406: Am I Racist? with Justin Folk
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Hey guys, Mike Rowe here. It's The Way I Heard It. This episode is called Am I Racist?

It's an honest question. I think the answer is no. But hey, I could be wrong, Chuck. I could be wrong. Well, you could be. I don't think you are. I mean, everybody could be. And I think there are people who want to tell us that we are. How would you know, though? I mean, how would you know if another person is racist? Wouldn't they have to tell you, yeah, I am? Or could you look at them and somehow...

decide. For me, I think it's more about actions than anything else. I mean, words certainly could lend themselves to make you go, hey, you know what? I think that guy might be a racist because of the choice words that he used. But really, you know, it's how people treat other people. But even words, even words. I mean, have you ever told a racist joke? Have you ever laughed at a racist joke? You know? Never, Mike. Never in my entire life. You've never done that, have you? I never have. Well, then you for sure are deeply racist.

My guest is Justin Folk. He's produced a movie with his friend Matt Walsh called Am I Racist? It is hitting theaters. Well, it's already in theaters now, but when I interviewed Justin, it was not in theaters yet, although you caught a sneak peek.

And I have seen the movie as well. There's no need to spend a lot of time talking about it because we get right into it with the conversation. Spoiler alert, it's an important movie. And I am well aware of the fact that Chuck and I and Justin are three white middle-aged men about to have a conversation about race in America.

What could possibly go wrong, Charlie? Nothing at all. I mean, I love the fact that you're calling us middle-aged because that gives me a shot at living to be 122. Well, look, I also called us racist. So there we go. Wait a minute. No, you just said we were white dudes. I just asked. Well, you know, it's clear that we're white. It's clear that we're dudes. I think it's true.

it's clear that we're not racists. But there is an argument being made that we are. The argument says essentially you know you're a racist if you think you're not a racist.

And then it just spins from there. This movie is shocking. It's funny. Very funny. It's important. And it's from the same guys who brought us What Is a Woman, No Safe Spaces, and of course their monster hit Trading Up with Mike Rowe and Chloe Hudson. Chloe Hudson. Shout out Chloe Hudson. Yeah.

This guy makes good movies. They're controversial, but like I said, they're kind of important. And this one is going to unleash, I hope, many, many, many conversations like the one. Let's hope it starts conversations. Let's hope so. Let's hope so. I've been hearing for a long time, the country needs to have a conversation. Here's a conversation right following this. Right after this, you're going to get one.

You're going to get one, folks, and I think you're going to like it a lot. Am I racist? Stay tuned. Find out. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

I don't blame companies who choose to make their stuff overseas, and I don't blame Americans who buy those things. Inflation is real, prices are high, budgets are tight, and most products made in this country today are more expensive to manufacture than their foreign counterparts. That sucks, but it's true, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

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along with some American-made t-shirts and blue jeans and more at American-Giant.com slash Mike. Save 20% with promo code Mike at American-Giant.com slash Mike. American Giant, American made. American Giant, American made. Well, first of all, not only thank you for being here, but you showed up early, man, and I don't know how to...

I don't know what to think about that, honestly, in this world. I mean, is there really... Don't get weirded out by it. I wasn't sending any kind of weird message. I was walking in down there on 4th, and I see this guy just kind of standing there on the phone, which, of course...

Not shocking at all. And I'm like, hey, kind of familiar. And I'm like, oh, my God, it's Justin. Surprisingly not a homeless guy. Not homeless. Not homeless and standing upright. And I'm like, this is with an actual phone. Anyway, we're caffeinated. We're good to go. But as I look at your resume here, I can't help but notice the conspicuous absence of your greatest work, Trading Up, I believe it was called. Oh, gosh. With Mike Rowe and Chloe Hudson. That's true. I tried to put that behind me. Oh, gosh.

Hey, man, you've done it again. I watched your movie. Obviously, Chuck, you saw it with him in the theater. Yeah. Was it two weeks ago? Yeah, about two weeks ago. Yeah, you were out in Burbank. Look, I don't have a crystal ball, but...

There's a storm coming. Yeah. And it's coming in your direction, man. This is the calm before the storm, for sure. Yeah. Well, in real time, your movie hasn't hit yet. That's coming out this Friday because we're where we know. What's today, Chuck?

Today is Wednesday, September 11th in real time. Oh, it's 9-11. Yeah. Yeah. Holy cow. Thanks for bringing it up. Sorry. Yeah. But the folks at home are listening to this or wherever they are a couple of weeks later. So your movie, Am I a Racist, has been out. Yeah. So maybe the storm's already happened. It's happened. Yeah. Yeah. And still happening probably. Right. Which means I'm going to have to check in with you. Yeah.

right after this podcast to see what it feels like. What are you expecting really to happen as a result of this? Because you kicked a hornet's nest. Yeah. I mean, you and Matt did this before with What is a Woman. I think this is a bigger hornet's nest. I think the hornets in it are angrier. Well, yeah, it's a hornet's nest that's attached to a lot of other things, a lot of other interests, a lot of other, you know,

other hornets that have a vested interest in what we're what we're sort of speaking out against so i do expect there to be you know i think for right now uh the people that would normally oppose a film like this have been mostly quiet i hope and i think our goal all along was to create critical mass around this movie enough that they could not ignore it they had to respond in some way not just the people that are in the movie but the people that don't like the movie

And so I don't know what's gonna happen. I can't really answer your question with too much specificity other than I do hope that it creates a big conversation about these issues. I mean, ultimately that's why we're making these movies in the first place.

is not just to go out and try to get a box office, but to really... They've been talking about having the real conversation about race for a long time. Sure. And we're just the ones that are going to offer it to people. That was our goal. I don't think it can be ignored. Now, I said the same thing about What is a Woman? Because that landed... I mean, you couldn't have picked a better time for that movie to land. Was that luck? Or...

was that really the... I call it divine providence. It's not something that I can take credit for. It just, you know, really Matt was the one that was going around asking that question for a long time. I think he's the one that saw this coming in terms of what his woman and

knowing what that question means and sort of seeing this issue on the horizon. Matt knew that was a issue, the transgender gender ideology thing that was going to touch everything. I think most of the rest of us thought, oh, you know what? That's a weird issue.

I'm going to kind of ignore that. I don't think that really applies to my life. I don't see how that impacts anything, you know, in my circle, guys like me, we were wrong. This thing was pervasive and it was kind of coming everywhere. And Matt was the one that saw that as an issue that was going to touch every institution and was going to work its way all through society and then ultimately affect children and

- Sports. - Sports and everything else. And so he was the only one that was willing to sort of kind of get out there first on this thing. - Well, he doesn't get enough credit for that. He gets a lot of credit justifiably, I think, for putting himself out there. I know he is a target today. I know he's got 24/7 security. That's what I mean by the Hornets. I mean, he's probably on the front line of it. - Right. - Right? But really, to ask that question at a time when nobody else was asking,

That's rare and smart. And it must have been really... If he were sitting here now, that's the question I would ask him. What did it feel like to suddenly hear the question you'd been asking?

echoed everywhere. And to see the headlines catch up with a thing that matters to you, I've been super lucky to see that happen with MicroWorks. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, you wind up riding in some weird kind of slipstream. Yeah. Yeah, you get pulled into it and you're like, okay, I kind of created this thing, but now I'm here for the ride and

And in his case, I mean, that question got all the way up to the Supreme Court nomination process. Right. That was at the end of the film. Think about that. You're like, maybe you're talking to your wife a few years ago. Maybe you're having a beer with a buddy. And you're just like, why doesn't somebody simply ask that question and insist on a sensible answer, a scientific answer, an answer rooted in logic and biology? Right.

And nobody was doing it until everybody was. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got to hand it to him. I don't know how he can read the tea leaves like he does, but in the case of

the gender ideology and the what is woman question in the case of this one on the issue of race. And now here we are sitting there with DEI being a major, major issue in our country today that we are chewing at and trying to figure out. We have a candidate that some are calling the DEI candidate. And I thought maybe we were going to miss our window on this a little bit. I thought DEI sort of flared up and kind of started to go away, but it came roaring back in a major way.

just recently. And of course the presidential election has a lot to do with that. Um, and so once again, here we are sitting kind of smack right middle of the zeitgeist. And again, I can't take credit for that. I'm happy we're here. It's a lot of fun to be sitting out there with a finished film and you know how long it takes to finish a film too. And you know how hard that is. And it's hard to time anything. Um, you think what you are going to make is going to be relevant, um,

a year, a year and a half when you're finished, but you don't know. And so we went out and made this film. It took about a year and a half to make. About two years ago, we were talking about the idea on the heels of what is a woman. And here we are, and we're sitting right in the middle of a presidential campaign, which is talking a whole lot about things like

and race and gender and all these other things that are or shouldn't be qualifications for a person to do their job, but yet somehow they are. And there's a major conversation in this country about that exact thing. And so, yeah, I hope we can kind of step into that conversation and kind of let off a little bit of a stink bomb. But...

I want to point out that this is a movie with incredibly serious undertones and earth-shattering implications, but it's also a comedy. It is a laugh-out-loud, funny movie in places where I didn't expect to hear myself laughing. I was roaring.

So how conscious was that? I mean, comedies are tough in and of themselves. This topic is big and hairy and tough and fraught in and of itself. How did you guys collaborate and think about keeping the funny in? It was actually our number one goal starting out, to make a funny movie and to make it

We just didn't want to do... So what is a woman? There's humor in there, but it blends with a lot of other things. And there's times where you watch that movie and you get angry, and there's times where you get sad.

In doing a follow-up to that movie, we didn't want to make What Is Woman Part 2, this time on race. Matt and I and our team, and we have a very tight-knit team, and we all sort of share the same sense of humor in a lot of ways. We have a lot of the same influences of things that we like, things like the British office and just the type of humor that's really uncomfortable. And so from the get-go, when we decided about what are we going to do next, we

Comedy was the North Star because we know, and we saw this with What Is Woman, that if you can get people laughing, it does open them up to the ideas. And so comedy is a powerful force. And it's something that...

conservative people, guys like Matt Walton, you know, conservatives of the past haven't done a very good job of utilizing that tool. So we definitely wanted to utilize the power of comedy and even ridicule in that sense. And the left has done a great job of using ridicule in the past for a long time. You look at Jon Stewart, you look at Stephen Colbert,

You look at even Borat and how they would kind of make fun of people in the, you know, middle Americans. And so comedy and ridicule are very, very powerful things. And they're very hard to do. Thankfully, we've got, like, Matt Walsh is up to the task of being in these situations and making things extremely awkward and funny. Just so good. I was just going to say, can you give our audience just sort of like the elevator pitch of what the movie is exactly? Just...

Just lay the groundwork. Yeah, so essentially Matt Walsh asked the question early on in the film. That's what everybody says. Am I racist? You know, that's the question of the times. Are you racist? Systemically, fundamentally racist. Are you as a white person, no matter what you do, do you have that bias in your body? That's what we're being told by the people that are pushing this agenda. And so Matt asked the question and he goes on a journey to find the answer. And in doing so...

He leans in. I guess the difference between this movie and What Is Woman is he believes what these people are telling him, and he goes down that road with them. In fact, he becomes a certified DEI expert, and he begins to teach these things himself. Card carrying. A card carrying. Yeah, yeah.

And he has the card in his back pocket and he's very willing to... He's not afraid to use it. He's not afraid to use it. He's not afraid to use it. We did a zig where... And what is a woman? We did a zag. And what is a woman? He finds out about these issues and he goes and challenges and confronts them.

In this movie, in Am I Racist, Matt digs into the DEI and he embraces the ideas. He takes things to their logical conclusions. That's really what we wanted to show. At the end of the film, he does this workshop where he teaches a workshop. And if you look closely at the workshop, I know a lot of it's played for comedy, but the ideas behind what he's saying are things that he had heard all throughout the movie. I mean, we didn't just...

kind of come up with this stuff for the sake of silliness. These are things that we were hearing along the way. And we just wanted to kind of, okay, well, let's see what that leads to. Let's see what actually happens when people behave this way, when they treat each other this way and put these ideas into real life. And so Am I Racist? is a journey of one man's

you know, journey into DEI and anti-racism. And some of the ideas are being pushed by people that are very powerful in our society today. When you talk about Robin DiAngelo, when you talk about a lot of other people that have made a significant living, let's say, putting these ideas out there with their best-selling books and everything else. But we just wanted to kind of peel it back and let Americans see what this stuff is all about. Because there are so many genuinely well-intended ideas

people who really don't want to be racist. They really want to understand. They want to be better. They're buying it and they're open to it.

And that's actually where the comedy lives. Well, they're taking advantage of that, right? They are taking advantage of those people that genuinely want to say, hey, I want to be a nice person. I don't think I have this hate in my body, but what do I need to do to make sure that I don't? Right. And so in that sense, they are, you know, listen, we have racial wounds in our country. There's no doubt about that.

But what they're doing is they're tearing those wounds open and they're pouring salt on them for the benefit of, you know, power and money and these other things. And they're basically, you know, taking us away from colorblindness into a situation where that's all that matters again. And it's a real danger. If you look at, you know, race relations in this country, they have gone the wrong way for a little while now. I mean, I remember growing up in the 90s and

thinking that we were in a society back then that seemed almost post-racial. I mean, there was still racists out there. Most of them lived in a shack somewhere and had no bearing on society in any way. But, you know, black culture and, you know, some of the most cool people in society were black people when I grew up. I idolized these people. And then now we're in a situation where every headline... At times I ask myself, is CNN just trying to stoke a race war in this country?

Just the way they would take things that have nothing to do with race whatsoever and put a race tag on it. And now we're in a situation where we're completely divided again on this issue. And it didn't have to be this way. Well, to reduce it, name something today in the headlines that doesn't have a racial component. Can you find anything? I can't.

And to your point, that's not the way it was. You know, the biggest pushback I got in the course of promoting my movie, Something to Stand For, now streaming exclusively on Angel's Guild, was the idea that if you look at the progress we've made and if you talk about the accomplishments the country has achieved over the course of its history,

you are immediately deaf to this problem that you're talking about. In other words, you can't say, look at the progress we've made without quickly adding, there's an awful lot of work left to do. I mean, obviously, there's a ton of work left to do. And yes, we were founded by imperfect people. And yet, if you don't acknowledge...

all of that in the same sentence, then somebody will finish the sentence for you and you'll be tagged either, what is it, privileged? Blind to this, that, or the unwoke. I don't even know anymore. But like with What Is A Woman, the larger conversation has just dominated everything. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

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There's a thing that I have trouble with with our society today, and I don't know if it's the media or what it is, but our country, our society has trouble believing that two things can be true at the same time. This is something that I get so upset about. It's like, yes, we can have

historic issues with racism in our country and slavery and all these things that we had to get past. But yes, we can also have an incredible enlightened country that is like nowhere else in the world in any other time in human existence that found a way to navigate that and to break it down and ultimately make it go away. Now, are we across the finish line? Do we wipe our hands and walk away and all the work has been done? Well, of course not. People, people are flawed.

But we created a system of government in this country that allowed us to move past this stuff. And I think that's what your movie is all about. And yet people can't say, oh, but hold on, though. That other stuff. Forget what you're trying to say about America. It's horrible. So I just don't understand why people don't have the capacity to understand that two things can be true at the same time. And I'm baffled by our collective inability to draw conclusions

a straight thick line between what we think and what we do, right? I mean, action. Humans, H. sapien, were capable of all kinds of thoughts and all kinds of feelings. Some may be subconscious, some may be deliberate, many out of our control.

Impulses, right? I mean, the stuff of being human is all bundled up into that amorphous mix of partial uncontrollability. Feelings, nothing more than feelings, whatever it is. And then there's action. And action is the thing that we're convicted for. It's the reason you wind up in court, not for thinking about parking illegally, but for parking illegally.

Not for thinking nasty thoughts about your neighbor, but for lighting the cross on fire in their yard. So the point comes out in the movie, but just to really hammer it home, all of this coaching, all of this industry, it's not based on changing what people do. It's based on changing what they think they feel. And so it's literally...

Right. And final point. By design, by the way. Exactly. Because the other brilliant thing about the movie that's not funny, but truly, truly germane, is every time you introduce someone, an expert, you make damn sure the audience knows what they're charging. Yeah.

These are deprogrammers, deprogramming people who don't need to be deprogrammed. And that's at the heart of it. At the heart of this thing isn't race. It's money. And that needs to be put at the very top of the chain, whether it's BLM, whether it's DEI, whether it's ESG. All of these acronyms seem to be connected to

by the filthy, filthy lucra. Yeah, and I hope that is one of the main points that comes out in the film. Obviously, you pointed out how we deliberately splashed it across the screen, those money amounts that we paid these people, very much by design because we wanted people to know, hey, that's what's going on here, right? This isn't, like you said, it's not about race, a lot of this. This is about power, and it's about money, and you have people that are sort of

Going back, like I said, tearing open these racial wounds for the benefit of themselves. And we have to ask ourselves. And listen, again, they're taking advantage of people. I want to be super clear. You're not paying them a talent fee to be in your movie. You're paying them the going rate that they're charging today, yesterday, tomorrow to help people on their way.

their awakening, right? Follow the money. My God. Yeah, no, these were their standard fees, for sure. Yeah, these were not...

In the case of Robin DiAngelo, now you know what her speaking fee is, Mike. If you want to go tomorrow and have her right here in studio with you, you know what she costs. So you can thank us for budgeting accordingly. But yeah, these are their fees, and some make more than others. Some have figured it out a little bit more than others. Yeah.

It is amazing how a multi-billion dollar industry could pop up around something like this. And again, we're going back to the fact that some of it may have had good intentions starting out. Some people wanted to do some good. But once those greenbacks kick in and you're getting hired by Google and Netflix and every other big company and you're going from job to job to job and you're realizing, hey, this is working out pretty well. Are you going to...

peel it back. I don't think so. You're going to keep going. This thing has only gone one direction, and that's more and more money around this issue. It'd be bad enough if all of this was rooted in the con of convincing people, all people, that they're racist deep down. That would be bad and deserving of great pushback. But the real tragedy in it is that you can't

You can't run that con without contemporaneously telling another group of people that they are victims. For this thing to really, really work, black America needs to genuinely believe that they're screwed. They need to genuinely believe that the system is still systemically against them. And if they genuinely believe that, nothing good can possibly happen for them.

Right. Yeah. And I mentioned the CNN headlines. Yeah. That's the device right there. It is constantly reminding them, constantly telling them. And if you mention something enough, people are going to believe it. The Jussie Smollett incident actually set back race relations in our country by a few points. And that's crazy because the story from the beginning was nuts. I don't know how anybody believed that story from the very, very beginning.

But yet, with the media and when the people involved, whether it's Kamala Harris or CNN say, you know, Jussie was a modern-day lynching. It has the effect. It definitely has the effect. The thing that I hope we're pointing out in the movie is this philosophy, this, I guess, call it what it is, ethos or agenda. It doesn't have an end. It doesn't have a hopeful ending. There's no way out of it.

Right? When you're telling, okay, this group, you're an oppressor and this group, you're a victim. And there's no way to solve that. There is no prescription to this. It's just the way it is. You're a victim. There's nothing you can do about it. You're an oppressor. You need to just be guilty the rest of your life.

and it is a hopeless, dark philosophy that goes nowhere. And that's what Robin DiAngelo's book is, White Fragility. Except for the people, I know the point you're going to make, but it does go somewhere for the people who perpetuate the narrative. If you're a news network and you're selling the oppressor and the oppressed narrative, you make money. More people watch, advertising rates go up, everybody prospers. If you're even on the

on the front front line of it, like Robin, if you're a person with a best-selling book charging all kinds of money to go out and really hammer that point home, well, that's good for you too. I mean, this is an industry. It's a real industry and it does lead somewhere great for opportunists, profiteers, racketeers, and so forth, but it ain't good for the country.

Well, the most clever thing they ever did was come up with this word systemic, right? Because you can't put your finger on it. It's everywhere. It's like the air. You know, you can point at real racism when you see it. Everybody knows what it looks like. And by the way, being a racist is one of the worst things you can be in society today.

But we all know what that looked like in the past. And as it sort of, a lot of the racism slipped away in our society, they had to figure out a way to reinvent it and to kind of give it a different, rooted in something. And so the systemic thing was, okay, well, if there's a disparity anywhere in society, well, it has to be become because of racism. That's it. Like if there's any differences between people,

Forget the fact that they're people for a moment. It just has to be because of race. And this is the point of Ibram X. Kendi's book, How to Be an Anti-Racist. This is his central premise of his book, that if there's a disparity anywhere in society...

anywhere. It has to be because of race and no other factors could be involved in that. No cultural factors, no economic factors, you name it. Family, forget it. It has to be because of race. And so, yeah, it's endless. And so it is very brilliant. The whole systemic tag allows this thing to go on with no end. Yeah. Hammers look for nails.

And if you tell your brain to look for a thing, it'll find it, whether it's there or not. That's just the fault in our stars. We've been looking for this everywhere, and we found it, or we feel like we found it everywhere. And I guess that's the question you're asking. It doesn't lead anywhere good, but how do we back away from it?

if not through pop culture, if not through more conversations, if not more questions. I mean, ask the question. If everybody asks the question, am I a racist? And everybody goes on the journey, then can't hurt. Yeah. Well, you kind of see the end result there in Matt's workshop, what happens if you take these things to their conclusions. And there's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of cussing. There's a lot of people just being angry at each other. It just doesn't go anywhere good.

Like, what happened if you didn't put the black square on your Twitter feed? Right. I remember that was, what, a couple years ago, I guess? Yeah, more than that. Yeah, it was during Black Lives Matter. I mean, is that over now? Is Black Lives Matter over? Did somebody roll it out? You're asking Chuck? Yeah. Yeah, as an expert on this. Well, no. I mean, I know when it started. I know how it started. I know who the founders are. I know those stories. But when did it end? Or did it?

Good question. Good question. I don't know. It definitely seems to lose a little bit of its luster and a little bit of its power. I mean, obviously, when people started looking at the paper trail of where that money went...

There's some inconvenient truth. Yeah. When those dollars that kind of flowed into BLM in the early days, because people generally did feel bad about this stuff and they wanted to figure out a way to help. And they were told this is the way to do it. And those women that created BLM were the answer. And they're the ones that were going to be like Moses to take us out of this into the promised land. And

And then next thing you know, they're living in these really nice estate houses up near the Calabasas. And millions of dollars have poof into the air. Same thing with Ibram X. Kendi. His think tank that he has at Harvard...

something to the tune of $20 million or more. I don't know the exact number, so don't quote me on that. But a lot of money just went poof, gone into thin air. There was no work that was produced. There was nothing that kind of came out of it. It's just that people felt bad. They felt guilty. These were the leaders that were going to take us out. They wrote the checks. And these people today, you know, I don't know how they feel about themselves. I can't imagine. But, you know,

They have some nice properties around the country and around the world. So, yeah, that's BLM for you. Did you try to get Ibram X. Kendi in the film? I don't want to give away too much of the inside baseball, but I will answer that. Yes, yes, we did. And it was bad timing, though, because...

At the time that we reached out, this scandal had kind of hit the news. And so I think he was kind of ducking underground at the point when we contacted him. And I don't think he was doing any media. He's not very good at media anyways. Have you ever seen an interview with Ibram X. Kendi? It's just, it doesn't end well. It's just not good. And when we reached out, this was sort of at the height of people were investigating his organization.

And so we had very, very poor timing if we really did want to talk to him. He didn't want to talk to anybody at that point. I wonder what happened between him and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm a fan of Malcolm's storytelling. I've read his books. I know the criticisms around it. But I was really surprised a couple of years ago when he welcomed Ibram into his, what was it, Pushkin, I think, and really rolled out the red carpet and made a very impassioned plea for...

his prescience and so forth. I just wonder, what do you do if you're him in the wake of that? What do you do if you're him in the wake of that Douglas Brinkley monk debate? Did you see that? Douglas Murray, you mean? Douglas Murray. Douglas Murray, yeah. What did I say? Douglas Brinkley. Brinkley, yeah. Yeah, wrong Doug. Well, don't mess with Douglas Murray. That's your first mistake. Sure.

Don't try to go get into a logic debate with Douglas Murray. But no, listen, I mean, you're tapping into what I think what we all kind of know. When you're a fraud, you're a fraud, right? And you've probably heard about the allegation that Robin D'Angelo is dealing with, with the plagiarism. And

I don't see that as a coincidence. I see her philosophy. Tell me about the fraud. Tell me more about the plagiarism. Well, her doctoral dissertation, I believe, was plagiarized. She plagiarized two, I think, Asian women, I think, that had been working on this topic and kind of come up with the...

And if you read it side by side, I mean, it's clear as day, plagiarism. Yeah, so one of her most important works that put her on the scene was plagiarized. And I think it was the foundation of her work thereafter that she became very famous for. So these are not necessarily her ideas. I think she put her own spin on it as a white woman, as a guilty white woman. And she packaged it up nicely,

And she was the first to really sell the idea. These ideas were definitely weren't not, were not hers originally. A lot of them. So, you know, I mean, for an academic, I thought plagiarism was a kind of a bad thing to hang around your neck. If you're an academic, I thought that would be difficult to crawl out from nowadays, but we'll see. We'll see. I mean, we've, we've heard a lot of plagiarism nowadays and people don't really seem to care. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do

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Well, it's just thievery. Whether you're an academic or not, if you're a comedian, hearing somebody else use your jokes, that hurts. That's intellectual theft. It's true. You don't expect it from the president of Harvard. And when you see it, what do you do? The answer should be clear and present. But what if she's in the wrong category of people to punish for that sort of thing?

which clearly she was. Right. Claudine Gay was. That's right. Yeah. So it's just, we don't,

how to treat behavior. We don't know how to treat good or bad behavior. Two different standards seem to be at work all of the time. Two different kinds of justice. Two different kinds of punishments. I don't know how this actually will hurt her. Again, just to reemphasize the point, these are accusations, so there hasn't been any real fallout yet. But when you look at it side by side, it's clear as day that

But in her circles and the way we are in society, I just don't know if it'll hurt. You know, I don't think... This movie is going to hurt her. I don't want to give it away. But there's a moment in this movie where she does something on screen.

You gasped in the theater. Everybody in the theater gasped. Everybody in the theater gasped and their jaws just fell in their laps and we all made audible sounds and it was, then it was like you put your hand over your mouth because you feel so uncomfortable about it. I was watching in an empty room and said, oh shit, no way, out loud, backed it up and watched it again because way, because she does it on camera.

And this is the real point, Justin. These movies, they take a lesson from candid camera in a way. Now, the cameras aren't hidden the way Alan Funt hid them. They're clearly there. But what it reveals is the people we want for neighbors, the people we want as friends, they behave the same way, whether the camera's there or not. And the people that you profiled

and the people that we meet, even the well-intended ones who are just trying to get better, they know they're being filmed. And that fascinates me. It's the Heisenberg principle. It's close to it. It's the uncertainty principle. And it basically posits that the business of observing a thing fundamentally changes the thing. Yeah, it is the uncertainty principle, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's

I don't know what that word is. It's a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known. That's right. Is that right? Yeah.

Everything is connected and you mess with those connections, both in physics and in social anthropology, when you emphasize or de-emphasize one. And the business of observation speaks to that emphasis or de-emphasis. And that's what your cameras do.

Sometimes they bring out a performance and other times they reveal a truth. And real comedy and powerful documentaries and the moments that made us gasp that we were talking about, they were made possible by a revelation, not a performance. And that revelation was facilitated by a camera that wasn't candid,

But right there. And so what Robin did, she had to do. Yeah. Because of the camera. Right. Right. She had to. Right. And that is the same dynamic that's, it's that thumb you feel in the small of your back when you know you're being manipulated, when you're in a group and you've been asked a question and you don't want to be the bigot. You don't want to be the racist. Mm-hmm.

And so the next thing you know, you're smiling. You're smiling at people you normally wouldn't smile at. You bear them no ill will, but you're just so. You've got a whole different way to act now. It's the panhandler that you're walking by, white or black. Now suddenly it matters. The white guy is like, "Ah, you bum. Beat it." Not now. You're just going to take my money and go off and you're clearly addicted to something. I'm not going to give you money. Oh, a different color?

I'd hate to be seen by all these people standing around watching me as being uncaring to this poor person who's been so clearly disadvantaged by a long list of systemic things that are actually my fault. So here's $5. That's an amazing dynamic and it's playing out everywhere.

Well, thanks. And thanks for the education on the Heisenberg effect there. I thought Heisenberg... Wasn't that the name of Walter White's character in Breaking Bad? I am Heisenberg. Yeah. Isn't that... Okay. Heisenberg. Yeah. Not Berger. I'm the one who knocks. Remember that episode? Oh, that's truly one of the best delivered lines in modern TV. Yeah. I'm the one who knocks. I think...

There's a lot of unpack there. I think you're exactly right. She had to do it. The goal for me, I think, as a director, was to create the perfect sandbox for Matt to play in. And that involves our crew. That involves our filming apparatus, if you will. Sort of an expensive recording device. I got a great crew. They're total pros. Love Ben. It's Ben's movie, too, man. Oh, yeah. Ben delivers like... To be dropped into those high-pressure situations like that, Ben just...

delivered beyond what we could have imagined. I mean, his lines, you know, when he says, you know, I never turn on cash. I mean, unbelievable. He claims that we got him a few drinks the night before, and that's how he got convinced to do this. But anyhow, Ben, and then of course my crew, Anton Syme, Andy Patch, Chris Claypool, these guys are all pros, right? So when Robin is looking around the room, first of all, she can't read Matt, okay? And

Matt doesn't give her anything. He is better at this than anybody I've ever seen. He should play poker for sure. Yeah. Oh my gosh. He should just retire and play poker. You're right. But the next people that, you know, Robin or anybody else that we talk to will look at is the crew because they would be the next tell. So...

Andy, Chris, our sound guy, our producers, you know, Kirby, Rebecca, whoever else is in the room and everybody total pro. So I guess I'm just lucky to have a crew like that, have professionals I work with because it could all fall apart quickly if, if you don't have everything in order. So what kind of conversations did you have with the crew going in? How did you direct them? Well, we've been at it now for a little while. Um, this is the same crew from what is a woman. So, uh,

We've been in some situations before that were a little hairy, if you will. We had congressmen walk out on us and other things like that. And if you look at the scene with the congressman in What is a Woman, the one that walks out on Matt when he asks the question, if you look at his eyes, the way he's looking around the room, we cut it a certain way and left it on him because we loved how he was searching the room. He was looking at his assistant. Yeah.

The staffer in the corner, he's looking at me. He's looking at camera guys. How did I get here? He doesn't want to, yeah, he's like, who put me in this chair? And who's to blame for that? And I doubt his staffer still works for him. But, you know, he's looking around the room with his eyes, searching like, okay, get me out of here. Get me out of here now. And again, credit my crew for...

hanging in there and just, you know, nothing. Nothing. What will you say to the obvious criticism that's going to come? That you were deceitful, that you flat out lied, that you, you know, you just weren't candid with your subjects. They can say that. We did everything that we said we were going to do in these situations. We would approach them and we would say, hey, we want to talk to you about anti-racism.

You are a leader in the field. Check. We would love to hear what you have to say. Check. And we basically would appeal to them with their ego. And of course, we would, you know, our checks cleared. And so we didn't check checked. So we didn't do anything that we didn't say we were going to do. Now, I mean, you know, if they're angry because they're in a Matt Walsh film, well, then that's their problem.

But the criticism, well, he didn't look like Matt Walsh. He had a man bun and he had the skinny jeans on. How does Matt Walsh not look like Matt Walsh with that beard? It's not a very good disguise. I mean, it's kind of by design, kind of on the border. And Matt's on a journey at that point in the story. He's on a journey. He looks that way because he's on a journey. But I'll also make this point too. I don't think that anybody that we filmed

would go back on anything that they said. I don't think that... We didn't edit things out of context. They can't accuse us of that. Right. That's totally fair. Everything is as it was. That was important for us, because we wanted to show Americans what these people really feel, or what they say, what they're teaching, what they're preaching. And so we didn't do manipulative editing. And I still think, to this day, there isn't anything that they said that they wouldn't stand by. So... They just didn't know.

the context in which they were ultimately going to appear. And the reason I think it's fair in this case is because they were paid. They took the money. - And they signed a release. - They signed a release and they took the money. Quick sidebar, Chuck, I think I've told you this story, but I had a buddy in New York, struggling actor when I was living there. Good looking guy, goatee, chiseled, and he got this audition for Doers.

Dewars is doing this campaign, I like, look, it's a big campaign. If you get it, you're gonna be on posters, subways, buses, bus stops. It's gonna be out there. He auditions and he gets it. He's so excited and he goes to the photo shoot the next day and there are two or three other guys who are cast in this spot and they all kind of look the same. They're very confident and they're rugged and they all have goatees, right?

and they're sitting on the steps. - So they look like Chuck, is what you're saying. - They look just like Chuck. And they're sitting on the steps of this brownstone and they go through the whole, big time photographer comes in. Anyhow, the ad hits a couple weeks later and he's on the subway and he looks up and there he is with three other guys all looking at the camera as they were directed to do, confident, tough, self-assured. And the caption says, "Okay,

We all did the goatee thing. Can we just move on, please? And next to it's a bottle of Dewar's that says, keep it real. So all these guys are basically in an ad. They didn't know exactly what the ad was going to do. And so we had this conversation like later that week. He was like, I don't know what, should I get a lawyer? I'm like, get a lawyer. What are you talking about? Did you get paid? Yeah, I got paid.

Happy with the photo? Yeah, I'm happy with the photo, but I didn't know. I'm like, well, welcome to the world, dude. You must be this tall to get on the ride. And there are a lot of different movies to be made. There are a lot of ways to advertise a thing. But I guess my question is, is your conscience utterly clear? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like...

Again, they're saying the things that they truly believe we give them the platform to do so. Just because they're mad that they talked to Matt Walsh, like, okay, are you so precious that you can't talk to Matt Walsh about these things? Do you believe in these things enough that you could? So no, I feel completely fine. In fact, I feel great because I want people to know what these people believe. I want to elevate them. I want to elevate their ideas so people truly understand

what these people believe about things. I think that's 100% right. Are you going to also elevate their response? Like, you got a text when you were walking in here, and you're going to get a lot of texts from these people. Are you going to share them? Are you going to put them out? I mean, I would. I would. They're going to be outraged. They're going to be just like my buddy with the goatee all those years ago. They're going to cry foul. But their words are theirs.

I don't know the answer to that question. Did it happen with What is a Woman? Yeah, we heard. There were some articles that were written and there was people that kind of after the fact that were in our film that came out and talked about how they were manipulated or whatever. But it's the same thing. It's how are you manipulated? We asked you about the thing that we were going to ask you about and you told us and we didn't impede what you were saying and we didn't twist your words.

So what are you really upset about? I'm not really sure. Just because there was a bearded man looking across from you that you don't agree with on some things? I expect we'll hear from some people. One thing I'm particularly proud of is if you go to Wikipedia today, and you go to Robin DiAngelo's website on Wikipedia, and you scroll down, you look at her body of work,

The very last thing you'll see is that Robin DiAngelo is set to star in Am I Racist? coming out September 13th, 2024. I'm looking that up right now. And boy, does she. Yeah, she does. She steals the spotlight. She sure does, man. She does. Oh, boy. Let's go back to Black Lives Matter for a minute. I spent a lot of time scrupulously not talking about this because there was just no upside. I was just amazed at the psychology that accompanied its...

its rise. I'm trying to make it personal and relevant to me because why did I resist it? Why did I look at that and go, well, wait a minute, all lives matter. And why was I immediately told, no, man, you don't want to say that. You're missing the point. I'm like, but what is the point? Why did so many people hear that and not

respond in a way that's proper, I suppose is the question. - Again, people don't understand that two things can be true at the same time. So when you say black lives matter,

Well, of course Black Lives Matter. Right. But I can also say I don't support Black Lives Matter as an organization because it's founded by a bunch of people that are Marxist and self-admitted Marxist and want to fundamentally change our society in ways that are not healthy. They want to break down and get away from the family unit. It was all spelled out on their website. So two things can be true at the same time. Black lives can matter. Of course they matter.

But Black Lives Matter as an organization was doing our country irreparable harm. And to say so meant that you were saying that black lives don't matter. So that's how it got twisted on you. To not put up the black square was another indication that obviously you're not on board. Right. Ergo. And to say all lives matter was even worse because now you're saying, oh, you know, black lives really don't matter. It's the way language gets used against us.

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revulsion at being told something that you already knew to be true. When you paint with a broad brush, you say things that would make the average person go, well, duh. Yeah, I know that. Wait, did you not think that I knew that? And then you're having that conversation, which has, again, nothing to do with action and everything to do with thinking. And so...

To me, it's like telling the country that everybody needs to get a four-year degree or you're screwed. Right. And it's for a long time. Well, wait a second. If you disagree with that, what are you, anti-education, Mike? Right, right. Well, no, I'm not anti-education. I just think that that's kind of broad. They draw that line in the sand and they make you want to stand on one side or the other. And it's time that we just say, I don't like your line. I just want to wipe it out of the ground because your line is stupid. Right.

And there shouldn't be a line there. It's not that simple. But yet we fall for it all the time, I feel like. And they'll take the language and they'll say, well, okay, you're either this or you're this. And I just feel like we should be nuanced and smart enough to say, no, no, I don't buy your premise. I remember the pushback that came when people would say, well, wait, Barack Obama is one of the most beloved presidents in our country's history.

He was elected, for God's sakes. That doesn't mean that there aren't racist people doing racist things, but come on. Can a society that's truly systemically racist elect that man twice? And the pushback was, well, of course, of course, of course we did. We are systemically racist, and yet we did that. And that is where

Those two things can't be true at the same time. Exactly. And if you remember, any sort of opposition to Barack Obama was immediately painted as racist. So could we as a society be excited to have our first black president? Yes. But could we criticize him on his policy? No, no way. If you remember, like when Obamacare came out, if you had any sort of resistance to Obamacare because you just don't like government run health care,

Well, it would immediately get painted with the racist brush. Well, the reason you're doing that is because you're, you know, because it's, you know, it's Barack Obama. And that seemed to happen throughout his presidency that any sort of pushback would get labeled as, oh, well, the reason you're doing that is because you're racist. And very convenient for them to do that. But at the same time, it just, it made it impossible to talk about ideas. Yeah. I was really struck recently that,

Not by the question, but by the tone of the question when people started asking, "Now, wait a second. Are you suggesting that Kamala Harris was a DEI appointment?" And I'm sitting home going, "Well, didn't President Biden say specifically that he was only going to nominate or invite a woman of color into the position?" I mean, wasn't that clear?

So, I don't even know how to think about that. Like, where did the incredulity come from on the behalf of the journalists who are saying, well, how dare you? How could you even say such a thing?

And yet, it's... I mean, as of this morning, the question is still being posed. These are not the droids you're looking for, Mike. Yeah. I mean, that's just kind of what it comes down to. Don't believe your lying eyes. The media is very good at that. It could be on tape, and it could be easily pulled up on Twitter.

But it doesn't matter. That was, you know, Biden might have said that, but, you know, to say that she's a DEI appointee is racist. You can't do that. And even though he said it would, you know. But don't we want DEI to be at least the proponents of it? Don't we want to see it enacted? Like, in a way. Right.

It's kind of like good news. They should stand by it, is what you're saying. Right. Like, why isn't the answer? Well, of course she's a DEI hunter. Of course. And that's why it's good. Not, well, wait a minute. How could you say that? That makes me feel like, okay, maybe they know that we're in some sort of snipe hunt here. Right? I'm not sure, but I don't even know how to think about all that. Yeah. I mean, ultimately...

It's such an attack on meritocracy, all of this, DEI. It's one of the reasons we made the film is just do we want to be a society that just looks at skin color as the first and major thing and all qualifications be damned? Or do we want to reward people based on what they can do and what they're about? Look, for me, the ultimate is...

Back to my movie, if I could ever so briefly. Something to Stand For is streaming exclusively on Angel Studios right now. The other pushback, Martin Luther King is in my movie because I think that there's no better indication of the country's march towards something better than what he said, his words. You know, this idea of...

you know, content, character over so forth. Everybody knows it. But I couldn't believe that I heard from people who were saying, look, that's no longer a thing. He's no longer the guy. That ideal is no longer for sale because it's the exact opposite. It seems...

We're living in real time. In my life, I'm watching the words of Martin Luther King be dismissed

by people who are arguing that a colorblind society is A, not only not possible, but not desirable. And we've got that hierarchy now. And it's all so carefully managed. It's all so articulated. The only thing that's missing are star signs and blood type and eye color. Everything else is spelled out for us.

Is it okay to say that that is in direct conflict with what Dr. King wanted? Yeah, we heard from several experts when we were talking to them about this, and we would ask them that question, and they would say colorblindness is problematic because...

It doesn't address the problem right now. They would kind of pay it a little bit of respect as an idea, as sort of an ideal to shoot for. Like, okay, yeah, we're not going to just totally jettison Martin Luther King. But what he really meant was that's the thing that we should shoot for. But right now, we need to work on the problem. And we need to actually do the opposite. We need to focus more on race.

than character. We need to focus more on these things to be able to sort of... And of course, they never give an end date. They never tell us when we're going to be there, that we could go back to the ideal. That's why I asked before, is Black Lives Matter done? Is it over as a movement? Well, I mean, the leadership was sort of disgraced and you don't hear much about it anymore.

Can I say, by the way, your movie, Something to Stand For, that part with Martin Luther, that was beautiful. That was a beautiful piece of cinema that you guys put together. Thanks. Which, Angel Studios, Something to Stand For. Streaming exclusively. Streaming exclusively. Thank you. No, it really was. You guys did such a phenomenal job. I mean, to take a movie, 90 minute, a little over 90 minutes, and to pick out the stories that

had a very similar thread but you know we have so many stories to tell in this country but to pick out the ones that you guys did i feel like you just kind of got the right ones and that one in particular was very moving and i took my parents to watch that film chuck sent me a screener ahead of time so i watched it ahead of time and i'm like i'm taking my family to watch this all my kids my wife uh my parents because they needed to see it and i just hope more people

So that's my resound, that's my plug for you guys. I hope your check clears. And it really is a beautiful movie. It is such a great movie about America. Very pro-America. Thanks. And look, I wish I could take credit for sitting down and going, yeah, you know what? I'm going to make a movie. This thing happened for me

I would like to talk to you a little bit about process and intentionality and all that stuff because this movie started by me writing short stories to pass the time on planes. Those stories wound up on a podcast and then they wound up in a book and then they wound up being recreated for TV. And only after all that happened did somebody reach out and say, you know, these would look pretty cool on the big screen and if you stitch a few together...

around an occasion, maybe Christmas, maybe the 4th of July, then we might have ourselves an event. So when we sat down to actually really start thinking about it, 80% of the movie was already what you would call like found footage, I guess. These recrees existed. And then it just became a question of, well, what do we do with them? And so going to DC and talking to park rangers and trying to contemplate our statuary

without taking a deep dive into left or right or any of that. That was a challenge. Right. That's always a challenge. But you guys threaded the needle on that, and I think you guys spoke to what is the most important about this country, you know, the stories. And what you're talking about is actually the hardest part of filmmaking, which is like, okay, we've got a good thing over here, and we've got a good thing over here, but where do we go? How do we connect these things? How do we sort of go from A to B to C? Because...

Listen, people like stories that have structure. You know, we're used to that. If you don't tell stories in that fashion, people will ignore you. Like if you watch a movie that doesn't have that kind of structure, doesn't have beginning, middle and end.

People will be distracted and not, you know, it just, it won't click. It's not the channel that they're willing to hear you. So you guys taking those things, putting them together with a beautiful through line, it really worked. And that's the hardest part. That's the hardest part of filmmaking. Yeah. Just because, just because it works on paper, right? Doesn't mean it's going to work on the screen necessarily. Like you said, at the start of this thing, you go into a shoot and you, you don't know. I mean, you can't script anything.

I mean, this is an unscripted film that you've made. And my career is an unscripted career. Everything I've ever done in front of a camera does not come with a script. This movie was intensely scripted. The stories were written and wordsmithed and the connective tissue I thought about

It's funny, there's a moment in my movie where I meet an old guy on an honor flight completely by happenstance, Andy Michael. And I did a thing that you're not supposed to do on movies. I called the camera guy over and the director. I said, "Look, I just wanna talk to these guys. "Film it." And it wound up being in the heart of everything that was promoted around the movie.

Just reminding me again that there's this weird balance. As an audience member, I want to be taken on that journey you described, and I want to trust the filmmaker not to confuse me or waste my time, keep me on track. But I also want to be surprised. And if that surprise comes in the form of a scripted scene or a spontaneous moment, I don't really care. But there's so much spontaneity in your movie.

How do you balance those things in the edit? --Well, and going back to your movie example, the moment you had there with that gentleman on the honor flight was very authentic. Some of the things that can get lost when you script things too much. You lose the authenticity.

And so finding that is important. In our film, we went and talked to, it's a very actually important kind of component of our film, is we talk to regular people. We talk to, we go down south, we go to a biker bar and talk to them about their white privilege. That's great. That is a beautiful scene, by the way. Yeah, thank you. And then we go down to the south and we talk to some blacks down there, some of them poor, and we kind of find that they're saying the same thing.

And in fact, they say in one case, the exact same thing. And in one case, we found a guy who's an auto mechanic. He owns an auto shop down there in New Orleans. His name is Milton. If you see nothing else from the film, watch this scene with Milton. I really believe Milton is the heart and soul of the movie. Now, Milton, I guess, probably very similar to your situation there with the Honor Flight guy. We just found Milton. We were down there. We ran for a sandwich.

And we're waiting for our sandwich. We look across the street and there's Milton sitting outside of his shop. And we're like, let's go talk to that guy. Let's go talk to the guy, see what he has to say. And he was very welcoming and very warm. And he was happy to talk to us and sat down. And Matt has a great conversation with him. And again, authentic. And really the heart and soul of our movie is that scene with Milton. Because it contrasts what these experts, what these sort of DEI people are pushing and

And it stands out, and it's not a very long scene, but it stands out in direct contrast to what we're hearing from these so-called experts. It is beautiful. He was the most colorblind guy in the movie. Yeah. Amazing. Wasn't he an immigrant as well? Yeah, he was an immigrant. From where? Haitian? British Guiana. British Guiana. And he, 53 grandkids.

53 grandkids. What you don't know, because we didn't say it, but you look at that auto body shop and it's got all this texture to it, you know, and you can just tell they work on old cars and they just fix things. And, but what you don't know is he owns about half the block.

Like he's been there for a while and he's bought up the real estate around there. And so there's this guy that looks like just a humble guy and like a, you know, auto parts hat sitting on his chair outside of his shop. But he actually owns about half the street that he was sitting on. And he was just a beautiful man. I want to ask you about the American dream. There was an article not too long ago in the journal that said, I think it was 64 or 68%.

the country no longer believes it's a thing or applies to them and I don't know where the tipping point is in that but the interesting thing about the article was they didn't bother to define it which I thought was smart because It means slightly different things to different people I believe yeah, but it's also irrelevant because if your version of that thing ceases to exist

Nothing good can happen. And when I hear about guys like that, you know, he's living the American dream. At a glance, you would not think so. So that's why getting his story out mattered so much. That's why getting Andy Michael in the movie mattered. Because when you see a 90-year-old man with tears streaming down his face as he contemplates the sacrifice of all those stars at the World War II Memorial, in a moment, he accomplished my goal.

better than anything I could have written or performed in that moment. Same thing with Milton. So Andy Michael, if he were sitting here, would tell you why he loves the country, why he stands for the anthem, and why the dream is alive and well. So would your guy. Oh, yeah. So I guess maybe the question is, how big a threat is DEI to the American dream? Great question. I think it...

it stands in direct opposition to the American dream because the American dream is built on meritocracy. It's built on the thought that we are all, we have an equal society. If we're treated equally, at least from the start, where we go from there is up to us. And DEI changes all of that. And so you can be, depending on your skin color, amazingly proficient, amazingly the right person for the job, but still get overlooked because of your skin color, which really,

To take a quote from Dennis Prager, our skin color should matter the same amount as our shoe size. It's just, it doesn't matter. And so DEI stands in direct opposition to meritocracy, which is how our society has flourished and functioned so well for so long. And so when people think, well, the American dream is not there anymore, it's because I think they feel that if they worked hard, that it might not necessarily be there for them.

i.e. meritocracy not being there. That if you know, if you work hard, if you do the right thing, that you can position yourself to succeed. And DEI sets itself up against that, I think. So I think it is a threat. I also think it should be illegal.

It defies the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 100%, right? I don't know if that law is worth anything to us in this country, but it basically says we can't give preference based on skin color. That was the whole point of the thing. And yet here we are giving preferences based on skin color. So how is it not being challenged in every court, in every place, in every company where it's being utilized? That's what I hope is next.

The answer, I think, has something to do with the same reason most people who were confused by Black Lives Matter kept their mouths shut. They just kept their mouths shut because they knew that to voice their skepticism or their confusion would invoke a consequence. And that consequence would be a kind of shaming, you know, a public shaming. And maybe even a cancellation, etc.,

I mean, it just reminds me of a thing I didn't live through, which was the Red Scare. Very similar. Yeah. That was tyranny. What we have in our country is also tyranny. It's the tyranny of nice. Tyranny of niceness. It's that we are supposed to be nice above anything else. So that basically means we can't speak out and stand for truth when we need to because that is the ideal that we have to have above anything else. People are so scared of not being nice.

So, you know, the end result of that is not speaking out when something doesn't smell right. We're using the wrong word. Back to your point on language. Carolla and I talked a lot about this. He had a great way of putting it. It's dominion. People want dominion over you. And I guess it was Peterson who really came out first when he said, look,

I'm not going to use that word. I'm not going to say what you want me to say because that's an action. My words are mine and you can't make me say that word. I might choose to say it out of respect, but you can't mandate this pronoun thing.

Listen, I am just so glad that Jordan Peterson made that stand in that moment. You know, he had a lot to lose there. But compelled speech is dangerous. It's tyrannical. Obviously, we've seen it other places. And so why would we want to go there? You just mentioned the Soviet Union. If you...

you know, it's like the same reason people would stand up and clap for two hours straight until their hands bled because, you know, they knew the consequences. If the, if you don't, you are compelled to say that thing. You're compelled to do that thing. I see it no different than posting the black square. A lot of people, if they had a corporate job somewhere, they worked in a field like advertising per se, and you know, they have to be on social media. If they didn't put that black square up there, it would invite questions and,

Very tough questions. And then that would be a sweater that would unravel of why are you not doing that? Well, the black square thing was a kind of a form of compelled speech in that moment for a lot of people because of the tyranny of knights. They just knew that they have to be nice. They have to post that square. They have to say that thing, whether it's pronouns or whatever it is. It's a very powerful and dangerous tool that people like to use against us. Yeah.

I remember I left a meeting at Facebook a few years ago when Returning the Favor was just getting off the ground. It was around the same time that all of this was happening. And Black Lives Matter was everywhere. It was on every wall. There were banners from the ceiling. It was everywhere. And I just had a meeting with Mark, actually, and I was with one of his lieutenants, and we were walking out, and I stopped, and I said to her,

"I had no idea that people here didn't understand "that black lives matter." And she's like, "What are you talking about?" And I said, "Well, I mean, obviously, "you guys have embarked on a, this is great, "because maybe your employees are gonna come around." And she's like, "No, no, no, no, this is us just saying." I'm like, "Well, you're just saying something "that you already believe, like to each other? "Or is this for me?"

You know, is this all for me? You know, who's this for? Right. It's like an NFL stadium full of 80,000 people. And in the end zone, it says end racism. So it's like, wow, I didn't know there was so many. There's 80,000 races here. Thank goodness they're putting that in the end zone, because otherwise, how would so many races go to a football game and not know that they shouldn't be racist?

The virtue signaling is the thing that... Meanwhile, on the 50-yard line, you can be as racist as you want. But in the end zone, come on, everybody. Come on, we can do better. It's the end zone. Yeah, I mean, it's back to the cookie-cutter thing. It's like some people probably need to be told...

We're reminded that black lives matter. Some people probably need to be reminded that college is a good thing. Others might need to be reminded that there are many, many other paths to do that. I think we're still stuck in this place where we're trying to talk to everybody in the same way all of the time. We just have no nuance left. We don't know how to do it.

And so everything is a proclamation. I know why politicians do it. They need to get elected. They need to get the greatest number of people all nodding their heads at the same time, all agreeing with a sentiment. And so everything gets watered down into this thing. Well, what could everybody agree with? And here come the platitudes. Your movies are just a...

just a bucket of cold water on all that stuff. Oh, thanks. They really are. Yeah. And I really appreciate you coming in to talk about this one. And I can't wait to follow up with you to see. The fun that's about to unfurl. I don't have a crystal ball, but I think this one's going to get sporty. Well, again, I just credit my team. I can't, you know how this is, you and Chuck. Film is a total collaborative effort. You cannot do, this is not a,

So obviously working with Matt has been a total joy, but my producing team, guys like Sean Hampton, Ben, who you see in the movie, you know, my producer, Brian Hoffman. I mean, these guys, I can name them. I'll probably forget somebody, but like, you just don't do this by yourself. And there's something magical that happens when you put people in a room that have a, have a mission and a goal and you all get along, y'all like each other.

And it's amazing what you can kind of pull off, what you can accomplish together. And when you actually enjoy these people, it makes it a lot of fun, too. That's not to say it's not challenging, but man, we had a lot of fun making this movie. I think people will see that on screen. For sure. And yeah, but it's not a one man show. Mad is an insane talent. I mean, obviously, this movie does not happen without a guy at his skill level doing what he does.

And our job was to just kind of come around that and give, like I said, give him the playground to play in and do his thing. But it would not happen without that team. And just very, very grateful to all those people. I got a question about that. Cause I know before you did the first movie, what is a woman? And afterwards you, it was like immediately you were like, Hey, that was really good. We should keep the same team and do something else. You obviously changed the topic, but yeah,

You managed to do another one where Matt Walsh is the star again, and he still has his beard, and he gets recognized, and then he doesn't get recognized. But are you guys already thinking about round three? And is he going to shave that beard so that people won't recognize him? He's going to have to put on a Mission Impossible face.

I don't know if that beard gives him some sort of a superpower that if we shaved it, it would be like Samson. Right. And cutting Samson's hair, and Matt would become just a regular human being at that point and not as compelling. But, you know, we are working on some ideas. This is a train that we've all enjoyed being on. Credit to The Daily Wire. Credit to Jeremy Boring and the team over there, Caleb and Ben and everybody, Dallas Saunier, everybody that...

had a hand in this thing because there's nobody else that would make a movie like this. There's nobody else that would finance and work to get distribution for a film like this. And so I'm just really thankful that they gave us the ability to go out and do this thing and play and make this thing happen. But yeah, we'll see what happens to Matt's beard. I can't predict...

Is there an over-under on his beard? Is there a bet that we can put down? What's the beard futures? It's got to go. If you're going to do another one of these, it's got to go. Yeah. Did you hear that, Matt? Did you hear that? I think he's quite fond of the beard. I think his wife, Alyssa, is fond of the beard. Well, here's the thing about beards, man. They grow back. Is that right? They come, they go. Yeah. You know? That's true. Like careers. Well...

Well, I hope mine grows back after this one then. But thank you so much, guys, for having me. It's been awesome. Well, look, you're always welcome. I look forward to you updating your resume. Trading up on there, the 20-minute documentary. I didn't put it on there because I figured you knew about that one since you were in it. I mean, that's how we met, really. You know, I think we actually met when you were doing No Safe Spaces. That's right. We had a conversation. Yeah, we talked. And I was thinking about maybe being in that.

Yeah. And I talked to Mary. But you wanted a career that went quickly. I was thinking, yeah. It was just another couple of years. It was on a different trajectory. Now, having this conversation could actually be the end of it. I mean, if you think about it. What do you mean?

Three white dudes sitting down solving problems of systemic racism. You're talking about Black Lives Matter? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is going to really... I have some really serious thoughts about that. Please go to miracist.com. See this movie. It's really, really good. You will enjoy it. See it in the theater, because in the theater, it is amazing. You will gasp at parts. I sure did. You will gasp. You will clutch your metaphorical pearls, and you will be glad you went. Thanks, pal. Thank you.

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