From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

I've always been conflicted about shooting a film about free soloing just because it's so

dangerous. It's hard to not imagine your friend falling through the frame to his death.

The new film Free Solo follows professional rock climber Alex Honnold's ascent of Yosemite's

towering Al Capitan without

any ropes. When he was shooting the climb, co-director Jimmy Chin feared adding cameras to an already

precarious situation could have lethal consequences. This week, while I'm out of town, we're sharing

an episode of the KCRW podcast, The Document,

in which our colleague, Matt Halsman, talks to married filmmaking couple Jimmy Chin and

Chai Vashirelli about how and why they made their dizzying film free solo.

But first, we banter.

Stay tuned, it's the business from KCRW.

Thank you. Stay tuned. It's the business from KCRW. I'm joined by my partner in banter. Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt.

Hi there.

So, hi there from Lisbon. I have just been at a large tech conference, but thanks to the magic of technology, I can banter from afar.

I have to say, this conference was absolutely mammoth, and there were literally tens of

thousands of people at this thing, and I'm not a tech person, so it was all very strange

and new to me. But back to the business at hand.

Hollywood, as you know, as we have discussed,

there's very little more precious in Hollywood at this time than a franchise.

And studios, therefore, studios, TV networks are incentivized to milk these franchises when they are fortunate enough to find them

until they are, you know, shriveled shadows of themselves.

...