Hollywood’s Dirty Secret: Selling Out to Communists for Profits | CLIP | Facts Matter

[Music] [Music] the level of infiltration that communist China has achieved into the American movie industry is startling to say the least in fact many films are so expensive nowadays that they desperately depend on the China Market to make a profit a movie might make $200 million domestically which covers their production and marketing costs but then in order to make an actual profit they need to enter China and in order to do so Studio heads are willing to do almost anything because it used to be that the Chinese Communist Party would consider allowing American films into the country so long as they did not mention these so-called taboo subjects things like Taiwan Tibet tianan Square Fallen gong things like that however over the past 20 or so odd years this censorship has evolved into a altogether different type a beast knowing the importance of China Studio heads writers showrunners and so on they not only ignore the topics they know they should ignore but even further they add Chinese Communist Party talking points into their actual films in the hopes of being allowed into the market furthermore actors self-censor their views because they've seen what happens to actors who don't and all the while American audiences have been presented a picture on their screens of a benevolent communist China now in a certain sense we all knew the that this was happening however the extent of it as well as the specifics of how this infiltration has manifested were recently uncovered in a new documentary called Hollywood takeover China's control of the film industry and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit down and speak with Miss Tiffany Meyer the lead investigative journalist as well as the producer of that awesome documentary and she explained to me in rather great detail what the Chinese Communists are really doing behind the scenes in regards to films take a listen Tiffany thank you so much for joining us great to be with you all right so your new film is called Hollywood takeover obviously a reference to China's takeover of the American film industry can you tell the audience how does this takeover manifest on the surface right so it starts out with money right movies cost a lot of money and then in 2008 we saw the Beijing Olympics after that the whole world was noticing we had the financial crisis in the US following that success Beijing was like hey we want to get into the movie industry and Hollywood needed money so the best way to do that is with joint ventures with Chinese Studios because China doesn't let all movies in they only have a select few that enter the Chinese market but if you can get in there's a lot of money to be made because everyone's like o 1.4 billion population right this was a growing economy this was the place to be and so with that you start seeing things change so we have Chris Fenton he's a film executive in the film he talks about how he helped change Looper and Iron Man 3 to get them into the China market and so to do that with Looper they changed the script so it has to do with time travel which is actually banned in China can't control the past and the present and the future all at once it's a lot harder so it's banned in China but they were able to get this film in because they changed the Utopia future from France to China so it became like that's the place you want to be and there's this like powerful line in the movie where like this character's future self comes and meets him and it's like you want to go to China and so when they tested that everyone was like oh my that's such a good line and even the Chinese Communist party was like oo that's a good line and so things like that right so so you're saying that line it wasn't like because I I watch some sci-fi sometimes like Firefly is a good example and they say in the future you know the people speak English and Chinese are like a mixture of the two and it's like okay well that kind of if you extrapolate what's happening today in the future that might be like just an artistic Choice by the by the showrunners but you're saying that particular line it was added exclusively for the Chinese censors yes right okay interesting and then so with that success because Looper then made a lot of money Marvel came along and was like Hey you know we've been having trouble getting our films into the China Market what if you had about like say 30 million for Looper what did we give you 200 million what can you do with that but Marvel's very secretive so Chris recounts in the film how they had like 90 minutes trapped in a little room to read the entire script and try and figure out where can they start adding China elements to then make it acceptable to to the sensors to maybe get a piece of the Chinese market so they inserted a new character called Dr Woo because China likes to be the innovators of the world right probably stolen Tech but we don't talk about that and so instead this character is inserted in to save the life of Tony Stark or Iron Man right so think about what that's doing to you psychologically you see your superhero who then it's saved by a Chinese Doctor Who has like the most advanced technology that the world has has ever seen that even a superhero would need their help MH and that movie did Super well in China so now a lot of Studios like oh my gosh we have to do everything we can to get into that market and throughout the years you start noticing that since 2012 no major Film Studio has produced a movie with China as the villain instead you see like Sandra bulock and gravity getting saved in Space by the Chinese not the people on the ISS the Americans or the Russians but the Chinese and you see see all these changes and then it gets to the point where now Chris Fenton right and others looking back they're like wait for access to the Chinese market in the process Americans Hollywood everything gave up everything that American stands for right democracy human rights all these different like taboo topics to China so Taiwan Hong Kong Tibet tinan can't cover that and what is that doing right so now we get to the point where you see especially among Young Americans This fascination with socialism to the point where especially on Tik Tok right a lot of Young Americans are like oh my gosh life in America is terrible like it looks so much better over there because you don't get that information it's gotten to the point where the world sees communist China the way communist China wants the world to see it and it's gotten to that point where it wasn't the Chinese censors coming out and saying you need to change this it's gotten to the point where studios are self-censoring just in the hopes that they might get into that market and so it's gotten to the point where it's now raising all sorts of National Security concerns because as many have noted in the past right the Communists understood that if you control culture eventually you reshape politics it gets to that point so that's where a lot of the powers a lot of people talk about government infiltration but it's like it actually starts with the culture and how people perceive the world and then when they go when they go to the voting box right they're like oh this seems fine so it's like gotten all those issues that have been raised yeah so you know the example you gave was really interesting with with Iron Man because I I imagined that to get into China the thinking is like okay you have a Blockbuster Movie that that the government officials know will do well because it did well in the US it did well internationally okay we'll accept it as long as it doesn't contain the taboo subjects Taiwan tanan Square Tibet Etc right as long as it doesn't contain those topics we'll consider it but what you're saying is like was there like a shift where that wasn't enough anymore and you actually have to go overtly Pro China in order to even be considered yeah so that's kind of basically been the whole process right because they only all let they only allow certain films in per year so they're very it goes through a lot of scrutiny where they're like H is this going to touch on any of those taboo subjects is it going to do well are people going to like it how is the world going to see it but I think it was that process where as you get more power right you want more so it got to the point where I think Pacific Rim was a great example it had a budget of 190 million it didn't do that well in the US markets it got about 101 million so it's losing money but in China alone it got 111 million so just by getting into that market it doubled its box off his profits and it had some Chinese characters in it but they like died pretty soon in the film but it was really well received in China I think that was the example where you have communist leaders being like ooh look we didn't have to do anything but they're already portraying China or communist China the way we would want it to be and they're realizing how much power that is but in the film we talk about joniman who watched Titanic and he was blown J was a former leader of China yes the one that's known for horrific persecution and human rights abuses he saw Titanic and he was so blown away by the emotion in it and he actually ordered all of his poit bureau like the most powerful people in China to watch it so imagine you're like an army Commander you're like why am I watching this three-hour romance film right but his whole point was never believe that we're the only ones who understand the power of emotion and so they see art as a tool and as a means of serving the cause of the party or the state as a weapon basically whereas in America we're like o freedom of the Arts freedom of expression that's not how art is seen in China everything has to tow that party line and so when something like Hollywood as an institution tries to get in these are two very different ideologies that then come together so then to get into that market you lose all of the freedoms that you normally think come with the artistic world wow how many films are allowed in into China from the US every year so it's changed throughout the years it started out with like maybe 12 and then went up to 24 the peak was 40 but after the pandemic that's gone down again to like 30 something so it changes depending on politics Joe Biden when he was vice president and helped ging ping who was also like Vice Premier at the time they really had this commitment and this agreement that then also opened up more films that we talk about in the film Chris Fenton mentions that and so you see that in terms of geopolitics right if the two countries are doing better you try to have more exchange as they called it Chris Fenton he always talks about how he really believed in that aspiration of more engagement with the two superpowers it's going to going to help the people of China right it's going to make them more democratic more liberal and then later he says he got punched in the face not physically but you know metaphorically and he realizes that this is not the future he wants his children to grow up in it's now gotten to the point of basically a cold war or maybe even a hot war is brewing on the horizon and he's realized that oh like we taught them he says like we taught the Communists how to fish as in like how to make movies can make them on the level of Hollywood now but insert all the things they want so after the pandemic you've seen a shift where the Chinese population actually prefers to watch their own propaganda films that are made in China and not these foreign Blockbusters um and you are also seeing some changes like for instance with Marvel's CI and the legend of the T rings and eternals those were like custom made for the Chinese people right these are Chinese Legends Chinese cast Chinese crew but neither of those enter the China market and many people and they and they bombed I believe in the US box office if I'm not mistaken yeah but it's kind of funny right CU Simo Leo the lead character for seni he had just years ago said something slightly negative about the Communist Party about why his parents experience well in China and Khloe J she's the director of eternals she had said something I think like back in 2017 like a while ago slightly negative and so just because of like those instances you see those films not entering so then many studios are like wait like if you have a story that's crafted for that side of the world and yet it can't even get in like I think that just highlights the amount of control that the Communist party wants to the point where like you had Black Adam another Blockbuster film come out there's one line that talks about the Dalai Lama kind of positively just in passing reference right but one line that movie didn't get in and so many Christian Toto he's a film critic he notes he's like that's just the amount of control they want that even one line they're afraid of that and why are they afraid right because the Chinese Communist Party knows fundamentally that it's an illegitimate government in China its greatest fear is its people the Chinese people realizing that and so it does everything it can to control its population but now through Hollywood and also other means like media lawfare drug Warfare all these different means to control how the whole world also views it and gets that information