Culture enters its plot twist era

0:07Hey guys, it's the November weather report with Kujo and joining Emily and I to talk about where this month's cultural winds have been blowing, is Anthony DiMieri. He is an independent filmmaker, and he is also a core member of Zoran's video team, helping develop that vision and strategy. You also probably know his work for Subway Takes, which he shoots and sometimes directs, his viral sitcom Bros. And he's also got a couple of new features out or coming out called Love New York and Romance Never Dies. Welcome, Anthony. So good to have you. Thank you guys for having me. This is really a delight.

0:46Okay, so let's get into November's weather events. It was pretty funny because we ended up having to record this conversation in two parts. And when we finished recording the first part, it was literally minutes before Trump and Zoran's much-discussed, wildly absurd White House meeting. and so it worked out actually that we're finishing having this conversation now i think we would be remiss in not bringing that up as one of this month's weather events definitely strange weather definitely strange it's definitely weather and quite an event yeah this happened in our interlude and we'll say this knowings are on like not the most but more than the average person i could totally imagine the moment this is just how i pictured it i was like he's like just sees the FDR picture and he's just like no what is this like he definitely does get like fascinated with things and that's so I could just imagine the rapport just being like wait whoa this is incredible and then Trump like being like humbled by him he's like oh yeah you like that you like that that's a good one I found that in the back and then just like that conversation alone because he said Trump said he found it so he like he's like I pulled it out of the warehouse or whatever like he viewed it almost as like a compliment less about fdr than a compliment to his taste that he had good taste i mean i think even better like the whole you know the whole conversation about how it was like a disarming moment and we thought this was gonna be so confrontational but clearly it was like i mean trump couldn't stop smiling it was a whole bizarre it was strange weather uh happening yeah did you how much time did you guys did you watch the whole thing did you just yeah emily and i were just like remote watching it in real time together i just like had to stay in my hotel room and keep watching it because it was too far out i watched it like three times yeah we're like texting each other during it and we were just like what is this buddy comedy it felt that like like an odd couple type buddy comedy yeah and then we really freaked out when this was like almost ended up being sort of a a little bit of an inadvertent like shout out to you anthony when some member of the press junket asked like about their respective media campaigns and strategies and how they influence each other.

3:01And Emily were both just like, we literally just did an episode about that. And then we just got off the phone with this fucking videographer. Like what? Oh my God. Your work made it to the press junket at the White House. Well, some of those tweets that are like, game recognizes game and whatnot. Like I think that there was also like a whole culture of just calling Donald Trump like a great poster. Like he's just like a top tweeter, top poster, which is like the path we're on was paved by Donald a decade ago, you know? of like, yeah, you could just be crazy on the internet and it could work, which seems to have laid the groundwork for the moment we're in, the strange weather moment we're in.

3:38How much do you think his sort of bizarre campaign of images, his image politics, were you thinking about either consciously or subconsciously in terms of like maybe how that influenced the strategy that you guys developed or like your approach? Well, I can only say that Debbie and I are like fans of the Donald Trump media strategy. Like we think he's good at not that i'm a fan of his politics or a lot of things or you know i think he's doing horrible things all the time but i he is fantastic at media and like the back-to-back of like he's serving mcdonald's drive-through to he's like riding the sanitation truck his wrap-up of the last election was like 10 out of 10 like he was really like killing it on social media and i I think that people didn't realize like how good that stuff was, like how strong of messaging it is to just, oh, Donald Trump's in the drive-thru.

4:31And like, and you know, the tendency in the, in like the Democrats core is to be like, what a ridiculous guy. But like, it's actually genius that he's in the Donald's drive-thru. So like, there's stuff like that, that I think Debbie and I at least talk about. We haven't had those conversations like with Serana with the team, but I know like when we're thinking about media, we know like the absurdism is a good thing. Like don't run away from being absurd. It's fine. Lean into it. Like whatever your weirdest ideas, try it. You always have the ability to edit things. Right. So it's like, it's okay to be very strange, you know?

5:06And the most surreal thing, like they were having a conversation in the white house about, you know, what our, our second video or third video we shot together, like, which was the Trump voters video. like so that's crazy and zaron's like yeah i met your dad's pharmacist and like yeah i have i went and i like went to the raw footage i was like yeah there's a man in a white if you watch the initial video he's interviewing trump for there's a man in like a white pharmacy coat and he's like yeah you're yeah donald trump's father used to come to my pharmacy like 30 40 you know 40 years ago and i tweeted out like the pharmacist i just put a tweet out this is like the pharmacist in question But then I realized, you know what's he?

5:45The reality of it is like all these people, including the pharmacist, were voting for Trump because they thought Trump was anti-war. That was the one thing that was coming across by talking all these like especially Muslim Trump voters and early immigrant Trump voters. Like they were extremely anti-war. They were just like, we are voting for Trump because he's going to end all the wars. Like which people don't talk about that. But that was like part of that initial video. That was an insane time. Like, I remember that as the general election was coming to an end where there was like a period where Trump was like moving to the left of Kamala or seemed to be, appeared to be moving to the left of Kamala and being like more interested in ending the war and then like hitting up all of these like Muslim community groups and like filming videos with them.

6:30And that was a very surreal moment. And it seems like also the meeting felt a little bit like that moment where it's like many Democrats just voted in favor of this like resolution against socialism. And I'm going to like surprise everybody by standing up with this Democratic socialist mayor left and be like, he's my best friend. I know. Well, it is, you know, it kind of presents this moment where like, you know how the MAGA squad is like extremely divided on the client list question, right? And that was like the first crack in their, you know, unified, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's just announced she's retiring.

7:08It's been an internal fight. A lot of the podcasters and media people are scattered on all sorts of sides of the issue. So like that issue very much divided them. And I feel like the Democrats have this opportunity now. They're like either the party unites with like a new vision and we could just do this thing or you vote for this anti-socialist resolution. and like, you know, you're going to, they're going to say like, they will sabotage themselves in the same way. Like, it's like, it'll divide. And maybe Trump, maybe he saw that and he was like, you know what? None of them like him. I'm going to have a great time with him.

7:40You know, I can imagine him doing something like that. And, you know, who knows? I have no idea. I have no idea what was going through either of their minds, but I imagine it was a wild day for all parties involved. And I also think, want to say that I think whatever went on in the meeting, I'm imagining like Zoran, like, you know, getting into a car at the end of the meeting and just like breathing out like a huge sigh of like, oh, my God, that was so crazy. I'm sure that's exactly what anyone would feel that way. But he did such a great job of like seizing upon the moment and then tying it back to like just the affordability message, like relentlessly.

8:17And in a way where Trump also couldn't like rebel again or he could he couldn't like reject that message. He could only accept that message because he wants to align himself with that as well. I thought that was really useful, even if it felt like an uncomfortable moment. Right. And even to bring it back to what we were saying about like the mid-campaign sort of anti-war, like war stoppage messaging, like that even came up during the meeting when I think that was like when someone asked about Palestine and Israel, Zoran like very masterfully just kind of brought it back to, you know, he said where he stood on that but he said you know but my focus is like right now on the people of new york and affordability and i'm fairly certain like one of them was like yeah like we need to stop the wars so we can get back to making america more affordable yeah i mean if you think about it we all live through the 2024 election which you know both biden and harris seem to be like tiptoeing around and never like you know it seemed like they were just hoping the situation would resolve itself like they were they weren't actively like stopping the war and they weren't they were definitely not calling it a genocide in the Oval Office.

9:26So like that was historical too, like for someone to name it in the Oval Office. And yeah, to steer back, to go from that and be like, and we're going to bring it back to affordability, like as, you know, of course, because war and peace and, you know, material livelihoods of people are interconnected, whether or not our political minds are drawing those connections. It was so insane though, where it could seem like there was a moment where Trump was like alluding to like welcoming Zoran if he wanted to to come and help negotiate peace in the Middle East. Did you see that? I didn't see that but I think it's brilliant.

10:03I hope now wait now I need to go back. I feel like I watched it in clips so I thought I saw all the clips but now I'm gonna really go back and watch the full thing. It's important to watch the full thing. He was like yeah like if you want to come with me we can talk to them together. like kind of oh he's invited to the valley like in his informal way will where he'll have like his like in-law like be on a call with so-and-so in egypt you know what i mean like that kind of you should actually just bring zaron's dad who is like the top scholar on the subject for 50 years or something like that that would be sick okay so how did you start as an indie filmmaker and then end up working on the Zoran campaign.

10:43Well, I mean, I was doing the Bros Project, and this is when Debbie joined. Like, we met. Later, we revived it in 2016. Like, it had some viral moment three years before that. But we crowdfunded a season two. There's some other, like, missing pieces. Like, because of my Tommy Wiseau relationship, I was very tuned in to what he was doing. And when it was announced that James Franco was going to play Tommy Wiseau in a movie, I started paying attention to what James Franco was doing. And then I became his student it's a whole long strange story but i was his student so i moved that's an entirely other interview yeah that'll come later but if what you're about to do is draw the connective tissue between tommy wiseau and like zoran becoming mayor of new christmas it's it's legitimate there's legitimate there is a tommy wiseau to zoran connection and i'm gonna make it right here exclusively oh my god kujo exclusive you heard it here this is exclusive content and that's it for the free preview version of this episode there's lots more ahead you can hear the rest and get access to things like our discord server and reading groups by becoming a paid subscriber for just five bucks a month all that and you'll be supporting independent journalism go get it over at theculturejournalist.substack.com