The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood
The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

The Bulwark

Overview
Episodes

Details

Sonny Bunch hosts The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, a new podcast featuring interviews with folks who have their finger on the pulse of the entertainment industry during this dynamic—and difficult—time.

Recent Episodes

The Copyrighted Material Being Used to Train AI
DEC 7, 2024
The Copyrighted Material Being Used to Train AI
<div>On this week’s episode, I talked to Alex Reisner about his pieces in <em>The Atlantic </em>highlighting the copyrighted material being hoovered into large language models to help AI chatbots simulate human speech. If you’re a screenwriter and would like to see which of your work has been appropriated to aid in the effort, click here; he has assembled <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/opensubtitles-ai-data-set/680650/">a searchable database</a> of nearly 140,000 movie and TV scripts that have been used without permission. (And you should read his other stories about copyright law <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/generative-ai-lawsuits-copyright-fair-use/677595/">reaching its breaking point</a> and “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/chatgpt-memorization-lawsuit/677099/">the memorization problem</a>.”) In this episode, we also got into the metaphysics of art and asked what sort of questions need to be asked as we hurtle toward the future. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!</div>
play-circle
40 MIN
Comcast Is Spinning Off Its Cable Assets: What Does that Mean?
NOV 23, 2024
Comcast Is Spinning Off Its Cable Assets: What Does that Mean?
<div>This week I’m rejoined by Sean McNulty of The Ankler’s morning roundup newsletter, <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-151883030">The Wakeup</a>, to discuss the big news in cable land: ComcastNBCUniversal’s decision to spin (most of!) their cable properties into a new, separate company, called SpinCo for now. What does this mean for MSNBC, USA, and the rest of the impacted channels? Why is Bravo staying under the Comcast umbrella? What impact will this have on NBC? All of these questions are asked and some answers are given. Warning: There is a fair amount of rank speculation in this episode, but that couldn’t be avoided. </div>
play-circle
40 MIN
Melding Video Games and TV Shows
NOV 16, 2024
Melding Video Games and TV Shows
<div>This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Jacob Navok, the CEO of Genvid Entertainment, to discuss his company’s new partnership with DC Comics, DC Heroes United. A combination mobile game and Justice League television show, DC Heroes United is a fascinating hybrid entertainment experience, one that Navok has been working on in various forms for years now. <br> <br> The first 20 minutes or so of the show are largely about DC Heroes United; after that, we discuss the evolution of this sort of interactive gaming/viewing more broadly, including earlier experiments on Facebook and with properties like <em>The Walking Dead</em> and <em>Silent Hill</em>. It’s a fascinating new arena of entertainment, and I hope you learn something about how the next generation is interacting with media even if you’re not that interested in the properties themselves. <br> <br> If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!</div>
play-circle
58 MIN
The Christmas Movie Industrial Complex
NOV 9, 2024
The Christmas Movie Industrial Complex
<div>This week I’m joined by Russell Hainline, the screenwriter of the forthcoming Netflix original <em>Hot Frosty</em> as well as a whole bunch of Hallmark original Christmas movies (including last year’s <em>The Santa Summit </em>and the forthcoming <em>The Santa Class</em>). I asked him on today to talk about the burgeoning market for Christmas movies on channels like Hallmark and streaming services like Netflix, and we had a great chat about how Hallmark resembles a cable network less than the old Hollywood studios like RKO and MGM. What lessons can the rest of the industry learn from them? If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend!</div>
play-circle
52 MIN
Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Fear and Desire
NOV 2, 2024
Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Fear and Desire
<div>This week I’m joined by Mark Cousins, the writer and director of the new documentary, <em>My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock</em>. We talked about his movie’s unorthodox presentation, why Hitchcock remains eternally relevant, and how he puts together his incredible video essays. (If you’ve never seen his <em>The Story of Film: An Odyssey</em>, you really should.) And then he turned the tables on me with some closing questions! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!</div>
play-circle
33 MIN