-Hi. Thank you for joining us today. I am Megan Katz, senior librarian of the Science Technology
and Patents Department at the Los Angeles Public
Library Central Library. First of all,
I would like to send out a big thank you to our friends group,
BEST Friends of LAPL for putting this event together. The BEST Friends group supports
the Business and Economics Department, as well as Science, Technology,
and Patents Department of Central Library. We encourage you to join
the BEST Friends group as j
oining will help to support
our library departments and bring more excellent programming
like this. We're going to put a link
in the chat to find more information about how to join BEST Friends. I want to mention just
a few upcoming programs in the Science, Technology, and Patents Department. Let's see what we have here. We always have some fun stuff going on. Auntie Sewing Squad is presenting
a program about sewing bookmarks Thursday, November 16th in our Octavia Lab,
DIY maker space. Saturday,
November 18th,
there's a 3D modeling and printing for children program, also on Octavia Lab, and actually
two more Octavia Lab programs, but both are Introduction to Photography,
one for children and teens, one for adults, both December 2. We're going to put another link
in the chat, and that is to our events calendar. You can use that to find
more about those programs and the wealth of other programming
we have going on at the Los Angeles Public Library. Before I introduce our guests,
I would
like to ask everyone to please type any questions
you might have as they come up in the chat field. We are thrilled
to welcome Inkoo Kang and Angie Han. Inkoo writes for The New Yorker, and Angie writes
for the Hollywood Reporter. Both are television critics who write
about shows across broadcast and streaming platforms. Without further ado,
I would like to introduce Inkoo Kang and Angie Han. Thank you so much for joining us. -Hi. [laughter] -We crowdsourced some questions. I would love to start
with the question,
how did each of you start in movie and TV criticism? -Angie, do you want to go? [laughs] -Yes, my answer is boring. I double majored in college
in women's studies and English with the concentration of pop culture,
and also started writing for my college newspaper
in the arts section. Then a few years after I graduated,
a college friend connected me to the editors on a site called /Film, and I started working there
and I've been doing that ever since. I guess the TLDR is just
college. -I think I started reading reviews when I was in 7th grade. I don't know how, but we got
this random subscription to the LA Times
that was delivered to our house. Every day I would pour
through the calendar section. Maybe a little meatier then than now. Basically, I also went to college and then went to grad school. I thought I was going to be
a professor, and then I was like, "Oh, wow, no, that sucks." [laughter] -I somehow figured out a way to maybe try my hand at this career
that I a
lways wanted as a critic. Then thought to myself, "I'll try this for a while,
see if anything comes out of it. If not, I can always go
back to a boring office job." Luckily it's worked out. [laughter] -All right.
You've both been doing it for quite some time. Actually, I should ask for how long have
each of you been doing it? -I've been doing it
for about 10 to 11 years. -I think maybe about 11
or 12 years for me. -By the way, again, these questions are not mine,
they are crowdsourced. Given tha
t viewership
at theaters is at an abysmal low, not my word, Barbie and Oppenheimer notwithstanding,
what is the future of viewing movies in the theater? -Oh, boy.
[laughs] Depressing.
[laughs] If I recall correctly, I don't think that theater attendance
has come back since COVID times. It's still not back to
where it was in 2019. Then of course, with all of the strikes happening, it is definitely the case
that a lot of movies that were supposed to come out next year actually are not going to com
e out
because they still have a lot more work to be done. There is a pipeline problem. Then I think, of course, there's
this problem of everyone wanting to stay home and be comfortable. At this juncture, movies are a lot more of a boutique experience,
and then the people are willing to acknowledge. Ticket prices in LA are somewhere
between $14 and $17 per person. If you are a person with a family
and you have to pay for your two or three kids to also go to the movies,
it just adds up a crazy amo
unt. [laughs]. I think that there's maybe
a bit of a class element involved. I wish that there was a way
to democratize theater-going more, but I'm not really sure
where that path is going to be. I think what theaters
are doing now is actually increasing the premium level of things
by providing, for example, bigger seats, which of course means
that you're going to have fewer seats. That seems to be the market
that is being catered to. I guess we'll see if it bears
fruit and people actually decid
e that it is worth investing
in a more premium experience or not. -Angie, do you have
any thoughts on this subject? -Yes. I like what you said
about how it seems like it's becoming a boutique experience. I agree with that. I don't think movie theaters
or movie-going will ever completely go away,
but it feels like it's more of a niche hobby. Not that it's completely niche,
obviously millions of people are still going,
but it feels more niche than it did, for example, when I was growing up [?] peo
ple would just go to the theater
on a Friday, see what's playing, and then pick something. Now people are-- most of the time
they go to the theater because they already
know what they want to see. A lot of the people who choose
to go out of their way to go to the movie theater are people
who have a vested interest in like, "This is a thing
that I really like doing," whether it's because they are someone
who considers themselves a cinephile and wants to see every new A24 movie
at the Alamo Drafth
ouse right away, or something like that, or even
in the case of some of the franchises, like someone who's like,
"No, I'm the person who wants to see every superhero movie opening weekend,
or whatever." We mentioned Barbie and Oppenheimer,
I think those showed that there is still a desire for people to go to the theater. People will still show up under
the right circumstances. One of the things that's changed
is what those circumstances mean. As Inkoo points out, there's a lot of planning and mo
ney
that goes into going into the theater, and especially if some of them are getting
more and more expensive and everything. People want there to be a reason
why they should get up, drive, or take the train, or walk
to the theater and go see a new movie right now
when they can already-- you can walk 10 feet to your living room
and you already have thousands of movies that you've already paid
for because you subscribed to some streaming service or another. With something like Barbie
or Oppenheim
er or the Taylor Swift movie, the Eras Tour movie, or even something
like Sound of Freedom, which were some of the bigger hits
of the last few months, I think all of them benefited
from feeling like it was something bigger than themselves. It wasn't just like,
"Oh, I myself am going to go up and watch this movie
by myself because I want to see it for myself." It was like, "Oh, I'm going
to call up all my friends, we're going to watch it together," or like, "Oh, it's part
of this big cultural mom
ent and I want to be part of it." In the case of something
like Sound of Freedom, there was also this political angle
to it where like, "Oh, this is my duty as someone
who believes in this cause," or something like that. Maybe even the boutique nicheness
of it fits into that because it's also
a thing where like, "Oh, this is a community of people
who are very invested in going to the theater." I don't think it'll go away,
but I do think it's evolving. I don't know if it'll ever get
back to just
being the way that it was like, I don't know,
in the '90s or something like that. -We did have a comment. Lots of small boutique
art house/foreign film venues seem to be popping up. All of them have
incredibly uncomfortable seats. [chuckles] -That is part of it. -Those really big cushy seats
or for the higher-end experience [laughs]. -I remember when [?]
family was around, there was I think
a four-hour movie that I had to sit through and I believe it was
on a metal folding chair. -Oh my goodness
. -I definitely considered leaving
at many points. That was when I had a 20-something spine. Now with my 30-something spine,
I don't know that that is happening. -As someone who is not very tall,
the premium stadium seating, please give me all of that. I love the old theaters
and respect them as much as anyone, but I need to be able
to see over the tall person in front of me.
[laughs] -I just want to get
this in because somebody was asking-- when you were talking
about your backgrounds and your
education, somebody asked,
"Does it matter what college you go to?" I assume that question relates
to if you want to go into this field, does it matter what college you go to? -I don't think you need to go to college. [laughs] Criticism is such a specific field and it is an industry that is a pyramid
that has a very, very, very wide base. There's lots of people
who do movie reviews for fun on their blog or their letterbox,
or now increasingly their TikTok account. I think if you just want to be
a person
who talks about movies on the internet, you can literally do that anywhere. You don't even need
to be college-age to go do that. I think if we're talking
in a more professional sense, being paid a living wage to be a critic and also good luck
finding those jobs there. They come out very, very rarely. I think the media industry is
in many ways an elitist industry, and so I don't think it matters that-- I don't think you need to have
an Ivy League degree. I don't have an Ivy League degree
. I do think that a lot of publications hire based on a perceived need, and sometimes that does include
a college degree, although I will say
that the media industry is changing too. Several of the publications I've worked
at have really tried to fuss with the college degree requirement
and also tried to expand that as a diversity measure. Things are changing. To what extent are they changing? I'm not really sure. -Okay. -Yes, I know I talked
about how a lot of the way that I got started in the
career
happened to just be based on my college experiences,
but I also don't have an Ivy League education or anything. I think I was just speaking
about my personal path, but I also know people
who that has nothing to do-- where they went to school had nothing to do
with what career they find in media. As Inkoo pointed out,
we're at a place where people can launch a career talking
about movies or movies, and TV from anywhere, which is one of the things
that makes it exciting too. -All right. Nex
t question. This questioner asks, "I'm an elder millennial
and I don't own a TV. I watch everything on streaming platforms. My guess is that people watching live TV
in real time are on average much older than they used to be. Do you think this is true,
and have networks and advertisers adjusted accordingly?" -I am an elder millennial. I am a professional TV critic. I never turn my television on [laughs] because I watch everything on my laptop. There are dozens of us. I think that I read somewher
e,
don't quote me on the numbers of this,
but I think for network television, the TV show at least some years ago
with the youngest audience had a median age of age 64,
and that show was Bob's Burgers. The networks are fully aware
that their audience is aging [laughs]. I think that there is
this larger industry sense that this is basically going to be an industry
that is going to and is slowly dying. Obviously, I think really television
in a multitude of senses has always been a medium that has
relied on convenience. A lot of the time you put it on
because it's the easiest thing to have some entertainment in your house. I do think that the people who make
the shows are noticing in the same way that there are these movies
aimed at older people. I think there was a Book Club 2 movie
recently with Jane Fonda and Rita Moreno and several other older actresses. I do think that there is
some sort of programming, something or other. I think other than Love Is Blind,
the reality show that I kee
p hearing the most about is Golden Bachelor. [laughs] It's happening somewhere. Yes, I don't think that there's any doubt
that there is a particular movement in television and it is away
from linear programming. -I am also an elder millennial,
and while I do own a TV and have a cable subscription, most of what I'm watching on it
are Seinfeld reruns, and a lot of the new stuff I'm watching,
even stuff that is broadcast shows like Abbott Elementary
or Will Trent or Ghost, I'm still watching that o
n Hulu. Sometimes I'm watching
on my TV through my Apple TV, but I am not watching it through cable
or DVR-ing it the way that I might have in the past. I think it's very clear
that the statistics that Inkoo mentioned speak for themselves too. It's very clear that people
are not really watching the TV in the same way, which is also
why it seems like, right now, a lot of the streamers
and the broadcast networks, all of them right now
are fighting over live sports, which is the one thing that does
not really play the same
if you're watching it on Hulu 12 hours later or something like that. -Except Amazon is also trying
to get in on the business. -They all are. Apple TV is. Amazon is. They're all trying to figure out, "How can we do this because we want
to force people to subscribe to this and whatnot?" That's the whole thing. I'm not really
a sports person, but my husband is. He's the reason we have
a cable subscription, as I mentioned that I have. It also just seems
like the streaming w
ars of the past few years were
a reaction to this realization that like, "Oh, people
are watching stuff on Hulu or Netflix versus
on cable subscriptions or whatever," but now it's starting to feel
like maybe they overshot that, launched too many streaming services, and now we're about to just read
the cable bundles again. Only now there'll be streaming bundles. I don't know. Even as someone who is fortunate enough
that I get to watch a lot of stuff for free just by the nature of my job,
even I a
m tired of feeling like, "How many different subscription services
do I need to pay for this month? -Yes.
No kidding. I'm Gen X and my television doesn't turn on anymore,
so I didn't get anyone, and I have two kids and a husband
and there's probably 10 devices in the household between all of us. It's like, "Well, we can
just all watch on our devices." -Isn't that really crazy though? I remember when I was growing up
before we got a laptop, not that in mid-90s anyone could play
streaming video or
streaming anything. I remember very distinctly
in my family of four, we had one television and it was always
some sort of psychological warfare over who got to watch
what and you definitely don't have that anymore, which, I don't need that. [laughs]. -It is fascinating. -Now I can personally watch stuff
on three different screens while my husband in a different room
also does the same thing on three different screens of his own. -Someone said, "Esquire magazine in, I think May had an article
on
Hollywood ignoring people over 50, which is a huge and growing audience,
not finding themselves represented on screen." I just thought I would mention
that as related to what we were talking about with the age of viewers
and how that has changed. This is also an interesting question. By the way, this is
from our viewing audience currently. "Do you feel sequels and remakes
are stifling original ideas?" -Yes. [laughs]
-Great. Thanks. How about you, Angie? -Yes. I think, obviously,
you can do some
thing original and exciting with the sequel or remake. I have plenty of the stuff
that I've watched where I've been like, "Wow, that's a really bold
or interesting take on this property that we're already familiar with,"
and adaptation, same thing. I'm not saying it can't be done,
but it seems like 1so many things that I watch feel they were made thinking of like, "Oh,
this is a hot IP first," rather than people having
some interesting idea of what to do with it, which is always very frustrating
when you're watching something and you just feel like,
"Oh, it doesn't seem like anyone actually had a vision
or was excited to tell a story
or to do something with this." It just feels like the marketing
and research team came back and we're just like, "Well,
this property is really hot right now. We need something out there. It doesn't matter if it's good." It's always very disappointing. Sometimes, I'd rather watch something
that's an absolute disaster, but it seems someone really went for i
t,
than something where it just feels like it was made
because some committee of money people were like, "Well, we need
to capitalize on the property." -I don't think it even needs to be hot. I remember when they announced
the Fatal Attraction TV show that came out last year, I thought-- -That's right. Everyone
was like, "Oh, really? Okay." -Who has thought
about Fatal Attraction in 20 years? [laughs] Can I have eight TV critics
lament very briefly with regard to the question of originality? I t
hink everyone is well deserving of complaining
about how many reboots and remakes and blah, blah, blah there are. I will say it's also really hard to get people to get invested in new stuff. Sometimes, you have a show that comes out
of nowhere like a fleabag, and it bubbles up enough into the,
I don't know, mainstream consciousness that you can get a show
that no one's heard of, starring a woman that no one's heard of, or that a lot of Americans
haven't heard of and get people invested. At the s
ame,
Angie and I watch loads of television, and even if I'm trying to praise
something to the skies because I believe in it so wholeheartedly,
people have this-- Sometimes, they want something original. Sometimes, they don't want
something original. I do think that if audiences
were more primed to seek out that originality, we probably would have
more original stories. That's my lament because it's out there. It's just that it's not being sought out. -You're pointing out it doesn't have
to be a
hot property, but I feel like
they just always feel like, "Well, we need any help we can get
for marketing." If it's a recognizable name,
even if it's something like Fatal Attraction where no one
was clamoring for them to remake it as a TV series, that already helps with name recognition
and stuff like that. Yes, I agree. It's frustrating when there's
something original and great, but it's hard to get people to watch it. -We have another good question
from our current audience. This one is, "I'm
over 60 and Hispanic. Spanish has the second largest number
of native speakers on the planet, but we feel ignored by English-only press. Any thoughts on this?" -My condolences.
[crosstalk] [laughter]
-Yes, my condolences [laughs]. I feel like I mainly cover American shows, and most of those happen to be in English. Unfortunately, foreign shows
just generally aren't something that I cover. I know
I'm part of the problem, so sorry. -I'm not quite sure if the question
is coming from a sense of why
is the English press not covering
Spanish language shows or why aren't there more shows that maybe incorporate Latino language or culture in America? I'm not quite sure
what exactly is the request there. I find it a little bit hard to understand. -Well, feel free, Desert Island Bookworm, to-- -Sorry. If I may add one thing. I think one benefit of streaming
especially post-COVID-- I mentioned the pandemic
because I think it really allowed people to dive into foreign language TV shows
in a way th
at wasn't as much before. I think personally, because people
just ran out of stuff to watch and they were like,
"Oh no, what do I do now? I guess, I'll read 10 hours of subtitles. Maybe that will be worth it." I do think the fact
that we now have so much access to foreign TV shows
and non-English language TV shows, I think that's a really
amazing development. Really, who could have foreseen
that 10 years ago? -I have two questions here that, I think, have similar basis. I'm going to do both. "Wi
th streaming, television has become
more movie-like in structure and look. Do you ever miss the more episodic nature
of pre-streaming TV?" Then right on the heels of that one is, "Is there a clear distinction
between film and television anymore? Watching serials, shorts, sequels, mini-series,
limited series, et cetera, on a phone or laptop
makes distinguishing them hard, for me, at least." Any thoughts on-- -This is so funny. I was just talking
to another friend of mine, a film critic about-- we
were both lamenting how many shows that we've seen that feel
they were movies that someone in accounting was like,
"No, it plays better for a streaming service
if you make it a six-part series." It feels they've had it out. Then also how many times that we watch
movies where it just feels like, "It feels this was maybe supposed
to be a show, but for some reason, they decided not to go that route." It is very frustrating. I love a serialized drama
as much as anyone, but yes, I do miss when they'
re episodic. I do find it frustrating sometimes
when it doesn't seem like the show knows it's a show. They're trying to do the whole work,
10-hour movie thing. [crosstalk] -A 100-hour movie.
[laughter] -Yes, right. Sometimes, they're like,
"Were seven seasons and we're a 10-episode series. A 70-hour movie, whatever." I appreciate serialization, but also--
[crosstalk] -That's a Game of Thrones sub-tweet. Oh, sorry [laughs]. -It's not sub
if you say it out loud, Inkoo. [laughter] I also appreciate
shows
that can figure out how to make it serialized but also work
within the structure of TV because you can use
the episodic nature of it to your advantage, but you have
to try instead of just doing 70-hour movies. -One of the things I have to watch
today is a two-part docuseries. Meaning, it is a docuseries that runs two hours
and yet wants to build itself as a TV show as opposed to a movie. I don't know what is going on there. Obviously, a lot of this is super hinky,
and a lot of it is becau
se of commercial concerns and people
trying to figure out like, "Can we make the most money for this
as a movie or a TV show?" Angie and I used to be film critics way back when, and I think it's so clear a lot of the time, as she said, that when a TV show
was originally probably pitched as a movie or vice versa, do I think that there is a distinction? Probably, not. In the same way that sometimes I wonder,
"Are YouTube series coming from one creator or TV or not?" I don't know. I don't think the
se genre borders
matter very much. Also, hi, Eric. [laughs] Do I miss episodic TV? I guess so. I think one of the things that you have
to do when you're watching serialized television is you have
to actually pay attention. If you miss a thing
that happened on Frasier, it doesn't really matter most of the time. Maybe the rest of the episode is
a little confusing, but then you move on with your life. Whereas if you are [chuckles] watching
seven more hours of Frasier dependent on that particular de
tail
that you missed, yes, that sucks. I do miss that ability
to mentally power down a little bit, which is, I think, the way that a lot of people
watch television. Am I clamoring for it? Do I need it in my life? Not really. Again, this really has a lot
to do with how people watch TV and what role it plays in their lives. -I find that there is
a distinction for me. Sometimes what I want out of a movie
is not necessarily always the same thing that I want out of a television show
especially if I'm
watching it in a theater versus on the couch
or something like that. That said, it's fuzzy. There are a lot of things
that are in between. There are a lot of things
like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they're all movies. Now there's also shows,
but let's just talk about the movies. Those are all movies, but they all are linked together
as if they're almost like a TV show. If it's a TV show, it's one
that you see more episodic and now feels more serialized, which I guess makes it feel
even more
like TV in some way. I think there's a distinction. I think one of the things I appreciate
about watching movies is just getting to sit down and being
indulged in this world for two hours and then just have it feel
complete in on itself. I think that there are some qualities
that I like more on one versus the other. If I'm watching a show and I'm planning
to tune-in week after week for 10 weeks, I feel like I need to be way more invested
in the characters in a way that it doesn't matter as much
for movies. There are subtle distinctions like that. Yes, I agree that one of the interesting,
maybe bad, maybe sometimes good things that are happening are the way
that the lines are blurring between all different kinds of TV,
movies, and things like that. -I want to go back
to our crowdsourced list because this does maybe hit a little bit
on what was being talked about by one of our listeners. Why is there still such a dearth of Latinx
and Asian-American performers and content creators
in trad
itional Hollywood cinema and television? What are the barriers to entry
for these demographics? What gives you hope that this is changing? -I think it's really,
really hard to break into film TV for anyone of any demographic,
but especially if you don't come in with some advantage. If you don't have a foot
in the door already or a safety net in case it takes really
a long time to make it. If you're not lucky enough
to have rich parents or don't know a friend of a friend who can get you
in the bi
z and help you navigate it, or if you can't afford to live
in the cities where a lot of that stuff is happening,
that makes it that much harder for you. A lot of the strikes that we've seen
in the last few months were about
this kind of stuff exactly. I remember there was an article
in the New Yorker about Orange is the New Black
and how it was this massive success whole hit for Netflix, but then had
this incredibly diverse cast of writers and performers who were queer
and people of color, but t
hen even
while the show was just a runaway hit, basically making Netflix, the people on the show were making peanuts
and struggling to make ends meet. That was because streaming doesn't pay residuals
the same way that broadcast television does and whatnot. When you look at something like that,
you understand like, "Oh, even if you're an actor
and even if you're lucky enough being cast on a hit show,
that doesn't necessarily even mean that you're able
to pay rent that month or whatever." Of cours
e, on the writer's side,
we've heard a lot about how there used to be a more clear path up
where you would start as a young writer working in a writer's room and then learn
on the job and get more experience and then learn enough
that someday you could create your own show and run
your own show and whatnot. Because of how they're written now
in these little, very siloed, smaller mini rooms, now it's become harder for them
to follow that path. I'm hopeful that the gains made
by the strikes over t
he summer and fall will help with a little bit of that. I do think that overall,
the strike stuff aside, diversity on TV is better
than it used to be years ago. Which is not to say
it's not a problem anymore, but I grew up in a world
where in terms of mainstream Asian-American content, it was like, "Well, there's Margaret
Cho's All-American Girl on TV and the Joylette Club, and those are your
two things that you get. It's been heartening to see
over the last few years that there's all that stuff
. Obviously, there's still room
for improvement but between that kind of thing going
in that direction and the strikes, hopefully, maybe that means
that we'll continue to see more and more stories from people of all demographics
including marginalized storytellers. -This is
an incredibly broad generalization, but I feel like there has been the sense and still largely is the sense that there are populations
within the US that are more other than other groups. I think Asian-Americans
and Latino-Am
ericans are I guess from the outside, very easy to other because-- for example, there's a language factor and then there's also the fact
that both of those communities are incredibly diverse within themselves, so it's hard to generalize, "This is what an Asian-American
person is like," or "This is specifically
what a Latino person in America is like." I think that all of that is really hard, and it's something
that has always made me very angry because as someone
who has grown up in Los Angeles,
there are so many Latino people
and Asian people in Los Angeles and sometimes I just wonder
like, "Don't you see me?" That has definitely been
a throughline for a lot of my life. What gives me hope? Things are changing. Again, I think a lot of the time
it requires people to go out and search for the things that they want. I don't know. For example, there was a show, I'm sorry,
I forget the name, that was I believe produced
by Gloria Calderón Kellett, who was the creator of One Day At a Time, a
show I absolutely loved. That show was
about a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles. She has a new show and it's like a horror-comedy show
that is a cannibal take on the post-prison life experience. It is just
an extremely unique piece of work, and I didn't see a single person
talk about the show. The only reason why I heard
about it at all is because I happened to catch an interview with Gloria. This is exactly the kind of show
where it's super original and someone is really going for it,
and i
t's not going to find an audience unless people go out searching for it. -You're talking
about The Horror of Dolores Roach, right? -Yes. Thank you so much. That was initially adapted
from a one-woman stage play. It just has so much uniqueness
as a television show, just tonally in terms of its genre,
in terms of its origins. I think that there are a lot more
of those types of shows than people realize. Another show that really, really, really gave me hope
actually is Beef. Beef came out this year
on Netflix,
it stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as these two people who get
into a road rage incident and then just become
obsessed with each other. Very LA story. This was a show that made me do
a full-body cringe at several points because there were so many details
that were familiar to me as a Korean-American growing up
in Los Angeles that I was just like, "Get away from me. This is too much representation. I feel too seen." -That show I've seen in particular,
that one made me want to just die
because of how much I was like, "I lived this, I feel like." -That's an example of how someone
can dig incredibly deep into something very, very,
very, culturally specific and also come out the other
and with a more universal, relatable story. I hope that that is the direction
that we can work toward instead of the more whitewashed version
of ethnic stories that I think we have gotten a lot in the past. -Thank you. Let's move over to AI. We have a question in the chat,
and we also have a questi
on in our crowdsourced questions. The chat question is,
what are the possible ramifications for television of AI
over the next couple of decades, and then our crowdsourced question
is basically almost the same. What do you think
the most relevant conversations and concerns about AI are
for the entertainment industry? If you could just speak
to that subject in general. -I have two answers, one is, nobody knows. This technology is still young, so we truly have no idea
what the ramifications will b
e. My other answer is, I cannot imagine that it will not be used
in writing scripts. I think that is the easiest way
that AI can be deployed. Maybe down the line, it can also help with special effects which I think might be great, especially
because of all of the very hinky stuff coming out of that industry. I don't know, but in any case, I am very scared for the writers,
and I think it's no coincidence that one of the reasons
why both of those strikes, the writer strike
and the actor strikes we
re lengthened was because people
really had trouble getting to a common ground about AI. -Yes, I agree. I don't think anyone knows,
and I'm glad that the two unions were able to get some protections
for their members in terms of AI and in terms of having [chuckles]
I think the nightmare scenario of being pitched around
which was just like, "Oh, a computer is going to write a script and then computer versions
of people are going to star in it." I don't know. I can't imagine that it's ever going
t
o-- It doesn't seem like it's something that's just completely going to go away. I imagine it'll end up
being used in some capacity. My hope is that it can be something
that is used as a tool that can help people get work done in a way and help human beings realize their creative vision
and not something that's used to take away their agency, but we also know
that sometimes that is not how corporations or technology works,
so I guess we will see. -All right.
Let's see. I am interested in this qu
estion
from our crowdsource questions. Do you see any efforts
to unionize/organize YouTubers or the video game industry? I'm not sure if you'll have anything
to say about that, but I thought it was
an interesting question if nothing else. -Yes, I think
at some points recently, didn't-- I know Sag-Aftra strike for film and TV ended, but isn't there still
a lurking possibility of them striking against the video game companies? Am I mistaken about that? I don't know, but I'm not someone
who covers
video games or really even plays them, so this
is not really my area of expertise, but I have seen headlines about them,
about unionization efforts at companies like Activision or Sega or whatever. There are other places
that specialize more in video games that can surely talk much more to this. Polygon I think has been doing
some good coverage of it, if you're really interested in it. I don't as much
about whether YouTubers are unionizing. I did read at some point
in the last couple of years th
at I guess influencers are now sometimes allowed
to be in Sag after or something like that, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me
to see if they started to make more of an effort to organize because it seems
to be something that's on the rise across many different industries. -I thought about this a lot when there was
some talk of reality stars unionizing, and my knee-jerk reaction to that was,
"How in the hell would they do that? Those people are everywhere." I don't really know
to what extent
they think of themselves as part of a larger group of people
with a collective interest. I think maybe something that we tend
to overlook when we are mired in all of these headlines
about strikes and such is that it isn't really,
really, really hard to start a union within an industry
that traditionally hasn't had one. I currently live in the Bay Area
and there's always lingering rumblings about tech workers unionizing. I just think, "Probably not,"
because a lot of those people just don't consi
der themselves
as union workers, and so it's just
a much larger mental hurdle. We'll see, but in the time
that I've been working in media, I think there's been
this brush fire of unionization that's happened within the media industry
and that's been really great to see, but I also wonder are
we the exception then? [laughs] Of course, there were many,
many pre-existing union shops, especially for newspapers already. For me, the biggest hurdle
really would be changing the hearts and minds of worke
rs,
because I feel like that as much as anything is probably the biggest hurdle. -Okay. Changing gears, LA has seen
a lot of production jobs go to cities like Atlanta,
Vancouver, and Toronto. Why is that and what other cities
are getting into television and film production? What does Los Angeles still have
to offer that other cities don't? -Angie, you want to go for it? [laughs] -In terms of why they're going to other-- The question was,
why are they going to other cities? Tax incentives are a b
ig part of it. It's often just cheaper
to shoot in Atlanta and pretend it's LA or shoot in Toronto
and pretend it's New York, especially if you're just shooting on some nondescript street
or something like that, especially if you're shooting
in interiors. Of course, over time, those places
now have very robust facilities and talent communities
and a place to make shooting somewhere like that even easier
than it might have been when they were more starting out. As for what LA has to offer
that ot
her cities don't, I don't know if I could speak
to the practical part of it. I'm not involved in the production side
in terms of knowing how much things cost or something. There's always specific reasons like, "Oh, LA weather is very good,
or whatever," that I know people
sometimes like to shoot in LA but there's also just
the fact that it's LA, same as a lot of other cities that have
a very distinctive look and feel. It's not that I can always tell
when a show set in LA is not shot in LA, but s
ometimes
you can really tell when it is, and that gives it
an authenticity that I think you don't get if you're
just trying to pass off some corner in Atlanta
as LA or something like that. Beef is a great example that Inkoo
brought up and how it feels so very LA and a large part of that
is that even when-- it's not that they're shooting in locations where I'm like,
"Oh, I've been to that specific place," but you can just feel like you're like,
"Oh, yes, this looks like the LA that I know." Or so
mething like [?],
which I think was also shot in LA. I don't think those shows
hit quite the same if they don't feel really grounded
in this really specific, really real LA community. Then of course,
depending on what the project needs and what it requires,
and what you're trying to accomplish, sometimes that stuff matters less. -Yes, really the answer is tax breaks as Angie said,
but I don't know, maybe this is bad, but I actually really enjoy it
when a show is shot in a very specific place. Of
ten a place that doesn't have
a professionalized industry there already, because I do feel like a lot of the time
you just get a really different vibe. Reservation Dogs is
a perfect example of a show that is shot in Oklahoma, set in Oklahoma,
and a lot of their B-roll, I don't know, feels to me a lot
like what I imagine Oklahoma to be. There's a show called Somebody Somewhere
that is on HBO. That show is set in Kansas. I believe they shoot
a lot of the show in Illinois, but you still get that sa
me flat,
Midwestern prairie look when you look out
at the car windows or something. Breaking Bad
is another great example of how shooting a location really adds
to the vibe of a show. If you are [chuckles] one among 600
scripted shows that year to come out and you want your show
to look distinctive, I think as a viewer, not a person in the industry,
that's a benefit to me. Sorry. -Thank you. We have 10 more minutes, 9 nine minutes. I'm going to ask you two more questions. I think we can do this.
What are some upcoming films
and television shows you are excited to see? -I'm very intrigued
by Nathan Fielder's The Curse, which comes out this weekend, so it's fairly upcoming,
but I haven't seen it yet, so I'm excited to check it out.
-It's very good. -Good. Then in terms of stuff
that's farther afield like Lulu Wang's Expats, coming up sometime next year,
I'm very curious to see how that turns out
on a much fluffier note. Bridgerton is so silly,
[chuckles] but the next season is based on m
y favorite of those books
because yes, I also read those books, which are also very silly, but addicting. I'm looking forward to seeing
what they're doing with it. I don't know.
[chuckles] I'm trying to think of what has
release dates and whatnot, and I can never really remember
what's coming up. Oh, then in terms of movies,
of course, this is just a great time of year for shows or movies
that you've been hearing about all year from the festivals. I'm dying to see Poor Things
and American Fictio
n, but I still also have to catch up
on some movies that are already out, like Killers of the Flower Moon. -Also really fantastic.
[laughs] Yes, sorry. November, I think, is the big push month
for a lot of the prestige shows because a lot of the shows are trying
to get on those best-of-year lists that journalists tend to write in, hopefully, early December, sometimes late November,
which is a nightmare. I feel like it should
be really mired in it, but because of the strikes, it's been a really p
atchy year
in terms of programming. I can talk about the one show that I-- I love The Curse. I actually just finished my review. I think it is an astounding series and a really interesting gear shift
for Nathan Fielder. The show
that just has me proselytizing it day in day out is a Showtime series
called Fellow Travelers. It is a gay romance that spans
from the 1950s to the 1980s. Jonathan Bailey,
who is in Bridgerton is in it. No offense to Angie,
but the show's sex scenes made me so happy. It
was nothing like Bridgerton
because it was so good. -Oh no, no offense taken. I have seen some of Fellow Travelers
and I actually completely agree with you. -I think a lot of it begins
during the Lavender Scare, which is a period of time,
I think largely forgotten today, when in the midst of the Red Scare,
people were also trying to route homosexuals from government service. You have these two government workers
who are in love with each other and also cannot be together. The fact that it has
th
is incredible time span and follows these two people
and their inability to escape one another's influence, I think is just
a really monumental achievement in terms of characterization, and I don't see enough people
talking about it. I think it has some really, really,
really great highbrow appeal in terms of the historical nature
and in terms of its look at gay progress from the '50s to the '80s. It's got a lot of lowbrow appeal in terms of some truly
mind-blowing sex scenes. I don't know what
more people need,
but I need people to watch this show. -All right, thank you. Those are some excellent lists
we will all be making. Our final question, what do you see
as the future for film and television criticism
as more traditional outlets change? -Oh, so we're going to end on a sad note? [laughter] -I was thinking like, "Oh, the future. We're looking to the future."
Yes. [laughs] I don't know exactly
what your answer is yet. -I don't know. Criticism for a while as an industry,
sometimes as
a practice, has been a rather bleak one as much as it is incredibly important
to have all of these new voices enter the larger discourse
about the various TV shows or movies or larger cultural trends. It does make it hard
for each individual critic to be heard. I know that's
a very self-indulgent complaint, so I'll just let that go. I think that, honestly,
probably one of the biggest threats is probably still something
like Rotten Tomatoes, where it gives you very quickly
a rundown of what crit
ics generally think as a group, and then it leaves people to not read
the review a lot of the time. The other definitive answer I can give you
is that it is going toward video. I think that's already been happening
for a long time. YouTube has
some now famous video essayists who are doing their own thing. Then, of course, it's also moving on to TikTok. I'm sure whatever comes after TikTok,
it will move on to there. I think people are never going
to tire wanting to talk about stuff that they watc
hed and want to process
with other people and share with other people, but I don't know. Sometimes I think,
"Are we an endangered species?" [laughs] -Yes, I think that there will always be
a place for honest and thoughtful and well-informed discussion
about Film and TV or maybe I just hope so
because my own livelihood depends on it. I don't really know
where it's going either. I think that something
like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, it doesn't have to be all bad, but I think that one
of the th
ings that's-- Because even when I was someone who was-- Whenever Rotten Tomatoes first came out, I was already reading reviews on it,
and that was a place where I discovered a lot of critics that I really love,
and that's how it can be used really well. Inkoo is right, a lot of times people
just use it to look up the number. I'm guilty of that myself, too. Sometimes I don't read
every single review on every single page when I'm curious what's
the general temperature on something that's coming ou
t. It makes it that much harder for people
to engage with those deeper ideas that critics want to talk
about in their reviews. I understand why I'm reduced to just
a little snippet on those sites, but my wish is that people would also read
the other 700 words that accompanied that one sentence. I think the video thing
is probably accurate. With TikTok film criticism, the stuff
that I've seen personally has been a little bit lacking,
which isn't to say that there isn't or can never be great TikTo
k criticism,
just that my For You page maybe doesn't have great taste in critics, I don't know. I think one of the things
that I always fear is in order for that kind of criticism
to survive that we're talking about, you need critics who feel empowered
to speak freely without needing to worry about what will make advertisers happy
or what do the viewers want to hear or the readers want to hear or whatever. That's always I think with any
kind of journalistic or creative endeavor. That's always be
en part of it. I'm not saying
that that's brand new to right now, but especially with something like TikTok,
it can be very direct of like, "Oh, the studios are helping
to sponsor this or whatever." I don't know if that makes it
a little tough. I also think Inkoo was right that people
are always going to watch something and then want to talk to someone about it
or to see what people are saying about it. I know that that's one of the reasons
why I got into criticism in the first place. It is beca
use I watched something
and I'm like, "Oh, I really need to just-- I have thoughts about this
and I need to get off my chest," or "Oh, I did not know
what to make of this. Now I want to read what other people have to say about it." I don't know what the future is. I wish I did. That would make my life easier. Hopefully,
someone somewhere will always be having a smart, interesting discussion
about the different things that we're all watching. -Thank you both so much. That was wonderful. I do want
to say thank you again
to our friends group, Best Friends
of Los Angeles Public Library, for putting this event together. Membership in Best Friends
supports our departments, both the Business and Economics Department
and Science, Technology, and Patents Department,
and gives you access to special members-only-- Special events like this
are open to the public, but we also have
special members-only events, like their recent private docent-led tour
of Central Library. We're putting a link in the
chat,
once again, about how to get more information
about Best Friends group and/or join. Thank you so much
to Inkoo Kang and Angie Han. This was awesome. I loved it. I think everyone else loved it,
I'm pretty sure. It was really wonderful
to spend this hour with you. Thank you so much. -Thank you for having us. -Yes, thank you. Sorry. I had to mute because of my dog, but thanks for having us.
-Perfect. [laughs]
Perfect ending. Thank you.
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