Why Pete Davidson won’t mention new movies on ‘SNL’

Three weeks ago, we held our breath when our first feature film, Dumb Money, opened in theaters around the world. We were expecting a blast. I started crying more. This debut film appeared in the midst of an actors’ and writers’ strike. Our film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to great reviews (proved refreshing!) and positive audience reaction, where a scalper sold tickets for his over $900. Sold. After two weeks of platform expansion, he was ranked 7th on the film’s opening weekend. (A glimmer of hope: “Everything Everywhere All At Once” reached No. 6 on wide release.)

A major factor in the box office success was that there was zero promotion for the cast, which includes Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, America Ferrera, Shailene Woodley, Nick Offerman, and Sebastian Stan. . Although we produced this film independently, the distributor Sony is signed to the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance, which represents studios, so the cast has no publicity for the film at all, according to the Screen Actors Guild of America. Couldn’t do it. TV and radio artists strike the rules.

Pete Davidson hosts “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, but he can’t say anything about the surprising emotional turn on “Damn Money.” Not to mention the character-driven nude scene he performs at the end. There are many missed opportunities to leave cigarette butts on your seat. The silence on TikTok is deafening. That’s how it should be.

The risks of these strikes far overshadow the individual outcomes. This includes experiences that we cannot recommend. It’s about spending a weekend alone at a local theater reading tweets from viewers who saw and liked our films.

We console ourselves with simple observations. That’s the message of our film, and that’s the message of the collective action happening now in Hollywood and across the country: Yes, this is about money. But it’s also about more than money.

These strikes are about business practices that exploit the many to enrich the few. Securing a better contract that pays a fair wage is important. But they are also about principles that go to the heart of how we value ourselves as an industry and as a society. People are starting to band together and say: I no longer feel small or inconspicuous. ” Making this point costs money, and people are willing to spend it.

Look at the United Auto Workers union. Nearly 5,000 autoworkers have been fired since the strike began last month. But the UAW remains bullish because they’ve seen the Big Three – Ford, General Motors and Stellantis – reap huge profits while worker wages have stagnated. . Or consider his labor union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents more than 300,000 UPS employees. The Teamsters narrowly avoided a strike this summer by using rhetoric such as “ending part-time poverty” to protect part-time workers, who make up more than half of UPS union members. Job security means dignity for workers.

Writing partners are Rebecca Angelo (left) and Lauren Schuker Blum.

(Emilio Madrid)

Residuals were used to give dignity to the actors. These have virtually disappeared, and the union’s efforts to undo the damage are being blamed for the collapse of negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP earlier this week. Now that technology allows actors’ images to be repurposed digitally, the stakes of the strike extend to ownership of the actors’ literal bodies and voices. infinitely. This battle couldn’t be more personal.

People are gathering to ask for money, yes. But just as importantly, they are calling for moral reckoning with industries and organizations that have devalued ordinary people for far too long. How else to explain this remarkable moment of worker solidarity in Hollywood and across the United States? For many, the system feels broken.

These were the same sentiments that drove people to buy GameStop stock in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, as we dramatize in “Dumb Money.” Seeing the story we told in the script suddenly unfold around us was surreal to say the least. From recording group actions to participating in group actions. In the case of GameStop, charismatic YouTuber Keith Gill, who wore a red headband and went by the moniker Roaring His Kitty, claimed that the hedge fund owned more than 100% of all shares in his once beloved video game store. I discovered that I was selling short. The story quickly spread on social media. Billionaires were profiting from business failures and the loss of thousands of jobs. To many, it symbolized the worst of Wall Street: greed and impunity. A careless brand of capitalism that reduces companies to ticker symbols and profits. As a result, individual traders bought and held GameStop, causing its stock price to skyrocket, and hedge funds with short sales suffered significant losses. One of his rallying cries used by retail traders was HODL. Please hold on forever.

Critics of our film, and the movement it depicts, don’t like to give this victory to retailers. They point out that many of them bought too high or held too long and ended up losing money, stating, “Retail traders always lose!” This is a straightforward way of representing actual statistics.In other words, retail traders Usually poor performance market. (So are hedge funds.Although, by the way, it has not received much attention. )

These critics are not wrong. But they are missing the bigger point. They view success or failure only in terms of who made money and who lost money. It’s the same as shouting at striking workers, “You could be making more money like a scab!”

We interviewed dozens of retail traders to create the script for Dumb Money, and the biggest regret we heard was that they bought too high or sold too much. It wasn’t. It was from someone who sold it at all. Selling meant betraying the movement, and the movement was the most important thing. One investor told us that participating in the GameStop phenomenon was worth all the money he lost, and then some. There was value there and he was willing to pay for it.

We pay money in Hollywood, too, and not just to get the richest possible deal on the other side of the bargain. It’s the price of integrity, visibility, and transparency, the very same values ​​that drove many to buy the inventory of an obscure video game store. We are already seeing the fruits of that sacrifice. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday announced new rules giving hedge funds more transparency into their short positions. A move like this wouldn’t have happened without GameStop’s traders. (Is it too much to believe that our film might have played that role too?)

Viewers continue to discover “Dumb Money” for themselves, and we hope it slowly burns and builds a movement. We will defend the writers’ strike with our lives, and we will continue to HODL in solidarity with actors, even if it means sacrificing our films’ box office revenue. Some might call that a failure. If so, please let me do so. It’s a failure we’re proud of.

Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum have been a film and television writing team since 2012. The two met as reporters for a TV program. tHe’s the Wall Street Journal. During their time as journalists, they also wrote articles such as: the is an economist the is with the new york times tHe’s the Washington Post. Angelo and Blum’s first feature, Dumb Money, which they also executive produced, chronicled GameStop’s short squeeze in January 2021. Other upcoming projects include reuniting with “Dumb Money” director Craig Gillespie for “Cruella 2.” A feature-length biopic about talent agent Sue Mengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence. Adapted from Michael Lewis’ New York Times bestselling book, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. and the theatrical version of the Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated series Murder, She Wrote. In television, I’m developing a show with Adam McKay for Netflix. Their previous screenwriting includes the Emmy Award-winning series “Orange Is.” the’s the new black.”