Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E246: Parents Are Done with Hollywood—Here’s the Alternative w/Jeff Harmon | Lila Rose Show

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E246: Parents Are Done with Hollywood—Here’s the Alternative w/Jeff Harmon | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
I think some of the greatest stories will ever be told will
0:02
be from this system. And I'm very excited for 0AD.
0:06
0AD is Mary conceives, Yes, the Angel visits her, she conceives.
0:10
So you want to be bigger than Netflix?
0:12
In order to build a competitor to Netflix or to Disney, it
0:15
takes a lot of capital. There's 1.5 million Guild
0:19
members today and they're actually funding huge amounts of
0:22
TV shows that align with our values and our really good
0:26
movies. Thank you, Jeff, for what you're
0:28
doing. I mean truly I think it's a gift
0:30
to humanity. Family values, faith-based films
0:36
and basically good films are more in vogue now than they've
0:39
ever been in the last few decades and Hollywood and some
0:43
of the weird and crazy stuff is now seen as not as interesting.
0:47
Too many audiences Today. The market is growing for family
0:51
friendly content and not just any content, but excellent
0:53
content. Today on the Layla Rd. show I
0:55
sit down with a man who used to be a poor potato farmer growing
0:59
up in Idaho, who is now a Co founder of Angel Studios which
1:03
has brought you some of your favorite entertainment over the
1:06
last few years including The Chosen, Cabrini, Sound of
1:09
Freedom and many more. Today we talk about how ordinary
1:12
moms and dads are completely changing the name of the game
1:16
when it comes to entertainment. How because of the rapid changes
1:19
in both media and technology and culture, there is an opportunity
1:23
like never before to create what is good, true and beautiful in
1:26
the arts. We also discuss what is coming
1:28
up in the Angel Studio Studios world and some of the films that
1:31
I am most excited about. And we discussed what the future
1:34
of faith-based and values based content looks like in America
1:37
and beyond. As always here at the Lila Roche
1:39
Show, we are trying to build a culture of goodness, truth and
1:42
beauty and feature the creators that are doing that out in the
1:45
wild and building beautiful things themselves.
1:48
If you want to join our mission, the quickest, easiest and
1:50
cheapest way to help is to hit that subscribe button.
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Make sure that you click the like button here.
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And if you're listening over on podcast app, make sure that you
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subscribe over there. Leave us five stars in a review
2:01
that also helps the show to grow.
2:03
Jeff Harmon, welcome to the podcast.
2:05
Thank you. Thank you for.
2:06
Having glad you're here. Thanks for coming in.
2:08
I'm a huge fan of what you do, a huge fan of Angel Studios.
2:11
So we were talking earlier and I'm excited to share with folks
2:14
listening about Angel Studios, the back story and then you've
2:16
got some amazing films out that I actually just finished
2:19
watching one recently called Sketch.
2:21
Thank you. Nice work.
2:23
Yeah, Sketch is great. It's one of my favorites.
2:24
Yeah. And then I'm very excited for
2:26
0AD, which is coming up. Yeah, 0AD is.
2:29
The merry story. Yes, originally it was code
2:33
named the New Eve. So love that title.
2:35
Kind of sad that that's not the title.
2:38
But 00 AD it's it's this concept where basically Eve is visited
2:44
by the Angel and then she conceives and at the moment of
2:48
conception is 0 yes. The pro-life film of all time.
2:52
I love it. All right, so tell me about Jeff
2:55
Harmon. The back story.
2:57
We were talking earlier and you're saying, I don't know, I
2:59
was going to get into arts and entertainment and now Angel
3:01
Studios is like one of the fastest growing, biggest studios
3:04
in the. World.
3:07
Yeah. I grew up in Idaho on a potato
3:09
farm. 9 kids. I'm the middle of nine kids.
3:13
We were very poor, dirt poor. We worked in the dirt.
3:17
We had three TV stations. So I'm not a likely candidate or
3:21
no, we're not likely candidates to be executives at a top ten
3:25
movie studio in the United States.
3:27
Now the one thing is, is a potato farmer invented the TV
3:31
from Idaho. Like what?
3:33
Yeah, I did not know that. Yeah, he was a potato farmer
3:37
from Idaho. He invented the TV.
3:39
He actually was looking at the rows of potatoes and he had the
3:44
idea of how to lay out the way that ATV has lines of light from
3:50
the Rose of potatoes. And he said he actually
3:53
considered it like a inspiration and a vision from Heavenly
3:57
Vision to help him understand how to do it.
4:00
And then he ended up in giant lawsuits with I think it was RCA
4:03
or some big brand at the time trying to steal his.
4:10
Potato. His TV what?
4:13
What year was that like 100 years ago?
4:15
It's it's it's a while ago. I'm not fresh enough on it to
4:19
like pull up all the like the exact facts, but I know the
4:22
general concept. But he was Idaho and Idaho where
4:28
farm boys potato farms and grow very poor.
4:33
We had three TV stations if we if you took the hangar from the
4:36
closet and hooked it to the antenna and then hung up from
4:41
the curtain, we could get PBS as well, like 1/4 station.
4:44
And so it was not on my radar. Like I just didn't want to be
4:48
poor. And the non poor people in the
4:52
neighborhood were dentists and doctors and attorneys.
4:58
And so I thought I'd be either a dentist, a doctor or attorney
5:02
because I didn't want to be poor.
5:05
So and then it was later on in school, the university that I
5:10
had almost all my roommates ended up just serendipitously
5:14
being film makers. They were, they were studying
5:17
film. And that's how I ended up being
5:20
introduced to the film world. And then slowly through a series
5:23
of events that turned into an ad agency, Harmon Brothers ad
5:28
agency, where we did like Poo Pooree, Squatty Potty, Purple
5:31
Mattress. The classics.
5:34
Yeah, really, really big viral ads.
5:36
And then later that pulled us into the world of film.
5:43
So that was 12 years ago now. When did you start?
5:45
12 years ago Was Angel Angel. 12 years ago was Angel.
5:48
When did you start the Harmon Brothers ad agency?
5:50
A. Little before that, yeah.
5:53
And then during this time, too, you're also a married father of
5:57
how many now? I have 6 kids, beautiful six
6:01
kids, one on the way. Congrats.
6:03
So you're very productive in more ways than one.
6:06
So I want to do a quick trip down memory lane because I think
6:12
the origin story is really beautiful that you came from the
6:16
background you have. I mean, it sounds like your
6:18
family, though, was this very faith-based loving family.
6:22
Yes, we're we're very faithful family.
6:25
My mom and my dad took us to church every week and we grew up
6:31
believing and, and stayed believers.
6:34
And the, it's a, it's a core part of who we are.
6:39
And I think that's the reason why, like if you look at them,
6:43
everybody says, why did you create Angel?
6:45
And then we're like, well, because we wanted to build the
6:47
type of movies and TV shows we wanted.
6:50
And that, that didn't, that didn't mean faith-based movies,
6:53
but it meant values based movies.
6:54
It meant movies that we did. It was hard even growing up to
6:59
find movies that that matched our values.
7:03
And my mom had a rule like we couldn't even watch PG13 movies
7:07
until we were basically out of the house.
7:10
Yeah. And And so we just didn't watch
7:12
a lot of movies. We still don't.
7:13
We still don't watch a lot of movies.
7:16
And the hardest part for me is actually the hardest part of
7:21
this business is keeping up with the movies that come in and
7:24
watching them so that we can know what to take in.
7:27
That's the hardest part because I don't watch that many movies,
7:30
But we wanted a system for our families.
7:33
And that's what Angel is. Angel is a system we built for
7:36
us. There's a there's a really great
7:37
book. I recommend anybody who's an
7:40
entrepreneur to read this book. It's called the user method by
7:42
Jeff Schwarting. And in this book, he goes
7:46
through and does studies and his audiobooks phenomenal.
7:49
But the in in this book, he goes through and does case studies on
7:53
all the different Unicorn companies and he says, I don't
7:56
remember which percentage, but the vast majority of Unicorn
7:59
companies, companies that are worth over a billion dollars are
8:02
made by entrepreneurs who are just trying to solve a problem
8:05
for themselves. Their own problem.
8:06
Yeah. So Steve Wozniak with Apple and
8:08
Steve Jobs, Wozniak just didn't like the computer.
8:11
So he made a computer he liked. And Steve was like, this will
8:14
work. Let's go build a business out of
8:15
this. Or the Airbnb founders were in
8:18
San Francisco. They couldn't pay their rent and
8:21
they set up, there was a conference nearby and they set
8:24
up air beds from the, I think they bought them at the local
8:26
Walmart, put air beds on their mattress, air mattresses on
8:30
their floor, rented out their air mattresses and paid for
8:35
their rent for that month. And they said, why don't we turn
8:38
this into a business. And they created Airbnb so that
8:41
people could cover the cost of their rent by going to
8:45
conferences. And that slowly turned into what
8:48
now is Airbnb, which is like the biggest hotel chain.
8:52
So there there's or Mark Zuckerberg wanted friends, so he
8:56
created Facebook. And now?
8:59
He has so many. Everyone wants to be his friend
9:01
now. Yeah, that's so funny.
9:03
This is where these companies come from.
9:05
And so I believe strongly that if there's a problem that you
9:08
want solved in the world, then you go solve it.
9:11
And you'll, you'll be surprised at how many more people want
9:16
that same problem solved. And for us, that is just, let's
9:20
make what we want for our kids. And what you're seeing is that
9:23
there are 1,000,000 actually hundreds of millions of people
9:26
that want the same thing we want, yes.
9:29
And I think increasingly because I think there's this pivot
9:32
that's happening or shift that's happening culturally where
9:35
people are so just burnt out on ugly, crass, dark, like
9:41
negative, anti family, anti life stuff, anti marriage.
9:45
It's just it's. Just full of nihilism.
9:47
Yeah. Just like Hollywood is full of
9:50
nihilism. It's so true.
9:52
You get to the end of a series and you're like, the meaning of
9:55
this movie is that there is no meaning, right?
9:58
That there's no purpose. Or that it's even better to not
10:00
exist in it. I think that's the other thing.
10:02
Like the anti existence. It's almost anti life.
10:04
Yes, it's anti life at A at a very kind of core way and people
10:08
that is not inspiring, entertaining or fun.
10:10
So people, even the people who might be tempted to that
10:13
worldview and they're just not really, you know, locked in with
10:16
their own values yet it's still hard to consume that as
10:19
entertainment even. And so the more and and there's
10:22
also the political dialects, like the more woke you go.
10:24
I've heard, you know, go woke broke, go broke.
10:26
Some of the most woke films. There's a Snow White catastrophe
10:29
that happened recently and people were just not having it.
10:33
And the film wasn't even that woke.
10:35
I saw the film, we reviewed it, and I was actually, it's not
10:37
that bad, guys. There's some lovely parts, but
10:39
you know, the whole sort of ecosystem around it is so highly
10:43
politicized. Anti values.
10:45
A lot of it, yeah. It's hard to cut, it's hard to
10:47
rebuild your brand after you get that far off.
10:49
Yeah, yes. So, so you started with the the
10:53
marketing firm with your brothers.
10:55
You end up becoming Angel Studios.
10:56
Now like you said, you're one of the top 10 studios, which is
10:58
very exciting. I want to do a quick sketch back
11:00
into time. Sketch.
11:01
Did you hear that? That's the new film guys at
11:03
Sketch, one of the new films. But going back in time just to
11:06
take a little peek at some of your creative work, Jeff,
11:08
because you are the chief creative for Angel.
11:11
So you are the one I think doing the initial vetting for films,
11:14
right. Chief content Officer, Chief
11:15
content excuse. Me, which in my world that
11:17
actually means something very different than other worlds.
11:20
Tell us. So the chief content officer in
11:22
a normal studio is the one making the decisions about which
11:25
movies come into the system for me.
11:29
That doesn't mean that I make the decisions I've made.
11:31
I've made good decisions. Like I, I, I called Dallas
11:34
Jenkins and pitched him on the chosen, bringing chosen to Angel
11:38
Studios. And he had a little short film
11:40
called The Shepherd. I called him, I was like, can
11:43
this be a pilot? And he's like, I've actually
11:44
been thinking about a series like this.
11:46
And I was like, let's go, let's go do this and or Drybar comedy
11:53
or Tuttle twins. These these big shows that
11:57
people are aware of. I, I, I was good at it because I
12:00
was making something I wanted for my family and my kids and
12:07
meaning I was making a platform that would host the shows.
12:11
I wanted the, the film makers make the, the films, not me.
12:15
And what I realized really quickly is 1 I don't want to
12:20
watch this many movies every day to try to even keep up with
12:24
having them come in #2 is I'm not going to be the best person
12:28
to pick all the movies. There's a, there's a really
12:30
good, another really good book to read called The Wisdom of
12:33
Crowds. It's like 20 years old.
12:34
It's by James Sawicki, and it's talk specifically about how
12:39
crowds under the right conditions are very, very good
12:44
at having great wisdom. So, So the example he gives is
12:48
Charles Darwin's cousin in the early 1800s, early 1900s.
12:52
He's at a fair in England and they have this ox up on the the
12:59
stage and that you could do a raffle and you buy a ticket and
13:03
you guess the weight of the ox and you get a prize if you're
13:06
the closest one to guess the weight.
13:08
There were 800 people who cast their raffles.
13:12
And this, this cousin of Charles Darwin.
13:15
And I'm going to, I'm going to remember his name in a minute.
13:18
He goes and he says, can I just have them after you're done?
13:22
Because I want to do statistics because he believes in natural
13:25
selection. He believed in the, there's
13:29
elite people that are way smarter than everybody else and
13:32
the expert should rule the world.
13:33
He actually had that belief. And it's Francis Galton.
13:38
That's his name. And he he goes and he gets these
13:43
tickets and he tabulates them and he throws out the ones that
13:45
are illegible and then he tabulates them.
13:48
And the average vote was 11198 lbs.
13:54
And the actual weight of the ox was 11197.
13:58
I think they had exactly averaged smarter than any
14:03
individual guest and he assumed the experts would know better.
14:06
The butcher that deals with meat all the time, the farmer, the
14:10
rancher that each one of them would know what that weight of
14:15
that cow was, that ox. But the ones who guessed or the
14:18
average people, 800 of them all just taking a random guess were
14:23
within 1 LB. And he, I, he wrote down
14:26
something to the effect of this doesn't match to my hypothesis
14:30
that that the elites need to run the world.
14:34
Yeah. The highest IQ or the perfect
14:36
bloodline or whatever. Yeah.
14:37
And so, and so he, he, he realized that this was against
14:40
it. And, and this is what we call,
14:42
we call the wisdom of crowds where the idea was, this was
14:48
years ago, probably five years ago, where we just started
14:50
percolating for the team and for where it started developing this
14:56
concept where we said, what if we take the user method, this
15:00
idea that we've been doing to pick successful movies?
15:04
And we take that and we say, what if everybody does the user
15:08
method at once? And so we built what's called
15:11
the Angel Guild where we have everyday people getting together
15:17
and we all have a common goal. We want values based movies.
15:21
And we say, we're all going to vote.
15:24
We're going to watch the movie and we're going to vote and
15:26
we're going to say whether or not we want that movie.
15:30
And then as a group, we will be much more accurate at what we
15:35
actually want then Jeff Harmon will or anybody else.
15:39
So as a Chief content officer, my job is to build a system that
15:43
picks good movies, not to pick the movies so.
15:47
It's very much a science, not an art.
15:49
It's other people's arts. Yeah, we're we're a.
15:51
Combination of them. We're a tech company disguised
15:53
as a studio and tech and marketing.
15:56
And so if you look at Angel Studios, we've actually set it
16:02
up to where we have we have the Guild and I can't take a movie
16:07
as a Co founder of Angel Studios and as a chief content officer,
16:11
I can't take a movie if the Guild vetoes it.
16:14
Every single movie, every single TV series, every single episode
16:17
of every TV series has to go through the Guild and pass.
16:22
And if they don't pass it, we can't take it.
16:25
So you've built though a ultimately a culture or an
16:30
ecosystem of those values based people.
16:33
You know, this is not like the I don't know the the, you know,
16:36
the Neolis Guild of America or whatever.
16:38
Like clearly like this is like Angel now I know Angel studio,
16:42
it's the Angel Guild. I know, I know.
16:43
Angel Studios, like the name, is about Angel investor, not so
16:46
much Angel, the angels, but there's a signal there that
16:49
people inevitably take away from it.
16:51
Yeah, it ended up being a double meaning.
16:53
A double meeting. Intentionally, but, but if you
16:55
look at the Guild, the Guild, so we worked on it for years and
16:58
years. Then we launched it as just a
17:01
little less than two years ago to actually like kind of out of
17:05
beta and started pushing it. And then by December of last
17:10
year, we had about a half million Guild members.
17:12
And the, and as a Guild member, you pay, you pay $12.00 a month,
17:15
$20.00 a month, and you get 2 movie tickets to every movie and
17:19
you get a vote on all the movies that come in and you get to
17:21
watch them early when they come streaming.
17:23
So it's a community, it's the, it's the world's largest
17:26
community that's supporting film makers who want to make values
17:30
based content, values based movies, value values based TV
17:34
shows. And so there's 1.5 million Guild
17:40
members today. So since December, it's.
17:42
Crazy. Yeah, I think we hit 1.5 million
17:45
Guild members yesterday and. It's wild.
17:48
Yeah, and, and they're paying 20, you know, 12 to 20 bucks a
17:52
month and they're actually funding huge amounts of content,
17:56
huge amounts of TV shows that align with our values and, and
18:01
are really good movies. They're they're amazing.
18:03
The signal though, from the beginning, I mean, the chosen
18:07
being one of your landmark or your first big films, right?
18:12
Or a series I should. Say it's a big It was.
18:14
I mean, that is a clear signal. It's the life of Jesus Christ.
18:17
Now I know you're not faith-based, you're values
18:19
based, but meaning the content that you've started.
18:22
We are the best faith. Yeah.
18:25
But I of the last decade we've distributed the best faith
18:30
content that there has been King of Kings.
18:33
We the first three seasons of the chosen Cabrini like these
18:38
are the best there is and and we've made it brought them to
18:42
100 + 1,000,000 people. But even before the Chosen, we
18:46
had Drybar comedy. And Drybar comedy is clean.
18:50
It's stand up comedy that's safe for families.
18:53
And there's 750 comedians that's been viewed 6 billion times by
18:57
150 million people. It's a big series.
19:01
And then we've also got Tuttle Twins, which is teaching
19:03
economics and freedom to kids. And Tuttle Twins, not only it
19:10
has 400 million views now worldwide, but it also Melee in
19:15
Argentina. The president of Argentina just
19:17
licensed Tuttle Twins for Public TV in Argentina.
19:20
And he said if they won't let me get rid of Public TV, then I'm
19:24
going to put Tuttle Twins on it, that is.
19:26
Hilarious. And and so there is.
19:28
PBS haven't called you yet, though.
19:30
Yeah. But I think, I think what
19:31
happens is there's a group of people and they're not wrong, a
19:36
subset of the values audience, like the heart of the values
19:38
audience, I think is the faith audience.
19:41
And we're the best at that. There's more broad than that.
19:44
And that you have Drybar comedy, you have Tuttle twins, you have
19:46
sketch and and so but if you came in through the faith world,
19:51
then you've probably only seen the faith content.
19:53
You know, it's less than half of the stuff inside of the movies,
19:57
inside of Angel, but but you've probably just seen faith movies
20:01
and you go, oh, they're they're faith.
20:03
Yeah, they're faith. And you're not wrong.
20:05
It's it is a home for faith, for faith content.
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22:50
I'm curious how though you've developed this brand and this
22:55
company culture were of extremely high bar of
22:58
excellence. And I think that is something
23:01
that very definitively sets you apart from other attempts in the
23:06
values based world or the faith-based world.
23:08
Because we both know there's a lot of beautifully intentioned
23:11
people who are creating things from a faith background or a
23:14
values background that they're not always best in class, right.
23:17
And So what Angel has done is really incredible that you you
23:20
are basically now this magnet to attract the best talent and the
23:23
best content. But that didn't happen out of
23:26
nowhere, right? So the ad agency stuff you were
23:30
like doing these zany, crazy successful ads about like
23:33
potties and all like so you guys had like a sense for what was
23:37
going to like resonate and hit right.
23:40
But then and then you said you called Dallas Jenkins, but then
23:43
you had the tell me about the Drybar comedy part.
23:45
I mean, because that's. Yeah, Drybar comedy.
23:48
The idea was every the biggest comedians in the world are like
23:55
Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Regan, these ones that are
24:00
more family friendly, right? And Cosby with an asterisk.
24:06
But but yeah, but he's a great comedian.
24:10
I mean, you can't take away the fact that he was a really good
24:13
comedian. And, and, but asterisk, because
24:16
family friendly is a little complicated now.
24:18
So all of these comedians were huge mega stars.
24:22
And we're like, why are there more of these comedians?
24:26
And we started digging into it. We're like, actually a lot of
24:29
comedians would like to do family friendly stuff, but they
24:31
feel like they don't really have that choice.
24:33
They're doing bars, they're doing, they're doing a there's a
24:36
comedy circuit around the country and they're going around
24:38
and they feel kind of stuck in this world.
24:40
And there's other ones that are very, very funny but and they
24:44
would be happy to do a family safe set but just never been
24:49
asked. Who's hosting?
24:51
Them. Yeah.
24:51
They've just never been asked. They'll bring your kid to the
24:52
bar. That's some late night comedy
24:54
show. And So what we did is we just
24:56
went and asked comedians. We said, look, you're very funny
24:59
and you and one of the Co producers and creators of
25:03
Drybar, he's he would go to them, his name's Keith Stubbs
25:07
and say come do a clean set. You have like 3 hours of set.
25:11
You can do 20 to 40 minutes of just pure clean, like family
25:14
safe set. And so the concept was get very
25:17
funny comedians. And at first actually just step
25:21
back a little bit. We said, let's go get the
25:23
Christian comedians, Let's go get the clean comedians that do
25:25
the church circuits. And it didn't take very long to
25:28
realize that most of them weren't actually very funny.
25:31
And because we went and put them on the stage and we're like, oh,
25:34
they're bombing. They're not doing good.
25:36
And you knew they were bombing because?
25:38
The audience just didn't react very well.
25:40
And but where did this audience come from?
25:42
You were just creating a a physical event.
25:44
Physical event. And calling friends and family
25:46
and it wasn't the church, correct.
25:47
It wasn't like they were performing for their church and
25:48
churches and they're like good joke guys.
25:50
It was like an actual legit group of.
25:52
This is a legit group of. People that weren't their
25:53
friends and family. They're not going to charity
25:55
laugh for you, but they're a values audience, right?
25:57
And so. They laughed at Squatty Potty.
25:59
Yeah, yeah. So you guys knew, I mean that
26:02
that is interesting. Like you did know comedy?
26:04
Clearly know comedy because you created these literally insanely
26:07
viral. Ads.
26:07
Biggest ads of all time? Of all time that have like 10s
26:10
of millions of views on YouTube that are just super zany outside
26:15
of the box thinking to sell like potty products and other
26:18
products. Yes, yeah, yeah.
26:19
In fact, Drybar comedy, we make it so that moms who are at home
26:27
taking care of kids or in a minivan or dads in a minivan,
26:32
when you're with your kids, this is comedy that's safe for you to
26:35
listen to. Your kids might not think it's
26:37
funny because they don't understand it, but it's safe.
26:40
We don't say family friendly. We say family safe because it's
26:43
safe for a mom to listen to around her kids without her kids
26:47
learning bad words, without her kids learning innuendos.
26:50
And she can laugh and enjoy it without having to put on the
26:53
headphones or, you know, or just shut it off.
26:56
And, and so, and that has been a huge success.
27:00
We've had 750 comedians, 6 billion views, 150 million
27:03
viewers worldwide. All exclusively on the app.
27:06
Not all exclusively in the app. Drybar started outside the app
27:09
before we had an app. And then and then you moved it,
27:11
Now it's on the app. Yeah.
27:13
So when someone becomes an Angel Gold member, they're getting
27:15
access to all of that. Yeah, in addition to the film,
27:17
you get access to lots and it's a very fast growing library.
27:21
And you also get a vote. Like if you go into the Angel
27:24
app right now, last I checked, there's 22 films to vote on.
27:28
Like you can go vote on 22 different films.
27:31
You're not going to be able to keep up with the number of well,
27:33
there's a few people who can't keep up, but I can't keep up
27:36
with them. I just.
27:38
And, and so you vote on them and then you give feedback to the
27:41
filmmaker and you can actually see film makers are commenting
27:44
on the, the, the, when you give them a comment, they'll
27:49
sometimes comment back and say, can you give me more
27:51
clarification? I want to change the movie, for
27:54
example, Sketch the movie. They just in theaters right now
27:58
and we'll, we'll be on streaming soon.
28:01
Sketch is a movie that came into the Guild, failed the Guild, and
28:08
then they removed a lot of language and they removed the
28:10
Lord's name in vain. And then they succeeded.
28:15
So they actually cut out swearing and made a cut for the
28:18
Guild based on the feedback so that they could pass and they
28:22
cleaned it up. So I want to watch the trailer
28:26
with you in a moment for sketch. I'm curious though, just for
28:29
clarification, how does one how does a film get onto the app
28:33
initially to be voted on? How does the film get on the
28:36
app? To be voted on, a film maker
28:37
goes to angel.com/filmmakers and they can read over all the terms
28:41
and everything and then they can just submit there.
28:43
And it will just show up on the app.
28:45
Well, first they submit a portion of their film because we
28:49
don't want it costs $250 so that we don't.
28:53
That's to weed out the junk because people who don't have
28:56
something worthwhile won't pay. Like I love your family videos,
28:59
but this is not the phone for them and.
29:02
Then they have to submit first like a 5 minute or more scene
29:06
from the movie and if that scene passes then they can submit the
29:10
whole movie. And then how many people are
29:13
going to of the movies that get on there, like for sketch, the
29:16
people that gave that feedback to sketch, how many people were
29:18
giving that feedback? A statistical sample.
29:21
So there's 1.5 million Guild members, but we have to get
29:25
enough that it's statistically accurate and that it's not
29:27
changing anymore. The score, got it.
29:29
The score evens out and it stops moving up and down.
29:33
That's so interesting. So you get enough of consistent
29:36
feedback even if it's a smaller sample size where it keeps on
29:38
repeat. Yeah, that so.
29:40
You don't need 1.5 million people to watch them, you just
29:42
need thousands. Right.
29:43
But it's interesting back to the original example of Charles
29:45
Darwin's cousin. It's it's this idea that even if
29:48
you take a subset of the people that are voting on the cow or a
29:50
subset of the people that are voting on the movie, they're
29:52
going to largely come up with the same thing.
29:55
But I think that speaks to the alignment of Angel Guild
29:59
members. Like they want this to work for
30:01
their families. They care about their families.
30:04
They have values. They're not, you know,
30:08
nihilistic, you know, angels, raging lunatics.
30:11
They're like people that care about culture and family and.
30:14
If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, which is kind of the premier
30:17
rating site, and you look at audience reactions, so audience
30:21
votes, the average Angel Movie pre sketch, I don't know exactly
30:27
what it is right now, but it was 93% on Rotten Tomatoes for
30:31
audiences. The next best studio is
30:35
Paramount 84 and then Disney in the 70s.
30:39
Like we have the highest satisfaction of viewers in
30:43
theaters. And the reason why that is is
30:45
because we know before the movie goes to theaters what that
30:50
audience score is going to be within a few points.
30:52
Yeah, every time. So Sketch scored in 87 in the
30:55
Guild. It's at 82 or 83 right now on
30:58
audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
30:59
Like they're they're very close. And so we can predict winners
31:05
with the audience. Like when you come out of the
31:07
movie, you're going to be satisfied with the movie because
31:11
we have the Guild to tell us that they're satisfied.
31:14
What is the critics vote typically?
31:18
Because I, I've seen some incredible disparity on Rotten
31:21
Tomatoes where we have like Hollywood critics.
31:23
They're like, we love this film. And then the people watching are
31:26
like that, that was the worst film ever.
31:29
Or they're like, we hate this film and it's like, this was the
31:32
best film ever. Critics are the one we can't, we
31:34
cannot predict. Like if we had a Guild of
31:36
critics, we could probably predict it.
31:38
But critics are all over the place.
31:40
You've got Cabrini, which scored really high.
31:42
I think it was 90 with critics. And then you've got like Sound
31:46
of Freedom, which is in the 40s, because they've just bombed it.
31:50
They. Hated it but the Sound of
31:51
Freedom is the single highest rated audience box office like
31:58
blockbuster of all time. There is not a higher rated
32:01
movie than Sound of Freedom with audiences.
32:04
And it wasn't just a niche market, it's a blockbuster
32:08
global hit, and it has the highest audience rating of all
32:12
time. And it was an amazing film.
32:15
Bombed it. But then every once in a while
32:16
you have something like Cabrini, which actually overcomes the
32:20
critics biases because it's so good.
32:23
The same director as Sound of Freedom.
32:25
And they actually loved Cabrini. Yeah.
32:27
And they loved Sketch. Yeah.
32:29
And the audience loves Alejandro.
32:30
Yeah. Alejandro's.
32:32
Alejandro's the one who can get both of them kind of alone,
32:35
except for On Sound. Freedom.
32:36
You couldn't pull it off on Sound of Freedom.
32:37
Well, that was a tough topic. Well, Sound of Freedom actually
32:40
started in the 90s and then it just dropped and dropped and
32:44
dropped and dropped as the controversy hit.
32:47
Meaning the controversy around the founders of the.
32:50
No controversy around Sound of Freedom was tied to this idea,
32:56
primarily promoted by like Rolling Stone and Media Matters,
33:00
where they started saying that it was Q Anon, which I didn't
33:03
even know what Q Anon was at the time.
33:06
Q it on yeah. Like I.
33:07
Don't know how to say it like. Yeah, I don't even.
33:09
Those people Q. Well, yeah, it's, it's fine.
33:12
I've learned about who the what it is now, No.
33:14
But they made your film. They made our movie and and it
33:20
was really funny because the writer, he didn't know what it
33:23
was. And this movie started with Fox.
33:25
You know, the the 20th Century Fox, the Great Q, the originator
33:32
and the movie started. They started writing the movie
33:35
long before there was any. Cute existed.
33:38
Cute existed. And so the writer was like, I
33:40
guess I'm cute. I know exactly right.
33:43
That is so funny. That's so sad.
33:46
So they attacked it as Q and it was about 48 hours before the
33:50
movie releases. Suddenly we start seeing tons of
33:53
comments all over the Internet within just a very couple hours
33:56
to start going this Q on, this Q on.
33:57
And we're like, what is this? And we realize Media Matters
34:00
sent out a huge blast saying this is Q on.
34:02
And they all, it's like, it's like a marching order.
34:06
Suddenly just the comments fill up all over the Internet.
34:09
Q And and fortunately it backfired and the movies still
34:15
huge and there's now laws all around the world called sound of
34:18
Freedom laws that are anti sex trafficking.
34:21
And presidents of countries all over the world signed
34:24
declarations that they're going to end child sex trafficking.
34:26
And like the movie, changed the world.
34:29
Amazing. But even then, but it just kind
34:34
of got politically divisive and people jumped in their tribes
34:36
and said I'm against the movie, I'm for the movie.
34:39
And you'll usually find that the people who are against the movie
34:41
never saw it because anybody who saw it knows.
34:45
Has nothing to do with conspiracy theories.
34:46
Yes, yeah. I feel in good company with
34:49
Media Matters because they've done hit pieces on me and it's
34:52
just so and live action and, you know, friends of mine and it's
34:56
almost like a badge of honor now.
34:57
Yeah. It's like, oh, meeting matters
34:59
after a good job, You did it, you know, because they're so off
35:02
the reservation, like they do not understand.
35:05
I don't know. It's politically motivated,
35:06
certainly on their part. But I think if they get a taste
35:09
of anything that violates their deeply held ideology, that they
35:12
feel threatened by it, then they're going to try to paint a
35:14
narrative to try to take down this.
35:16
Yeah, they were trying to paint, they were trying to paint a
35:18
narrative that child sex trafficking is not a real issue,
35:22
that it's a this is a fake issue and it's very real.
35:26
OK, so what's your favorite movie that's made it on Angel?
35:31
Right now it's Sketch. Wow.
35:33
Yeah, Sketch is my favorite. And there's some people that'll
35:35
be upset about that, But because some people really don't like
35:38
this movie, there's a small percentage that I mean.
35:42
You like sketch more than the chosen more.
35:44
Than. I guess it's like trying to make
35:45
you pick. Favorites.
35:46
Well, yeah, I mean, I I the more recent movies always went out
35:50
for me. It's not, it's not.
35:51
It's more of a recency bias than there's a like I love the
35:55
chosen. I love it and and I love Cabrini
36:00
and I love Sound of Hope, the story of Possum trot and I love
36:04
Sound of Freedom. Awesome trot, awesome trot.
36:06
So good, so good. And I love Brave the Dark, which
36:09
came out in the spring. Brave the Dark rocks you.
36:12
And I mean, I just, I love so many of these movies and.
36:19
You're like, I'm not even a movie guy.
36:21
I'm not a movie guy. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, Sketch.
36:25
Sketch is just so unique. It's like when I finished
36:28
watching, it's like, it's like Jurassic.
36:30
I said it's like Stranger Things and Inside Out to had a baby.
36:33
Yeah, but Stranger Things in a way, you could watch it because
36:36
Stranger Things got really dark. It got very scary.
36:38
Yeah, I was. I usually hate anything remotely
36:41
horror. This is since having kids
36:43
actually like if you'd asked me, 15 years would be like, oh, I
36:46
like watching, you know, the Ring or scary movies.
36:48
Now I'm like, I have no patience.
36:50
But it was very endearing sketch.
36:52
So let's let's take a look at the trailer for folks here.
36:55
And this is designed for what? This is designed for what age?
36:59
The Guild says it's 10 plus. 10 plus, OK.
37:04
Amber, you're incredibly creative.
37:09
Here's the thing. Life is all about balancing the
37:12
good and the bad. If you don't carry the good with
37:16
you too, then it's just going to make the bad stronger.
37:25
That's always kind of been her thing, right?
37:26
Drawing. All kids like to draw.
37:28
But has she always been? So hiders.
37:32
Hiders. She's working through some
37:34
stuff. Are we orphans?
37:37
No. You have a dad.
37:38
I'm alive. Then what are we?
37:40
What do you call an orphan that still has a dad?
37:43
Come on, you know feelings aren't bad When you get angry,
37:48
sad or scared. Put it in here, it can't hurt
37:51
anyone. Is everything OK?
37:56
If I was placed in the woods, we dropped Amber's notebook in it.
38:02
Now I'm worried that Amber's drawings might be.
38:10
What are you talking about? I promise I didn't want this.
38:39
I'm not a little. Person just because you drew
38:42
pictures. I saw an eyeball with legs.
38:46
When do you see that? I know we're supposed to be
38:49
scared of it, but it's kind of beautiful.
38:53
Amber was the only one doing what we're supposed to be doing,
38:56
not running from the pain to feeling it.
39:01
Watch this. You guys ready?
39:07
No, I don't want to do this. I have to go to the bathroom.
39:10
You couldn't have gone before we put all the stuff on.
39:11
I didn't have to go then. No, I have to go too.
39:14
Oh my cutest monsters ever. Yeah, also the scariest monsters
39:23
too, right? There's a couple of scary.
39:24
Ones, yeah, there were, but those were not like they didn't
39:26
scare me the way that, you know, you thought they might.
39:28
The kind of movie that I would would turn it off because it
39:30
scared me. So I don't know about my 5 year
39:32
old in this one, although he might actually appreciate it.
39:35
Yeah, well, I. Haven't shown it to my kids yet.
39:37
We, we, we since this movie, the launch of this movie, you're
39:40
going to introduce a new feature.
39:42
And we haven't done it perfectly, but basically when
39:44
this got rated PG, we were looking at it and we're saying,
39:47
OK, some people think PG is the new G, They forget that Goonies
39:52
PG that, that, that Jumanji's PG that.
39:57
Jumanji's terrifying. There's some really, really
39:59
scary movies that are PG and they forget about that and they
40:03
and they assume this is gonna it's Angel's name.
40:07
It's colorful. It's bright.
40:08
They assume Jonathan Rumi's gonna show up and like
40:10
everybody. Yeah, they actually, we
40:12
literally have people saying, where's Jesus in this movie?
40:15
And and that's a that's a subset that's only will ever watch
40:19
anything from Angel that has Jesus in it.
40:21
And and so they're they're they're looking at it and
40:25
saying, I can take little kids to this.
40:28
And that's our fault for not making it more clear that we
40:32
had, we implemented a score, which we say, what is what We
40:36
asked the Guild when they vote, what's the youngest age that you
40:39
would say should go to this movie?
40:40
And the youngest age at the beginning was 8.
40:43
It's now moves to 10 with more data.
40:45
The 10 years old plus is where it currently sits on the
40:50
recommended age for this movie. Some people didn't see that.
40:53
They didn't know about it. In the future, we're going to
40:56
make sure it's like right next to the PG thing.
40:57
It says like 10 plus. Like we're going to be better.
41:01
But some people showed up with little kids.
41:03
Like their three-year old. And if you've ever watched a
41:06
movie that's not age appropriate for the wrong kid and the kids
41:10
in the room, it's not a comfortable experience.
41:12
For a parent, My 3 year old was scared of Winnie the Pooh.
41:16
Yeah. So yes, if you got to be, you
41:18
know, you. Just and.
41:20
And so they came at us after the release of this movie and we're
41:24
seeing all these comments coming and we're like, oh, people are
41:27
watching this and they're scary trailers.
41:30
And then there's this trailer is not as scary.
41:33
And then we had like that we had ads that one of the most viewed
41:39
ads was one that has Zach King huge YouTube and he says this is
41:43
Jurassic Park meets inside out. And so we thought that that
41:48
would signal to people if it's Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park is
41:51
very scary meets inside out. It's going to be scary and feel
41:55
good and adventurous and feel good.
41:58
You know, like that would give, but it didn't do it.
42:00
It didn't do it right. And, and we feel really bad that
42:03
people showed up with little kids and a lot of them walked
42:06
out of the theater because it was too scary for them.
42:09
But overall, the reviews have been excellent for this movie
42:13
and the other pieces and those people.
42:16
I understand. And there's another.
42:17
There wasn't that many people, right?
42:19
I mean, it was a. It was.
42:20
Still significant, OK, I mean. Enough to make their.
42:23
When you get 600,000 people watching a movie.
42:25
That's a lot of people. A small like 1% is still 6006
42:29
thousand people. That's a lot of people A.
42:31
Lot of three-year olds, Yeah, I'm sorry.
42:33
Yeah. And.
42:33
So so we messed up on that. And but then there's another
42:37
group who are like this movie's demonic and that that's actually
42:43
a significant group of people and they're like, it's demonic.
42:45
This this doesn't fit Angel because it has.
42:48
There's monsters in. It there's a crayon, there's a,
42:50
there's a purple crayon demon in the movie that's representative
42:54
of this girl's deepest anger about her resentment and things
42:58
about her mom dying. And so she's drawing out those
43:02
feelings and then that monster comes to life, this this purple
43:05
crayon monster. And it's a scary monster.
43:07
Like it's legitimately scary and and not.
43:11
As scary as Stranger Things. No, not even close.
43:13
Yeah, that's why I was like, I can stomach this.
43:15
As I can do. Yeah.
43:16
Yeah. And not as scary as Jurassic
43:18
Park comes. No, not at.
43:19
All but not even as scary as like, in my opinion, Lord of the
43:22
Rings or. No, not at all.
43:24
I agree that the. Orcs.
43:25
Yeah, yeah, the. Purple Dragon had nothing on the
43:27
orcs, but yeah, it was more scary than the little one I.
43:31
They're saying you shouldn't show demons at all.
43:33
And we didn't even we just called it a monster until they
43:35
started calling it a demon. I just started calling it a
43:37
demon because they call it a demon.
43:39
So I'm just going to it's a crayon demon and so.
43:44
You had that GK Chesterton. Quote Yeah, yeah, I've got it.
43:46
Here or the CS Lewis quote. I've got two of them.
43:48
OK, let's. Go these guys went through this.
43:50
So this this director Seth Worley, he's a Christian guy,
43:54
very good Family Guy and he made a movie that he wants to exist
44:00
and for his kids and it's actually based on his daughter
44:03
drawing really scary pictures and the pictures in the movie
44:06
are his daughters drawings. That's cool.
44:08
So he made a movie with his own kids drawings to to represent
44:14
what was going on in his own world.
44:15
How? Old was the daughter when?
44:17
She was. I don't know.
44:17
I don't know. Wow, but I didn't know the back
44:19
story. That's.
44:20
Yeah. And so this is GK Chesterson,
44:24
who's a Chesterton, who's a famous Christian fantasy writer.
44:28
He's amazing. And he said fairy tales do not
44:30
tell children Dragons exist. Children already know that
44:33
Dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that
44:36
Dragons can be defeated. I love it.
44:38
I love that quote. And this is what's important for
44:41
parents to understand is you can have a conversation, is my
44:45
opinion. You don't need to watch the
44:46
movie at all. If you don't watch it, it's
44:48
fine. But you can have a conversation
44:50
with your kids about defeating and good and evil.
44:54
And CS Lewis covers it this way. He's much more articulate than
44:56
me. Maybe too articulate.
44:58
I may have to stumble over the reading.
45:00
Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two
45:02
things. They may mean one.
45:04
We must not do anything likely to give a child haunting,
45:08
disabling pathological fears against which ordinary courage
45:11
is helpless. In fact, phobias.
45:13
His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things that can't.
45:17
He can't bear to think of. Or they may mean #2 that we must
45:22
try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a
45:27
world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and
45:29
cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first, I agree
45:33
with them, but not if they mean the second.
45:36
The second would indeed be to give children a false impression
45:41
and feed on the on escapism in the in the bad sense.
45:47
There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a
45:51
generation which was born in the era of the atomic bomb.
45:56
Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let
46:01
them at least have heard of the brave Knights and the heroic
46:05
courage. Otherwise you are making their
46:07
destiny not brighter, but darker.
46:10
Nor do most of us find that violence and and bloodshed in a
46:14
story produce any haunting dread in the minds of children.
46:18
As far as that goes, I side impotently with the human race
46:23
against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings,
46:27
beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and Dragons,
46:32
and let villains soundly be soundly.
46:35
Let let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.
46:39
Nothing will persuade me that this causes any ordinary child
46:43
any kind of degree of fear beyond what what it wants and
46:46
needs to feel for. Of course it wants to be a
46:50
little frightened. Children want to be a little
46:52
frightened. And as a kid, I would have loved
46:54
this movie, right? And and so in Seth Worley make
46:59
sure this demon is the bad guy and the demon is trying to kill
47:03
them and they are defeating the demon.
47:06
And I think, but the message too, is like trying to keep them
47:09
in the dark space, right, is the idea Because there is dark stuff
47:12
that we have to process in life. There's sin, sin exists, evil
47:15
exists. But if you dwell on the evil or
47:17
the sin as if it's the end all be all and that and then the
47:21
idea of her coloring right was to like let it go.
47:23
And then the demon sort of keep it like make it stay.
47:26
And then it's like the idea is like no one's Vanquish the fears
47:28
or Vanquish the evil. And let's be let's be good or
47:31
let's be, you know, in harmony together and as a family.
47:35
It's lovely. It is.
47:36
It's beautiful in the movie. I think it's beautiful, and I
47:38
think that the scariness actually makes the ending more
47:40
poignant, where Seth Worthy did a masterful job of showing how a
47:46
family can heal from grief in a very parable like way.
47:52
Can you get tell us what happens at the end or you want to save
47:54
it? Sign up for Angel Guild in front
47:56
of yourself or go. Watch in theaters if it's in
47:59
your area still or come watch it, sign up for the Angel Guild
48:02
and you can watch it and it's a it's a it's a great movie in my
48:06
opinion. How, how much more kid content
48:09
do you think Angel's going to do?
48:11
A lot there this year. There are some kids series
48:18
releasing like Tuttle twins. I said is huge.
48:20
We've got there's an incredible TV series on Angel called right
48:24
and the dance, which is basically planet earth, but with
48:28
the point of view that there's a creator and it is beautiful.
48:33
You love that crushing. It's so.
48:34
Gorgeous there, like an Australian or English accent or
48:36
Scottish accent. It's.
48:37
American. This one's an American.
48:38
Accent. Yeah, I'm sure it's great.
48:40
This one, this one's different because it's pro human and every
48:43
other nature documentary, it's like, here's the here's nature,
48:48
and if we ever show a human, it's in a negative way, or if we
48:51
ever talk about humans, it's not, it's in a negative way.
48:55
This one's pro human. He's out in the wilderness with
48:58
the animals, out in the safari with the animals.
49:03
And it's just like the way it interlaces the idea of a creator
49:10
into nature, a danger documentary just never been
49:13
done. And it is beautiful.
49:15
That's called Right in the Dance.
49:15
My kids watch that. One Ryan the dance.
49:18
Riot and the dance. Riot and the dance.
49:20
It's beautiful. So that's already on Angel right
49:22
now. Yes, yeah.
49:24
Amazing. And it's it's actually the the
49:26
guy who the creator is ND Wilson, who is the writer of 100
49:30
cupboards. I think it's one I may actually
49:33
got his book wrong. Did I get that right?
49:36
And Andy? Wilson, Andy Wilson.
49:38
Andy Wilson, and he's a famous writer.
49:41
He's an author. Yeah, he's an author and.
49:44
He's 5 kids. Another really good 100
49:46
cupboards. You got it. 100 cupboards, Yeah.
49:49
And then then another, another really wonderful TV series on
49:54
the system is called The Wing Feather Saga, which is by Andrew
49:58
Peterson, who's a Christian musician who wrote this best
50:03
selling book series. It's a fantasy book series.
50:05
It's kind of like Lord of the Rings or CS Lewis stuff.
50:07
And it's it's on its third season right now.
50:13
And it is a phenomenal series. It's fantasy, it's exciting.
50:17
It's there is also one called the Wayfinders that's coming
50:23
out. The first episode's already out.
50:24
And this is more of a like older, young kids to teenagers.
50:31
And it's how do I explain it? It's a little bit coming of age
50:37
series, but they're these kids that get caught between this
50:40
like alternate world where they go time travel back into the
50:44
Middle Ages and there's Dragons and all kinds of but it's it's
50:49
based on good principles and Wayfinders is a really big one.
50:52
There's one coming out next week called A Week Away the series.
50:57
This is based on the same director that did A week Away,
50:59
the movie that's on Netflix. It was a top 10 on Netflix.
51:02
Now he's done an entire series and it's about a Christian
51:07
summer camp, but it's High School Musical meets a Christian
51:10
summer camp. And you would think this is
51:13
cheesy and campy, but it's very self aware and it's super funny
51:16
and the music is stunning. I you it's going to it's so
51:24
good. There's another one coming out
51:25
called Miracles. This one's more of the whole
51:27
family, and Miracles is a series where they follow.
51:35
I think it was Harvard or Stanford professor who went and
51:38
studied miracles that happened in ministries.
51:41
Yeah. And was trying to decide if
51:43
there was real scientific backing for them.
51:45
Love it. And so this series is going
51:47
through all the stories of these miracles.
51:50
Anyway, there's there's a lot coming.
51:51
What's the so the business model for the creator, for the
51:54
filmmaker is that they get paid once it's on the app and then
51:58
they get promotion and then they get an opportunity for Angel
52:00
distribution if it's chosen by the Guild.
52:02
Yes, that's how that works. Yeah, so the the filmmaker needs
52:05
to bring us at least what we call a torch.
52:07
So if you go back to the 1800s and you look at Frederick
52:12
Bartaldi, a great artist who made the Statue of Liberty, he
52:15
wasn't able to fund the Statue of Liberty and governments
52:18
wouldn't fund it. So he went to the crowd.
52:21
He was able to get enough money to build a hand and a torch.
52:25
He set it up in Paris and he started crowdfunding his big
52:30
idea. He wanted the biggest statue in
52:32
the world to be a biggest art piece in the world, to be around
52:35
the biggest idea in the world, which was the United States.
52:38
And so he goes. Any crowdfunds off of this
52:41
torch? The entire Statue of Liberty.
52:44
And people don't realize the Statue of Liberty wasn't given
52:46
by the French government, it was given by the French people.
52:49
And so we've taken that concept and we say you got to bring a
52:52
torch, you got to bring 5 minutes of your movie.
52:55
And then from there we can help film makers work their way to a
52:59
full series or to a full movie. And some film makers bring us
53:04
entire movies finished because they already made them.
53:07
And that's the way Cabrini came. That's the way Sound of Freedom
53:09
came. They bring an entire movie
53:12
completely done. Or or it can be like the way
53:16
that Chosen was where they had a pilot episode, a short film, and
53:21
then they built a series after that.
53:24
I am really excited for 0AD. Is there a?
53:27
Is there a preview we can watch for that?
53:29
Yeah, there's a new trailer. All right, let's do that.
53:31
Let's do that because this is I think that Mary is so
53:36
misunderstood as a not the main character, because Jesus is the
53:42
main character, of course, but as the essential supporting
53:46
actress. You know that in this in the
53:48
gospels narrative and she's such a name.
53:50
She's my inspiration. You've got a lady in the
53:52
Guadalupe on the wall behind you right now, but that's another
53:55
film that would be that would be amazing.
53:57
The Our Lady of Guadalupe story because she when she appeared to
54:00
the to the Mexican or the Aztecs at the time.
54:04
Within like a few years, 6 million people were baptized and
54:07
converted. To Christian, I didn't know the
54:08
story. And they stopped for human
54:10
sacrifice. I know Alejandro and.
54:13
Yeah, I'm gonna call him Alejandro.
54:14
Be like what? Where's that movie?
54:15
That's it's coming your way, Angel, go get members.
54:18
It's coming your way. I'm sure eventually.
54:19
But let's take a look at the Angel, the 0AD film.
54:22
Very pumped for this movie. And this is this is going to be
54:25
a tough one too, because the reality is the story of Jesus's
54:29
birth and. Killing the innocents.
54:32
It's so heavy, so let's take a look.
54:37
Do you believe the prophecies they claim a great king should
54:44
take might from? There's only one king, and it is
54:55
Herod. You wish to prove your loyalty.
55:01
You know how tonight darkness hides in the form of a child?
55:08
Stuff out the darkness and the light of honor will shine.
55:18
You will unleash He is.
55:32
You can still choose which king to serve.
55:40
Salvation is not what you imagine, my son.
55:47
I do not know what way you must carry, but I know you have come
55:53
to reveal Dot's deepest secret. This one's not a kid.
56:12
It's a little heavy, yeah. Yeah, the the this.
56:16
Movie. Yeah, it's a very different
56:19
nativity and, and it's got a killer cast.
56:22
Like Sam Worthington is an avatar.
56:24
He's the biggest actor in the world right now.
56:26
Basically, he's in the movie. And Jim Caviezel, who everybody
56:32
knows is. You know, he's he's not playing
56:34
baby Jesus. He's not playing baby Jesus.
56:36
He's he's Herod. He's in the fat suit and he is a
56:40
tough times, terrifying bad guy. Yeah, I'm scared watching the
56:44
trailer. Yeah.
56:45
I think, I think Jim Caviezel is going to surprise people at how
56:48
scary of a bad guy he is. I think it's such a pro-life
56:51
film. I haven't seen it yet but I'm
56:53
going to see it soon. But I think it's such a pro-life
56:55
film because it's about Jesus came into the world as an
56:57
embryo. The Incarnation is the ultimate
57:00
pro-life story. Yeah, like I said earlier, it's,
57:02
it's zero ID is Mary conceives. Yes, right.
57:07
That's zero. That is, when the Angel visits
57:10
her, she conceives 0, and then from there on and then Herod's
57:15
killing babies. Yeah, which also is symbolic.
57:18
Yeah, yeah, the devil hates babies, which is why I say off
57:23
that abortion is demonic because it's basically it's our modern
57:27
version of, of human sacrifice. Yeah, right.
57:30
It's what like Our Lady of Guadalupe appearing to the
57:33
Aztecs and convicting them and wanting them to fall in love
57:36
with Jesus and reject human sacrifice?
57:38
We need to have, I think, that conversion.
57:40
But stories help us with that conversion.
57:42
Yeah. And there's a big question for
57:44
us, you know, whether or not this will be, you know, the MPA
57:50
rates, movies and the subject matter.
57:51
And this is pretty tough. So we're like, is this going to
57:54
be R? Is this going to be PG13?
57:56
Yeah, I I don't know how graphic does it get.
57:58
Yeah, we'll we'll see. I I.
58:00
You're still, you're still finalizing that.
58:02
Yeah, I always would when it comes to like children being
58:05
harmed in film. I.
58:07
Don't know if it would be about graphicness, it might just be
58:09
subject matter. It was really tough.
58:11
Yeah, yeah, because it has to do with children being harmed.
58:14
Yeah, my sort of unofficial Angel Guild member vote, which I
58:18
know just counts for one, but maybe the rest of them would
58:20
agree with me, is like, you can suggest the evil without showing
58:25
any of that, yeah. That's right.
58:27
What is your vision for the future of Angel Studios?
58:29
Well, in order to build a competitor to Netflix or to
58:35
Disney, it takes a lot of capital.
58:39
Movies cost a lot of money to make, and so Angel's on a very
58:43
good start. 1.5 million Guild members, you know, hundreds of
58:48
millions of dollars of box office.
58:50
Huge, huge successes, right? But the next phases require
58:55
access capital markets. So you want to be bigger than
58:59
Netflix? Is that, is that where we're
59:01
headed with that? I don't, you actually educated
59:05
me earlier. I'm like, it's an $8 billion
59:06
company, right? And you're like, Netflix is like
59:08
the revenue. 100 plus billion. The spend is $8 billion a year.
59:12
Right. Yeah.
59:12
I think they spend something like $8 billion a year on movies
59:16
and TV series. Yeah.
59:17
You guys are coming for them. I vote Angel all day long.
59:21
I always say because Netflix isn't really like tackling the
59:24
values based market. They're like their, their, their
59:28
official statement is, is they needed to become HBO before HBO
59:31
became them, right. So they're they're going after
59:34
very different market. Yeah, interesting.
59:37
Our focus is the value space market, which moves more into
59:40
Disney's World. Do you think that market is
59:43
growing right now? I think it's a huge market that
59:47
has gigantic appetite that's just left a gaping hole.
59:49
Disney just just like crater their market.
59:54
There's very little trust. They still do some great movies
59:57
here and there, but as a whole people just feel like I can't
1:00:00
trust this. And our goal with with Angel is
1:00:04
that even though not the Guild won't vote for movies that you
1:00:10
love every time it will have a better batting average.
1:00:14
The goal is that the Guild is going to have a better batting
1:00:16
average than any studio. There is no other studio that's
1:00:20
letting. A Guild, something like the
1:00:23
Angel Guild, actually the viewers veto movies If you get
1:00:27
on the Guild and you vote and you vote down a movie and it
1:00:31
doesn't pass the Guild as a founder, I can't take the movie.
1:00:36
I can't. I can't publish it have.
1:00:38
You guys vetoed before? Have films?
1:00:40
Have films actually gotten vetoed?
1:00:42
Over 95% of them don't make it. I think it's around 95%.
1:00:46
I don't have the exact. Was there one that you really
1:00:48
liked that didn't make it? Yeah, there.
1:00:51
Are ones and the first time Sketch didn't make it the first
1:00:54
time. They had to take out bad words.
1:00:56
They had to take out a bunch of language.
1:00:57
Amazing and I love that. I love that, right?
1:01:01
I mean, as a mom, I just, that makes me so happy that there's
1:01:06
instead of like buying the parental control that you put as
1:01:09
a filter on your content and you're like the sex scenes and
1:01:11
the bad language. It's like, what are we doing
1:01:13
here, guys? It's like a filter.
1:01:14
Just do our own. It's a built in.
1:01:16
Our own stuff, Yeah, our own stuff.
1:01:18
And actually, we are going to in addition, there's still some
1:01:22
swearing in sketch. There's like, I think there's
1:01:23
like 5 or 6 four words in it, you know, and there's some
1:01:27
swearing in Last Rodeo and there's some swearing in Brave
1:01:30
the Dark. Brave the Dark's another one
1:01:32
where they submitted it one time and then they had to pull out a
1:01:34
bunch of language in order to to pass and, but there's still some
1:01:38
language in it. And so we're actually building a
1:01:41
system where you'll be able to, when you click play, you'll be
1:01:44
able to pull up and say, I want to watch the version without the
1:01:49
language. I love it.
1:01:50
And it'll just skip them. It just skips the words like
1:01:54
mutes, mutes the sound and just skips it out automatically
1:01:57
because automatic remote control, yeah.
1:01:59
Or like when they can just dub it right If it's like the the D
1:02:01
word would be like oh darn. We're not dubbing it, but OK,
1:02:04
just just very like. That's a little too involved.
1:02:08
Yeah, well, also film makers don't want you to like they're,
1:02:11
they're OK with the remote control.
1:02:12
They don't want you to like put change their yeah, change it,
1:02:15
That's fine. So remote control muting and
1:02:17
fast forwarding that film makers aren't bothered as much by that.
1:02:20
And you're choosing what to mute and Fast forward.
1:02:22
But the the changing and adding a voice would be an issue for
1:02:25
them. What happens is it's like, it's
1:02:28
also like the beginning of a you're watching a series and you
1:02:31
click skip intro, same kind of concept.
1:02:34
It's just automatic and it'll skip over.
1:02:37
That's great. The the swears and we're going
1:02:38
to that's actually releasing the first version of that.
1:02:41
We'll be releasing with Sketch. Oh wow, when When Sketch Hits
1:02:45
leaves theaters and hits the hit streaming and that's coming up
1:02:48
soon. Yep, thank you, Jeff, for what
1:02:51
you're doing. I mean, truly, I think it's a
1:02:53
gift to humanity. It is.
1:02:56
It is. I'm, I'm a, I'm a big fan and I
1:02:59
know the best days are in front of you guys and I just think
1:03:02
it's so needed today. It's a movement like if you look
1:03:05
at it, it's we're just kind of figure like we're, we're kind of
1:03:10
organizing a company. But what's happening is it's one
1:03:14
and a half million Guild members and, and, and this growing group
1:03:18
of people who are saying film makers, we will support you if
1:03:26
you follow, if you just make the stuff we want, just make what we
1:03:30
want and we will support you. We will give you money.
1:03:33
We will help you give feedback on your films.
1:03:36
We will help you make great movies.
1:03:38
And Hollywood is full of amazing Craftsman.
1:03:43
They are the best in the world. the United States has the very
1:03:47
best group of talent in the world for making stories.
1:03:51
And most of them don't mind making faith content.
1:03:54
They don't mind making values, content they actually like.
1:03:58
As long as it's great art, they love it.
1:04:00
You can see the cast of Zero Ad amazing cast because they love
1:04:05
making great art. They're not worried about
1:04:08
whether it's nihilistic or not. The nihilism is coming from a
1:04:11
group, a little tiny group of people just like the journalism
1:04:14
world, The the, the publishing of news.
1:04:17
There's like a half dozen people.
1:04:18
Elon Musk said this, I don't know, like 2 years ago, a year
1:04:21
ago, he said there's a, there's like 6 people who control the
1:04:24
entire narrative of the news cycle, 6 people.
1:04:29
Same in Hollywood, there's, there's a couple dozen people
1:04:31
who make all their gatekeepers, who make all the decisions about
1:04:34
everything that goes to theaters and what the narrative is going
1:04:36
to be. And they're the ones adding in
1:04:38
all the nihilism and requiring this.
1:04:41
The film makers are actually very open and they're, they're
1:04:44
more agnostic in the way that they look at it.
1:04:46
They just say, if it's great art, I want to make the ones
1:04:49
about faith and if it's great art, I'll make the ones about
1:04:52
nihilism. I just want to make great stuff.
1:04:54
That's what they're thinking. And so as soon as the Guild
1:04:58
gives them the option and, and as a Guild member, you say, I'm
1:05:01
going to pay you, we're going to pay you.
1:05:04
And there's enough of us that we can pay actually good checks.
1:05:08
And it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger to where we
1:05:10
can compete head to head as the Angel Guild versus the old
1:05:15
Hollywood and that Guild and the old gatekeeping system of
1:05:20
Hollywood. That Guild will fund.
1:05:23
I think some of the greatest stories to have will ever be
1:05:27
told will be from this system, and so it makes me really
1:05:33
excited. I think we're on to something
1:05:37
big. You're already doing something
1:05:39
big, but it's going to keep getting bigger.
1:05:42
It's very cool. Thank you, Jeff.
1:05:43
And how can people find Angel guilt?
1:05:46
You go to angel.com and you can just sign up for the Guild right
1:05:49
there and you can. And as a Guild member you get a
1:05:51
vote on all the content, you get a veto stuff you don't want.
1:05:53
You get to get feedback to the film makers and you get 2 movie
1:05:56
tickets to every movie. Amazing release so you can go
1:05:58
support them in theaters. Amazing how much was that URL.
1:06:02
Angel.com, I think we paid $2.1 million for it, but we actually
1:06:08
got a really good deal. It was bought by the people
1:06:10
before us for like 100 million, according to his got name,
1:06:14
Michael Saylor, who's a big Bitcoin guy.
1:06:16
He bought the original 1 and he told us he's like how'd you get
1:06:18
this domain? And we said we bought it for 2/2
1:06:20
something, $1,000,000 and he's like, how'd you do that?
1:06:23
I sold it for like 100 million. What?
1:06:26
Yeah, yeah, that's a total side. That's.
1:06:28
A God thing? Was that a God thing?
1:06:29
Yes, I must have. Been yeah, yeah, it's amazing
1:06:32
that we got that URL Angel dot. Com when did you get that?
1:06:34
Was that recent A. Few years ago.
1:06:37
Nice one. Well, you guys are business
1:06:39
people and creative, so the Chief Content officer though.
1:06:44
Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Jeff.
1:06:45
That's amazing. Appreciate it.
1:06:47
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