Are Digital Extras the Future of Movies? Plus: ‘They Cloned Tyrone.’

Welcome back to across the movie. I will present it by Bulwark Plus. I am your host Sunny Bunch Culture Editor of the Bulwark I’m joined as always. By Elizabeth Rosenberg of the Washington Post and Peter Studerman of Reason Magazine. Melissa Peter, how are you today?

I’m well.

I am so happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First up in controversies and controversies. The studios are getting really into cloning. Digital cloning. That is one of the contentious points in negotiations between the screen actors guild and the studios involves something actors have never really had to worry about before. Namely whether or not they are, you know, strictly speaking, necessary, at least in the background.

Alright. This flashpoint involves so called background actors, right, more commonly known as extras when you’re not talking to them. Turns out the studios are taking life size scans of extras in the hopes of making extras, what kind of kind of obsolete, talking to NPR, actress Alexandria Rubal Caba, I think I’m getting that right, said that while working on the set of WAN Division, she was told to report to a trailer where she and dozens of other extras were told to step in front of a camera and allow it to take pictures of their bodies from all angles. After fifteen minutes of this, Disney studios had a copy of her likeness forever. And perpetuity to, as best as anyone can tell, use in any production they want to forever for no extra compensation.

Now the studios have pushed back pretty strongly against us. They say, no. No. These replicas are only for use in a single shoot. But if you look at the papers that are being signed, that’s not entirely clear.

And, you know, lord knows legal niceties never really gotten in the way of studios before. Even if it is a case, even if they are just saying using it for this one, production, it’s easy to imagine in a a world in which studios pay an extra for a single day’s work, a hundred eighty seven dollars, right now as it happens. And then use that extra likeness for weeks of work in the in the aftermath, saving thousands of dollars per extra not used. On the one hand, you know, putting a stop to this sort of thing seems like a fairly straightforward priority for the union, replacing actors with digital likenesses, even background actors, is a pretty slippery slope. You want to put the Kibosh on that as quickly as possible.

You know, what if I don’t want to appear on Mario vision, the one division actress asked NPR. And this gets to just one of the many thorny questions here. Right? Set aside the finances of it all. Set aside, you know, money paid or not paid.

If movies and TV shows are art, we all like to think of movies and TV shows as art, then extras absolutely have a right not partake in artistic enterprises they do not approve of, don’t wanna be in, don’t wanna be associated with. But productions have been trying to figure out forever what to do with. Extras and the extras costs incurred by them. Right? One personal anecdote here.

This is just a funny funny little story from my reporting. Once upon a time, I reported on location, at an adaptation of Kurt vonnegut’s Harrison Burjeron. This short film was called twenty eighty one. Fun fact, start a pre social network, Army Hammer, as Harrison Bergeron. One of these sets there was a theater.

Right? Like, it’s a theater where live performances happen. In the case of this film specifically was a ballet performance that was taking place. Filling the seats, were extras naturally. But also inflatable dummies with wigs and tuxes placed on them, put around in all the seats to make the venue seem fuller than it was.

Extra cost, you know, at the time, a hundred fifty bucks or whatever, a dummy cost a fraction of that. These digital scans are the modern equivalent of that dummy, but, you know, not. On top of that, you have the COVID considerations. Right? Like, while most of the testing protocols have been dismantled over the last few months, It’s still a looming threat in the age of lockdowns and everything else.

When a nine figure production can be halted because one extra somewhere pops positive for COVID, Well, doesn’t it make sense to eliminate as many potential vectors of disease as possible? I guess what I’m saying here is that I can see both sides of this argument to a certain extent. Alyssa, are you excited for the future of digital gollums popping up over and over again in every movie, in perpetuity?

No. I am not. And I’m also not a fan of companies, asking workers to take their word for things that they might or might not do. And, you know, I mean, I think if if studios want to scan and you know, make multiple copies of background actors. That should be something that’s upfront in a job or casting description.

It’s something that where the compensation for it should be negotiated. And also, frankly, there should be some sort of discussion of whether an actor has a right to ask for that scan to be destroyed after the work is over. So it can’t be reused against their consent. Right? I mean, there are sort of beyond the, like, labor abuses questions, in an era of deep fake pornography.

For example, there are fairly substantial issues around potential misuse of this kind of artifact, I think, is maybe the best word to put it. And so, you know, if the studios are serious that they have a sort of principled argument for how to use this stuff that it’s limited, you know, put it in a contract and then put it in the casting descriptions and, you know, commit yourself to doing what you’re saying you’re going to do because asking people who are making pretty minimal money from this work to take huge corporations at their word for something as sensitive as sort of a permanently accessible and manipulatable likeness of themselves is insane. And nobody should do that. I mean, Certainly, if I were, you know, Julia Roberts or Zendaya or, you know, any of the Chrises, there is no world in which my agents would not hammer out those terms, and you know, it’s insane to let the studios pretend that they won’t abuse background actors because, of course, they will.

Let me just change the situation here slightly. So let’s say instead of, you know, on a movie set, you know, you have the the just come, and they’re they’re there. They sit there around craft services most of the day, waiting for their call to go out to wherever it is they’re supposed to go. Right? What if, instead of, like, calling those people over to a trailer and kind of surreptitiously taking a lifelike recreation of them forever, Instead of doing that, you just put out a call that says, hey, we need digital models.

We want you to come to a studio. We’re gonna take your likeness, and we’ll pay you a thousand bucks. And we are going to use you to populate the background of movies forever. You know, you’re gonna be the extra in the Colosseum. You’re gonna be the, cheering guy on the side of the street, what in the fire engine goes by in the disaster movie.

Would that be acceptable or no?

I mean, I think that, you know, a sort of alternative to that might be a body scan bank, right, where, you know, people are willing to license their likenesses. And, you know, they can put stipulations in here. Like, I don’t want this license to be used for full frontal nudity. I don’t want it to be used under these circumstances. And, you know, either that’s sort of negotiated for an upfront fee or you know, studios can, like, sort of pick and choose who they want to use.

Maybe it’s a subscription system for the studios. Maybe it’s a you know, sort of lower cost license use, but actors could make more money out of a single scan, etcetera. So I think I mean, I think there is a it is possible to set up a model of using this stuff that is less likely to be abusive than calling someone into a trailer. I mean, like, your continued employment is conditioned on us taking the scan of use, but that we won’t use forever. We’ll be principled.

We’ll be honest. Right? I mean, you can trust us. We’re Hollywood. And so, you know, whether it is sort of clear upfront contract, about single use of this stuff, whether it is a licensable bank of scans.

I think there is a way to do this, but you know, it should not be based on a sort of honor system. Like, this is not something that can be handled with a pinky brom Yeah.

I mean, Peter, this this really does seem to be mostly an issue of informed consent. Right? Like, you can’t you can’t just spring this on somebody in the midst of the of their job and be like, come do this. You know, read this read this ten page release that you’re signing. You know, I, like, I I I don’t find that to be terribly reasonable.

But I do feel like it is kind I I feel like this sort of thing is inevitable, on a certain level.

Most of the issue ends up being resolved via contract clarity, and I think that that that’s basically how the the issues that we’re talking about here ends up being resolved. Don’t think this is quite as novel as it sounds, even though it is it does present some novel issues. We already have, a whole world of, sort of, paid models who end up being photographed for different reasons. And if you are, obviously, if you’re a highly paid supermodel or even just sort of somebody at the top of their game, right, doing, modeling for a big fashion company. There’s quite strict, rules and about what, how those images can be used.

Whereas, some people, pose no knowingly. I mean, and they’re they’re doing it, and they know what they’re doing, but they’re posing for images that end up. It’s a you get paid one time, and then this is, you know, stock photography, and somebody can put this, you know, and, like, at the top of a, you know, whatever kind of article they right? As long as they’re they’ve paid the fee, and you don’t get any percentage of that as the model. Right?

Because you are a less successful model, and that’s just sort of how modeling and photography over the for those people Bulwark. And this is stuff gets used against, like, I wouldn’t say against their consent, but they have given away the right to have consent one way or the other on that sort of thing. And that’s a thing that’s gonna end up happening here. I think think that we actually should be thinking about this ten years down the road, fifteen, twenty years down the road because the inevitability here is not just that people are going to be scanned and used as background actors. The inevitability, I think, goes gets weirder than that.

And it’s gonna be that artists that affects artists are going to be able to use AI and use their brains, right, and and artistic tools to create humans that are based on real people, but are not actually real people that are like a a a weird sunny Peter, you know, hybrid Right? And it’s neither of us, even though the artist was like, Hey, AI. I want you to pull features from both of these bearded guys, who are about forty years old. Like a brain, and then we then we get like a then we get like a combo version. And do either of us then have a right to sue?

Well, it’s kinda based on us, but not exactly. Right? And And, like, are they using our likeness? No. Not directly.

And so, like, this this to me, like, the specific thing of can you use an individual person’s likeness after you’ve scanned them? That’s pretty straightforward. You put that in contractual language, and some people Will Saletan can pay me a thousand bucks for one day’s worth of work, and I will never, like, that’s it. You can use my image for forever. And some people will say, wait, no.

You can’t do that. I’m not going to submit to that sort of scan or that sort of licensing machine. And contracts work that sort of thing out. But it’s just gonna get so much weirder from here as technology becomes capable of producing quite lifelike human images, not just stills but effectively sort of animated puppets of quasi people who are not real. And like that’s that just looks to me like it is coming.

And I think that’s gonna be genuinely novel. Right? That’s gonna be a a a situation we haven’t been in. But the other thing is I think There’s sort of no way to avoid any of this because even if even if the actors guild can get all of the big studios to just promise they’ll not just a promise, but to contractually agree to, we will never do anything like this. And you actually get the studios to not scan people and not sort of use people as manipulatable digital dolls for the background images of their movies.

Then this technology is going to become cheap enough the people who aren’t affiliated with the studios, independent filmmakers, people working on YouTube, people working in other formats and other forums, non studio people, whether it’s advertisers, whether it’s weirdos in film school, you know, just making stuff for TikTok. Other sort of smaller organizations that are that exist outside of the union structure are gonna end up doing this. And the background actors are gonna have to compete with those people somehow or another, and the union contract may delay the date in which that happens, until that technology is very cheap, but ultimately, they’re gonna have to end up competing with digital background doubles with digital extras, and they’re gonna have to find some value at some reason. To use real people rather than to use the digital extras that are coming, and and will be, like I said, in many cases, not based on any single person, or frankly even two obvious people. They will be mash ups of a thousand different people and their features so that no one has any kind of real rights to their to, like, a portion of their image.

Hey, man. You used my eyebrows. Like, no. It doesn’t matter. Like, can

I alright? I’m gonna I’ll I’m gonna hop on the other side here. I’m gonna I’m gonna say this is a reason why it is good that organizations like SAG and other unions exist to collectively bargain this sort of thing out of existence. Like, I think there is an argument to be made by the unions that say, if you want to make a sag approved feature film, you cannot use any of these things. Like, if you wanna work with Meryl Streep on your movie or Keanu Reeves on your movie or whoever, You cannot use these weird digital creations.

We won’t allow it. And, like, I actually understand sag making this an existential line in the sands, you cannot do this sort of thing stipulation of any contract. I can see that case and I can understand it, and I frankly even kind of agree with it. Because as you say, Peter, once you start down this digital path, there’s no stopping it, and you are headed very closely to, like, the Simone future. You know, speaking of AI, whatever’s.

Alyssa, I’m sorry. What were you what were we gonna say?

Oh, no. And I think, you know, we’re talking about this in the context of Hollywood, but I do wonder if we’re gonna see legislation were clearly enshrining people’s rights to their images and their work. I mean, you’re, you’re seeing some of this already with the authors who are suing various AI companies for using their, you know, their text as training material for large language models without consent. And I can entirely see a future in which the federal government sort of lays down strict guidelines for how you can use people’s images. You know, it’s like you we sort of joke around of, you know, Peter, you joke about saying like, oh, you wouldn’t be able to say, you can’t use my eyebrows, but you know, what if there is a clear law of what you can use to train these models or, you know, sort of as the how you have to you know, license or handle the distribution of, you know, people’s images.

Cause to a certain extent, what you’re talking about here is the right to a self. Right? And the right to self determination in the sense that, you know, you you have the right to be a coherent person who makes decisions and not have a facsimile of yourself, you know, kind of wandering around out there giving the impression that you are doing or saying or behaving in a way that has nothing to do with the decisions that you would make yourself.

It’s a a very good argument when it comes to images that actual that clearly resemble a specific person. We’ve already seen that to some extent, in some video games where some video game type characters have clearly been closely based on real life performers, but not quite so closely enough, right, voiced by different people, you know, and and with somewhat different features, they’re just kind of they’re it’s like, you know how you used to, like, you still have this, but you know how, like, Hollywood, casting agents will say, we need a meryl streep type. Well, video games can just give you a meryl streep type that isn’t actually any specific person. That is just a kind of a type of like that. Right?

And that that sort of thing happens in video games already, and it’s not been the case and that they have had to pay anything to to sort of borrow your type. And you can see this is actually in screenplays too. I mean, reservoir dogs has a bunch of elements from taking of Pelom one two three. It’s obviously quite transformative as well. And I think we’re gonna get into situations where people may have a right to themselves.

And to their own image, but to the type that they represent that is not this is not quite specific enough to them. Those things are gonna be able to be created without without your input, and and it’s not obvious, fair use. I mean, right, which which we all rely on as journalists just to, like, print stuff and talk about things and and to do criticism, fair use says that as long as a a use is transformative, then you don’t have to pay for it. And I think we are going to see some this will almost certainly be tested in the courts and we’re gonna see some novel, instances of transformative use. Where on the one hand it is clearly based on a person who did not consent to be involved and also it is not exactly that person and not close enough that you can really say

to that question. I’m sorry. This is not what fair use is. Fair use is specifically designed not to be transformative per se, but also as a comment upon the thing, the thing that is being transformed. I mean, this is, you know

Comment or criticism but it’s not it’s not eight.

I well, I I don’t know. I think that this is the sort of thing where once you start getting into the nitty gritty of it, a lot of conventions that we hold are just gonna fall by the wayside. Like, I I I’m sorry. I I do not I do not think fair use was designed to create an, a bottomless reservoir of digital likenesses called from publicly available Facebook pages, you know, I I, like, that that doesn’t that doesn’t work or make sense to me. You’re right.

It’s probably gonna have to be litigated in the courts because this is I this really is brave new world sort of stuff. I, like, There are there are issues here that we have not considered fully, that we’re just kind of steaming ahead with, that are, I think, really At best tricky and at worst terribly dangerous.

And I think, you know, we’re we’re seeing some of these debates also in questions about your sort of monetization of data, you know, to what extent our our expressed desires as captured by what we type into Google ourselves. Right? I mean, are, you know, the sort of aggregate profile of ourselves that are created by our postings on social media. These are really interesting questions. And They come at a time both on technologies advancing incredibly quickly.

And when we had this huge experiment in virtual living, that is leading people to revalue the real And, you know, I I can’t say I’m super excited to, you know, someday log on to the software and realize that I’m chatting with avatars of you guys, but I am very glad that I have the two of you here to discuss this with as we embark on this dystopia.

I’m already an avatar. But I’ve just assigned to the AI to do my part on the podcast. I’m making a cocktail

right now.

Cocktails all the time.

Avatars already mixing cocktails. The avatars come up with cocktails. Peter could never imagine with its AI brain. Can you can you believe?

They involve juicing pineapples. Can

you believe it? Alright. What do we think? Is it a controversy or an controversy that digital replicants are taking over for flesh and blood humans on the big and small screen, Alyssa?

It’s a controversy also, you know, solidarity with sag aftra for fighting this one for all of us.

Peter. It is a little bit of a controversy on the other hand since you said digital replicants. I’m now excited for somebody to make kind of spiritual successor to Blade Runner using this as the the basis for it. Like, our our

It’s just about podcasting.

Our digital background extras humans with souls.

Controversy, but now I am starting to formulate a pitch in my head that’s like a Johnny demonic, but, also Blade Runner and you got guys running through the multi, the multiverse of the internet trying to eliminate all of the versions of me. The the Peter the Peter bunch hybrid that has been created and is terrorizing. Terrifying. The world. I have a a controversy, but good good movie idea.

Are we taking away from this that I’m the replaceable member of the podcast?

Well, you are the only woman. So I, like, we can’t really meld you with me or Peter. That doesn’t make any sense. Because, you know, the the binary of gender and all that. Alright.

Make sure to swing by Bulwark Plus this Friday. We’re gonna be paying tribute to William Freedkin who passed away on Monday at age eighty seven, talking about some of our favorite of his movies, and, you know, again, just kinda paying tribute to one of the greats. Now on to the main event. They cloned Tyrone, which hit Netflix a couple weeks ago and just picked up some momentum. As audiences have found this odd little indie flick.

John Bolega stars’ fontaine, a gangster who runs drugs, in Hassel’s pimps, like slick Charles, who’s played by Jamie Fox for a protection money. Slick Charles is number one girl, Yoo, played by Teona Paris, once out of town. But before she can get away, she hears Fontaine get gunned down. Slit Charles actually sees it happen. By fun fact, Fontaine is back the very next day.

He’s just fine. Thank you. He desires his money once again. Slick Charles freaks out. And the three of them, begin a quest to figure out what is going on in this town.

Why is there a clone of fontaine underneath a trap house? What mysterious concoction is being put into fried chicken, grape drink, and hair straightening product? Control the local population, how are hip hop songs at a strip club being used to hypnotize townspeople into turning into violent mobs, what is Kiefer Sutherland Nixon up to? That the villain is a white guy with a southern drawl named Nixon using fried chicken and grape drink to control the Bulwark population should demonstrate precisely how subtle this film is, which is to say. Not very.

But if you haven’t really picked up on some of that earlier in the film, like, for example, there’s an advertisement for a soda called Soma Soma. Get it. Well, I’m I’m not sure what to do with it. If you haven’t picked up on it, you know, get your ass to a tenth grade English class. They clone Tyrone succeeds, not despite that lack of subtlety, but because of it.

Juul Taylor, who directed and co wrote the film with Tony Retteneyer, leans into the comic absurdity of their premise with real glee. And, my biggest complaint about this movie, frankly, is that it it it has that Netflix bloat problem. It’s two hours long. It doesn’t need to be, and it really saps some of the pace and energy from the picture. I, you know, I after watching this, I rewatched.

They live John Carpenter’s classic commentary on Reagan era, America that clocks in about half an hour shorter than this. It’s the sort of movie that you really need to zip along in order to stop people from questioning the basic premise. And, you know, if you if you if you don’t keep it moving, you just get people starting to say, well, you know, is it really that mysterious why people prefer simple pleasures to overthrowing the whole system and not knowing what’s gonna come after? Most of us Are Joey pants in the matrix, right? We just want our fake steaks that taste good.

We’re not neo. It’s alright. Peter, are you now awake to the world? In a way that you never were before this. Has this movie opened your eyes?

Are you asking me if this movie made me woke?

Has this movie made you woke? I don’t

think that this movie had much of an impact on that one way or the other, but it did occupy a couple of hours of my time rather enjoyably. This is, this is not a great movie, but it’s a superior Netflix movie for one thing, and it’s also a lot better than a lot of the stuff we’ve seen in the theaters this summer. I mean, I certainly think this is better than Transformers Res of the B switch the jewel Taylor also co wrote. It’s, you know, it’s much better than the most recent Indiana Jones film, and it’s the kind of movie that I’m that makes me both glad that Netflix exists and also very frustrated with Netflix because on the one hand, this movie probably wouldn’t have happened if not for Netflix, and it’s kind of and it’s weird inability to figure out what it wants to do, which too much money problem and like, oh, sure. That’s an interesting concept.

You’ve got Jamie Fox. Let’s go ahead and do this. So it’s good that this movie exists. Because this is a pretty good movie. It’s the kind of the kind of movie that I used to just really enjoyed discovering in a movie theater back when you used see oddball films occasionally kind of come out through that the year.

It’s the in in fact it’s the sort of thing that you use to frequently see, show up at the end of September like, in that sort of dead zone right after Labor Day, one of these odd little genre films that is just clever enough and Bulwark just well enough. So you’re like, yeah, you know what? I’m glad I saw that. Then you tell your friends about it. Maybe it becomes a big hit on home video afterwards, which, oh, that’s, you know, I guess that’s maybe is the Netflix model.

This is it’s a movie’s visually interesting for one thing. It’s got, like, a great little kind of digital kinda, you know, it’s, like, there’s a there’s a there’s a digital film grain to it that I enjoyed. There’s a a real sort of bleak blackness to the to the light. Right? It’s just kinda the color in this movie has been sapped in an interesting way, and there’s so much kind of the the darkness just sort of bleeds into all of these shots.

Right? It’s great use of of of shadow and color. It manages to be absurd without being super silly. Right? You could imagine a a version of this movie.

A little silly at that times. I didn’t say it was not silly at all, but it it like has this like kind of finally balanced tonal weirdness to it in which it manages to, just to to be odd and offbeat and off kilter. Without being straight up goofy. And it and it this is actually, like, a quite difficult tonal balance that this movie strikes because, again, it’s sort of, like, brings you into, like, a a kind of a serious, but also, like, crazy sci fi ending. And, makes you think about it just enough, but also is like, well, you know what, there’s gonna be some shootouts There’s gonna be some very odd bits, and we’re gonna we’re gonna emphasize the absurdity of this.

You know, and I actually thought about this in since we saw Barbie recently. I I thought about this as a a sort of corollary to Barbie, where this movie Bulwark, I think, better than Barbie overall. Not once again, it’s not quite it’s not a perfect movie. It’s not quite a great one, but it’s a good one. And the reason is because it constantly at the moments where it could just be like, Here, we’re gonna have something that’s just boringly blatantly political.

It doesn’t quite do that. Not only a little bit at the end. But most of the movie, what it does is it, it, like, frames everything as a sort of, like, absurdist, otherworldly, like, you’re stuck in this, like, what the hell is going on here kind of mystery zone. It is more like a John Carpenter movie and less like a I don’t know, like, like, something that you could have pulled from Gawker in twenty fourteen. And Charlie Sykes I said, in, you know, when we were talking about that, Last week, Barbie works at its best when it is just an absurdist high concept film.

And this movie does the absurdist high concept stuff Again, not quite as well as say get out, but like quite well and consistently well. And it’s just and it’s got some nice performances and, you know, and like a and the visual sensibility works pretty well. And I’m I’m glad that it exists and I’m glad that we that like this sort of thing is out there. Even if it’s also only available through Netflix, which does not seem to have promoted it very much at, like, I had to find out about this movie, basically, by reading Rotten tomatoes.

Yeah. The Netflix factor here is the most interesting one to me because is I I think you’re right. It’s a movie that doesn’t get made or at least doesn’t get made precisely like this, like, starring J Jamie Fox and John Bolega and Tona Paris. Right? Like, there there’s a lot of money that goes into the casting here that may not otherwise have been there.

And it’s also good because putting it on the front page of Netflix introduces it to a much broader variety of people than otherwise might have seen it. You know, this is one of those movies where, like, the best advertising campaign for it really is being, like, on the homepage of, you know, a hundred

million dollars. Can you get it on your homepage? Because I had — Yes.

—

to search for this movie. It was never once recommended or served it to me.

It definitely got served up to me. It got served up to me in my in my like trending now, you know, bar it was it was right there. So I don’t but again, this is a question for, like, for the for the for the folks at Netflix. I I actually would be curious to know exactly how hard this got pushed to people because it definitely it didn’t open huge, in terms of the hours watched it picked up and the second week as word-of-mouth started to spread. So it it’s it’s a sort of movie that exists because of Netflix probably has a wider reach because of Netflix and will In three weeks, it’s gonna end up being buried at the bottom of a billion different titles, with no algorithmic juice behind it, which is, kind of frustrating.

And I I feel like, you know, that’s probably better than it being released by a twenty four and getting seen by, you know, a half million people in theaters before head hitting DVD, but maybe not. I don’t know. Alyssa, what did you make of they cloned Tyrone?

I enjoyed it a lot. It could have been twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes shorter. I mean, there’s just some self indulgent, like, I think John John Boyega is a fine actor, but, like, there’s a lot of just lingering on his face, and it’s a very handsome face. It’s a very expressive face. There were just a lot of places you could have shaved a little bit off this movie and made it move a little bit faster.

And I I appreciate its sort of very specific political paranoia, which actually reminded me of, did you guys ever read the Gary Webb Dark Alliance series in San Jose Mercury News? This is a very interesting piece of journalism history. Webb was an investigative journalist, and published sort of the the series that introduced the idea that the CIA was responsible in some way for the crack epidemic. And, you know, the the reporting has been challenged in certain ways. You know, and I think, you know, Webb probably didn’t have as much of the goods as he thought he did.

But one of the things that was very interesting about the story is that it played a kind of fascinating role in kind of the founding of the Bulwark internet in that, you know, this is the story by local paper, came out in ninety six, and spread to a huge national audience, in part through Bulwark internet users at a time when they were a much smaller percentage of web users relative to white Americans. And, you know, that story. The story, you know, is based on the CIA relationship with the contras and Necarawa. And there’s it’s far too complicated to explain. But, you know, They clone Tyrone, you know, is based in sort of a real conspiratorial, you know, somewhat fact based argument about, you know, what is being done to black communities?

What are the outside forces working on them without their consent? And, you know, the the way the movie balances that paranoia expresses it in very funny ways, And then throws in, like, random things like Yoyo’s childhood Nancy drew obsession. It’s just very winning and idiosyncratic.

Did you get the sense that this movie was intentionally structured like a Nancy drew novel and that that but that’s part

of life. Yeah.

Because I was a I was a hearty boys fan. And I was watching this, but, like, it’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing.

Yeah. How many ventures this bitch been on? Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so, like, the the combination of that against sort of, like, white bread staple, you know, and the fact that they had all of the yellow backed covers. You know, I mean, these are three just very fine appealing actors, bringing real life to their types and tropes, right, in a way that it’s just extremely enjoyable to watch. I met Paris once a long time ago. And have always just found her incredibly appealing both in person and on screen.

And to a certain extent, you know, the fact that she has managed to be in Marvel movies while still managing to make really interesting stuff on the side consistently. To me is kind of the model for, in an ideal world, what a marble contract would let you do. Right? Like, let you make a bunch of money. So you have the freedom to do really interesting stuff in between, like, being CGI into, you know, I guess some sort of superhero space suit, which is what is happening in the marbles, which is coming out later this year.

And so You know, I’m just, like, she was written to Stan. I’m happy for her. I’m happy for John Boyega, who, you know, I think was publicly kind of concerned that he would not be working again in an interesting way after speaking out about just, you know, what he felt like was a really bad experience Star Wars franchise. And so, you know, it’s it’s one of those movies. It’s like the system is really imperfect, but sometimes it works in a way that is satisfying and enjoyable.

So it’s just, you know, for a first time feature, I think it’s really quite a shared and idiosyncratic and charming. And I wish it were a little tighter. I wish it didn’t have the Netflix bloat problem, but I’m glad to have watched it. I’m glad it exists. I thought it was very funny.

It’s funny, Elisa. You mentioned the, the dark alliances of of stories or, and I I remembered, while you were discussing it, that this is also what the film killed the messengers based on, the Jeremy renner, a picture about that nonsense story that was reported in the San Jose mercury news. Yeah. No. I mean, I I I like this movie a lot.

It’s it’s definitely it’s a movie I just I want to like more I just I just wish it had been, I don’t know, slightly, slightly tighter, and and almost even maybe more absurd. Frankly. It could’ve it could’ve leaned into that even even a little more.

I agree with that. I also need to make a correction here. I am misstated, a jewel Taylor did not write, or co write, transformers rights of the beasts, and I don’t know why I thought that.

Why’d you think that? Didn’t know. I was like, oh, that’s just that’s interesting. I didn’t I didn’t realize that. You said it.

Somehow or another, I got that in my head, and did not have the credit up in front of me. No. He’s also a a co writer on space jam, new legacy, and creed Chu. And it is just sort of an interesting example of somebody who has been who’s, like, worked on bigger studio films, and here is somebody who had, like, a weird idea that doesn’t fit into what studios are funding traditionally, and Netflix was able to step in and make movie happen. And that to me is the value of Netflix here is that this is a this is the kind of interesting high concept like, good elevator pitch movie that basically works and is certainly worth seeing and worth seeking out.

And it wouldn’t have happened without Netflix’s strange, you know, mister moneybags, approach to making movies here. And I I honestly worry that as we get into a world where Netflix and other streamers are spending less, this is the sort of thing that might end up be not making it through the system, you know, five or ten years from now.

Yeah. I mean, this is the sort of thing. If you’re if Netflix is going to be making movies, it makes way more sense to make stuff like this than, you know, you make five movies like this instead of one red notice. And, like, that one red notice may get more hours viewed or whatever, but I I mean, this is this is just this is this sort of thing is more interesting and better.

Yeah. And it’s also a nice example of, you know, how effective practical effects can be. Right? I mean, or just, you know, like, set decoration. Right?

I mean, that scene where fontaine breaks into his mother’s room and realizes that she’s just speaker her, and it’s just this, like, little PA system on the table. Is so much more affecting and effective than any sort of weird special effect would be. The, you know, the packaging, for example, on the, like, the grape drink, the, you know, the chicken boxes, the, the straightening cream Who knew creative graphic design applied to a physical thing can have a great effect in a movie. And You know, when I when I talk about a movie like this having sort of personality and a worldview, you know, it’s the combination of the humor and the sort of eye for detail and color. And I just I really enjoyed looking at it.

And whoever yeah. I need to look up who the costume designer is. But you know, all credit to the folks who put together Jimmy Fox and Tiana Paris’s outfits because they are delightful. I mean, her, like, sort of trench coat and big hat and Nancy drew thing is outstanding. Love it.

So what do we think? Thumbs up or thumbs down on they clone Tyrone, Alyssa.

Thumbs

up. Thumbs up.

Thumbs up for me as well. Fun movie. It’s on Netflix now. You can watch it the second you turn this podcast off. Speaking of, that’s it for this week’s show.

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