Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy.
And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through tears. Hello, and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal.
We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Betty Fair contributing editor Mo Ryan, who's going to talk all about her new book, Learn It Down, Power, Complicity, and A Call for Change in Hollywood. And she'll give us lots of dirt and details about your favorite TV shows and all the bad stuff that went out behind the scenes. But first, let's have some fun.
Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Yeah. Clips.
That's what I like to hear. Okay, so in this clip, we're going to hear another warrior against woke revealing that they can't say what they're really fighting against because they'll say the quiet part about it. Here we have a town hall one Nikki Haley did with an empty suit named Jake Topper, CNN. Ouch.
Woke. The word woke used to be used by progressives to talk about an awareness of inequities and historical inequities. But obviously it means something else to conservatives criticizing it. What does it mean to you?
How do you define woke? There's a lot of things. I mean, you want to start with biological boys playing in girls' sports. That's one thing.
The fact that we have gender pronoun classes in the military now. I mean, all of these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans. It's too much. It's too much.
Yeah, it's too much to respect people. It's too much to give them dignity. It's too much to call people by the name that they ask you to call them by. It's too much to train people into equity and inclusion.
You're absolutely right, you fucking idiot. Yeah, I just want to say, I don't even like what Jake Topper said at the beginning of that. He said woke used to be used by progressives. It used to be used by black people.
I don't know how she defines very possible, but I don't think it's the dictionary definition. I'm willing to bet everything I have, which is at least $90 worth of stuff, that Chris Wray will not be going to jail anytime soon. Are you sure? Because if you wish it, just like Donald Trump can declassify documents with his mind as if he's an X-Men, are you sure they can't make it happen if they all do a fucking seance together?
They can't because the Biden crime family will stop it. No, you're right. Good. Yes, Hunter's going to come in and save the day, just like Barrett's going to be our future leader in Dusty.
He's coming back in time to award his future self that Barrett could be a great leader as the QAnon's like these days. I will say, I think there's a better chance of Hunter Biden going to jail than Chris Wray. I would definitely agree with that. Well, the stupid keeps on going.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who's my dark horse candidate for who Trump will put on his ticket as V, is here uttering the world's stupidest talking point, which is one of the reasons I have my money on her being picked, because that's basically the qualification. Let's listen. I'm like a lot of Americans. Love to shop at Target.
I mean, we do, but we just can't anymore. And while the rest of the country is worried about, you know, having fun and going out and shopping and enjoying a store, that store is fundamentally tearing down this country. And we have to have real conversations about how serious we are about protecting our freedom. Sure, absolutely.
Target's having a bad month, I'm just saying. They are. So, Governor, you're there in South Desert. Target, a display of rainbow paraphernalia, is tearing down the country?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We have to have a conversation about freedom.
And I thought that that's what happened when you had private companies that weren't government-run, right? That they have the freedom to make decisions about who they're selling to and where they're selling. Am I wrong about that? Did I make that up?
Yes. No, you made that up. Okay. Republicans have never been in favor of the free market.
Okay. Yeah. I don't know what put that in your head, that the Republicans were the party of the free market, because clearly they have never been. So, I don't know.
Jessie, I kind of don't disagree with you. I think she has a decent chance of being Trump's sneak pick. She's doing the right call here, which is like she's just kind of playing it safe, just saying the stupid talking points that make you qualified for it. You got Nikki Haley out there, just bungling policy all day, thinking if she gets in front of the camera enough, he'll pick her.
Marjorie, really not winning the race these days. And then, you know. And then there's Christine. Yeah, just there.
I mean, her hair, it's just, you know. Well, that's the thing. She has a look. Yeah, I was going to say, it's that Trump woman look.
It really is. It is striking. Yep. Well, don't look forward to that, but hell awaits us all, I guess.
Okay, so over on the clown car that's called Newsmax, a quote-unquote comedian named Chrissy Mayer had some more great insight into the culture war. Here she is with Newsmax host Eric Bowling. It's pretty ridiculous to just assume that Chick-fil-A, I mean, you know, I'm hesitant to make a fried chicken joke, but they sell fried chicken. I don't know how much more inclusive we can get here.
Okay, so here's my maybe weird take on this joke. It's not a good joke, but that's a separate question if the question is should she have said it. The answer to should she have said it on a news program is no. If you want to make a joke like that in a comedy club, I mean, yeah, you can do it, and I think you can get away with it.
Again, I don't think it's a very good joke, but there's things you can do with body language and, you know, with facial expressions to make it clear that you know you're making a joke, but you're not racist or anything like that. It's just a dumb joke. But I think a lot of the problems that these comedians have is they don't understand that there's a difference when you're on a TV show, and they just don't get that. I don't know.
I know this is a weird take, maybe it's because I did Red Eye, the news comedy show for so long, but that's sort of how I feel about it. Like, make that joke at a comedy club if you want, and again, I think you could probably get away with it. It's mostly harmless. It's just not a very good joke, but don't say that on a news program.
It's just stupid. It's dumb. It's racist. It doesn't belong anywhere, in my humble opinion.
I mean, I suppose you can do it in a comedy club, and I wish that I could just laugh at Fox and other outlets because they're ridiculous and dumb, except for the fact that tens of millions of people listen to this on a regular basis. So it was, she should be embarrassed, but, you know, you can't embarrass people to have no shame. To be fair, this is Newsmax, so it's tens of people. Oh, it's tens of people.
Yeah, you're right, you're right. I was more just thinking through the whole thing. Eric Olin has got to be upset that Apple's new operating system that comes out later is going to hide explicit pictures that you receive. Apple's heartbreaking and horrifying experiences of people of color and women who worked on the TV show Lost.
It left many people's jaws dropped, including mine. Well, now that book, entitled Burn It Down, Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, is out, and it is an essential look at the history of this kind of treatment that has been faced by pretty much anyone who's not a white man in Hollywood. Bad and Fair contributing editor Maureen Ryan joins me now. Mo, thanks so much for being here.
Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here, thanks. Absolutely. I'm going to start off by saying that there's simply too much in the book to cover in a 25-minute interview, so please excuse me for skipping over a lot of stuff.
A lot of my material ended up on the cutting room floor. People are saying, when's the sequel? And I'm like, I actually, I had to cut things out despite how long it is, yeah. Wow.
I want to combine the opening of the book, which deals with people like producer Scott Rudin, things like the existence of the utterly reprehensible treatment of assistance, and the questions of who exactly has allowed the freedom to be an asshole in Hollywood. I want to combine that with what you talk about later as the toxic myths around creativity. And this is, of course, the ridiculous belief that if you're artistic, you have to be an asshole, or that it's okay to be an asshole. The whole idea that artists have an artistic temperament and it involves suffering and so forth.
I mean, we have it from, you know, level I'm onward. It's not new, but I think Hollywood kind of weaponized it the majority of the people you talk about in these sections are white dudes and that the people pushing back at them are not. But I can't even say that was shocking. Yeah, and just to be clear, for the last chapter and other chapters, some of my sources were white dudes.
You know, I mean, I've been on the phone with people who were, you know, in or near tears many times because of, you know, what they witnessed, what they saw being done to colleagues, the toxic dynamics that happened over and over again in their workplaces. And, you know, I'll never forget one person pulling over to the side of the road, a white guy just trying to talk about his own complicity. And what I often say, or, you know, what should I have done differently? You know, sometimes when you're witnessing an abusive thing, you do not know what to do.
And I think that that's very human. You know, obviously these people usually go forward and try to make the industry better. And that's what I tell them. I'm like, you know what?
Honestly, I think there's a good chance you would have committed career suicide had you been the one to, you know, scream back at that person on behalf of a colleague in that moment, you know, or defend someone. People do it and I'm glad that they do it. But I think there's a set of hurdles for everyone. You know, you know the industry, you know how hard it is.
Unless the studio head is your dad and those people exist too. We have, you know, studio children representation in this conversation. For most people, it is rough. It's rough to put yourself out there and just want to tell a story.
And, you know, if you put words or a story or anything in the world, someone's going to judge you for it. So, I mean, let's just acknowledge that it's a little scary or a lot scary. But some people have even more hurdles. You know, just the other day, the book's only been out for three days.
And on Twitter, a series of Latino writers were talking about just frankly, straight up racist things that were said to them in pitch meetings, including one comment of like, shouldn't the character be an unwed mother? Because aren't most women from that community out of wedlock mothers? What do you even say in that moment? You're pitching your passion project and you've planned it out and you've worked so hard on it and it just like freezes people in the moment.
So, look, I don't think that people, you know, get up in the morning, you know, with rubbing their hands together and twirling my mustache and saying I'd like to commit verbal or physical violence on people. But it just happens a lot because what creativity is, it is hard. And what I want to make clear to your listeners is that I hope that people with a lot of baggage continue to make art because that's my thing. You know, explore the baggage, process all your neuroses through your art.
Go for it. I want that. I don't want storytelling on screens that is, you know, antiseptic and basically the Care Bears picnic. You know, no shade to the Care Bears.
We have that Care Bear representation on this podcast too. Right. We're really covering all the bases here. Absolutely.
So, no, like, it's fine to have baggage. What Hollywood said was we don't want to spend a lot on training, management and putting limits on people's behavior. So what we'll do is we will reinforce this idea that creativity allows for from the people with power, status, connections, money or some combination of those things from those people, whoever they are, they get to do what they want or more or less do what they want. And if something bad happens and things go very, very awry as, you know, if you've paid any attention to Hollywood news even before me too, but certainly after a lot goes wrong, we will sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen.
And I do not think that that is, I mean, it leads to terrible situations for human beings and that's the primary concern. But it also, I think, kind of leads to bad art, you know. Really, it haunts me. Many things people tell me, but one of them is a film school graduate had some experience in L.A.
in the industry, did some jobs and came used to work in New York in the 90s. And she said the two shops that you had as your options if you wanted to work in movies in New York in the 90s were Scott Rudin's shop and the Weinstein Company. And so, you know, imagine you love cinema. You worked so hard to put good stories or interesting or creatively successful stories in the world and your choice is Abuser A or Abuser B, you know, like those are your options.
And that strikes me as horrifying. Yeah, beyond horrifying. So let's talk about Lost, which I will say right off the bat, one of my favorite TV shows of all time. There are some days I might say it was my favorite TV show of all time.
Oh, yeah, I mean, I wrote some about it back in the day. Absolutely. As I noted at the top, this chapter of the book was accepted in Vanity Fair a week or so ago and made a pretty big splash for obvious reasons. It was unbelievable, not in the sense that you couldn't believe it, but in the same holy shit as you're reading it sense.
It was just example after example of abusive behavior towards writers of color, towards actors of color, towards women writers. You say, as you put it in the book, in the full chapter, which also weaves in historical antecedents for this type of behavior, that the people you spoke to who told you of their experiences were of all races and genders, but, you know, half were people of color and more than half were women. So let's start with the actors and I guess particularly the shabby treatment of Harold Perrineau, who played Michael. You know, when you are a viewer, and I really came up more as a critic, you know, I was actually a music critic first, and if anything, the music industry is worse, so that's exciting to think about.
Yes. You don't always know, if you're a professional critic in some ways, maybe you shouldn't know, like you just want to look at what's on the screen, but you see these things play out and you're like, well, that's weird. You know, Harold Perrineau was a key part of the ensemble. He seemed to have a key role in the narrative or in how it was being set up, the premise, if you will.
He's his father, stuck on this island. You know, he and his kid, you know, we're trying to kind of reestablish and rebuild their relationship. So that's, you know, it's an interesting setup and Harold Perrineau is a wonderful actor. Why was he gone?
He was more or less gone after the end of season two and came back in season four for some episodes, it was a tough environment. But even post me too, I wasn't sure what that meant. I didn't have specifics. I mean, I'm not trying to defend myself.
I didn't know what I'd been later found out. And it took people years to trust me, to trust anyone, understandably, because I think really that last chapter came out because next year Lost's premiere will be 20 years old. So it took that long for people to build up their careers to the point where they felt like they could be truthful about what happened. And that's, you know, that's a scary fact in and of itself.
I haven't looked at every single clip I ever wrote about Lost, but I do think the fact that it had an inclusive cast, that was great. You know, I go to something called the TCA Press Tour, the Telephone Critic Association, and that's held twice a year or was pre-pandemic. And basically what happens for a lot of it is that the producers and creator of a show would come out on stage often surrounded by the cast. And what it would often be was, you know, like six white people in the creative or producer positions, you know, seven cast members, and one of them was a person of color, if that.
And Lost wasn't like that. So yes, it did break with the norms of the time, but it's incredible to me to this day. And I'm going to say something that I didn't put in the books. I thought, you know, there was so much serious stuff being said by people in so many painful revelations.
I didn't want it to come off as seeming petty, but just even on a story level, I didn't understand it. I still don't understand the following. This is an island that hopscotched through time, and it was tropical and had a polar bear on it. So you couldn't figure out a way for Harold Perrineau's son to be out there, but Harold Perrineau's character, Michael, couldn't stick around.
I don't like, I get the creative problems are hard to solve, but I'm like, this is an island in which quite literally the most wackadoodle things that had been seen on television, some of the most wacky things that had ever been seen on television happened. In the very first episodes, a man who had been in a wheelchair began walking around, and they told you why that happened. I just want to jump in and explain to a story who don't know Lost. The story has always been that Harold Perrineau, who played Michael, was left off in the show because the actor who played Walt, his son, had a huge growth spurt, and they couldn't explain that on the show, so they kind of wrote them both off the show.
Exactly, and I just, you know, talking to Harold, it was just shattering because, you know, he's such a... good actor and what my career has been full of in the last 10 years especially has been hearing from people that had to depart a job put it that way or were fired from a job or were endured some kind of punitive or vindictive behavior not because they were bad at what they did not because they didn't know how to do their job not because they themselves were you know abusive or unprofessional but for some extraneous reason and that's really distressing to me you know it's really distressing to me that writers at last writers of color in particular and also some white writers either were let go or felt the need to leave because the environment was really punishing and there was as at many shows there has just been basically the imprimatur from the television industry was we'll give you a budget and you'll have to answer to our notes but in many other matters you are free to use your power how you want and we will pretend it's not happening you know and so whatever's happening is not happening so that led to really kind of like a royal prerogative if you will one or two people maybe three people maybe the star is also powerful they would have a massive amount of power and everyone else didn't do you know what i mean yeah absolutely you know i just wanted to clear that in the book what we learned is that harold perno was pretty much let go for reasons that didn't seem to not have to do with race everyone's side is presented you know i asked for the show and i came in lindelof and carlton hughes they gave their side their explanations revolved around the growth spurt of the young actor who played harold perno's son and all i can do is present various people's explanations they were allowed to present their explanation and harold perno was doing a good job on a show that was very grueling and then he said to me i feel like i just got fired i understood why he felt that way and you know what the next season he wasn't on the show so like i don't know what to tell you like that's that was a job he was not doing anymore and it was a grueling taxing job and that's another thing too that we have to weave into this if someone feels overwhelmed by the responsibilities that they're given and unable to meet the moment and meet the challenge of controlling a film set with 500 people working on it or controlling a television production with between pre-production post-production and active production you know like filming hundreds more people are involved that is a very very big job and i certainly know that if you put me in that chair tomorrow i would probably screw up so a big theme in my book too is not just this was a disaster and it wasn't all that long ago which was also the case with sleepy hollow another show that you know is more of a cult thing but very much talks about the dynamics that you know were to some degree present in the last chapter not all that long ago and you know it's not okay to treat whether it's actors writers personnel on you know working in you know network studios or on set it's not it's not okay to treat them as interchangeable it is not okay to make the working conditions basically have the following rule in place if you speak up to anyone powerful you could end your career tomorrow right that's just not a healthy work environment i don't care if it's a pizza parlor or if it's a big temple movie if the reigning philosophy is there are people who will use and misuse their power in anyway and no one can call them to account and you cannot speak up or else you will face serious consequences and possibly threats to your livelihood and your mental health and your physical health that is unhealthy and i'm really tired of living with the fiction that oh well what are you going to do this is how creative people operate you know there's one show on our cbs so i did multiple stories on the vibe i got from the back channels of people who talked to me there well we couldn't do anything while less was less moombas who has been acute you know there have been allegations many allegations reported by ronan farrow and others about heinous things that less moombas the head of cbs allegedly did oh well we couldn't fire anyone like that while less was still around what makes my head explode is people present these things as inevitable no you could have done something everyone involved with power chose not to absolutely look there were some truly awful stories from the lost writers and the way they described how the writers room was run by lindelof and cues and one of the reasons this chapter was so heartbreaking to read is that lindelof at least has always seemed like sort of a menschie guy i've heard not so nice things about cues outside of your book but i've never heard anything particularly bad about lindelof you contacted both of them to tell you what you were reporting what were their responses well you know they differed i think that the part where they overlapped was them saying that they did not recall the remarks that i said to them and they did their explanation about harold you know i go into depth about that and they had an explanation that to them revolved around like creative decisions or you know problems with the stories they had to cut off certain stories the difference is that i spoke to dame lindelof you know we spoke a couple of times and carlton hughes communicated to me through various representatives here's something i've encountered a lot in my career people may not remember certain specifics as i reported in that chapter my contention is not that they were in the room for every heinous offensive or unprofessional thing that was said or done i do think multiple people told me that as showrunners as dual people responsible for the show and with the power of the show many people use the word vindictive they were the ones that were responsible for that work atmosphere and you know you know how it is i was lucky enough to speak to some of the sources after it came out and you know what you get nervous about as a journalist is like did i reflect the part of the situation that i was concerned with with a degree of thoroughness that the sources think is reasonably fair it's not like oh gosh i have to answer to my editor and we all answer people i felt like i did that but it was heartening to hear from people and think yes this was an accurate reflection of my experiences as pertains to the topics you want to bring up in the book and one person said to me recently and i won't name who it is that you know i think i think more than one person would say this given the opportunity if one of them had walked into the writer's room and said we're not going to say things like x y and z and we are going to treat each other if one of them had given the speech that the average kindergarten teachers gives you know we are going to not use our words to attack people and make them feel diminished and demeaned we're not going to believe people anymore the source said that would have happened in a heartbeat it would have just kaboom but like again they had the power and that's really the part that i'm trying to explode here and that's been the consistent thing throughout hollywood's history whether it's a mogul like louis b mayor or there's just the people or you know the latter-day moguls whose behavior now in many cases we are just horrified by they have the power to hire and fire and make and break people's careers and look i understand part of that if you watch the dailies for a film you're making it's a hundred million dollar film that actor isn't working out and their performance is terrible maybe they're showing up and let's say less than good physical or mental condition get them help and maybe you know pay out their contract and get a new actor like i understand that sometimes things don't work out creative alliances or cooperation or collaborations don't work out that's okay but what we're talking about is the ability to end people's dreams and careers for reasons that have much more to do with ego and toxicity and bullying and frankly i follow the stats on hollywood too here's a scenario i did one chapter called the myth of meritocracy and i hope it's not overwhelming with numbers but there's a lot of numbers that back up the assertions i make one high profile annual study looks at the top 100 movies and it's from usd it comes out every year and then they did kind of a meta study instead of the 1600 films that we've talked about 1600 years 21 of them were directed by black women and overall women in power positions on those films went from 17 25 years ago to 24 last year here's the thing this is the way i try to convey to executives sometimes i'm just having an off the record conversation with them i do think people are trying but with a goodly number of people trying the number only nudged up seven percent in 25 years so that tells you something the number of people in writers room the percentage on people of color in writers room as long as i've covered the industry it's covered at around 10 and what that amounts to is tokenism you know well we have one person who isn't white you know and like and so that tokenism is isolating it can be really hard so i follow the stats too and the stats just show you there are stats that go up sometimes but overall the forces working against change in hollywood are incredibly powerful but they're really good at spin and hype and pr so you just don't see how these powerful forces operate and one of the ways in which they operate is to enforce norms that are not normal and people just peace out and say i would rather do anything else because i cannot take this mental state or these constant threats to my well-being in my career you know that's a very real thing that i encounter all the time yeah and you know we're pretty much out of time but you know as you point out over and over in the book this is self-harming because you're talking about what you just mentioned you're talking about all this potential talent leaving the industry and deciding that nothing is worth this treatment and they're not wrong about that they're not but it's so frustrating because you realize that so many of these people probably had amazing stories to tell and they'll never get that chance right and so hollywood loses out on these amazing stories we lose out as consumers and as watchers we lose out on seeing these tremendous stories it's just everybody loses and they for some reason cannot get that through their thick skull but the good news is that these executives who make these decisions and at the top of all these pyramids are making between 50 and 100 you know 200 million dollars a year yes thank god that's the upside i want to leave your viewers your listeners on a happy note i'm so glad i'm really glad that you made that point and i really do want to stress that very strongly before we have to wrap up yes certain people from certain communities face even more hurdles but i'm telling you you're absolutely right some of the people that get eliminated from the industry whatever walk of life whatever culture and community they're part of what we're doing is eliminating the people who have really good intentions about how they're going to treat other human beings and can tell good stories and if we're sifting them out of the mix that's a problem you know why are we sifting for abusers or potential abusers and then telling potential abusers go for it if you've made us a lot of money at the box office you can now do whatever you want that is slowly changing but i will just leave you with this tidbit my husband works in the banking industry in tech not like he's not a banker and you know he works alongside bankers sometimes but i tell him stuff about hollywood that i hear about and he just says that would never fly you know banking is very square his particular corner of it is very square you know how it portrays itself as being this enlightened place where collaboration and artistic freedom and you know personal autonomy are valued and i sit there and i tell my husband who's you know working in tech at a bank and he's like no no one is allowed to do that where i work so that's like my reality check and thank goodness for that well sometimes there are authors i could talk to for an hour and this is one of those times but unfortunately i can't the book is burn it down power complicity and a call for change in hollywood it's out now and i suspect it will be required reading in hollywood and elsewhere maureen ryan thanks so much for coming on thank you so much i appreciate it hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal we're back every tuesday friday and sunday if you enjoyed it please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going this podcast is a daily beast production with production 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