 Okay, so two nights ago I saw a movie, I think it's, I thought it was excellent, really enjoyed it. I hesitate always to say about movies that they're excellent because I think the aesthetic evaluation is a difficult one, but I truly think this is a good movie. Aesthetically from every perspective, I think it's beautifully shot. And the cinematography has meaning in the sense that the cinematography is there to embellish and enhance the theme of the movie. It's not there just to be pretty, but it's actually, the acting is good and the story is fabulous and it has multiple themes. It's based on a true story. The movie's called Mr. Jones. And, you know, I've already recommended it, I think on the show I did with Greg the other day or yesterday, whenever it was. But I want to talk a little bit more about it today. It's called Mr. Jones. It's not on Netflix as far as I know. I think it's on Prime. And I think, and I'm pretty sure, well, I know it's on iTunes because I watched that I rented it on iTunes. It's $399 to rent on iTunes and it's definitely worth watching. It's an incredibly powerful movie. So there are a number of themes that this movie has, although I'm sure there's a theme that integrates it all if I think about it, but I haven't thought about it because I'm not, you know, I want to use this movie to talk about a current event issue topic. But, you know, one of the complaints I've always had for years and years and years that there are many, many, many movies, you know, attacking the Nazis and showing the evil of the Nazis, many movies about the Holocaust and the horrors of the Holocaust and clearly showing who is responsible and who is responsible for that evil and kind of their nature, the nature of the Nazis. And there have been almost no movies about the communists. If you think about it, the communists have killed many more people. They've killed tens of millions of people. We The Living, obviously, is a book by Ayn Rand that does that, that shows the communists for what they really are and what life and the communism was really like. But other than that, there are not that many. There are books, certainly Alexander Solzhenitsyn books and so on, but almost no movies, you know, very, very few movies that do that. Now, one of my favorite all time movies is a comedy that illustrates kind of the pathetic nature. But Ayn Rand had real qualms about the movie because it's the kind of evil you don't make fun of and it's a comedy. But Ninochka is a great movie and one of its themes is that it really makes fun of ridicules, shows the pathetic nature of communism, of Soviet Union. But there are very few serious movies that actually show the horror in a dramatic format, you know, with heroes in a real movie. They show the horrors of the Soviet Union. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of movies about the Holocaust, almost none about communism. And it's not just the Soviet Union. I mean, I know very few movies about the famine in China in the 1960s, about the Cultural Revolution in the 70s and all the horrors of Mao's rule in China. There's really very little. There are a few movies about the coming. There's one movie by Kamui, which actually made by Angelina Jolie. She was the director. She doesn't star in it, but she's the director called First They Killed My Father, which is very good, very touching, very moving, difficult to watch, but very powerful. First They Killed My Father. But there is very little. Outside of that, it really addresses the horrors of communism. And that's one of the things that makes Mr. Jones unique. It is a movie that shows you the consequence of, at least, Stalinism, if not of communism. I mean, if you think really deeply a little bit about it, it really is broader than that. And indeed, the movie makes the broader point. And granted, there are going to be spoilers here. But let me say something about spoilers in this context. The movie is a real story. It's a historical story. It's not an original script. It's not some suspenseful novel because you kind of know what's going to happen. So I don't think it will actually detract much from your enjoyment of the movie to know what happens in it. But if you really don't like spoilers, and I don't like spoilers for dramatic movies, then don't listen, I guess. There's spoilers here both more about telling you about the history of what actually happened. But the movie starts off with George Orwell. It starts off with George Orwell writing Animal Farm. And that gives the movie kind of a, because George Orwell's in the beginning, George Orwell's in the middle, George Orwell's in the end, and it kind of Animal Farm kind of wraps the whole movie around. And if you remember, I'm sure you don't, but if you remember the beginning of George Orwell's novella at Animal House, it starts with Mr. Jones, the farmer. And you hear the movies about Mr. Jones. It's about a Gary Jones, a real character. Gary Jones, a real figure in history. So Mr. Jones kind of is a nice parallel. But Animal House kind of closes the arc or creates an arc. An arc that is basically accusatory of communism per se, even if the movie itself, the story itself is accusing Stalin. But Animal House gives it kind of a more abstract, if you will, theme. But the outline, the basics of the story are that during the 1930s, Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union. At the time, the Western world was in a great depression. England, which is where this movie emanates, because Animal Farm, not Animal House, Jesus. Animal House is the ridiculous funny comedy. But this is Animal Farm, farm, farm, animal farm. Sorry, guys. And where was I? Yes. The movie starts in England and kind of goes to the Soviet Union and is in England. But England is in a great depression. The United States is in a great depression. Really, the whole Western world is in a great depression. And Stalin seems like the Soviet Union is thriving. Soviet Union shows massive economic growth, massive economic success. The stories coming out of the Soviet Union, primarily in all the Western press, are positive stories. It's a time where the United States does not have yet diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. I wish they had stayed the course and never established those diplomatic relations. And the movie deals with why they established the diplomatic relations as a side note. But the United States has no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The Brits, though, are helping the Soviet Union quite a bit. They're sending engineers, they're companies are building infrastructure for them. And one of the early questions in the movie is how do the Soviets get all this money? Where's the money coming from? And it's a theme that goes through in the beginning of the movie that Mr. Jones, the Gary Jones, keeps asking, where's the money? How is this happening? They're not producing anything. They're not selling anything. They don't have gold. Where's the money coming from? And it's kind of what motivates Gary Jones to go to the Soviet Union. This is after the movie actually starts with him briefing British political influential people on his interview. He interviews Hitler and his interview of Hitler and his assessment of Hitler. And it's a brilliant assessment. He takes Hitler very seriously and believes that Hitler is a real threat and a real threat to the West. And he's very, very condemnatory of Hitler. And now he's turning his attention to Stalin and he wants to interview Stalin and he wants to find out the mystery of how Stalin is producing these amazing results. And he goes through a variety of different means. He goes to the Soviet Union. He goes to Moscow to try to figure out what Stalin is doing. And this is really where the story begins. And what you see at the beginning of the story is kind of a decadent Western presence in Moscow, drug-filled, sex-filled parties in which the media and the engineers, but primarily the media, Western media is involved. And the Western media, of course, is the one that is constantly feeding the West these stories about the huge success of the Soviet Union. And this is where the theme gets universal. Because the real question that the movie asks, I think beyond its condemnation of communism, is a question about the role of journalism. It's a question about what should journalism do? What should journalists report on? It turns out that all these journalists in Moscow never leave Moscow. They're hunged down in Moscow partying. And they're basically printing what Stalin wants them to print. And in particular, there is the character of Durante, again, historical character, real character, all the characters in the movie are, I think, maybe not, but the main characters. And Durante is the New York Times correspondent in Moscow. And he is a famous character because he basically reports to the United States the wonders of the Stalin regime. He prints this as news. Well, he reports it, the New York Times prints it. And he is the one hosting the parties. So he lives in this bubble of decadence, of hedonism, reporting of the wonders of Stalinist communism, of the great advancement and the great successes of communism. And when he's confronted by Garrett Jones, his response is, well, you know, this is a noble cause. This is a noble cause. And it's our responsibility to give it a chance, to give it a break, to try this experiment, to see what happens. And, you know, a lot of this is delivered through kind of his second in command, a female writer who's writing also for the New York Times. And she says, you know, a goal as journalist is to support the cause. And Garrett Jones says, no, a goal as journalist is to report on facts, on the truth. And this really frames the whole movie. This question of what is journalism? What is it about? And in an era of fake news, in an era of biased news, in an era of accusations about the press here and there, it's first of, it's interesting to look at the press in the 1930s, early 1930s, and how biased it was, worse than biased. The New York Times was literally reporting fraudulent lies about one of the most brutal regimes, maybe the most brutal regime in human history. Now, Garrett Jones has heard rumors, primarily from one particular reporter who was committed to the truth and who is killed for it, killed supposedly by the Soviets for it. Fake news is an anti-concept. It is an anti-concept. It's more an era in which everything is accused of being fake news. This is the verbiage, not that it exists. I mean, there is a sense in which fake news exists, and when you unpackage the package deal, that is truly made up stuff. We see that on Facebook. We see that on Twitter. You see that all over the place. It's not, I don't think, what the mainstream media does. I think what the mainstream media does is primarily unbelievably biased news and news that is biased towards an agenda that they want to promote. And that's the excuse that Durante gives. He's there to promote an agenda. I don't know that in 1933, when this was done, when this is depicted, the New York Times has that as an agenda. I doubt it. But certainly Durante has that as his agenda as a journalist, and the New York Times is accepting what he's writing without second thought. And by the way, kind of funnily enough, Durante wins a Pulitzer Prize on his reporting about the Soviet Union. He wins it about a year before the story takes place. So he's already famous when the story happens. And think about who won the latest Pulitzer Prize. Also the New York Times, for what? For the 1619 project. So the Pulitzer Prize in both cases, in the case of 1933 and the case here, both given to stories with a clearly political, philosophical, ideological agenda, which is false, rotten to the core, misinformed, and yet in both cases. That's what won the Pulitzer Prize. So the story is about to a large extent. Well, you know, what happens in the communism, but beyond that, about what is the role of a journalist? What should a journalist report on? Is there such a thing as objective truth? And is it the job of journalists to report objective truth? And Gary Jones clearly thinks that and explicitly says so in the movie, which is extraordinary. That it's named. It's not just implicit. He says, no, my job is to report the truth. And both Durante and the woman reporter are like, no, you know, there's an experiment here. Durante actually says at some point he takes Lenin's line straight out of Lenin. In order to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs, which means you have to kill some people in order to have a social experiment. And if the social experiment is positive, we're going to hide the fact that you're killing some people so we can see how the experiment turns out. Because we're generally in favor of this experiment. Think about the horror of that. Think about a human being that holds that. Yeah, lives, big deal. People are dying. This is what the story's about. And then it is this conflict between Durante and Gary Jones. And Gary Jones, once he reports on what's going on in the Soviet Union primarily, we're dealing here with a famine in the Ukraine and the fact that what Stalin is doing is he is, I mean, grain production drops dramatically once farms are collectivized in Ukraine. And then what Stalin does is he takes all that grain from the Ukraine. Remember, Ukraine might be the most fertile land in the world. It is the bread basket of Europe. And what Stalin is doing is taking whatever grain is grown there and he's taking it to Moscow. They call it Stalin's gold. And one of the arguments in the movie, and I don't think I don't know that this is true or not, is that that is what is funding whatever successes he has, whatever infrastructure he's building, is being built by taking that food. And the result of him taking that food. And the result of the collectivization of the farms, although the collectivization part is not illustrated in the movie, is the complete and utter destruction of those towns and villages in Ukraine. The death of anywhere from four to 20 million people, nobody to this day knows exactly how many people died. And it's interesting how the reporting is very mixed. So the story is, Gary Jones discovers the famine is really going on. Holodomor, Holodomor is what it's called. And it's the famine. It's a famine from 1932 to 1933. Anywhere between four to 20 million died, although if you read the press today, they tend towards the four million because generally they tend towards minimizing the horrors of communism. But the scholarship is uncertain because partially we don't know. People just died. They were buried in collective holes in the ground. The movie shows, I mean, that part of the movie where he is actually in Ukraine and sees what is going on is shocking and beautifully, beautifully filmed. Slow, but in a way that focuses your attention on the horrors. Focuses your attention on what's going on. Focuses your attention on the complete and utter devastation of communism, devastation of what Stalin is doing to Ukraine. The place is annihilated. And when he comes back and tells a story, of course, Durante calls him a liar and destroys his career at least for a while. And Durante continues as a heroic in real life, as the successful New York Times journalist who wins accolades and ultimately convinces, supposedly convinces FDR to recognize the Soviet Union and establish an embassy there and establish diplomatic relations. And Durante is this success story. Only later, much later as he recognized, as a liar, as an apologist for Stalin. And the movie is clear in its opinions of Durante. So the movie, the movie is very morally assertive, both in its view about the world of journalism reports objective truth and in its view of communism. And in that sense, in both of those, it is unusual. It is unusual. There are not very many people, very many movies that will do that, that will take on journalism, take on the conflict between journalism for cause versus objective journalism. Almost no movies do that. And then how many movies, as we talked about at the beginning, how many movies actually portray communism as evil. So I highly recommend the movie. It's very, very powerful. One of the interesting things about, I've read now I think three or four reviews of the movie, is a lot of the movies recognize, you know, the Stalin, the communism stuff. They don't generalize the communism. Of course, that would be politically incorrect. They get the illusion, or not the illusion, the direct reference to George Orwell and what that represents. And of course George Orwell, remember, doublespeak and, you know, that connects to journalism too and the search for truth. But it's interesting to me that the one thing that the reviews don't mention or don't make a deal of is this question of journalism. It's as if the fact is that today nobody believes in objective reporting. Nobody believes in truth. Nobody believes the journalist's job is to present the facts. So you just don't comment on it. Now, I give a huge amount of credit to the director of this movie. For doing it right. The director of the movie is Polish. I can't pronounce her name. It's a woman. She's Polish. And, you know, she's really, where did I, I had this somewhere here. In IMBD, I'm sure I had it. Anyway, and I'll get you, I'll get you her name in a minute. But she's exceptional. She truly is exceptional. And kudos to her for doing this Agnieszka Holland. Agnieszka Holland is the name of the director. And, you know, she doesn't compromise. And she sticks with it. And she presents the reality and she's willing to take up this issue of objectivity in the media and stand by its objectivity. Stand by the existence of such a thing as truth and objectivity. So I'm impressed. I was very impressed by the movie. I was very impressed by the philosophical messages, the themes in it. And I think this issue of objective media, objective journalism, is one which needs to be taken up much more in our culture. It's one which the general culture rejects, rejects the idea of such a thing exists. And it's one where most of the commentators in this movie have rejected. They won't even address it. And it's explicitly a major theme in the movie. And yet that's not addressed in any of the reviews, either reviews that love the movie. Don't talk at all about this conflict around the question of what is the role of journalism. The name of the movie is Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, it's available on iTunes and on Amazon Prime and Prime Plus because you have to pay for it. So you don't get it free on either one of those services. It costs $3.99 to rent it. It's definitely worth it. It's a moving, powerful moving experience. Even though very difficult to watch because the horrors of what happened in Ukraine when people are starving, and we're talking about really, really, really starving, to death. Millions and millions and millions of people starving to death. So I encourage you to watch it. And the relevance today I think is obvious. The relevance is today is that how many people today believe in objective journalism? Very few. Is it even taught? Now I don't know. Everything I've read about journalism school suggests that it's not. That what's taught is the belief that there is no such thing as objective journalism. Do your best, but you can't be objective. And what I think journalism is becoming more and more and more is advocacy. The using of some facts, distortion of other facts in order to present a biased view, an ideological perspective, a gender item that is motivating to what some goal that the journalist has rather than just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. Journalism should be about telling us what happened. And to the extent possible, why it happened, when it happened, where it happened. All those Ws, I remember, I forget there was a formula, right? Where, what, when, how, whatever, who, that's the role of journalist. It's not to preach to us. It's not to defend a cause. It's not to present the information, the data, the facts in the best light for a particular cause. It's not to slant. It's to present the facts. And the reality is that nobody does that today. I mean, literally nobody does that today. And I have a, I think, you know, I don't think that all the news is fake news. And make up stories. But all the news is biased news. All the news is biased news. And I give you, I give you an example of how I discovered it a long time ago. Yeah, the wire, that's right. Somebody mentioned the wire took on journalism. The wire, every season takes on a different brand, you know, area in society. So one year it's unions, one year it's politicians, one year it's education, the schools, and one year it's journalism. And it's why this series is so good, because it really shows you what happens. But I discovered this about journalism in the 1980s. Long time ago, some of you weren't even born, I know. When the Wall Street Journal used to run front page stories condemning Michael Milken every other day, basically towing the party line. And in those days, the party line with regard to Mike Milken was Rudolph Giuliani's line. The District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And this is where I developed my visceral hatred of Rudy Giuliani, which I still carry to this day. They carried his agenda, and they presented it as facts. The editorial page in the Wall Street Journal was better. And they would often present opposite viewpoint than the front page, than the journalists. And I was going, you know, what the hell's going on here? The journalists are not supposed to have an opinion. It's the opinion page that's supposed to have an opinion. The journalists are just supposed to report the facts. And they're not. Even the editorial board knows they're not. And then when it came to the facts themselves, I was at the time getting an MBA and then a PhD in finance, so I knew something about what was going on. And it was just wrong. It was just not true. Or slanted. Or often just ignorant. People would write about finance who didn't know finance. Would write about economics who didn't know anything about economics. Write about Milken without understanding one thing about what Mike Milken did. And I suddenly understood, here I'm reading the parts of the paper about issues that I know something about. And they get it all wrong. So I wonder if they get it all wrong on the other parts of the newspaper. And again, it's not only that it's often based on the ideology of the journalist. Some of it is that. Some of it is just ignorance. They just don't know what they're talking about. They don't have the expertise. It's like a science writer not knowing anything about science. And many economics writers that I know know nothing or very little about economics. They know how to mouth the conventional wisdom, but that's about it. And then to the writers who write about Israel. Know anything about Israel. Often not. Again, they're motivated by particular ideology. They've read particular number of books, but it's the same books and they all read the same books. And they all have the same perspective. It's not about facts, reality, truth, investigation, really trying to understand. That is such a rare phenomena in journalism. And again, that is why a movie like Mr. Jones, where they show a heroic journalist, a real heroic journalist, who risks his life to discover the truth, almost dines to discover the truth. That's inspiring. And that's why I so strongly recommend the movie. But the issue of journalism is one to really be concerned about. I mean, I find it very difficult to read an article and just accept it. I have to read the article if there's a quote. I have to often look for the original source, the interview, the video of what was actually said. Read the story behind the story. Read other newspaper articles and articles from other perspectives. And just to try to cobble the facts, what actually happened. Never mind why, you know, what motivated it and what's the political agenda. Which makes it very difficult to do a show like this because it's very difficult to figure out what the hell is going on. Now it's true that whatever I know about what's going on typically comes to me through the main sources of media because nobody else has reporters that actually even try to figure out what's going on. People like Alex Jones make it up. They have no clue what's going on. They just make stuff up. They take what the mainstream media feeds them and put them into their filter to come up with some conspiracy theory to explain it all. Or distort what's actually going on. So the only people who actually have reporters out there in the field. I mean there's some independent reporters who do this, very few though, and hard to rely on them either because many of them are motivated by particular causes. But mostly we're relying on the news that we get every day on reporters that are working for the mainstream media. And I'll include Fox in the mainstream media because they are. And that's how we know what's going on anyway. And yet we know at the same time that they're incredibly biased. That they're not objective. That they're not necessarily reporting objective truths. So there we are. It's an insane world and it's very, very difficult. You know one of the things we're going to have to get right if we're going to get the future right is to get journalism right. It's to get them back on course, back on the idea of seeking truth. And maybe a movie like Mr. Jones moves us a little bit, a little bit in that direction. At least it puts that issue on the table in an aesthetic form. In an aesthetic form that maybe resonates with people, maybe has some power, maybe raises expectations. But again I found it really, really interesting that the critics completely ignore that part of the movie. Completely ignore that issue which is the most relevant to the life we live today. Because it's happening all around us. This question. And it's so obvious that whoever wrote this movie introduces it in a way that makes it relevant to the world in which we live. All right. So that's Mr. Jones. I hope you'll watch it. Let me know what you think. Don't forget to let me know what you think. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect. Not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence. And does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist growth. All right. 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