Daniel Alter

[Daniel Alter @DAlter007]

Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA

[Stephen Gibbons @Gibboanxious]

Michael Bay’s The Rock was released on this day 30 years ago.

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

Young filmmakers have it in their head the only pathway to become a working director is to make a low budget movie. No doubt that's a path, but that's not the ONLY one. Over the years there's been trends of different pools directors were scooped from: film schools, music videos, commercials, television, cinematographers, ADs, Scandinavians.

When a 20 year old like Kane Parsons or 25 year old like Curry Barker skyrockets to success, there is a panic that grips young filmmakers that it's now or never, and they have to score their $100 million film in their 20s or it's over. But movie director careers are the rarest of birds in filmmaking, and you can have a great career making ads, episodic, moving up an established chain and gaining tons of expertise.

Granted, it's not an easy path either. Commercials might be even more competitive on a certain level because once people gauge where your talent level actually is, once the door shuts it SHUTS. But that's the business. Your talent is the deciding factor, and even AI is not going to change that.

Nevertheless, the business is much bigger than movies, and the hyperventilating from film twitter that you have to make movies at the expense of unpaid crew labor is impatient and somewhat twisted. You CAN movie up a structure but it takes time. Even the path to directing ads can come from crew. Eventually you might be finally directing movies in your 40s and 50s like Ridley Scott, but he came into it armed and dangerous.

As to trends, they're overhyped and exaggerated. Let's remember amongst the film school brats, Steven Spielberg was NOT one of them. He made a short film funded by a dentist, got Mike Medavoy to pass it to Sid Sheinberg, and then unlike Lucas and Coppola spent years in television purgatory. Steven Spielberg, the most successful director in history, cut his teeth directing Columbo episodes. Only after years paying his dues, he broke through with Jaws.

Pateince. As a famous teacher once said: wax on/wax off.

[Leslie Young @AkaLazarus]

Bill Maher is based. 🤜

[Variety @Variety]

Tony Goldwyn says #Scandal fans ask him to run for president “all the time”: “That’s a really bad idea.”

Stream the full #ActorsOnActors episode now on the CNN app: https://t.co/jrgGNUTCmX

[Arynne Wexler @ArynneWexler]

On the anniversary of D-Day I would like to remind any idiots who listen to Tucker Carlson that America was the good guy in WW2

If they wanted to grow up speaking German so badly they can move to Berlin where they'll realize they have to learn Arabic

[Laura Robinson @LauraRbnsn]

Are people.... fans of He Man and Masters of the Universe?
I have some dim awareness of it having been a show but I literally could not tell you a single thing about it. Is there some massive fan base that explains making a blockbuster about it?

[Exhibitor Relations Co. @ERCboxoffice]

Power outage.

The bomb of the summer has arrived.

MGM’s MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE—which cost a reported $200M to produce—is estimated to debut with less than $30M this weekend.

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

L. A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

Indie films are a cheat code for distributors to put all the legal and financial burden on independent producers. Crews get underpaid in exploitive working conditions, occasionally harmed or killed, but none of that affects the studios that cherry pick the survivors.

Theoretically there should be a budget floor to these movies - a line that shouldn't be crossed to ensure safety and fairness - but it's actually applauded when labor is crushed as sticking it to the Man, when ironically the Man is who actually profits. It's celebrated when a filmmaker is able to make their film as close to zero as possible in one of the most hand crafted, labor intensive industries today.

Micro budget indie film market is an unregulated cheat code for studios to make the cheapest product possible, hammering crews, with none of the risk or responsibility.

What we should have are major studios and streamers green lighting more $10 million films. Yes, more $10 million Backrooms, less $750k Obsession. The only reason Obsession wasn't made for $10 million when the script was clearly great is either a failure of imagination from the executive class, or the filmmakers trying to avoid dumb ass notes.

Yes Backrooms was heavily supervised so it's a bit of a triumph of producer supervision, but Obsession could have been made with that budget without Osgood Perkins looking over Curry Barker's shoulder.

Instead of indie filmmaking Hunger Games, the solution to all this is smarter executives making more decently funded smaller films and staying the fuck out of the filmmaker's way.

[Joseph Kahn @JosephKahn]

Many people will make more talking about Obsession on X with payouts than crew members made making it. Everyone needs to stop complaining about the cost of big budget movies. The large below the line costs are how much things cost when you pay crews fair livable wages.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Patience.

[Patrick Bet-David @patrickbetdavid]

Buy and hold!

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to meet with technical experts, part of ongoing preparations for potential nuclear negotiations with Iran, Axios reports.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: American teenagers are reportedly facing the worst summer job market since the 1940s.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Jennifer Lopez declares “you have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker.”

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Trump: "I should be a stock broker"

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Citibank has said that stocks are their "frothiest level since the Great Financial Crisis."