio plays for the podcast generation with a lot of these scripts.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would like to be able to have the opportunity to finance and produce these things, but I'm not willing to claim first tibs.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think that, you know, when it comes to putting words in a certain order to elicit an emotional response, I don't foresee in my lifetime a computer being able to write the works of Shakespeare no matter how well that machine learning happens. And part of that is because we as human beings from birth are trying to communicate ideas to elicit a reaction or to communicate. And we've all been training on how to tell stories. From literally the day we're born. And the best amongst us who do that are doing something, in my mind, infinitely more complicated than sort of the best chess computer. And also in terms of testing for the human reaction, I don't know that we can test for an emotional reaction with AI. And look, maybe I'll be proven wrong, but it's a marker I'm willing to put down.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in content, I'm not sure that I do. And that's sort of what I was getting to, right? Like, I think that a computer is always going to be better at chess than the best human being.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For Sure, it's interesting. It is interesting. I cannot get my children, my sons, to go to little women ever, no matter what I do. I get them to almost everything. I know it's a good movie. I was like, it's good. It's good. I get them to go to most things, but this one, for some reason, I can't get them to do it, even though it's a very good movie. That's what I'm trying to appeal to them. So do you ever think about bringing computers in to do this, AI? Do you imagine that being a day?”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's the other thing. It's like fundamentally, this is a subjective medium, right? There are like, you know, one person's trash is another person's treasure, and that doesn't mean that you have a sort of racial or gender bias against something. It might just mean that you don't like the story for whatever reason. And this is another reason why we don't present mean scores on the website. We present the distribution because I'm going to be more interested in a script that has a lot of high scores and a lot of low scores than one that just sort of delivers an average score every single time.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody has bias. I just want to make sure that our readers don't have enough bias that it will negatively impact the people. Do they read them more than one time? Do they service? Well, a lot of the scripts end up being read more than once. And so we're able to sort of compare people's responses to things based on gender and race and any number of other factors to try to get to is something happening here. There's something good.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say they're more diverse than Hollywood, but less diverse than the United States. And that's, you know, look, it's obviously a priority for me as a black guy from Georgia. Like I'm acutely aware of the consequences of that. But I would also say that we are very diligent about seeking out bias if we find it in our readers. And I also think that my readers know who they're working for. And so when I say zero tolerance, they know that there's not going to be any sort of give if they read something and provide feedback that suggests any sort of bias whatsoever.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I often say they're like, you shouldn't do it just because it's the right thing. I'm like, why not? Because the right thing is the right thing. Like, okay, but let's go to the money. And then that's the right thing. You can't do it for.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's true. It's interesting because in study after study shows that a more diverse technology group of people do better and they give more money across the board and all these companies. And you can't even, at some point, I'm like, you can't even appeal to their greed. What is wrong? I think we know.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's all get rich at a minimum, and then you know, as you spend more time with people that don't look like you, you're probably going to realize that we're all pretty much the same on a sort of fundamental level.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, I don't need you to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or I don't need you to do the right thing for the right reasons. Just do the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reasons.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The main thing that we see is that who you are or what demographic group you're a part of has no direct correlation to your talent, which is, you know, again, unsurprising. I don't think there's any reasonable person believes that any group has a sort of exclusive control of talent in any artistic endeavor. But if you look at sort of what Hollywood makes and who makes it, you may come to that conclusion. And it's just not true. And I think it reflects a profound bias in a lot of the decision making that happens in the industry to the industry's detriment. My whole thing is, look, diversity is really good morally and ethically. And it's particularly true in an industry that sort of projects images 40 feet high around the world disproportionately and defines sort of how we see ourselves and how we see each other. But it's also good financially. Appeal to their”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is just sort of amusing to me conceptually, and it's always a fun thing for me to point out, especially with the audience. Maybe you can add that to the audience.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, but because the bottom falls out for women, because they're not submitted as bad scripts, in every genre women have a higher mean score than men. Okay.”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would imagine that you got him right pretty quickly. Yeah, I think for most of us who. Didn't grow up in that way, we know that we have to be twice as good to get half a”
2020-01-31 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Franklin Leonard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT