The State of Hollywood with Matt Belloni (‘The Town’)

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2023

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For nearly two decades, Matt Belloni (The Town) has been observing and writing about Hollywood. He joins us today to unpack the latest on the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

After a review of TIFF 2023 (6:50), Belloni dives into Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher’s decisions to return to their talk shows without WGA writers (10:45), the vital issues the guild is fighting for (19:20), and how their negotiations have progressed over the past twenty weeks (23:10). Then, we discuss the history of the Netflix business model (25:05), the state of streaming today (29:50), and Belloni’s fourteen years at The Hollywood Reporter (35:04).

On the back-half, we talk about his path from entertainment law to journalism (41:29), his unique approach to reporting at Puck (44:10), and his predictions for the end of the strikes (50:05). Before we leave, we sit with recent messaging from SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher (57:15), the potential fragmentation within the AMPTP (1:03:00), and to close, Matt's hope for the future of Hollywood (1:08:12).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Frigoso. Welcome to the show. Today I am joined by reporter and podcaster Matt Bellany. He's the author of Puck's flagship
0:49.0	newsletter, What I'm Hearing, where he covers the real inside conversation about money and power in
0:56.0	Hollywood. He also does this on his excellent podcast, The Town, which comes from Puck and
1:02.1	the Ringer.
1:03.2	Bellony was formerly an entertainment attorney before pivoting to journalism, first
1:08.7	writing an Esquire, then the Hollywood reporter, where he eventually became the editorial director.
1:15.1	But since he left the reporter back in 2020, he's become something of a trusted
1:20.3	Hollywood insider, especially throughout this dual labor strike over the summer
1:25.6	between the writers, actors, and the studios,
1:28.6	where a deal has yet to be made between the respective guilds and the AMPTP, which includes Amazon, Apple, Netflix,
1:37.6	NBC Universal, Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, Paramount, and Sony.
1:43.5	And so as we move into Fal, without a clear deal in sight,
1:48.4	I wanted to have Matt on to offer his clear-headed,
1:51.8	no bullshit perspective on the state of play, which includes the negotiations
1:56.4	themselves, the demands from guilds that have yet to be met by the studios, and why I think
2:01.8	this all matters outside of Hollywood.
2:05.0	Because a lot of the press I've read during these strikes seems to be tailored to people within the entertainment industry.
2:12.0	In fact, in conversations I've had with people, you know, throughout this summer,
2:16.0	people who don't work and film and television,
2:20.0	the question I often get is,
2:22.0	why should I care about this?
2:24.0	Why does this matter to me?
	...

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