It's July the 21st, 2021. Welcome to What Now, America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Today's title is Facebook, Suspended to Due to Poor Oversight. The last weekend, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter what he thought about social media platforms and their contribution to misinformation, or not misinformation about the vaccine. And President Biden kind of shot from the hip, and he said, they're killing people. Well, on July 19, President Biden kind of took a walk back from that, and he wanted to clarify it. And he said, my hope is Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that Facebook is killing people, they would do something about the misinformation. President Biden then further said, Facebook isn't killing people. These 12 people out there are giving misinformation. Anyone's listening to it and getting hurt by it. It's killing people. It's bad information. So given the title of the show, and given our discussions in the past about Facebook and Twitter and social media platforms, Jay Fidel, CEO of Think Tech Hawaii, has determined that Think Tech's participation on Facebook should be suspended. And I'd like to go to that question. Before I do, I'd like to introduce our guests. With us today, Jay Fidel, CEO of Think Tech Hawaii, and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Good morning, Tim. Jay, you took a big step. I got two questions for you. The first question is, do you agree with President Biden's statement about social media? That in a sense, they are killing people as a result of the misinformation. And secondly is, how did you come to your decision to suspend Think Tech Hawaii from Facebook platform? Let me address those one at a time. It was sharp rhetoric. No doubt about it when he charged Facebook with killing people. I mean, it has the implications of murder. It has the implications of an affirmatively wrong for lack, if you don't mind. And he did walk it back in a mild mannered kind of way. He walked it back.  But you think about it. It was that word that was troublesome. It was that word that he walked back from. And if you think about what's going on here, Facebook has an enormous bottom line. It has really hundreds of millions of customers. I say customers because it makes money on them. And it has a few people. It's not clear how many who are doing, you say, misinformation. I say disinformation. Those are lies. When you say that vaccines don't work, when you say you shouldn't take a vaccine, that it's bad for you, that it's politically inadvisable to take a vaccine, that those are lies. And those words that not, they're destructive lies. And we know already, just look at the map, that people are dying. So I guess the problem in the using the word killing was that Facebook itself did not was not the positive agent of the deaths, but it set up a platform where other people would be a positive agent of the deaths and are, and are still doing that, by the way. And it did not effectively stop them from doing that. So OK, maybe allowed them to die instead of killing. The word's too sharp, I suppose. But I wouldn't really disagree with the notion of calling them out on this. They weren't fit in their bottom line than they are in saving people's lives. And people are dying as a result of disinformation, lies that are being spread on the Facebook platform. So that's the answer to your question, the first question. The second question is why do I feel that way? I don't feel we ought to be involved in disinformation of that nature when people's lives are at stake. I look at the map, and I think the right opinion here is to say, gee, Wiz, if you don't take a vaccine and you have no good reason for it for not taking the vaccine, you're participating in a very gruesome national experience where hospitals in a number of counties and cities and states around the country are being overtaken by COVID, where they don't have the resources. It is a replay of last March and April in this country. And it is political. It's the red states. It's the Trumpers. It's quite remarkable that they would do things that destroy themselves, their families, friends, communities and all that intentionally. Intentionally, when did they actually learn? And in fact, we entertained and have included a commentary on that point on our ThinkTech lineup, which is an official statement of how ThinkTech feels, but it is certainly a commentary worth listening to. So what we have today is disinformation that kills people and disinformation that can be prevented. It's not that Facebook doesn't have the resources to stop these guys. And it's not that Facebook doesn't have the intellectual ability to stop these guys. What's interesting, I suppose, is a piece that appeared on National Public Radio a couple days ago about a fellow named Ben Shapiro who runs something called Daily Wire, which is a very conservative website, I guess. Maybe it's also a podcast thing. And they do what Fox News is now doing. They say, well, it's okay that you take the vaccine, but let me tell you all the reasons why people feel you shouldn't take the vaccine. And the net effect of all of that is to discourage people from taking the vaccine. It's very clever. It's very slick. And that was the upshot of the piece in National Public Radio. And there are many organizations around that use Facebook to spread that kind of lie and to diminish the president's message and the government's, the current government's message about taking the vaccine to save your life, your family's life.  And I just saw just a quick blurb from Winston just now and he said, you know, Facebook is a gossip rag.  And so you're seeing real news being intermixed with gossip and real news being intermixed with fake news depending on what side you're looking at on the coin on that one. But it's a mismatch of information. And do you think that Facebook has improved or Twitter has improved? Given all the spotlight it's been under, the scrutiny by Congress has been under, do you think they've improved somewhat, say from a year ago? And let's all acknowledge their role, be it Facebook or Twitter or anyone else, the role in false information about the election, 2016 election and even to some extent the 2020 election. So they have a hand in that. You think they've improved their ability to ferret out bad information and prohibit it? Well, I think surely they've improved their ability but I don't think they've used their improved ability. I think a lot of misinformation and my word disinformation gets through. And I'm not satisfied that they're not doing business with the likes of Cambridge Analytica politically. They sold themselves, they sold themselves in the 2016 election and made millions and millions of dollars selling themselves to Trump. So and having a huge effect on the country. I mean, anybody with a national conscience or a shred of patriotism would realize that the platform that they are providing is doing incredible damage to the country. They know that people rely on Facebook, a lot of people rely on Facebook as a sole source of news. And when these slick guys get in there and they publish things that make you confused, that take you in the wrong direction, they are affecting public opinion by the hundreds of millions and they know that. And as a matter of fact, I feel that they are really taking perfectly in efforts to stop that from happening on their platform. This is going to require a huge change in Facebook. And to answer your question, there has not been a huge change in Facebook. And they're doing PR, but that it doesn't reflect the real change. You saw the response they gave to President Biden when he criticized- There was a blog response, which we're going to go through some of that right now. Yes, I saw their response and it's right out of the ABCs of public relations as far as how to respond to criticism. And we're going to go through some of the points here in a minute. But I guess the question is to what extent if they don't dramatically change their approach to misinformation, what consequences did they suffer? If any. Well, first, what consequences does the public suffer? What consequences does the government suffer? What consequences does democracy suffer? You know, if people are being misinformed and disinformed, our very democracy is at risk. We've seen that. We saw it all through the Trump administration and Facebook was part of it. You know, I'm sure they realize the huge leverage they have, the huge effect they have on the national conversation and national public opinion. And so they haven't really done anything to improve that. Like what was the second part of your question? Well, you've answered it.  Congress was investigating this and- Okay, but you know, Facebook is international. What about other countries? Should they dive into this and say, well, if you're going to be operating in the UK or in Canada or wherever, you have a social responsibility. You bet. But let me add one thing that, you know, we don't want to undermine the First Amendment or at least we don't want to violate the Constitution about having, you know, a government control the media. We can't do that. But there are ways to change it. Partly, I suppose, is the law of defamation, disparagement, and the law, for example, that came up in the voting machine case, where statements were made about the voting machine company, I forget its name, Cynthia will remember its name. Dominion. Dominion, where they lied about Dominion and Dominion sued them for slander or libel. And, you know, that is one way that you hold these social media companies at bay and that you have some control. Another way is this section that was supposed to be included in the law that allows suits by the public against social media companies when they lie. And it makes them responsible for the information they repeat on their platform. This would be a huge step forward. But of course, we have no Congress. I say that only because Congress hasn't done anything in years, through the Trump years and especially now. Well, they did something years ago. They had their strove vote this morning. They had their strove vote this morning, you know, a couple of hours ago on infrastructure.  So if there's not going to be an infrastructure bill, how in the world are they going to reform the social media in a Congress which doesn't do anything? Thank you to the Republican Party, question mark party. Okay, good point. Great points, Jay. Hey, Cynthia, before I go to you with a question, I'd just like to bullet some of the response from Facebook, they did a blog post and I'm just going to highlight some of their defense. They basically said, don't point the finger at Facebook. They think they're a responsible corporate citizen and their response is the following. They claimed they removed 18 million instances of COVID misinformation or as Jay would put it disinformation. Now that's interesting, that's a high number. They have billions of people on Facebook and they've removed 18 million. But what that response doesn't say, and I want your reaction on this, it doesn't say how many posts are out there that they didn't catch, they just caught the 18 million. Was it 25 million? Was it 40 million? Was it 1 billion? So you could clearly see this as a public relation response. Your reaction to that one bullet point alone from Facebook. Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the perfect example for this question to be answered, right? It took her how many times of putting out misinformation specifically about vaccines, specifically about COVID, specifically about the big lie. And yet now finally, all she gets is 12 hours of not being able to post anything to me. Well, let's clarify something. That's Twitter, not Facebook. Twitter, excuse me. Oh, they're owned by the same people? You're pretty sure they're not? No, no. Oh, I guess they're not, that's right. Okay. Yeah, so it's, but your point as well, founded that she has repeatedly spread disinformation about the election and has whipped up a, you know, millions of Americans about the validity of our election versus their perceived, you know, fraudulent election night. So again, misinformation, disinformation. And now she gets a 12 hour suspension from Twitter for her comments about, she said two things. She said, non obese people probably won't get COVID and it's not dangerous if you're under 65 years of age. So those are clearly two highly erroneous messages to be putting out there and she gets slapped on the wrist for 12 hours. Is that appropriate? No, it's not appropriate. And neither is any of the stuff that Facebook is doing. And I agree with you where you say, you know, they blocked all these different ones, but what about all the rest of them? And I see them on Facebook. So I know they didn't block them all. And I'm still friends with a lot of people from the South and it's interesting what is on their feeds as opposed to what's on my food or our feeds here in a blue state, right? I think they very specifically target people and until they start to really address the algorithms that they use in order to target people, then they're not doing anything as far as I'm concerned. Well, and thank you for saying the word algorithm because they're saying their algorithms are catching disinformation, misinformation. I'm not sure I buy that. I'm sure it does some of it. But whatever happened to good old fashioned employees that would police, you know, I know it's a lot of work. They're gonna have to hire a lot more police. But why don't they? They have the capital resources to do so. Why aren't they have actual human beings looking for bad content? Well, I believe that they are in the same way that Kevin McCarthy is covering his own butt. I believe they are too. I believe they are compromised and have been completely, it compromises the word, yeah? By not just the Trump administration, but the people that were behind a lot of that misinformation that came through in the 2016 election. So I think they are still compromised by their own complicity back then. That their hands are kind of tied as to what they can do, let alone what they wanna do. We sort of already know, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's level of not wanting to compromise himself and being greedy and obviously because he has made so much money and done so many things that have showed us who he is and that he's not trustworthy. Okay. Hey, we just got a question coming in. We really do appreciate questions that come in while we're doing this show live stream. And for you, Cynthia, the question is, how does Facebook determine what is true and what is false? How do they go about it doing it? And is there a better way? Yes, there is a better way. It's called the fairness doctrine. It was in place from 1949 until 1987 and they need to put it back in place so that news is news and social is social. And when we can separate those two, then perhaps we can make some of the headway. But I think until we separate the two, we're not gonna get very far because people's opinions are people's opinions, but the opinions that get retweeted or not retweeted, but reposted and reposted and reposted end up becoming true. It's like the lie that gets told over and over and over becomes true. It's the same sort of thing with this. So until we make news, news, and there's consequences for people like Tucker Carlson and John Hannity and Laura Ingram and the whole Fox News Network, until there's consequences with the fairness doctrine where we can catch them a ton of times and see. Well, let's go to Jay's point that you can't get anything done in Congress. How is that gonna get approved? Well, let me jump in on that. It's us guys. Sorry about that, I didn't mean to stop the band. Forget about Congress on this, forget about it. It's just a waste of time. So many of the initiatives that we'd like to see passed are gonna be are being killed and delayed out of existence just to make Joe Biden look bad for the next election. That's why the Republicans are doing that. That they have no ideology, no agenda, except to make them look bad. Don't forget Congress. So the question is, who speaks on this? Well, he answered Tim, Cynthia, we speak on it. We're a small fry, we're just streaming video, but we work consistent and we take the position that if they wanna create a platform for disinformation and not take any steps to remove it or stop it, we don't want any part of that. And we should and we did suspend them as far as submitting content to them and showing Facebook on our systems. And we'll wait, we'll see what they do. The ball's in their court. But the ball's also in, maybe they'll clean it up. I wouldn't hold my breath, but maybe they'll clean it up. And so how are they affected? Well, they're affected by public opinion. And it has to be guys like us and maybe a lot of other people who would say Facebook, you're off base here. You have to take affirmative step. Now, so it won't be Congress, it probably won't be government, it'll be the people. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. What's to prevent President Biden from taking a page out of Donald Trump's book and that is the power of the executive order? What's to prevent President Biden from saying, from here on in, we're gonna re-institute the fairness doctrine that was in place for many years that was deemed legal. It was only by politics that it was redacted, if you will, erased. What prevents Joe Biden from doing that? Tani? Well, thank you, Cynthia, you know more, but wasn't the fairness doctrine a statute? Well, I can tell you because I've got it right here. Well, it doesn't tell me as much as I'd like to know about this, but it was in 1949 is when it was put in and it required broadcasters to present both sides of political or controversial issues in an equal and honest way. So we can- Well, that was the equal time. Okay, well, yeah, I'm not sure that balance reporting is what it used to be. If what you're talking about is, quote, balance reporting, then for every truth, there is a lie and we have to report both sides. That's what some people would argue. And the problem is they have no basis for arguing their side of it because it's not true. So I'm not sure that's a solution. Let me go to the solution that I have in my mind, okay? So it's the people and the people have to stand up, the people have to say, we're not gonna play on a platform that broadcast this information. It's not good for us, not good for the country, to have lies being propagated this way or the world. So we're out of here or we're gonna complain until you change your system. Now, the system, okay? Actually, we have a show this afternoon about artificial intelligence and ethics. And I think there's a role for that. And Mark Zuckerberg knows there's a role for that. I'm sure he uses AI in the way he propagates whatever he's doing and the way he operates his platform. Remember, even in the international relations and surveillance business, the way it works is you look for key words, key words in email, key words in any kind of text document, key words in the spoken word or the video word. And if you find a combination of words using AI, you can determine that this is something that hits on truth or hits on lies. You have to program it. And this is always dangerous to have the government program, this kind of thing. But if Mark Zuckerberg took it upon himself to program it and say, look, people who are bound playing the vaccine, we're not gonna let them on the platform. We're not gonna do it. If we lose money, that's okay. We're not gonna do it. This is an ethical moral question. We have AI to identify every time somebody is doing this information on that issue, we're gonna stop it. But hereup, we're going to, we're gonna refer this to a committee and he can afford to have a committee. He can afford to have thousands of committees and the committee is gonna determine human people, whether this is, you know, this information. And if the individual who put this information in has a problem with the result of that committee, he can appeal it. But it doesn't get on the platform until it gets processed that way. If the AI lifts it in at first, fine. If the AI stops it, it goes through this process. And it doesn't get on the platform without being cleared. And so, you know, I think this can be done in-house. I think if the power of Mark Zuckerberg or if Mark Zuckerberg were ethical moral guy, not so interested in power and money, he would do exactly this. He has the resources. He has the funding. He has the technology. He has the people. Why doesn't he do this? It wouldn't be 18 million. It would be many more than that. And it would be more sophisticated than that. You know, if you think about it, college professors are doing this all the time to make sure their students don't plagiarize. They have that software and it's readily available. All the algorithms we were just talking about, it's a simple algorithm that they could put on the whole thing. And it would do exactly what you're talking about. But you also said that if Mark Zuckerberg was had some integrity, but we kind of already know that he doesn't. And that's what I was beginning to say before. Just look at what he did to his partner when he first started his business.  He does not have integrity. So we cannot expect him to do it. I hate to say this, but I think you're right in the sense, Jay, that it's up to the people. We just need to pull our involvement in Facebook. And when that happens, we'll be going better. But this is what I don't know. Maybe it'll improve. Maybe it'll improve. You know, for example, he's got stockholders. He's got directors. You know, if they're independent thinkers, if they entertain, you know, rational and patriotic thought, they will say to him, Mark, you can't run the company this way. You'll have to do better. And he will have to do better or lose his job. Within the company, this is not government. These are the individuals who will participate in the corporate structure. Do I would say consequences is a bigger stick and the consequences of breaking up Facebook because it's a monopoly of sorts, that would be a bigger deterrent than him not getting on the bandwagon with this information. So I mean, right now, J.I. grew with both points you made as A.I. would be a nice little helpful tool. But in addition, he's got to spend a lot more money on employees to come up with these committees and to just be on the hunt, not just a technology solution because I think he's implementing that already. He's claiming that his algorithms is ferreting out all this bad information and you and I both know that's not the case. Yeah, we got to do better. He's got to do better. And your point about breaking it up is very interesting because I was going to tell you before that a year or two ago, there were hearings in Congress about big tech being too big, right? And they were considering this issue and they were asking him questions. But it's kind of interesting that the Congress doesn't have a great ability to ask probative questions. They have these hearings and they all make political speeches. They don't know how to ask a question. So they got no answers. So then the hearings were suspended for a year or more. So the staff was to go back and do some research and find out what questions would be probative. I think they came back, but I don't think they did anything. What Congress has to do, if it's going to entertain the antitrust approach on this, it has to know what it's talking about. Yeah. And it's like what Fauci said to, was it Jim Paul, I've got Paul. Ben Paul. Yeah. Ben Paul. Yeah, yesterday he said, Senator, you don't know what you're talking about. We have to have senators who know what they are talking about. And then maybe they could entertain some kind of breakup strategy that would be hard politically, make no mistake about it. And as I said before, there is no Congress. But assuming there was, that would be an interesting approach to break them up and to foment the competition. I read the other day that there is actually a small company that is entering the field on Google searches. And they are head on in competition with Google on searches. And I welcome that. I think that's good for the country. It's good for tech, good for politics and so forth. Good for us. And the same thing could and should happen with Facebook. And in a funny way, Cynthia, you know, Quitter is a different company. It's owned and managed by different people. Some people think that the management is better at Twitter. And I would be included in that. But bottom line is we need competition in social media because if we don't have competition, we have effectively a monopoly on public opinion. This is very threatening to our democracy. Yeah. Hey, we've run out of time. So I'm going to go around for last comments. But I want your last comments to take into this last thing that I'm starting to watch. And that is the last day or so, Sean Hannity has stepped up to the plate. He is full-throated, endorsed vaccines, which I've never seen him do before, and Mitch McConnell just recently, full-throated, encouraged people to get vaccinated. So your last comments, maybe you could entertain, what happened? What's the turnaround? What prompted some talking heads on Fox News to start getting serious about not putting out disinformation, misinformation, and what prompted Mitch McConnell to step up to the podium in the microphone? Cynthia? Well, I think that it's that their constituents are dying and getting sick.  So I think that's part of it. I like to say one last thing about Facebook as far as, you know, yeah, what they're doing about the vaccines and all this stuff is one thing. But what about their involvement in propagating the January 6th insurrection? They put violent stuff all over the place and cannot tell me that their algorithms did not know. There's just no way they didn't know it was happening. Yet they did nothing about it. And that's what I'd like to see addressed even more so than anything else. Sure, they, you know, they are trying to look like they're doing better now. They've, you know, their vaccine hesitancy has gone up by 50% and blah, blah, blah, since they've changed their ways. You know, there's still people talking about January 6th, supporting it, thinking it wasn't bad, talking the big lie all over the place. So why suddenly are we going to look at them just for vaccine issues? I think we need to look at them across the board. They are a danger to our country. Okay, appreciate those words. Jay, your last thoughts. I'm proud of Jay for doing this and saying no more and taking a stand against it. I'm very proud of you. Good job, Jay. Well, I hope they change. I mean, it's certainly possible. It should happen within the corporate structure and without the need for government intervention, that would be better. But let me say the reason that Fox News, my reaction to that, your question, Tim. Number one is it appears that a lot of those guys are taking the vaccine and it's really kind of strange to on the one hand be taking the vaccine and let that get out into the press and on the other hand discourage people. That's one factor. Don't know if that's the driving factor. Another factor is they want to build credibility, okay, so that they can do outrageous things on other issues, such as the big live, for example, Cynthia. I think they keep on doing that. And the third possibility that I've been thinking about is what you have here is a slick operation. It's like the operation that was reported on a national public radio with regard to the daily wire.  So there's all these side stories and you're left confused at best and you're left wondering whether you should take their advice when they give you this very soft advice that maybe a vaccine would be a good idea. And so it's deniability. We never said that it was a bad idea, but we gave you all the reasons you could consider in coming to your own conclusion. It's very slick. It's the new approach. The new approach and disinformation. I heard Tucker Carlson say just two days ago, it's your right as an American to ask solid questions about these things before they force you to take a vaccine while no one's forcing anybody to take a vaccine yet. Number two is he's using the red, white, and blue mom and apple pie to say that you as an American should be questioning everything and that should prevent you from taking the vaccine. This is one other thing I wanna mention and that's a reality that we observers of the Trump administration should understand by now is if you say that it's just a sniffle back in March of 2020 and then later, you evolve off that point, there's a very substantial number of your base that is looking for signals. And when you first said it was a sniffle that's the signal they caught. And everything you said after that to the contrary, they don't take seriously. They believe what you're really telling them is it's a sniffle. This is the theory of my theory anyway of momentum information. You make your statement at first and you get people to believe that's how you really feel. And then when you change it under pressure they don't change their minds. They think today it's still a sniffle and they die over it. So it's the theory of these guys at Fox News, yeah, they're changing their tone but the guys in their base and Trump's base who have heard the original message still believe the original message. And I think we're watching that phenomenon in public relations happening right now. Okay. Can I have to think, Tim? Can I just? Well, we've run out of time, but very quickly. Very quickly, it is a quote from Trump himself. Very quickly. The vaccine thing. People are refusing to take the vaccine because they don't trust Biden's administration. They don't trust the election results and they certainly don't trust fake news which is refusing to tell the truth. So that's behind all of it. All right, all right. One guy behind all of it just blowing everything up anyway. All righty. Hey, great discussion, great points made. Thank you very much, Jay Fidel. Great points, Cynthia. Cynthia, Lee Sinclair. Join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What In America. I'm Tim Appachello. I can never say my name correctly when I'm doing this show. I'm Tim Appachello, your host and we will see you next week. Aloha.


Hello, how are you? Hello, hello sir. I'm good, hi.  Well, it's wonderful to meet you. How are you during this whole self-isolation? I'm good. We've been watching a lot of old noir. We're doing a Hitchcock and a Fritz Lang. Oh, really? Which was big. Yeah. That's awesome. What's your favorite Hitchcock film? I don't know that far too many. You can't say anything. Anything from frenzy to rope to, I don't know, psycho. My own you too much everything. A whole lot of stuff. But we're now watching a lot of old movies. I just saw The Lodger and I saw Young and Innocent. That's awesome. Yeah, I love, Hitchcock obviously is amazing. I don't have to tell you that. But thank you so much for joining us. And I wanted to ask you during this kind of almost self-isolation that's going through. How is it going for you as a writer? Is it more helpful as a writer being able to just sit down and being able to write as much as you want? Or is it actually more painstaking? I have not been able to write at all. There, perfect. Yeah, there it is. Thank you. Sorry about that. But yeah, I've actually been trying to write. There's a movie I was shooting just before the lockdown happened and I had three, four days away from the shoot. And I kind of wrote some scenarios for that, which is my book In Progress. And the other writing that I was supposed to do last two and a half weeks, I have actually not been writing at all. Really? And so you said you had four days left on a current shoot? Yeah, I had four days left. So I still have four days left. So whenever the lockdown gets over, I finish my thing. Oh, dang. So is this break from writing frustrating or is it actually nice? No, I write in a flow. When I write, I write in a flow. Yeah. I think it's like a burst of, it's always a burst. So I write and I sit and I'll write till I finish. It often always happens very close to shoot. So I always know what I'm going to do and I narrate everything to people and get the team together and I write just before we're going into the shoot. So normally that's how writing happens. So you figure out one.  OK. So you're one of those writers that doesn't write every single day. You almost write when inspiration happens and kind of like that. More like that than like that. I write when inspiration happens and I write in a burst. I write to finish. When I write, I finish my job. And then I keep doing corrections as I go along in the shoot. Even when I'm working with somebody else's script, I work like that. So a lot of rewriting happens while you're in the shoot. What originally made you, because I know you're, you originally wrote a lot.  And so what made you want to be a writer? And I have been writing since I was a kid. So I was writing when I was nine years old. I was writing when I was 10 years old. And I was writing three dark stuff when I was 19 years old. So that would scare a lot of people. Like my school magazine wouldn't publish what I wrote because I thought it was too dark. That's what I did. Really? Thank you. Yeah, I would like nobody, like I was so conscious of what I wrote because I felt things very strongly that I never showed it to anyone. I think somewhere, somewhere when I started watching a lot of cinema from the world over, mostly international cinema, not Indian cinema. When I started seeing a lot of European cinema, I started getting confident that what I wrote was actually good stuff. Because until then, I thought my writing was not very healthy. Well, that's actually a question I had for you because a common theme in your films and the shows that you, whether you're writing, directing or producing, there seems to be often this common theme about depravity in us as well as the nature of evil. But at the same time, one of the things that is so astonishing to me is your capacity to present characters that are never demonized. So is that intentional when you write or is that just a byproduct of your ability to create believable characters? No, I think that's somewhere that I see things as well because it's a very early on, like when I was growing up in a very small town in India and I was, we were primarily Hindi speaking and I never spoke a word of English and used to read a lot of Hindi literature. And that was the time that a lot of Russian literature was published in Hindi. So very early on in life, I was very influenced by Dastavsky, by Tolstoy. I read a whole lot of that literature in Hindi. I did not read it in English or any other language. I read it in Hindi. And also being a loner, you tend to think things and you tend to see things a certain way. And also that whole belief system that people are not born a certain way. You don't judge people for what they do. And I've always been curious about why somebody would do something so heinous as kill someone. What makes somebody seemingly so normal? Because I've seen this happen in this. Growing up in this very small town, I've known someone who later in life turned out to be someone who murdered somebody, not intentionally out of anger, across my house. I've seen things like somebody I probably played with. And it was somebody who showed us movies on VHS that were kind of forbidden because we were young kids and somebody who'd show us say Macanus Gold and it was forbidden because in Macanus Gold there's this one sequence where you see the breasts of the actress. As kids is nine, ten years old, you see that and you're like very wide eyed and in India you can't see that. So that we got kidnapped and we grew up much later and I was studying in a boarding school. When things like that happened around you, when I was growing up in Uttar Pradesh, in India, near the place, which is considered to be the current capital. So you see things and you start thinking because you don't tend to see people the way the world sees them. You want to get into the humanity, you want to see what makes them the way they are. And I've always been very bored by it. Very nice guys bore me. I can relate. We actually just watched your Raman Raghav 2.0. Phenomenal by the way. Which version do you see? There are two versions of the film. Oh really? Where did you see it? Where? We saw it on YouTube. That's the only place we could find it. There's a preferred version which is mostly all over Europe. You'll find a version that's in Germany or Spain and things. So what's the difference of those? Is it a director's cut? The Indian version was much more linear. Because in India they don't like to play with structure. Indian version was much more linear. It's a minor change but it changes a lot in the film. Indian version explains things a little bit more. Really? Now I want to find it. I'm talking about the version that played at the Canfield Festival. It's a more European version. Well, I want to find that now. We were talking about in it that it doesn't feel like in gangs and ugly and that you don't ever judge your characters and you also don't let the audience judge your characters. At one point, obviously Nawaz's character is a despicable person but at the end of it, Rick said that you wonder if he's almost an anti-hero kind of a little bit at the end. I was also wondering though, a lot of your films that you've not only written, directed but also produced Lunchbox, Udan, other ones like that are some of our favourites for one but they're also very digestible for Western audiences. Is that something you purposely write? Purposely think about? No, I don't like the unnecessary melodrama of Indian cinema. Even if I put that in my movies, my movies will be much bigger successes than they are. But the thing is, I just can't do it. I can't bring myself down to spoon feed or justify certain things because my education is very different. Mostly in the film industry, it's full of people who are born within the film industry. So it's just better. Nawaz, that's okay. So our film industry is mostly people who are born within the film industry. So they've grown up watching cinema that's already produced. The idea of the world comes from cinema. And my idea of the world comes from life. My idea of the world comes from a whole lot of other things. I did not grow up on Indian cinema as much as I grew up studying. I discovered cinema much too late in life. And when I found cinema, I got into cinema. And I used to read a lot because I spent most of my time in the library. So what happens is, I got my passport in say 19... I got a passport in 2004-5. I was 32 years old. I did not have a passport before that. So when you grow up in a small town in India, you travel the world through books. And you travel the world through cinema. And you get into people's heads. So it's not really deliberate in the sense that I am very aware of the kind of movies I'm making. And I am also aware of... It does not reach out to the core Indian audience, the cinema audience. Because it doesn't explain so much, it doesn't simplify so much. I like complex characters. And by creating complexity in movies, you also lose audience. So hence, I work backwards in the sense I work on very low budgets. I work on low budgets so that the budgets often force you to change your approach to cinema. Every time I got money to spend on films, I have not had that full freedom. I had to always cut out the complexity from the film. I have to simplify it. I have to cater more to the audience because you need a broad base audience. For a much more tighter audience, I can retain my complexities with the character. So like, for example, Saikur Raman or Raman Raghav, I know beforehand how much the film is going to work on box office. So how I work is I go to my producer and ask him, how much money will you give me if I do not give you a script and I don't tell you who is in it? Just to make a film. So then they give me a figure and I work backwards. So for example, Saikur Raman, I got a figure and I know that I cannot shoot more than 20 days. So I sit down and write the script to make it in a way that I can shoot it in 20 days. So that's why the chapters, because chapters help me jump. Interesting. So every chapter becomes like, I go into one location and I shoot one chunk. I go into another location and I shoot one chunk. So that's how I would design my film. So it is working backwards, but the point of the film was in the end, there's a song sequence in the pre-climax, when you see the burning of the Ravan and all the rituals. So what happened was at the time of the shoot, it was coinciding that the way India is, the political atmosphere of India is such right now at the moment where everybody is very insecure. So all the religions first time came out in the streets in numbers as a show of strength. All the festivals became a show of strength for religions, various religions. And that kind of became the commentary in the film. So all the visuals that you see of people are real visuals. I have not created that was happening on the street. We went there with the camera and shot it as it is. And that becomes the kind of a narrative in the climactic scene because the entire film was made only for the last sequence. The conversation between the two about what's evil and what is a perceived evil and what is an evil that we trust so much and we don't know it is evil. There's an evil that we're supposed to trust. Like for example, the police we're supposed to trust but in India we're afraid of the police. We don't trust the police, we're afraid of the police. I'm saying we're supposed to feel insecure but we're insecure. And I'm saying there's the summary and the whole conversation in the end was what the whole film was driving at. But I had to also do it in a way where it's like a genre film. In a genre piece you can be political, you can be complex, you can be so much more for the discerning eye, for people who understand it, it's fine. For people who don't understand it, they just see it as a serial killer film. Yeah. Sorry, Rick, can you turn your camera a little right there? Yeah, right there. Thank you, perfect. Thank you. Go ahead, Rick. Yeah, you've mentioned a few times about the working of the music in the films and I've found that oftentimes the score, it seems to have little musical symmetry. Like I bet if I listened to the score of Ugly or Raman Raghav and I showed those songs to people, they wouldn't even know they came from the same film. But when you see them as a whole, there's this congruency that it all seems like it's supposed to fit. And how closely do you work with your composers in that regard? I work a lot on music. Yeah, I think music is extremely important. Music became, because when I was writing my first movie, there was no music in it. It's a movie called Pange. And it was a movie about these four students based on a real story to kind of go on a crime screen because they want a good life. And to make that film, instead of four struggling students, I had to tell them into four members of a band. I made them into members of a band, because if you don't have songs, nobody wants to produce a movie. And I come from a school where I can't have an actor suddenly breaking into a song. With my first film, I didn't know how to put in a song, so I had to make them a member of a band. They were professionals in this. And I wanted to get to my story fast. So my first movie, if you see, it's very hard, but it's there on YouTube, but I don't think it has subtitled. I never released it, got banned in India. But my first film, first 25 minutes of the movie was just music, songs, songs, songs. When I said, you want songs, I'll give you songs, and then let me get to the story, and then the story. Yep. We see that in your films, sir. We see that in your films. Absolutely. There's your music. That's our relationship with music. Over a period, I think I figured out how to integrate music with my film. And because I love music so much, and my taste in music depends a lot on what I'm listening at the moment. So what I do is I work on music over a period of time, and I make it part of the narrative. Music always becomes part of the script and part of the narration. So if people are breaking into a song and dance, which is a rule that I've probably broken only once, they have to play the part of a singer. They have to play a professional singer or something. Otherwise, that rule I've broken only once in my movie. But other than that, they're only playing in the background score, and they are adding to the film what I cannot put in the script, mostly because of the reasons of censorship. So most of the songs, if you bring them down, kind of becomes political. Mostly, like, say, for example, Gangs of Asipur songs are extremely political. They're sexual and political. And for Indian movies, the key things that you cannot put in the movies is sex, sexuality, politics, and religion. The key things are a big no for Indian cinema. And those are my key preoccupations. I cannot make a film without those things. So I need to find ways to put that in, and songs often become the way to put it in. My songs are very political. We saw Sacred Games, which we love Sacred Games. And do you prefer that medium working with Netflix since you don't really have those constraints? I like working with Netflix. I've been doing a great time working with them because not just that. A lot of my movies that did not find, for example, Raman Randu, and for example, Ugly and The Girl in Yellow Boots, all these movies found a much, much bigger audience after they came on Netflix than they found in theater. So the amount of feedback and mails and the response I got for my movies after they came on Netflix, the movies that make people uncomfortable. So they became much more popular because of the OTT platforms. And they were on the release. I've always got great reviews and they played at festivals, but somehow there's always a lack of box office. There's a lack of number of people who seek at the time of release. So people generally discover my films later after they hear it. And by that time, it doesn't stay in cinemas in India because they're very limited cinemas. So with the advent of Netflix and Amazon, I found a much larger audience than I had when those films actually came on. I have a question for you because a lot, there's a variance of difference of opinion on this matter from filmmakers, even Martin Scorsese, who I know you know, would you like to do a film and have it go straight to a streaming service so you don't have those constraints? No, as a filmmaker, I would love to see my movie on screen. Yeah. But as an Indian filmmaker, we don't have that advantage, not because of Netflix wouldn't do it. Netflix is willing to do something like that. But the Indian theater owners would not play a film, even for a week if it's going on Netflix. Gotcha. So you can't do what they do. Right. You can't do a limited release there and then put it on streaming like we do in the States. No, you can do that in the US. You can do that in parts of Europe or UK. But you can't do that in India because the cinema, exhibitors won't do that. Exhibitors don't even give cinemas to do a premiere for movies that are going on Netflix. They do that for a web series. Like for example, Sacred Games, we premiered in a screen of cinemas, whereas the movies that go on Netflix, one couldn't find cinemas to screen them because there was a competition to them, even for a premiere. So that's a metaphor. Interesting. But you can do that outside India. Yeah. Yeah.  How much of that, we've often said that we think you are someone who could instantly become a household name here in the United States like other directors who don't come from America. I think most of our movies haven't... I've found a massive audience in Europe, mostly in Spain, Germany, France, Italy. But except Lunchbox, none of our friends have managed to have had a big through in the US or Canada. Like I've had a lot of movies that have played at the Toronto Film Festival. But Barik Lunchbox, none of our movies have had a kind of a breakthrough in the US. Gangster was, if you had a breakthrough on the online OTT platform. Because it was picked up by a distributor and it got a great Blu-ray release in US. But it found success on Netflix when they released it as a six-part series. Yeah. I think that's because, one, Americans don't like reading subtitles. Two, Americans have a very short attention span. And so releasing... I know Gangster Wasiper, which is probably my favorite... I think it's the best gangster film of all time. But the fact that it's five, five and a half hours long would immediately intimidate any American. That's the reason it didn't find a distribution. Yeah, which is unfortunate. Because it's so phenomenal. But do you have any aspirations to do any Hollywood films at all? Or not? No, I've been... Since Black Friday, 2005, I've had an agent in the US. And I've just been very resistant to it until two, three years ago. Until two, three years ago, I was very resistant to it because I'm very self-conscious of my language. So when I watch an American movie, I put the subtitles on, even for English language movies. Because I want to understand everything and I feel like I don't understand things. And then I was... I was on the jury in Sundance in 2013, I think. The Gangster Wasiper came out and played it Sundance. And... Park Chang-Wook had made a movie called Stoked with Nicole Kidman. And he's a very good friend. So I asked him, like, how did you manage to make a film in Hollywood? And he told me, very simply, he says, all you have to do is pretend you don't understand English. So when you pretend that you don't understand English, they leave you alone. But for me, I was like, by them, everybody knew that I spoke English. Good understanding. Had I met him much before, he says the moment they know you understand their language, everybody wants to tell you how to make a movie. So this is when they know, they have to talk to you through somebody, a mediator. You get a free hand at making a movie. So I've had... I've got so many filmmakers from across the world, their experiences in Hollywood has been very, very strange in the sense, like, I know Fatih Akin was trying to make a film and he had signed the contract with Focus Features and signing the contract. It went on for so long time and then he gave up and he came back and decided I don't want to work in Hollywood. I've had a whole lot of filmmakers who have had some very strange experiences and then they came to this phase in Hollywood, the phase where I was at, where they were picking up filmmakers from across the world who were playing movies at the festivals and they were all getting movies with, like, say, Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger and Stallone and things and they were trying to make these packages with filmmakers from across the world. I didn't want to do movies like that. I did not want to do... I wanted to do more personal, intimate, smaller movies, which now I have started, now I'm a little more confident and in the sense of dealing with people, I have a great agent there and I have good people and we've been talking now to figure out something that I would like to do which is much more under the radar, quite smaller, more personal, and then something much out there and much louder. I would love that and I'm hoping that it's changing in Hollywood with the parasite winning the Oscar. Nathan, it's been changing for the last two years. Yeah. And the fact that Guillermo del Toro won... In your retube? Hania Hania in your retube. So we're hoping you can join that conversation of ones that have actually... There's a lot of good things happening. I'm seeing just the movies, for example, directed by an independent filmmaker. Bad Boys is these two Belgian filmmakers who came in. You have no history in Hollywood. So they are now actually looking at... They've understood that the hunger for a filmmaker to tell the story is much more from people who are coming from outside rather than play the Hollywood game. So I think it is changing. I've seen this change in perspective in the last two years. So most of the work that I'm doing right now is backed from outside only. It's not backed here as much. So you're out of shot. There, cool. Good. Thank you. Sorry. Go ahead. So I'm doing a lot of work for OTT platforms. Mostly my preferred platform is Netflix. I'm doing a lot of work at Netflix. But it's also... It's backed very strongly from there. So it's in a good space right now. Yeah. And would you say...  When we were speaking with... I know how you... But when we were speaking with Noazad Ansadiki about his approach to characters and if he would prefer to be in a character for a stretch of time like Sacred Games versus being able to do it for 20 days on a film, he said he loved, and it didn't surprise me, especially because he has a theater background, that he loved the process of being a character and extended them out of time like Sacred Games. Is that your preference as a creator? A series versus a film? Or it's too completely different? I like the idea of a series. I like to tell the whole story. Yeah. So many times my problem is that I need more time. I need more time to tell a story. I sometimes... Like some films like, say, Ugly and... Raman Raghav, they're fine. There's so many other movies, like the movie that I made Mukhabar. I probably would have made a much longer movie. Or Black Friday. Black Friday was probably... I would have made it like a gang of us. We actually shot and had a four and a half hour version. Really? Yeah, and then it got banned, and after that, by the time it got cleared, we lost a lot of the film in the lab. So what came out was a two hour 40 minute version, which was still very powerful, but we lost a lot of material. I like telling longer stories. Yeah. Yeah, it was... Sacred Games is one of our favorite series. I loved the ending of Sacred Games. I did want to ask you one question, though. I know you didn't direct the second season, but you were obviously heavily involved. No, I did the second season as well. You directed? Yeah, me and Leeraj came on. We directed the second season. I directed all the... Sorry. There was one part that I wanted to know, because I hated her so much. At the end, when they're trying to figure out the code, spoilers for anybody who hasn't seen it, go away. This woman comes up, who's supposed to be a tech expert.  Can you explain the logic behind what she did there? Because... I can't explain that because that was... not my chunk. We don't even read each other's scripts. Gotcha. Because we have a boss sitting on top of our head. Gotcha. We have a right to corona. Got it. I just wanted to know if you knew, because we reacted to that in a live reaction. People saw my reaction, they found it multiple times. Just shoot her in the face, Sartaj. I hated her so much. Sometimes it works because there's always this character that you hate so much and it irritates you because it's just killing time when there's a race against time. Those characters work very well because they pull you in much more because you start getting personally involved. I love the ending though. I love that you didn't answer it because you left it open for interpretation. I love that. I wanted to have a question about you've worked with Nawaz a lot and you almost gave him his biggest break, obviously. He talked about when you casted him in Gangs of Wasiper that somebody came up and said, who's your lead? I think you pointed to Nawaz and they were like, oh, this will never work. Obviously, he doesn't look like a hero. When did you know that Nawaz was as good as he is? In my opinion, he's one of the greatest actors I've ever seen. Nawaz is not just a villain, he's an incredible screen presence. For me, Nawaz's first role, I cast him because I was a casting director at that time as well as a writer. It was a movie called Shool which I wrote and I was casting and Nawaz was in dire need of money. And I said there's nothing good for you when he said I'll just come and work because I just need my lunch money. So he did a one-scene role in that movie called Shool. And after that we worked again on Black Friday and Black Friday is where I discovered him because Black Friday was just a good actor for me and he's just one of the many good actors who were on the set. And while I was shooting with him, the very crucial scene has seen that a whole lot of people love and my assistant who's also been my co-writer standing next to me, this woman who was from the same acting school as Nawaz was, but she wanted to be more in direction. And while Nawaz was performing she was kind of talking to herself and she was gushing over him and she said look at his eyes, look at his eyes they're so beautiful. I was like listening to her and that's it was almost like a prompt. She prompted me and I looked at Nawaz very differently.  And then I'll try to look at Nawaz from a perspective of say a woman or from a perspective of a filmmaker. I never saw him that deeply before that day. And I realized the man is somebody else on camera. He holds the camera because if you see him off screen if you see him on the street, you will not notice him. He will come and sit quietly next to you, you would not know that he's coming sit and he's the main actor in the show.  With Nawaz that's not the case but Nawaz becomes the character on screen but off screen he disappears so it kind of helps me I can think of him in various ways and he'll come in and he'll totally surrender he just get into this by doing Raman Draga he fell ill twice he got into it so badly he got dengu, he was in a hospital and while in the hospital he was only just constantly blabbering lines from Saikuram from Raman Draga as if he was literally delivering the character and he was on a high fever and his wife called me and she said what have you done to him and he's just like talking non-stop lines from a movie and I got scared and he was really affected by it he becomes like that he likes to live there, he likes to stay there because he actually prefers that world and he steps into that world so when he's bringing a character he steps into that world can you put your camera back I'm sorry I keep missing you, go ahead thank you in Raman Draga one of the things that was so astonishing about Nawaz was he was obviously playing someone who was sociopathic but it wasn't just in the dialogue and it wasn't just in what he was doing literally as if I could see there was a psychosis in the inner monologue that that monologue I wrote that monologue I wrote back in 1993 really it is from it is from a play that I it's the first piece of writing that I did when I came to the city in 1993 I wrote a play and that started with this monologue which was about this person who was killed somebody on the street and the police picks him up and they're talking to him and he's talking about why he killed that person and how I wrote it back in 1993 so when I was about to make this movie Raman Draga I actually wanted to make a biopic but my movie Bombay Alwet didn't work it was a big disaster and everybody pulled the plug on Raman Draga so we had the material and Vasan Balar who was a writer on Raman Draga he had done a lot of work on it so I took his material and I tried to I made the film into a contemporary film and it became a political statement so that his monologue piece I called a friend of mine who had my plays that I wrote in 1993 he had all my writing from then and he's the theater in Delhi and I asked him and he sent me screenshots of the play and from the screenshots I rewrote the monologue then monologue piece was written in I was 21 years old when I wrote that really that's impressive that was such a phenomenal scene what you did with it and what obviously Nawaz did he's so natural in what he does I did want to talk about the acting your process with one casting and acting but there was another scene that I want to talk about as well in ugly I'm sure it's one of the most famous scenes in it in the police station the police station yeah that's what I want to talk about I heard it was supposed to be one minute and then you just let them go and they were kind of improvising and it came out to be a 14 minute scene that was the first day of the shoot oh really jeez so you must have felt good improvising in the sense also I did not give my script to the actors I would give them scenes on the day of the shoot and I did not want anyone to know what I was doing and what I did was I gave them all different instructions I told the father that you think nobody's trying to understand you so you're constantly trying to explain things in the way it happened and you're very sincere so every time you're asked a question you try to sincerely answer it you have to be overzealous and very sincere I told the actor who's playing his friend that your friend is an idiot he doesn't understand how to handle the police he doesn't know how to handle the world you're a more practical person you're a street smart person so you have to keep cutting in between and try to handle things your way and I told the cop you don't trust them at all you think they've done it so you want them to keep repeating what they're doing that's a very irrelevant question till you see they kind of crack up and the scene went on non-stop for 14 minutes because nobody would stop and it stopped only because I couldn't control my laughter and I fell off the chair well yeah I was I was dying I was dying I have one take I'm like the first very first take stop for 14 and a half minutes which we didn't cut when I started laughing and you can hear my laughter I still have that somewhere after that we start to just borrow from that one take that lends to our question about the way you work with actors and you select your actors because what you just said is very revealing about how you direct your actors because I know a lot of actors would be scared to come on set and not have a script not know a full objective they want to create a backstory they need to know what their why and you just yeah all you needed to do with them but what's beautiful is all you needed to do in that scene was give everybody a very simple objective and they trusted you to just take that I don't work with actors till I form a trust with them or they form a trust with me so I spend a lot of time like even when I'm working with actors I have worked with them in a smaller role where they have seen me how I work then I give them a little bigger role before I put them in the center and when I'm working with absolute newcomers for a first film where I know I need to work with them then they wait for the film is 3 years before they come on board after they come on board when they come on board 3 years they hang out on the set they assist, they watch the process before I start to work watch how you work because if my actors don't trust me I cannot make the film every time I found I had an actor who didn't give me the trust and the faith things have gone wrong just the way you described the way you directed that scene my first thought was man those actors had to trust you they had to and they gave me a lot of trust give me a lot of trust this Mukhabar's film that I made recently I told him he's the same guy who plays the best friend in Ugly he plays the centerpiece he plays the lead in Mukhabar's Mukhabar's is the boxer it's the brawler so I told him I cannot make a film with you in the lead role because nobody will give me the money so if you have to make the film in a smaller budget that means you have to save money on choreographing the boxing so for that you have to become a boxer if you become a boxer I will save the ring with you and I will save money and I can make the film and I sent him off and he went away for a year he actually became a boxer and he's fighting the Asian champion in the film and all the boxing scenes boxing happened wow I love that that's beautiful yeah that's fantastic so in terms of your casting process we're both actors so that's why we're asking a lot of acting questions yeah a lot of your films especially some of the smaller characters it seems that you sometimes just go out on the street and pick somebody who looks like the character that you're trying to portray so what is your process with the casting I pick out actors like that I find an interesting actor I know what role I want for him and which film I want to use him but I do it much before the film I normally do it in advance I always find my actors more than here in advance and I put that in their head and I get them to prepare like many a times this actor I worked with in a short film who plays a perpendicular in Gangs of Wasipur and I told him I said you want a role in the film I have a role for you but you need to learn how to play with a blade in your mouth so your only audition process is that I trust everything about you except can you play with a blade in your mouth without it looking like you're making an effort or I don't need to do camera tricks and he literally went and learned how to play with a blade in his mouth and he got the role that really is because obviously you can already see an actor's talent before you cast them so you already know that but to give an actor that much time to prepare is a much better in my opinion casting process and it shows in your films because your films have some of the most realistic acting we've seen I think almost 100 we've only been doing this for a little over a year now we've seen over 100 films and your films have realistic acting that we've seen out of India and so that to your credit I believe actors are like and they give that time that's also the reason why I've worked with most times new actors or actors who give me that kind of a time actors and music because it's very important I don't know how to create music I mean people who give me time I can't work with a music director who is so busy that I'm not in his pride in this because I don't have very big budgets so I end up working with a newcomer or I end up working with people who have that kind of relationship who will still prioritize me even if I have less money for them than what the mainstream industry is giving them I cannot work with someone who does not prioritize me so within our limited budgets I have to find people who prioritize me we saw a thing on Netflix it was a creative Indians the thing that you did with them it was a very happy guinea pig with your composers and I love that you let artists be artists and since that's one of the things I love about you you kind of just let the artists do their thing and then you kind of shape it to what you need it to be but I think that's why your scores are so unique and creative and very different because sometimes you'll just have gangs of wasp are going on and it's just I love it because it's so different that's a lot of fare to Sneha Khandwalke my working process not just with the music it's mostly with everybody is the same I do not tell them what to do I give them very basic instructions information most of the times they don't get a script until much later but I know what I'm going to make so I take them into the world and I only tell them what not to do I only keep the power of saying no with me but I do not tell them what to do including my costume designer my production designer and my camera person and I let them what they want to do the most I don't tell my camera man this is the film I want to do this is how I want to shoot it I ask him what's the new camera you want to try what's the new thing you want to try this is our conversation and everybody has this thing that I've been dying to do and I genuinely believe that I've done my best work when somebody has trusted me and let me be so that's how I work with my people and I know when you trust them and you let them be they don't just have the sense of responsibility that they like so much they also feel empowered to want to give you so much more and they also want to do something that they've been dying to do but nobody lets them do because everybody tells them exactly what to do so even with the music director like every time I deal with music directors they say every person comes to us and say we want a song like this we want a song like that blockbuster song they say you're the only one who comes and tells me what do you want to do then you make me hear a sound that's awesome we work on the sound first what is the kind of a sound we are working towards in the movie and then we start working on music and songs and I don't have few songs ready I don't get into the script at all interesting sometimes like the most famous dialogue from Gang Sao Vasipur about Kaike Lunga comes because of the song it wasn't the song did not come from the dialogue in the script the dialogue in the script came from the song hmm wow so those are the things and that's why the the script was very flexible the script is written there and then suddenly Sneha recorded the song and the song was in gibberish the music was in gibberish and it went like kangainunga kangainunga and that's how it sounded like that and suddenly while listening to her gibberish I said you know Kaike Lunga is such an extraordinary expression hmm such an extraordinary expression and then we found that word and then the song was built around Kaike Lunga and then to incorporate that in the film I rewrote that entire sequence I love that so it's a kind of a process that is that everybody is a kind of a collaborator on it so I can borrow from everywhere and I keep adapting to it and keep changing it and everybody feels like they want to give it their best because they also get the time they want to do it yeah because we've always said film is a collaborative art form obviously and you really take that to heart and it shows and I think that's why your work shows that it's so so good because my screening and my audition happens before people come on board so like I'll spend all my time before locking my production designer before locking my costume person before locking my team and all my time with them knowing whether I can work with them or not or whether they'll understand what my process or not it's done there after they come on board we're all equals and then they have their own kind of a contribution and they become their one bosses yeah how important do you think it is because obviously you said you don't like acting but you have acted and you know acting and it obviously informs your directing do you think it's important for directors to understand actors and acting like for me it has helped me a lot because my entire process of casting or handling actors is informed by my experience in acting so while I was acting on stage and I was very proud after on stage because I know that I was very good and at that time I like most people I also had ambitions of acting and I enjoyed the fact that I was very good and I was getting so much attention and I got movies very early on when I was very young I was 20 early 20s and I got some movies to act in and I was terrible in them I was like the shittiest actor you've seen on stage so I could not stand myself I could not watch it and I did 4 films 5 films and I just as soon as I wouldn't talk about it I wouldn't tell people I was in those movies and it was so bad and that's what taught me how not to handle actors because I realized it was because not because I didn't know how to act it was because my director does not know how to work with actors so my entire learning of how to deal with actors comes from knowing what not to do with actors yeah well put that's very true I actually have a question it's not so much in your films at all but the I know what he's going to ask you I've asked this of another director and Nawaz we've seen quite a few and the one common thread I see with a lot of acting in Indian cinema is that the white actors are so terrible the foreign white actor it's almost comically bad how they are and it's not all the acting like it could be like an Irfan Khan film and he's amazing but then a foreign actor comes in and he kind of just shits all over the place and so I was wondering if you knew why that is it's a very simple thing they very rarely cast white actors in the movie they just cast a white man in a role many a times because it's also the equation of rupee versus the dollar or rupee versus the pound so they have the minimum wage of an actor say outside India is what you pay a very successful actor here in order to save money so you want a good talent and you respect the talent so either you pay good money for it or you spend time scrounging through cinema theaters and amongst actors and find a new raw talent who's very good they don't want to spend time and they don't want to spend money so they end up working with very bad white actors make sense well you want a rapid fire thank you so much for your time we have a couple like almost fast quick questions for you here rapid fire that we just wanted to ask you to end it off here so first off coffee or chai coffee black coffee black coffee well done sir i'm with you do you have a favorite Hollywood film oh i have too many i like too many movies i like too many movies i like one or two one or two that you like you give me a decade i can name favorite filmmakers yeah favorite favorite film maker then one of your favorite film makers one of my favorite filmmakers is Minus Corsese yes Minus Corsese that's obvious i will not talk about Scorsese i will not talk about Coppola among the my favorite film of last 20 years i can say that of last 20 years from Hollywood they will be blood and my favorite film worldwide memories of murder i haven't seen it but i know i think it's beyond pariside so memories of murder i got it right now and my favorite my other film that i like so much is leg the right one in i haven't seen that one it says memories of murder it's a kind of a horror maybe the guy who made tinker totailers will just buy his first film oh yeah and they will be blood is my favorite Hollywood film in last 20 years is he your favorite Hollywood actor i saw it at the dome in LA only two filmmakers once upon a time in Hollywood and they will be blood oh that's awesome i love the dome favorite Hollywood actor yeah of course yeah go ahead rick and otherwise james cagney wow i think james cagney is the precursor of all later great actors because everybody from a jack nipples into pachino to dinner i think they kind of come from james cagney what is one film you think every person specifically every film a writer should watch specifically like a writer the best writer you should watch this if you want to see great screenwriting oh great successful screenwriting though the film did not succeed so much no but for me i will talk about my process when i was learning writing a lot of learning i had from james m came and the adaptation of his films my learning was i read double indemnity then saw the adaptation of it i read poshman drinks twice then i saw all the versions of it including the chinese version of it then there was purple rain there is a whole lot of james m came adaptation and one of the greatest adaptations according to me was LA confidential because i read the entire LA quartet james selroy when i went to LA i would go and sit in the restaurant i would sit and write in scripts and i got matchboxes from there nice but you see LA confidential LA confidential is such a big book but how intelligently it's been written because they took out a lot of material from the book away and still made a concise film and they created that role of tamasi they created it was created by the script writer it was not in the original book never in the book it was never in the book so that it was probably the most intelligent screenplay adaptation i have seen ever and my learning of screenwriting is also from reading the books then reading the screenplay then watching the film so that's how i thought myself maybe and these are exactly the books and the films and your favorite alcoholic beverage i love whiskey and i love woodburn and lf kilkoman and i am right now having custom egos that's good yeah i'm a whiskey man i love all alcohol but the whiskey is my thing i love whiskey number one and my tequila or my scale number two well thank you so much for allowing us to sit down and have a conversation with you it's a big honor for us you're easily one of my favorite just directors playing not just indian directors and not really but i was sent a link for you reviewed it and i thought you caught on to every single nuance of it which i was so happy to see that i would love to talk to you and i have to see more of what you've been doing we were just so happy that you catch on to every single tiny little thing on it so one feels very good because a lot of complexity people don't tend to catch so phenomenal it was all our honor we just did the r2.0 just yesterday i'll see that i'll go check it out thank you so much for sitting down with us it's a huge honor if you ever need white actors you know who to call but yeah go ahead rick where are you guys based los angeles i keep coming to them my daughter studies at chaplain if you're ever here we would love to sit down and talk i'll do it when i'm there yeah please do thank you so much have a good one man thank you


Welcome to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the Think Tech Live Streaming Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Justin Demos from V-Dog. Today we're gonna talk about dogs going vegan. So let's get into it. Tell us about V-Dog, Justin. Well, V-Dog is vegan dog food. We've been around for about 16 years now. Our formula is nutritionally complete. People seem to love that we offer a kibble in both a regular size and a mini size.  Yeah. So what exactly does nutritionally complete mean? It's AFCO approved, which means it basically has everything that a dog would need, including touring and the amounts of protein and like crude fats and that sort of stuff. So it meets all those levels. So, you know, it's on par with any commercial dog food that you would buy for your dog. And you can like rest easy knowing that they're getting everything they need. And what is AFCO? AFCO? Yeah. I guess I'm wrong. AFCO. Yeah. Because what is that? It's literally the go-to nutrition certification, you know? Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, cause I think a lot of people want to make their dogs vegan, but they don't really know how. And so that's reassuring that, you know, the food has enough nutrition for a dog.   Is there a transition you have to make? Or do you just do it right away? What if your dog doesn't like the taste of the new food? I mean, how? Yeah, yeah. Is there anything you do to make it more meatier? Is there anything you guys do? What do people, how do people make their dogs vegan, I guess? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Okay. First thing I'll say is that dogs are actually omnivores technically because wolves, they departed from wolves, kind of evolved alongside humans for about the last 15, 30,000 years, you know? And in that time dogs or wild dogs at that time were mostly scavengers and they were budding up with humans to kind of, that was just the best place to get food at the time. And humans were feeding them both grains but also meat and vegetables and whatever scraps was left over, right? And through just like breeding and natural evolution and just what dogs survived through that time, you've got your modern dogs that can basically access all the nutrition in meat or in various vegetables and fruits, right? So, you know, as long as you make a nutritionally complete formula, you shouldn't have a problem switching them from a diet that's omnivorous or purely carnivorous to a vegan diet. You know, that said, every single dog is different and the adjustment period, we usually say like you mix a fourth of the new food in with the old food, you know, and then do that for maybe a week and then do half a cup, like half of it, the old food, half the new food and then slowly transition them over just so their stomachs have a chance to adjust, right? If they're having, you know, if they're not as like interested in V-Dog as they are in their old food, you know, that's just a palatability thing and what people do is they can add nutritionally used to the top of their food or we have this recipe on the website and I do this for Finn, my dog, you mix some various oils like flaxseed oil and sunflower oil and coconut aminos and maybe a little bit of liquid smoke and you just mix that in a bottle and then you like squeeze it on a little bit. Oh, that's great. Oh yeah, he goes crazy for it, so. Okay, that's a good, because I think it makes it taste more meaty, I guess, yeah, I mean, what are the benefits of dogs going vegan? Yeah, okay. So there's a couple of different ways of answering this. Any kind of dogs with allergies, especially to exotic animal products actually are gonna benefit from switching to V-Dog because you're not gonna encounter those. Their skin usually clears up, they have ear problems, those will clear up that sort of stuff. So that a lot, I also think about this question as you compare V-Dog to other formulas, right? So we use all plant ingredients, but a company that uses any kind of meat-based ingredients, there's the four D's and a lot to get the price down on those ingredients, they're usually using animals that are dead already or disease or disabled or just really, you would never eat what, even if you were an omnivore, you would never eat a meat that's going into a meat-based formula really. So that's kind of scary to think about it as well. And I mean, we've done various studies where we monitor the blood levels of dogs who do switch to V-Dog and we've seen benefits across the board on all those levels, so yeah. How about puppies? Cause I see that some of the dog companies, they have puppy food, but I didn't see anything like that on V-Dog. Does it matter what's the difference between puppy food and adult dog food? Yeah, puppies are different because they require more, just more. They need more calories, they're growing, they're not, V-Dog technically is an adult formula. We've seen people use it for puppies and they add things like flaxseed or coconut oil or whatever just to get the calories up and get the healthy fats in there. And that's really what a puppy is going to need in addition. Behind the scenes, we're always working on formulation that is gonna be including puppies or being a puppy dedicated puppy formula or an all life stages formula. So, especially nowadays, it's not easy sourcing ingredients with the supply chain issues and everything. And we wanna make formulas, whether it be for puppy or for an adult dog, that's affordable. We don't wanna make it inaccessible to people because it's so expensive, right? So that's the kind of articles that we run here, right? So it's just kind of a choice you have to make at some point, but we are looking into that all the time. I also noticed you guys don't have wet food.  We are working on a wet food formula. We have a formula that a lot of times it just comes down to manufacturing and packaging and how can we make it affordable, that sort of thing, right? How do you make it affordable without sacrificing quality? Because that's not something we never wanna do, right? I remember the formula, when we first developed it, we were actually trying it. We would just try the formula ourselves for a wet dog food. No, no. Yeah, well, because I mean, I've actually seen this at veg fest where people will try our treats or anything because they don't wanna feed anything to their dog that they wouldn't eat. Yes, yes. And the ingredients are human grade. So it's like, why wouldn't you?  I don't snack on the dog, but you can.  And I could see why dogs appreciate human food. Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah, or human grade food, I didn't see that. Now, I've seen some stuff online where people are saying that dogs are supposed to eat organ meats. Is there any specific reason why a dog should be eating that? I mean, for me, I just, that kind of, I mean, even for humans, I mean, as a medical doctor, eating organ meats is not really good for you, especially if you have gout or something, right? I can't imagine.  Can you comment on that? Sure. I think the thinking here is that their ancestors were eating all of an animal. Therefore, they should be eating all of an animal. But again, the divergence from wolves that dogs took is kind of astounding. Also, this kind of the direct involvement that people have had with the evolution of dogs as well through various breeds. I mean, there's only wild dogs. So we'll only maybe a few breeds. And then, you know, we've developed many different kinds of breeds, right? Before my time, you know? Yeah. But, you know, I mean, like humans, and luckily, since dogs are omnivores, they can essentially live off of any kind of diet. I mean, I can't speak exactly to whether or not an organ diet is beneficial to them or to is a hindrance to their health, right? But I can say that the dog is supplying everything that a dog needs for the full cycle of their life, you know, minus being a puppy, right? You need to have some sort of additive into the formula. But like, I can be vegan my whole life. And thrive that way. I could also be an omnivore my whole life. And, you know, the jury is still out where they're not, that's better for me or what, but like, I'm just saying that if your dog eats one kind of food, they are just as likely to thrive on a different kind of food as long as it meets their nutritional guidelines. Yeah. So what do puppies need extra that is extra than adult dogs, I guess. It's just more of it is what you were saying. Yeah, more in the sense of like, they're burning way more energy. More calories. Yeah, they probably need more protein just because they're putting on mass, right? They need those healthy fats to just be, to develop in a healthy way. And then, you know, at their adult stage can just be reliant on the dog as well. And it's not that much. It's like, like I said, you could add coconut oil, add flaxseed oil, add these things that you want just on top of the V-dog kibble itself. Probably you also would increase the amount of V-dog kibble that you're giving them just so they're, you know, because they're burning through those calories very quickly. Yeah, yeah. Now, how about historic experience? Do we have any historic experience with dogs going vegetarian or vegan in different societies? I know you talked a little bit about people just feeding them the on-war diet, but how about specifically just a vegetarian diet? Historically, I mean, I guess it's a relatively new thing, right? I mean, there's been this in society in general, there's been this kind of thread that dogs are carnivores because they come from wolves. And as far as I know, company-wise, V-dog was the first on the scene to try to develop a formula for dogs that was strictly plant-based, right? And that was 16 years ago. So I think before that, historically, it's not been something widely publicized or widely adopted. So there's that. I think in the 16 years we've been around now, we've seen nothing but positive feedback. So it's kind of hard to argue with that. I mean, we do do studies just of that V-dog as well, and we welcome other people to vet it as well, just like do independent studies because we want the information. We want it just as bad as anybody else does, right? So that's why we'll fund our studies, we'll also encourage people to do their own and talk to their vet about it, anything that works for them. So what kind of studies have you guys done on V-dog? I know there's a couple ongoing and we're gonna be published in various journals. I don't know what journals exactly, but I can also give you that information. I was just wondering if it's about anything specific, like is it mostly about like, do you follow dogs through their lifetime? Is it a case control study, a cohort study? Do you kind of like test them for their nutrition off the V-dog and then have a comparison on a dog's not on V-dog? Yes, essentially that, right? And I think in one of the studies, we actually included a couple puppies, the person who was kind of conducting the study had some puppies and wanted to include them.  So I think, you know, I've seen some vets talk about vegan versus non-vegan and some vets are, you know, supportive of a vegan diet for dogs, others are against it. What would you say to, you know, somebody who is saying that dogs are not getting necessary nutrients from a vegan diet? I would recommend if a vet has particular questions to email V-dog. We have resources on the website about various health things if they're interested. The benchmark for this is the AFCO approved foods. And if they're comparing us to any other food, we are AFCO approved. So I'm not sure exactly what they're saying at that point other than maybe expressing concern about the newness of it, right? In which case I would recommend they just reach out to us and try to gather some information. Maybe we can put them in touch with one of our vets or our nutritionists to kind of reassure them. But I do think there is, since it is a relatively new thing, I think vets are just a little bit hesitant. But all the studies that we've done, all the 16 years that we've been in business, the anecdotal evidence that we have from all of the testimonials and all the reviews from people, I feed my dog V-dog for the last four years. So, and his blood levels are great. I mean, I always recommend people talk directly to their vet. And if they're on V-dog and the vet tests their levels and everything looks great, I'm not sure why the vet would recommend they change their diet at all.  That's why I recommend people go in, they take their dog in for regular checkups with their vet.  But it probably doesn't mean changing their food because like I said, we don't have to go approved. So we're just like any other food basically. Yeah, and you know, I think dogs get some of the things that humans get. And so, I mean, if dogs get heart disease or anything like that, I'm sure, I mean, to some extent, it might be good for them to be on a vegan diet, to cut. And even the diseases of the joint probably when they have joint pain, it's probably helpful to be on a vegan diet just cause there's less allergens. Sure, sure. I mean, I've definitely seen a lot of our testimonials suggest as much, whether it be allergies or any, mostly allergies. I've seen like hundreds of people saying like, oh, I switched this, switched the V-dog and then allergies just cleared up almost in that week. They're just their skin. I've seen a lot of people with pit bulls, like their skin just is totally red. And then they switched to V-dog and then clears up in a couple of weeks. Yeah, so it can really make a difference. Yeah, and I mean, the carbon footprint too, that's something like, you know, company like V-dog makes on the planet versus, you know, a different kind of carnivorous dog food is very vast.  Cause some dogs are really big and you feed them a ton of food.  So I think it's appealing to a lot of people. Now, you were telling me before we started the show also about what you do with the leftover V-dog bags. Can you tell us a little bit about that? There was a place in Hawaii that you said. Oh yeah, yeah, sure. Gentle World is what we tracked them down, right? And send them damaged bags. Occasionally we get damaged bags. There's like a little tear or something, right? And we tape it off. We don't want to sell that commercially. We just want to sell the bags that are completely intact. But, you know, through the transit process or through the warehousing process, it just coupled that, well, you know, depending on how big our orders are, you know, bags will be damaged. And in which case we set them aside and then if nonprofits contact us, we'll go ahead and donate those minus the cost of shipping. And they could go to rescues. They go to sanctuaries, right? And one in particular, Gentle World in Hawaii has reached out to us many times when we've gotten them pallets through a freight forwarder. And so yeah, so I don't know exactly where they're based in Hawaii, but maybe- They said on the big island, you said, yeah. I saw the website was on the big island somewhere. Was on the big island, yeah. Yeah, we're on Oahu with Think Tech, but yeah, I think they're on the big island. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, if you could tell everyone how V-Dog got started? Yeah, so originally the current president, Darren, his father actually founded the company. So it's been in his family this whole time. But it just basically started as Darren's father wanted to create an alternative for dogs, wanted to be plant-based, wanted to live a plant-based life, wanted to lower their carbon footprint and just started researching alternatives about that. And I mean, it's funny, I've heard Darren tell me stories about how, when they first got started, they would have to make deliveries themselves and then it just caught on from them just doing their due diligence and the formula that actually worked. And yeah, that's how it got started. That's pretty cool. I mean, I think that's great. I know that a lot of other, I've seen some other vegan dog food pop-up actually because I've been doing searches and it looks like there's a bunch of other new options as well. So it's must have, I guess, V-dog was the first one, but I think other people are, there's such a bigger vegan population now and they're looking for more alternatives. Are most of the people who are buying V-dog food, are they mostly vegan? Are people who are just looking for food for their dogs that is not allergenic? Yeah, I would say most of the people, I'm guessing, right? But the sense that I get is that most of the people who are buying V-dog are themselves plant-based. But that's not to say that they're exclusively, I mean, I know a lot of people do feed their dog V-dog because of allergies. And we are always reaching out to omnivores to see if they'll try it. We have our free samples available on the website. So if anybody even wants to consider it just because they wanna lower their family's carbon footprint, if their dog can thrive on this, it's easy enough for them to switch out and it's competitively priced with any other dog food, any other comparable dog food. So that's something to consider. If it's an easy switch for you and your dog is interested in it, why not kind of? But that's a harder sell just for the reasons we've outlined in this talk, right? A lot of people just come to the conversation thinking that dogs are absolutely carnivores, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I think that I read something in your website. Actually, can you show the website that people in India have been feeding their dog vegetarian for a really long time? So, isn't that true? So that actually dogs can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, probably. Yeah, and I've heard that a lot of the prescription formulas are just by default vegetarian. They use maybe like a pulverized soy or, you know, they'll probably use eggs in there as well and those certain formulas, but yeah, you just wanna be a completely plant-based one. There's the dog.  I just love, I mean, those companies are, you know, seeing an opportunity in the market to offer this kind of formula. And I think VDogg's mission has always been just to encourage, you know, a movement away from animal cruelty, a movement away from, or a movement towards a lower carbon footprint, lower water consumption, all that stuff. And I think that's what drew me to the company in the first place is that that's kind of the core mission. I know that, you know, the company actually takes like a much slower like profit margin just because they're really just interested in making things affordable for customers so that the barrier to entry to a less animal cruelty is not so high, right? Yeah, that's great. Well, we're out of time now, so we have to wrap it up, but I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. This is Healthy Plana on ThinkTech live streaming network series. We've been talking with Justin Demos from VDogg. Thanks to all for being here and thanks to our broadcast engineer and the rest of the crew at ThinkTech for hosting our show. And thanks to you, our listeners for listening. I'll see you on May 12th for more of Healthy Planet on ThinkTech, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. Our next show will be about vegan nutrition with our special guest, Dr. Michael Clapper. If you have ideas for the show, please contact me at HealthyPlanetThinkTech at gmail.com. Check out my website at graceandhawaii.com for more information on my projects, including future show guests. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. Aloha everyone. Thank you so much for watching ThinkTech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.