My Favorite Things! - Morgan Freeman & Denzel Washington Movies

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of people. people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:20This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altature Show.

1:36Welcome to another episode of my favorite things. And I'm going to talk about a few of my favorite things. What does it mean to be a favorite? Well, it means I'm super excited about recommending it. It might mean something I was excited about just this past week or something I've been doing research on. So without further ado, let's get started. I saw a movie. I had never heard of this movie. Someone recommended it to me. It's a movie from 1989. It's called Lean on Me. It's like a young Morgan Freeman. And I love this movie. I would highly recommend it. By the way, I knew of the song Lean on Me and this was a movie named Lean on Me.

2:17I had never even heard of the movie, but Lean on Me, I would highly recommend the guy who sang Lean on Me, which is Bill Withers. It's the most incredible singer. He sang some of my favorite songs, like Grandma's Hands and Hope She'll Be Happier. They're very sad songs. Like you almost want to cry when you listen to them, but he's just got this beautiful voice. And sometimes I stand in front of a mirror and try to imitate his voice. He's got a very like smooth kind of voice. But what I really admire about Bill Withers is he was disgusted with his record label. I think it was Columbia Records. And as he became more and more famous, they kept trying to control the music he wanted, he should do.

3:04Like they thought he would be, oh, you'll be more popular if you do X, Y, or Z. And meanwhile, he's saying to them, you just released an album by Mr. T, an actor, and you're not releasing the album I want to do. And I'm professional at this with a bunch of Grammys and I've sold millions of records. So he quit the record label. And I don't think he ever really performed again. Like he did a little bit here and there, but he basically left the musical business. Also, he wasn't like some young kid when he broke out. He was 32 years old when his first song came out. So not that that's old, but shows that you don't have to be like 19 years old and beautiful to have a great career in the music business.

3:45So I really admire this guy. I listen to all his songs, Bill Withers. But the movie Lean On Me with Morgan Freeman, I think it's the best acting I've ever seen him do. and he basically plays, it's based on a true story of a rundown high school in Patterson, New Jersey, right near where I grew up actually. And he becomes the principal and you have to see the movie. I'm not giving anything away. But great movie. I just saw it this week. Jay, first, do you see any movies this week? Oh yeah, last week, this weekend, actually I saw this movie called Argyle. Have you heard of it? Argyle. I've heard of Argo, but not Argyle.

4:26So Argyle is kind of like a sweater pattern for wasps. Yes, right. I think. But the movie is basically… It's like a spy plus novel plus comedy. Like it's a light-hearted spy. Have you heard of The Kingsman? Yeah. Yeah. So it's by the same… I would say almost the same production team. I think the same editor, same producer, same director. Sort of in the same sort of… It's got an all-star cast. I know. Samuel L. Jackson. Exactly. Sam Rockwell. Bryan Cranston. Henry Cavill. Dua Lipa. Who I don't know who that is but I've heard the name a lot. She's the singer. And John Cena as a professional wrestler.

5:09He's in it. Yep. Wow, that's crazy. And also when's the last time you've seen… When's the last time there is a lighthearted spy movie? like James Bond get like more and more intense right like you know it used to be like fun sort of spy movie that people can watch but now like the last one with Daniel Craig is like so intense and stuff like that so this like light-hearted like comedy a little bit all right well because I outsource all of my critical thinking to the internet I'm going to use Google to uh search spy comedy films. You ever think about that? Like every new technology that's developed, and I'm not being anti-technology.

5:49I think technology is great and it improves my life, almost every new thing that comes along. But basically with GPS, we outsource our ability to find things. With calculators, we outsource our math ability. With Google, we've outsourced our memory. And now with AI, we're starting to outsource our critical thinking. Okay. So best, 15 best sky comedy films ranked. And you have The Man Who Knew Too Little with Bill Murray. I've never even heard of that movie. I've never heard of that. Get Smart. Oh, yeah. Steve Carell. Yeah. I didn't want to see it because I like the TV series from the 60s. But it was great.

6:29Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Oh, yes. That was fun too. Austin Powers, of course. Oh, wait. Hold on. I'm just scrolling number one. Is Austin Powers considered a spy movie though? I think it's not. But, oh, and look. Guess what? Number one is? Guess. Argyle. No. Kingsman. Kingsman. Dude, you got to watch Kingsman. Kingsman is such a fun movie. So, like, you don't have too much substance in it. But, like, it's like a family fun movie. Just watch it with your family, with your kids, with Robin. It's so much fun. You have to watch Kingsman 1 and then Kingsman 2. And then, you know, the prequel to Kingsman.

7:07They have, like, a whole universe they're building upon it. Okay, so my recommendation on movies was a serious, well-acted, well-written movie based on a true story. Lean on Me, starring Morgan Freeman, one of Morgan Freeman's first, I think. And yours is lighthearted. Yes. Spy comedy, which who knows? I'm not judging. And I will see it. I will watch it. My other pick for the movies, though, and this was the one I saw about a month ago, was Roman J. Israel. Oh. uh that's the name of the movie starring denzel washington a lesser known denzel washington movie first off i think denzel washington might be my favorite actor uh i've been going through a phase where i'm basically just watching one by one every single denzel washington movie and like i love american gangster i love i just love how every movie's in and uh the equalizer have to recommend those as we talked about it man last week the equalizer movies are are incredible just as good as it man i think well it depends if you're super into kung fu movies then it man over equalizer but roman j israel he plays kind of this almost nerdy on the spectrum sort of civil rights lawyer defense lawyer doesn't really know how to communicate with people and he's he just makes 500 a week as a lawyer and then suddenly his boss who was always kind kind of like shielding him from the real world dies and he can't get a job.

8:37He doesn't know what to do. And it's really interesting what happens. A little, again, a little older movie Denzel Washington, though, one of his best, I think Roman J Israel. Did you ever listen, Jay, did you ever listen to the podcast? Uh, it was called, it had a great name. It's called, uh, Denzel Washington is the greatest actor ever. Period. I heard about it, but, uh, because we talk about it all the time, but I never watch it. Because I love the name of it. I love the fact that they write, that the word period is part of the title. It's great. Right. So, and then I saw a TV series this past week.

9:14Like we, Robin and I binge watched for three straight days this TV series. My daughter, Molly, recommended it to me and it's called Pen15. P-E-N-1-5. We watched it, I think on Amazon, but it was produced by Hulu, so I don't quite understand it. But Pen15, and it's worth seeing. It's basically, it reminds me of the TV series Freaks and Geeks, which was one of Judd Apatow's first ever shows slash movies. And Freaks and Geeks, I should add, is almost a historical sitcom to watch. It only lasted for one season, and then NBC canceled it. but it's the first Judd Apatow wanted to hire all new actors.

10:02And so here are some of the new actors he hired for Freaks and Geeks. James Franco had never acted before. Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Martin Starr, who's in Silicon Valley. Linda Cardellini, who is in a ton of stuff. You'll recognize her once you see it. But it's interesting that Seth Rogen and James Franco, this is their first appearance on acting on any show or movie. But anyway, Pen15 is a little like Freaks and Geeks. It's basically about two 13-year-old girls surviving seventh grade. And if that sounds like awful to you, believe me, it's not awful. Like at first, why would I watch that?

10:43But A, my daughter recommended it. She has good taste. But C, I saw that the Lonely Island guys were producing it. So Lonely Island is Andy Samberg and his friends. You might remember them from the very first song to ever go viral on YouTube. The first song to have over 100 million views on YouTube was a funny song by Andy Samberg called Lazy Sunday. It was him and Chris Darnell, something like that. And then, of course, he's on Brooklyn 99. He's done a bunch of movies. was on Saturday Night Live, super funny guy, but Lazy Sunday was great. But anyway, I didn't even know he was producing shows.

11:26So he produces the show, Pen15, and the two women who write it, it's about their experiences as 13-year-olds and they play themselves. They're two women who are 38 years old and they play themselves as 13-year-olds and you really believe they're 13 years old. It's kind of funny because it's not until like halfway through that I sort of realized, oh, they're not 13 years old. and uh one of them maya erskline she's now starring in the tv series mr and mrs smith so i mean and they won a bunch of emmys for pen 15 it was just on 20 in 2023 just last year but it was really great there's two seasons they it wasn't canceled they specifically planned on it being two seasons and it's really worth watching it's it's it's it's funny in this kind of almost cringy way sometimes because 13 year old seventh graders are often cringy and it really reminded me of not only of my own experiences of age but then i thought about my my daughters when they were that age and and uh it's a very sweet show so and and funny yeah cool i started watching atlanta oh my god that is the best show ever it's a sitcom starring um childish gambino i always forget if he's Danny Glover or Donald Glover.

12:45I think Donald Glover. Oh, by the way, he's the Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith and Maya Eskerlein is Mrs. Smith. So that's funny. So the two shows we're watching are both somehow connected to a TV show we didn't watch, which is Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I guess now we're going to have to watch that. But I would say Atlanta is probably the most creative sitcom ever made. And it has a lot of great competition for that including Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dave... Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, Larry Sanders Show, and some other classics. Atlanta is really just a great story, but great experiments that don't disrupt the story.

13:27Really funny, well acted. Donald Glover is just amazing in it. And it's just an all around good show. And just by coincidence, I live near Atlanta. Yeah, but isn't... And so do you. But Atlanta, it's a little bit more greedy compared to all the other shows that you just mentioned, isn't it? Oh, yeah, definitely. Like, it's… Well, people will see when they see why. Yeah. But, all right. So, Atlanta, Pen15, Lean on Me. Maybe Argyle. I'm not convinced. You have to watch it, Argyle. I will watch it. I will watch it. But I have to say, I also watched Spirited Away as well this past weekend. You know, Spirited Away…

14:09So, okay, that's an animation. What's it? Studio… Ghibli? How do you say it? Ghibli? Yeah, Ghibli. G-H-I-B-L-I, something like that. Yeah. And it's probably the best animated movie I've ever seen. But again, I saw it around 20 years ago. Is that possible? Did it come out more than 20 years ago? It came out in 2001 or 2000. Yeah, I used to watch that. I've probably watched that 10 times. It's really… The animation is just great. I don't know if they do animation like that anymore. What's the most recent movie by that studio? The Boy and the Heron. Boy and… I don't know. Yeah. How do you pronounce H-E-R-O-N?

14:50I think Heron. Yeah. The Boy and the Heron. It just came out. People loved it. 97 % on Rotten Tomatoes. It's by Studio Ghibli. You can't… It's almost impossible to hate that movie. Sorry to interrupt you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's impossible to hate that studio. The studio is good. And also, like, this type of movie, it's just heartwarming. and it always takes me off the reality. Like sometimes when I watch a movie, I don't want to watch something too real, too close to the reality, you know? Yeah, like, you know, it's interesting. Most movies are very visual and then you get a feeling for based on the acting and the writing, it creates the emotions inside you, the emotions inside you while you're watching it.

15:28But Studio Ghibli, just the way it's animated also creates this emotion that's really kind of, to use Robert Greene's word sublime. Like it's a very sublime kind of movie.

15:53Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

16:36And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

17:12This message comes from Capital One. The Capital One VentureX business card has no preset spending limit, so the card's purchasing power can adapt to meet business needs. Plus, the card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase, so the more a business spends, the more miles earned. And when traveling, the VentureX Business Card grants access to over 1 ,000 airport lounges. The VentureX Business Card, what's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureXBusiness. There's something else I did completely different this week, which is I wanted to research, again, for my kids, I wanted to research websites.

17:54I always tell my kids, oh, why don't you try making money online? But I never have really evidence to back it up. So I wanted to research some websites where they could potentially make some money. I found what I expected to find, which is that, so on Instagram, there's all these accounts that go to these websites and you can make$5 ,000 a week. So a lot of those websites that those accounts refer to are just BS or they're scams, or you don't really make, you might make a dollar a week, but not$5 ,000 a week. But there's two that I think you might have a chance. One is Audible. So you go to acx.com, which is Audible's kind of backend website.

18:33You make an account, you click on the button that says find projects. So that means projects are books that have been written where the author doesn't want to read the audio book. Why wouldn't the author want to read the audio book? it is really unpleasant to read an audio book. Like I always, I can't schedule anything before or at, when I've read every one of my audio books and I can never schedule anything before, several days before or several days after because I got to rest my throat before and then my throat is just shot afterwards. And it's about two days to read an audio book. You know, let's say it's around 60 or 70 ,000 words and my throat's hurting so much afterwards.

19:15but that's why authors that that creates an opportunity so you could make you honestly could like a romance novel that would take you about two or three days to read you could probably get paid four or five thousand dollars in a few days reading an audio reading a romance novel for instance and there's hundreds and hundreds of projects at any given point where you could get paid anywhere from a hundred dollars to like five thousand dollars to read that book so that is a site where you could potentially make money from home or in a studio or whatever and make your own hours and so on. Another one site that I found text broker, TXT broker.com.

19:57And it's a site for writing reviews. So let's see, it's like you can write, actually you can write basic articles, in-depth articles. It's kind of like a marketplace where people who need content pay people who write content. So it's not just reviews. I take that back. It's articles. It's all sorts of things. So I should have had some examples, but you have to fill out a whole questionnaire to apply and so on. But apparently I've Googled around. Apparently you can make some pretty good money per week on Tax Broker and there's always stuff to do. So I've actually hired someone once to write a book for me, not a book that I am proud of.

20:39I wanted to do an experiment, as I always do. And I wanted to see what would happen if I completely plagiarized 50 Shades of Grey, except I used a synonym for every word. So instead of saying, you know, oh, I had a test at school, I would say I was taking an exam at my high school or whatever. So I would, I wanted to, I wanted to, so nobody would actually see any words that were in 50 shades of gray, but it would be the exact same book word for word, except every word was a synonym from the original 50 shades of gray. And you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I can't even remember what I called it because it's on Amazon.

21:30Then I self-published it. So I he did this work in about a week. I don't know how he did it so fast. Probably used some premature AI thing. Jay, do you remember what I called it? Do you even know that I did this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I designed the cover. It's something where the... Oh, you designed the cover. Okay, well, what's the book called? I can't remember what the book called, but you used a fake name, Jackie something? Jackie Ling or something? Oh, yeah. No, I used something that was the initials for J.K. Rowling. Yeah. So John Kenneth Rowling maybe? No, no, no. It was Jackie King something.

22:09So Jay, thank you for finding the book. I was just disconnected from the podcast and that allowed you time to find the book. So the name of the book is How to Satisfy a Billionaire by Jackie King. And I just want to read the first sentence. I frown with dissatisfaction at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair. It simply won't work out the way I want. and damn Cindy Woodworth for being sick and subjecting me to this experience. I ought to be concentrating on my last, most decisive tests, which are one week from now. Yet here I am attempting to brush my hair into the style I want. So let me see, what's the first sentence of Fifty Shades of Grey?

22:48Because it should be the exact same, but with different words. Well, also I'm curious, what's the FK score of this one that you did? Oh, that is a good question. So the FK score, the Fisher Kincaid score, is a Fisher Kincaid calculator will take the whole text of your book or article or story or whatever, and will tell you the Fisher Kincaid score of it, which will tell you the grade level that you're writing at. And people think, oh, the better the book, the higher the grade level. That's not true. If you write a book or an article or a blog post or whatever that's at like a 10th grade level or an 11th grade level, that is a horrible, horrible book.

23:29Ernest Hemingway's book, Old Man in the Sea, which actually is literally one foot away from me. It's right in front of me. Old Man in the Sea, one of the best books ever written. It probably caused him to win the Nobel Prize in 1952, I think. It is written at, I believe, a fifth grade level. So whenever I write, and particularly whenever I write a book, I am constantly checking the Fisher-Kincaid score to see I am no higher than a sixth grade level. But I'll check the FK score in a second of my classic book that someone else wrote. But first I want to see - I want to see the first sentence of Fifty Shades of Grey.

24:07Oh, let's see if I can find it. All right. While you're finding it, can I read you something that's really good? So we got five. You get a five-star review on Amazon. You're kidding. Yes. So this person, I'm pretty sure it's like a bot, but this person named Aristotle Case. And the five-star review. One of the best books I've ever read And it says An incredibly gripping original And sexy story Told from the perspective of a girl Played with the monotony Monotony of everyday life When a chance opportunity Allows her to step outside of the mold Brenda Dares where lesser women might cower Another brilliant work by Jackie King Story of a shy girl Proves that provocative fiction is still alive and well.

25:02There you go. Two people found that helpful. There you go. Okay. So again,

25:12the first sentence, I frown with dissatisfaction at myself in the mirror is from How to Satisfy a Billionaire. And the first sentence of Fifty Shades of Grey is, I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Okay, he left mirror, but I don't know. Maybe there's no synonyms for mirror. I scowl with frustration of myself in the mirror. And this, again, this is the second sentence of Fifty Shades of Grey. Damn my hair. It just won't behave. And damn Catherine Cavanaugh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams. Whereas in the classic book, How to Satisfy a Billionaire, the second sentence was, damn my hair.

25:55Okay, he left that. It simply won't work out the way I want. And damn Cindy Woodworth for being sick and subjecting me to this experience. I ought to be concentrating on my last and most decisive tests. So anyway, I don't recommend that book. I would give it one star. It was an experiment and guess what? It hardly sold any copies at all. How many reviews does it have, Jay? Six reviews. All right, well. That's more reviews than some of my books. I think it's one review, but six ratings. So people can rate, right? Oh, yeah. Good books or whatever. No, no, on Amazon. You know why I was thinking I was JK Rowling?

26:35There's another book I once wrote. I did another experiment a few years earlier than this. I wanted to see if I could write a book, write and publish a novel in a weekend. And I'm not going to bother finding this book, but I wrote the autobiography of Prince William's son. So it was called, all right, now I got to find it. the autobiography. And it was, it was, the idea is it's, it was an autobiography, but it was only three days old.

27:09It's so, it's so underappreciated, this book that Amazon's not even filling in the blanks. Okay. The autobiography of Prince George Alexander Lewis Windsor, because that's his full name, Prince William's son. And it got 15 ratings. It has 2.9 stars and it's only 31 pages, which just, I wanted to show too. You could just write, I call it a novel or an autobiography, whatever. I have the Kindle edition and I did it in a weekend. I published it July 31st, 2013, just two months after I published Choose Yourself. And the top review is a one-star review by G. Kenny Burroughs. I wonder why, what is the G is?