Q: I guess Netflix is lucky they don't own theme parks, or else they'd probably fall behind again.

A: Right, and that was one of the things that people always talked about why Disney was so better positioned than Netflix because Netflix had their streaming, but they didn't really have merchandising. You can get a "Stranger Things" T shirt. But Disney owns merchandising and theme parks and stuff like that. But now that's become their weakness because the theme parks I think lost a billion dollars in the first quarter of being shut down, so Netflix doesn't worry about anything. 

People are actually watching Netflix more now because of the lockdown. And you know the same thing happened in 2008, Netflix shot up because the Great Recession happened and people have less money to spend on entertainment. So spending, you know, 12 bucks on Netflix seems like a better value than going out to a theme park or going to a movie and spending like 60 bucks, So Netflix kind of thrived in situations like this.

Q: So was there ever any chance that Netflix would stream the documentary themselves? Were there ever any discussions, or was that just a nonstarter ?

A:  I mean we've reached out and I know multiple people that know Reed and things like that and know he's aware of the documentary. It's just one of the things-I mean I would love it to be there but you know it's something that happened when we were doing the film festival circuit.  I won't say what film festival but it was a good sized festival but one of the people inside said “hey, Netflix is a platinum sponsor, we can't touch this and it's one of those things.”

It was a Catch 22. It's like either If Netflix was a sponsor of a festival, the festival would have two reactions to it. One,  they didn't want to play anything that would piss off a big sponsor because you know festivals,  it's good to have sponsors give money towards your festival and the second is,  if they're not afraid of Netflix getting pissed off, but if they let in a documentary about a sponsor, then it looks like they're playing favoritism.

So it was definitely a challenge that we knew what was coming but I just think I think of Netflix as, which is weird to say,  our modern day Apple -  a company that shouldn't have succeeded but has on so many fronts,  and there's so many perfect moves that they made that sometimes it wasn't even their own intention. I mean Netflix never intended stream content. Netflix was always the understanding that you would download the movie from their service.  But the studios said "piracy, hell no," and that's why they shifted to streaming. And look at where they're at now, I mean they've changed the whole way people consume entertainment.

I was shocked I remember going back just like you,  back in the day when I used to work in entertainment press, I used to work in a show that aired in Spain. And I didn't think Netflix was going to make it because I was like all it's going to take is people are going to have to take their content back and Netflix is not going to have any content. I never foresaw Netflix just producing more amounts of content than even the studios could.

Q: So you mentioned that you put the movie out sooner than planned. Was it that you just knew festivals weren't happening and people were streaming. Is it Amazon who has it exclusively, or is it available other places?

A: it's right now just on Amazon. We might play it other places eventually, but currently, it's doing well on Amazon, which is promising because we have like no marketing budget So it's all writing personal emails to people to see if they would cover the film because this is an independent film. 

A funny thing is that when we first released a trailer,  in the trailer you would see people saying like "why am I gonna watch this, it's Netflix making a movie about themselves" or people would rate the trailer poorly because Netflix cancelled their favorite show. People would say "I'm never going to watch this because they canceled "Sense 8." And I'm thinking this has nothing to do about this. This is a dad of four in Texas with a former Reuters journalist, a female writer, this is as independent as you can get, like raising money from people that we know. But people just see the name and they just assume that you know it's got like half a million dollar budget behind it.

Q: Well that would be more a Disney thing. I mean, there are a lot of documentaries on Disney+ that are about Disney, most of which are made by Disney and sponsored by Disney, about extolling Disney, which is a very Disney thing to do. 

Is it on Amazon Prime for streaming, or is it on rental?

A: It's on Amazon for rental and purchase.

Q: And I guess it's been helpful to your film to have so many at home and streaming?

A:  Yeah, I mean there's people are just looking for content and the documentary space It's just exploded,  back in the day no one cared about documentaries. But now  you see a documentary like "Tiger King," which  sucks out all the energy in the world compared to "Extraction,"  I mean you put "Tiger King" next to  “Extraction" —  one's a big blockbuster type movie with Chris Hemsworth and one's about a redneck that owns tigers and "Tiger King" killed it.

Q: Another thing that Netflix is often in the news about these days is them fighting with movie theaters. They want to have the window be a certain thing, and the major theater chains are boycotting them. What do you think about that whole thing?

A: We touched on that slightly at the end. From my point of view like I understand where the theaters are coming from. I mean, this is their business model. I love going in movie theaters. It's tough because you go to a  theater This is one of the differences between Netflix and  the movie theater is that to go to the theater I have to put my kids in day care, so you're talking about day care costs, and then going to the theater, and then sitting down, you order the food and such, which is higher-priced. So it's just an experience that's different from watching at home.

But also, it's limited on what I'll see in the theater. I don't know if I'll go out and see a comedy, or if my wife wants to see a rom-com. I'll go out to watch a "Batman" movie or Marvel flick. It's gotta be a big experience, because you know, smaller-type movies I'll just watch it at home because I can't justify spending a hundred bucks. So I understand where the theaters are coming from, but it's just the battle of distribution, which has been going on from back in the day when the studios legally could own theaters. I forgot what the thing that Congress passed was called.

Q: The Paramount Decrees

A: Yes.

Q: Which I think they're taking steps to repeal.

A: Yes, I saw that, because Amazon's taking steps to buy AMC, I heard.

Q: Yeah that was a crazy report like a week ago but no one denied it. That's the kind of thing where it's a crazy thing that gets reported and it's not true It's usually the kind of thing that you know someone would deny it, if not just as an anonymous source, but no one did, so I'm thinking it's possible that it could happen.

A: I mean the stock price shot back up on AMC So yeah I know Wall Street seems to like it.

Q: I just remember last year  when “The Irishman” came out last year, and then “The Two Popes” and all the other Netflix Oscar contending movies,  I'm in Philadelphia which is a pretty major market. But there's one theater in the city that Netflix movies and it's on a tiny screen,  and that theater has since gone out of business.  So it's not like you can just go to a major theater and see “The Irishman” on a major screen, you'd be seeing on a tiny screen, when you can just watch it at home three weeks later. I'm interested to see how all that plays out the next couple of years.

A: I can't even imagine “The Irishman” existing outside of Netflix. I mean I watched it and made it through the first two hours,  and it took me another month to finish the movie just because it's so long, and it was such a commitment. I mean just imagine if Paramount would have ponying up that $200 million plus whatever the marketing costs, and then God knows how much Netflix threw at it for its Oscar campaign, so you're talking about it could have been like $500 million. There's no way if something like that ever making its money back.