Big city is already up, thank you to the guys in the shipping container taking you on what it's like to drive home with. It's really interesting. Check that out on the regular show feed. If you're listening to this, you know exactly how to access the big city. Sometimes that's how for sometimes a local hour is first. Today local, our batting second. But that's where you put your best hitters. David Samson. David Samson rejoins us for his weekly show here, host of Nothing Personal movie critic extraordinaire.

I started watching that show that you said recently, started watching. Is it Emily and Paris? So bad, it is awful. It is terrible. I was just sort of watching it in passing because my wife is watching it and it's sort of Devil Wears Prada meets Sex in the City. I know what they're going for. Acting is terrible in this show.

It's possible that they made a list. Here's what I think the production meeting was. They made a list of every French stereotype. Then they came up with every possible cliché and then they put it all into one show. And they're like super flippin about statutory rape. Wait, who's the young person? There's a 17 year old. There's a situation with the 17 year old when she's drinking champagne and champagne.

That's fine. I mean, you say that. I thought you meant. I thought you meant Phil Collins. His daughter was under 18. No, that's Phil Collins.

His daughter. Yes. Lily Collins, the star of Emily in Paris who plays Emily Collins daughter.

Wow. What do you think? The eyebrows I think David should pull back on when you say that statutory rape and he says that's fine. He probably needs to clean up some of the context around that for people who haven't seen the show.

That's why we got the big guy here, Dan Levitan, to make sure that we're in compliance.

Can't say that the phrase statutory rape when nobody knows what it is that's being talked about. So you guys are saying a main character wasn't the subject of statutory rape?

I guess there's different rules and I'm not exactly sure.

I watched the entire series and I didn't see any statutory rape of any kind when she went to champagne and she fell for, like, the blonde guy and she discovered that.

So that's funny. So here is the the sort of internal bias that I have. I always associate it the other way. It is true that an older woman did have sex with the brother of one of her friends who turned out to be 17 years old. No, I did not focus on that as statutory rape. But there's also no indication that they actually went all the way. It's possible they only went to third base.

No, she was telling them to slow it down. They went all the way.

But in France, different laws and important context for this podcast. Regardless. Now, you've at least framed it with some of the details that make it less, hey, statutory rape, that's fine. The number, the magic number in France is 15. He's two years over that. And keep in mind, we're talking to somebody who ended up marrying his camp counselor. So his is full prism is a little distorted here. David Samson, this is going to be a fund raiser.

Do you think that might? My view is distorting the things we've done together that you're going to focus on that.

And obviously, Jeffrey was always going in France, going to France, being an art dealer. So it was just common to you. You didn't bat an eye at a 17 year old having sex with an older woman in Emily in Paris.

So I had a business in Paris and I spent a lot of time there. And there's something they do capture. Right. And Emily in Paris, the way that Parisians live and there's an old line that they use in Emily in Paris that's been used fifty times, which is in America, you all live to work. And here in France we work to live. And that part of the cliche happens to be true. It is amazing what goes on in Europe, in general, in Paris, specifically in terms of their quality of life, forgetting all of the union issues and all the protests and the work shutdowns and all the issues that happen there, the reality is they're happier and healthier than we are in every way.

They drink wine, every meal, they eat bread. They are not overweight. They enjoy every part of the beauty of life. When you ask people about cigarette smoking as an example and you say that's bad for you, why do you do that? They sort of look at you as though you have four heads saying, why would we stop something that we enjoy because of the possibility that one day it could be bad for us. It's just not how they think they're.

It's funny that you say work to live is a philosophy, given what I believe to be the specifics of why and how you are running your business there when you were in a panic. If I've got the right business, was it The New York Times business like when you. OK, well, tell the people that story. I know they know parts of it. But like the details on when I think of you doing that business, just the idea of it pre Internet to me, it overwhelms me with like a dread and fear because of the size of the what felt like work and risk involved.

It's funny that you should say they work to live. When you were living there to work, you were trying like that. You were at the height of your ambition trying to get your hands into a future and money. And it's the will of the guy who runs, you know, seven continents in seven days. Tell people the details of how just innovative but also inefficient that business was.

Well, it's only inefficient in the rearview mirror. At the time, it was extraordinarily efficient because I was the first person to sell the Sunday New York Times in Europe on Sunday. Do you know back in the day when you went to Europe, all you had was the International Herald Tribune, which was a newspaper that was owned by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. And they would release a paper every day, a pretty thin paper. And the sports section was terrific that all had this the scores a day late.

Can you imagine a world that existed which many of your listeners may not even comprehend? There was no CNN. In terms of getting sports immediately, there was no Internet, if you wanted to know the score of your Miami Heat, you would only get it a day after the game. Forget real time, forget following in the game as it was happening. The result was a day late and that used to drive me crazy. So I thought, why can't I get the Sunday Times to New York on Sunday?

Because it was only available in Europe on Wednesday and people were paying twenty dollars. Can you imagine this concept? There were people paying twenty dollars for a newspaper that was three days old. You can't get people to look at a news story that was posted nine minutes ago.

What was the eureka moment that you had where you're like, this is a business, this is a market inefficiency. I can exploit all of this if I just take hundreds of newspapers with me and keep flying to London.

So in New York, if you grew up New York City, the way I did, there were things called newsstands and newsstands is where people would get their magazines, newspapers and candy. There are these little bodegas that are on literally on the sidewalk. And every Saturday night, if you're a New Yorker and you're out on a Saturday night, you're there when you see the Sunday New York Times dropped off at these newsstands on Saturday night. And I realized then that the Sunday paper, they were writing it early.

It was not coming to your doorstep Sunday morning. It was available Saturday night. And I learned that that was called the Bulldog edition. And that's in addition that gets distributed early. And so I realized that if I could just get on a plane with those newspapers in my carry on, because when you fly to Europe on Saturday night, you land Sunday morning. So I could take a Saturday paper that I bought Saturday that has the Sunday date on it.

That's thick. Take out the advertisements and all the crap that it comes in the big Sunday New York Times land in Paris the next morning very early. And I could be selling that paper at nine a.m. on Sunday morning for people waking up. And I thought of that in high school when I wanted New York Knicks scores. And so I started off simply because of a failure. That whole business started because I didn't get a job with the Manhattan D.A. out of law school, which is all I ever wanted to do was to be D.A. They rejected me after a few rounds of interviews and I said, I'm not going to become a regular lawyer.

I don't want to do it.

So I said, I'm going to try this business because there's no the cost of starting the business was buying a newspaper and I got twenty and flights and hotels, all of it being a write off and a flight to Paris.

So I flew in seat forty to G and I got on, I carried on newspapers how that I carried on twenty newspapers. That's it, 20 newspapers, because they're heavy, like that was a that was a schlep, and so I slept all these newspapers and I went to a hotel and I said, there's got to be rich Americans here. And I went to the concierge like the Michael J. Fox character and or the really the Ben Stiller character in Tower Heist, where their job is to take care of everybody, whatever they want, no matter what they want.

And I said, hey, I'm here with the Sunday Times and I'm willing to sell them to you for twenty dollars, which is what you pay. But three days from now, call up all the Americans, stand in your hotel, tell them you're selling these papers and see what happens. And they sold within minutes in one hotel minutes in one hotel because people remember it's a different world.

People weren't getting online and weren't in 1G papers, though I would have assumed like five hundred papers, twenty papers, that's all.

But this was just I went on on a whim just to see whether or not anything could happen. And then of course, when I realized that I could do it, I had to find a way to do the business. I mean, there's 20 stories involved in there. But to make a long story short, I it involved me dressing up as a as a messenger and trying to get a meeting with the publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.

It involved me trying to do a deal with Air France because they were the last plane out of Kennedy every Saturday night, Flight nine. And I ended up doing thousands of papers over time all over Europe because Paris with Air France, once they land in Paris, you can put the basically they transfer to another plane and you can be in Zurich and Geneva. And I had papers in Poland. I paper's going to Asia. It was quite something all going out of Paris.

And I loved it. I really did. Because there's no risk, because all you're doing is buying papers a week at a time. I wasn't printing them. I wasn't writing them. All I was doing was buying them. And I knew whatever I bought it was going to sell. And it just took me going to all the great hotels and all the chambers of commerce and finding all the expatriates who lived in Europe who who missed home. And it really was an easy business, to tell you the truth.

The logistics were complicated once the numbers got bigger, because then I had to deal with cargo instead of Check-In. But I got stopped at the border. I got detained for for transporting pornography, even though it was The New York Times. I was stopped in Switzerland because the papers would not be allowed through because they thought they'd never seen someone traveling with this amount of publications. So they assumed that I was doing pornography. So I felt like Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty when he gets stuck and he gets saved by.

And Oswald, I don't know if you remember that scene, but I was detained. I got involved with with organized crime because they were angry. Organized crime did the newspaper business in Europe. And I was nothing to them. It didn't matter. I was doing a couple of thousand newspapers. Once it got bigger, they started getting involved and getting angry because hotels were cutting off deals with the mob in order to take my papers because their clients wanted them on Sunday.

French mob. Let's seize on this. What is a shakedown from organized crime in Europe look like when you're David Samson?

So you mean when you're five five, a buck twenty five? What does that look like? Right. Because I think everyone just goes to OK, intimidation tactics and that's what it is. It was never physical.

I never got the crap out of me. It was always physical was you are not allowed to be in this business. We've got deals with all these hotels. We are the delivery service of all of these publications. You may not be in the business. And for me, I didn't care less. I was so naive. I was twenty five twenty six point seven years old. I thought I was invincible. It didn't make a difference to me. I was like, what are they going to do, kill me?

Over The New York Times? It just didn't make sense to me. And then I, my partner in London, got murdered. And I ended up being dealing with Scotland Yard for six months because the guy who got murdered was a distributor, so I would cut distribution deals in each country I was in.

Wait a minute. The Mafia murdered him, like you said. That is so. That is what I thought. And that's what Scotland Yard thought because they were aware of the newspaper business. They were aware of what was going on. So there was an investigation. Scotland Yard came to New York to interview me because I would not go back to Europe because I was concerned that I would somehow be a suspect and I would live Midnight Express, even though, of course, I had nothing to do with this.

And as it turns out, the guy was murdered by a flame. So it was not mob related at all.

But it was that was a scary moment.

Terrifying, but it was. But but it but I was never a suspect. I was never in danger at all. I just felt like, wow, I'm definitely growing this business to the point where people are taking notice. And then it fell apart in the late 90s when people realized that they could get their news a whole different way. What a roller coaster.

Oh, thank God. He was only murdered by an ex flame. Yes, that's right. That's right. You're right. I am so relieved right now. I can continue with my illicit newspaper business that has gotten the attention of the mob because my partner and friend has merely been murdered by an ex lover.

It was bizarre. It was bizarre. And by the way, as you know from Emily in Paris and everything else, you know, there are mistresses and there are relationships that go on outside of marriage. And it's not secretive. It's it's something that everyone acknowledges and that it just exists there. And so I was taken aback by the results of that investigation, whereas the people in his life were just. Oh, yes. So that happened.

She does kind of look like Phil Collins now that you mention it. I do. I do see it.

It's just I don't know where the eyebrows came from to Phil Collins. It's too bad, you know, all the rumours of him being anti-Semitic and some of the comments he said and I have I struggle with myself for listening to Phil Collins music as I struggle with listening to Michael Jackson music. I can't. And I and I say to myself, I can talk it through because I enjoy how I feel listening to it, but it does not bother me.

But Lily Collins has a nice little career going for herself. And this show, it's huge. It's going to get renewed for a second season in the first season with such crap that it's hard for me to believe.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I want to say on that subject, though, how do you process Mel Gibson still getting roles in Hollywood? There's this trailer that he plays Santa Claus in an action movie, and it's kind of gone viral. And it's a cool concept, but some people just can't get over it. I thought it's Mel Gibson.

I thought you were going to transition seamlessly, speaking of things that were terrible and lasted only one season. Let's talk about the French reality show that the Marlins and David. Yeah, that's actually a tailor made transition. We will get to the franchise first, some anti-Semitism. But first, I want to ask you about Mel Gibson, and then I want you to put a bow on the Marlins season.

So I don't I don't give Mel Gibson any money. I won't pay for any of his movies. I will see them if they're free. I'm disappointed at him because I still want to view him as the Lethal Weapon guy who I liked and Martin Riggs, who I loved watching. But what he is, is just inexcusable and has nothing to do with with now and what's going on with all of the systemic racism and inequality and everything that hopefully is getting better.

He's just a guy who it's not that he made a mistake. I can dismiss certain people who say things in the heat of the moment or it's not really how they've acted. It's just what they said. And I understand because sometimes I've said things that do not reflect me, but Mel Gibson, it's it's truly who he is. And I just don't know why it's necessary to be that way. Just because you don't want or appreciate what other people are like doesn't mean you have to think that they're wrong and you're right.

So it annoys me. And there are plenty of people in Hollywood who will not work with him. He's sort of a pariah in a way. Woody Allen is there are still some people who will do movies with him, but that list is getting lower, smaller.

Since the 1980s, hip hop and America's prisons have grown side by side, and we're going to investigate this connection to see how it lifts us up and holds us down.

Hip hop is talking about what we live trying to live the American dream selling at the American Dream. I'm Zinnemann. And I'm Rodney Cormark.

Listen now to the Louder than Ariete podcast from NPR Music, where we trace the collision of crime and punishment in America. Scarlett Johansson just can't say no to working with Woody Allen, and it's getting to the point where, you know, Scarlett, you may want to dial it down, I think she's finally listening to some advice.

So she came out as she changed her tune recently when she realized that she was literally on an island with a few people and that she was endangering her money, which really now comes from her being an action hero that pays for all of what she does. She loves doing the art films, the lost in translation type films, the great movies like that. But the money comes from being what is she? She's not Catwoman.

She's the other black widow, which there was all sorts of rumors that had a theatrical release that got postponed. There was talk about does it forgo a theatrical release and just go straight to Disney? Plus, right now, the plan is to go theatrical. And this is a trademark of the David Samson shows. I want to get to something, but you open up a new pathway and I want to follow it as a huge fan of cinema recently, yesterday, Christine Licciardi.

And finally they said coming to America is not going to debut in theaters. A sequel to Coming to America with the number two in the middle. It's going to debut Christmas on Amazon Prime.

How do you are you a fan of where the industry all change? It feels like we're we're past the point of no return.

So what I think is going to happen is you're going to have some issue with some big budget films because studio executives are doing the math. And what happened with Moulin this year has really informed what's going to happen going forward. Disney made a decision that they were going to release Moulin and they were going to charge an up charge of whatever it was, twenty nine ninety nine dollars or something like that for Disney plus subscribers on top of their regular monthly charge.

They pay a premium for a pay per view movie.

Correct. And I bought it. I did it. And the movie was fine. I don't I'm not one of those big screen snobs where I have to see a movie on a big screen and I have to have the perfect surround sound. But I do demand a quality of a movie if I'm going to pay on top of the streaming service cost. But Disney got crushed, absolutely crushed with Moulin, and the juice is no longer worth the squeeze to give these type of advances and these big budgets on movies where there aren't going to be major theatrical releases.

And when you don't have New York and L.A. with movie theaters open, you cannot open a movie in the middle of the country, cannot pay for a movie hard stop. So what I think you're going to see now is what used to be the kiss of death, where three words straight to DVD, remember those words when in the not so distant you start to video?

It used to be a huge mark of embarrassment. If a big star found himself in a street, it's going to be the new normal.

It's exactly the new normal. And it makes perfect sense to me. And so what is going to adjust is until the price points move up on these streaming services and they've got to start getting more expensive. We are paying nothing to get content right now. You know, you pay what I pay fifteen, ninety nine for Netflix that five different people use. And there is original content constantly on that, whether it's TV series or movies, they've got to either go ala carte or they've got to increase the monthly amount because the motivation for me to go to a theater is zero and the big movie theater chains just cut a deal with the studios that they are going to allow a shorter period between theatrical release and release on streaming sites.

But that's going to keep shrinking to zero, where it's going to be simultaneous. And you're going to see a condensed industry in the movie theater industry because post covid, I have zero interest in going to a theater. I don't need to anymore because of streaming services. It's not it used to be the only people who didn't go to theaters where the rich people who have movie theaters in their houses, that's not the case. Now, if you have a laptop in your house, you don't need to go to a movie theater.

And that's definitely going to be the future. So coming to America is a great example. It's going to impact the budget of the movies and the amount the stars get paid.

I still love the experience, though. I think movie theaters are just going to have to sell experiences from now on. You're going to see the more a bistro model as opposed to just packing everybody in and general admission seats and having a summer tent pole film. Maybe that day is now of a bygone era. We'll see. I do want to put a bow on the Marlins season before we get into the experiment. That was the franchise, a hard knocks for Major League Baseball that our show even had a hand in.

You were very honest with our audience. You were rooting against the Marlins, making the playoffs because of how it made you feel. And then you turned and then you were swept up in the emotion of, hey, I like to be associated with this franchise that is presently undefeated in all of its postseason series. They get swept out by a superior team in Atlanta. Atlanta had their number all season long. How did you experience a sweep?

So I was mixed. Right, because once they started losing and I came to the realization that they couldn't beat Atlanta, I then realized that being associated with a. Seven in one series franchise was not at all sexy, and I got back to the frustration, jealousy and anger that what Jeter is doing now, which is so unbelievable, his narrative, if we can just talk for two seconds about this, is that the 60 game season where they went thirty one in twenty nine where they beat the Cubs and inferior Cubs team who can hit who's just terrific and then got swept by the Braves, his view locally as look at me, I was right.

Everything that Sampson and Lorillard did, we had to start from the beginning. We did it. It only took three years. And our rebuild is now successful. And you know what his problem is? He's pitching it and no one's buying it because it's not true. As I look back now, there's just as good a chance that it was a 60 game seasonal variable that caused this playoff plus the expanded playoffs, plus catching the bad Cubs team versus the fact that they have somehow under Jeter become what he says he wants, which is a permanent winning competitive team.

By the way, give me a break. We all say that, but you've got to put you way it.

They had the worst run differential in the division, like they were just as bad technically, if they played one hundred and sixty two game season as the disappointing Nationals and Mets and Phillies like, they they were like those teams at the bottom of the they won more than they should have given how good they actually were this year.

And if you don't think that jitters being smug, then you're not paying attention because he's rolling around town right now and he still doesn't realize that people still contact me after three years. I have relationships with who he contact, but he should do that, David.

He should be out here selling. We've turned it around. Why wouldn't he go out there and sell that like it? It is a great way to sell the winning. There hasn't been winning sold down here in a while.

Yeah, but he's not using the word we. That's the difference. He's using the word eye and that's it, that's a word that's normally reserved for megalomaniacs and it's there is a word reserved for people. Remember, people in South Florida get it. One of the issues they had with Jeffrey is he was always around when things were good and was never around when things were bad and when things were good is because he did it when things were bad. It's because other people did it.

And that's not abnormal for owners. But Jeter is doing it right now. So he's he's really leaning into this ownership role saying, I did this. You know, he's got a contract coming up with Michael. They who is one of the few holdovers from our era. His contract is done and expires October 31st. What is he going to do with Mike? Is he going to demand a pay cut the way he demanded one of Don Mattingly? Is he going to move on saying, hey, you know, you're part of the old IRA, you're a Sampson guy?

It's going to be fascinating to watch. I just don't appreciate that he's pitching stories about how great he is that he turned everything around. I want to see them have one hundred and sixty two games season make the playoffs. That would be doing something I couldn't do since 03. So in your own personal record book, this postseason count does not count, there's a little thing they stopped counting. What's going to happen with Mike Hill? What's your best guess?

My best guess is that they will have to make him a offer because they don't want to be seen as moving out a black president of baseball operations, that it won't be a good look and that they will make an offer that will be unfortunately low and embarrassing. And that Hill will then have to make a decision what he wants to do. And he'll keep family in mind. He'll keep the desire. We all have egos, right? Michael has an ego.

He wants to be here. He thinks the team is good enough to turn around and that this is a spring.

Those jobs are hard to get, though. When you're a black dude in that sport, like those jobs, like it's going to be hard for him to get another one of those just like that if he doesn't take the offer.

Yeah, I don't agree, actually. I think that a Harvard educated African-American who's been doing this for 18 years with the experience, having worked with owners like Jeffrey Loria and Derek Jeter, I would think that any team, how many of them are how many of how many black guys are there in his position in the sport?

But that's the whole point, right? It's just him and Kenny Williams and Kenny Williams is pretty much on the White Sox. Just stepped aside for Rickon. I mean, are you telling me that from baseball standpoint, it would be a good look for them to have my.

No, that's a terrible look. But it's a terrible look to not pay him correctly. And I also know enough about executives in sports to know that they generally gravitate toward people with whom they have commonalities. And when all the guys who own teams that have power are white, that's how you end up in a situation where Kenny Williams and Mike Hill are the only GMs with any kind of power. And and to truth be told, Mike Hill has sort of a ceremonial power because he doesn't have as much power as he would normally have in that position if there wasn't a Derek Jeter.

Well, Derek Jeter is also a person of color. Do you foresee a situation where Mike Hill rejects this contract offer and it just means more power for Derek Jeter?

I don't think having Michael reject or accept an offer changes the amount of power that Derek Jeter has. I think that Derek Jeter has made it clear that every move that has been successful is a move that he's done. And every move that hasn't worked is a move that Mike's done. And by the way, that's what owners do. They take credit. John Middleton basically was saying the same thing when at the end of his season in Philadelphia when he said, I don't even pay attention to bullpen arms.

Don't bother me with the two million dollar bullpen arm. He said that when the bullpen arms that were acquired by Mike McClintock, who he fired, ended up stinking. If they had been and gotten Philadelphi to the playoffs, he would have said, I am involved not just in the Bryce Harpers, but I care enough about this city that anybody who puts on a Phillies uniform has to go through me. That's what you say when it works, when it doesn't work, you say, oh, my God, my baseball people do that.

I never heard of Brandon Workman until he became a Philly.

Now the franchise Hard Knocks for baseball. This was on Showtime. You guys were the toast of the town. You've told us many times how great it was being the Miami Marlins at the winter meeting ahead of its time.

The show, like the idea for this show, was absolutely ahead of its time. Yeah, you guys were the sensation of the off season. And this show, I do believe, existed before you guys. Correct. Was it the White Sox that took part in it? Who took part in the Giants? Yeah, the San Francisco Giants. That's right.

So here's the problem. It seems the Giants had a bad year when they were on the franchise. And the owner of the Giants, Larry Baer, who is the president's control person owner, he said it was the franchise's fault. And having the cameras around it wasn't that they miscalculated their talent. It wasn't that they just had a bad year. It was the fact that there were cameras following them. And he told the rest of the owners, hey, listen, you don't want to do the franchise.

It's not going to be good for your team. I promise you that the baseball people don't like it because baseball people believe that that what they do is so proprietary and so secretive that having cameras around is just a bad idea. So I was approached by Chris Tully, who used to work in the it maybe still does in MLB and their broadcast department, and they were looking for a team to do the franchise. We had hired Ozzie Guillen. We were open a new ballpark.

We had a bunch of colorful characters, including Jeffrey, including me. We were signing players including Jose Reyes. And the thought was, would you guys be interested in doing the franchise? And I was an immediate yes. And the only people who were in know were every single other person in your audience.

Other than that. Because of that. Because of the cathedral. Right. Because it's not entertainment. It's the sacred baseball clubhouse, which is so amazing to me.

I said to Larry buying fest, who is so against it that I could barely I and to this day, he will not at all admit that there was anything positive about. Of course, in the rear view mirror and Jeffrey was completely against it, there is no reason to ever allow cameras. We talk about things that matter. We're making big time decisions. We don't need other teams to know what our decision making processes, et cetera, et cetera.

And I view that is that's a complete crock of of of crap, because let's entertain the audience. Let's get attention to the Marlins. We have a new brand new uniform, a new name, new players, new ballpark. Let's become famous as a franchise. How did you push it through with everyone against it? So I got very aggressive and I and I used money, so I said to Jeffrey, I said, listen, we need baseball's help, because if it doesn't work in Marlins Park and you're signing all these players and we don't get fans and baseball does not champion us and changes revenue sharing rules, we are in danger of selling Picasso's of yours.

Just keep that in mind. We need baseball and the commissioner. We need to take one for the team here. So I made it is, though, that we were sacrificing something by agreeing to it. So Jeffrey could be the hero saying to to to Bud, Hey, you know what? We're doing this for you.

You're going in there saying I need to placate my owner's ego. You were doing that all the time as a management manipulation.

Yes. And every single president of any company does the same thing to the CEO and to the board of directors of their company. And if they don't, they're not good at what they do. That's, of course, what I do. But but that doesn't make me different at all. My effectiveness may be different because I was so willing to subjugate my ego and so willing to play the part of the bad guy in the heel that it didn't matter to me.

And when you've got issues like Stan Kasten is a very famous baseball executive, sports executive, he never wanted to play that role. So he's had problems with ownership groups always, which is why he doesn't last. That's funny.

All right. Braves, nationals. I don't know what other jobs he's had, but I do remember he was an ego monster, such an ego monster that he didn't realize and got into a huge scandal one time in Atlanta as the most powerful man in the Braves organization for throwing an enormous temper tantrum during a softball game while playing against the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

So that's funny. He is you know, he still is with the Dodgers and he is it's interesting. But he the point is that telling me that subjugating my ego or placating someone else's ego is noteworthy is not noteworthy to me because I always won.

Not everyone does that. I can't imagine Dombroski being somebody who did that. I can't imagine like that's not Dombroski would just sort of work for John Henry and I would imagine that he wouldn't be doing maybe I'm wrong, but I don't view Dombroski, for example, that way.

So I guess what you're what you're calling me is, is someone who has sociopathic tendencies and I'm OK.

No, you're just smart. You're just smart. You know how to manipulate, you know how to look. You had an owner who was a bit dopey and you were to win on sociopath. You were smarter than him. You were smarter than your owner and and you knew it. I don't know that.

I'm not going to say that. What I will say is I always knew what I wanted and I always made sure to get what I want. And I always knew that to get what I want, that they were going to be moments where I had to give other people what they wanted and I would pick and choose. So there were many times that whether it was Jeffrey or with Larry or with any.

But that's what makes you like that's one of the things Jeffrey wouldn't think that way. Jeffrey wouldn't do that for somebody else. I can't imagine Jeffrey subjugating his ego in a way that would allow him to be that in someone else's presence.

You know, it doesn't he's very successful. The way he does business and the way he had grown his wealth is by he had no employees. He had an assistant. He had never been in a business situation. When you are an art dealer and you just see things that other people don't do, he has a skill that I'll never have. He can look at a work on canvas and say, wow, I can buy that for four million. And I've got a guy in Japan who's going to pay nine million dollars for it.

And in three days he's made five million dollars. And other people look at that for million dollars and they say, I'm not paying for for that. That's way too much. That's a skill that you just you can't teach. It's hard to be a family business in the art world because it's with eye, with your eye, and it's hard to teach that. But in terms of the franchise, just if you want to land this plane, I was able to convince Jeffrey to do it because I said it's in our best interest as a franchise because we cannot be in a position where we are not getting favors for Major League Baseball.

Miami needs these favors, so we agree to do it. And then it just got it started going downhill when I became aware that there was a definite competition going on in terms of screentime. We had actors in the franchise, again, me, Jeffrey. Joey Cora, other people involved in the team, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes, where they were counting screentime minutes and when there was too much on one subject, there would be complaints that would get to Major League Baseball to the union like you like you too much on you as a subject because you're the colorful, controversial little powerhouse guy who doesn't care what people think.

And so you were you were getting too much screen time so that that is, in fact, what happened, that they had decided to give me extra screen time just because I was willing to let cameras in, you know, the Ozzie Guillen suspension over Fidel Castro that was caught on camera.

Do you know how the franchise works and how Jeffrey was told it would work is that they give people the back story there, though, just for those who don't know exactly what a disaster Ozzie Guillen was with, like you guys are opening up the ballpark. You've got a you've got a manager who's Hispanic because you're trying to placate the Hispanic community. And I know you've covered some of this, but just in short order, can you explain to people the reference you're making when you say Cuba?

Comment by Ozzie Guillen.

So in short order, I was leading a Sator in Florida when I got a phone call from P.J. Loyola, and he doesn't call me during Saddam's during holidays. So I took the call because I had my phone with me. And all he said to me was, you have to leave the table. And he would I assume someone was dead. That that literally and this is back in 2012. And I left the table. I said, excuse me, to the 20 people at the table.

I went into my room and he said, David, I need to read you something. And he read me comments from an upcoming magazine article that had been given to him, an advance copy where Ozzie Guillen, our manager, was basically praising Fidel Castro in the relationship he had with Castro and that Castro is not a bad guy after all. And I'd been in Florida at that point since 2002. It had been ten years. And I had learned one thing about being in Miami there is that don't say that.

You can pretty much say anything. We can talk about statutory rape all day long and everything is going to be OK. You do not talk about Fidel Castro in that way, ever. No, it doesn't matter if you're Cuban or if you're Hispanic or if you're white. It doesn't it doesn't matter. So the minute it happened, I actually heard it and I said, hold on, P.J. I went back and I excuse myself permanently from the center because I knew that I had to start writing with a statement.

We had to communicate with the commissioner's office. We had to communicate with leaders in the community through a guy we worked with, Alfie Masr, who is a very connected person in the Hispanic and Cuban community, because I knew that we were done like literally you're letting your letting cameras film some of this.

Correct. So this is all happening when I'm at home. Once the franchise and the producers found out about this, because I called them to say, hey, just so you know, we have a story line that's about to happen and it's going to be really good TV, really.

That was your attitude. Like you're in the middle, you're engulfed in scandal and you're calling television producers and say, hey, this is entertaining here. This is going to be this is going to be an entertaining.

I said this will be good TV.

OK, so wait a minute. You've got an antenna up for that moment. Not that your team is drowning in scandal, but oh, this is entertaining content. This is content.

So so, Dan, let me ask a question. What exactly was I going to do? My first question to PJ was, can we do anything to quash the release of the magazine? Is there a scenario where we can make it disappear? So when I was told the answer is no because it was in print, I'm not thinking about it anymore. It's going to happen. And I know exactly what the results are going to be. So I have to live one day at many people.

You say you have to lean into it. Many people would have gone in to cover up or like I'm sure in hard knocks. If something like this happened, they'd be real careful about how it was disseminated because they're worried about the league's image. Like, your instinct is like, OK, well, if we're going to do this, let's lean into it. That's not the normal instinct. I don't know that I agree with you.

I really don't. If you are agreeing to be in a reality TV show where you where you're giving access, that means when the words come, that's what they're hoping for that help achieve.

That's why nobody in the organization wanted to do it. Like if it wasn't going to be something they could edit, if it wasn't something going to be something that where they could take out the embarrassing part. You didn't care about looking how you looked, how you are in front of the cameras. Plenty of people do.

Pretty much everyone else in the organization did. And so what I said to to that franchise and I was dealing with David Nevins at the time, who's still with, you know, is a huge executive now at Viacom CBS. And there were producers in MLB and they were using me to get all of the access because they knew I was their champion and that I would take care of Larry and the players and Jeffrey and. Make sure the cameras were there, because my role was simple, I'm not doing anything twice, and what I found out is that in previous shows like Hard Knocks, like previous incarnations of the franchise, there would be double takes.

They're all fake, they're all fake, all of them are edited and sanitized so that the league is giving you what it wishes to give you, it's not the real stuff. It's just the illusion of intimacy, because all of those all of those things are edited to take out the actual most interesting things.

And I didn't want any part of that because why bother? I said, I'm not. I said, listen, but you're the only one you like.

Everyone is looking at what's happening there. Everyone's looking and they're saying, see you asshole, you're so wrong. We shouldn't have allowed those cameras in. And you're like, no, this is exactly why they need to be in there.

And that's the line. I said, this is exactly why we're doing this show right now. And so we had an argument.

But it's not normal, Dave. It's not normal. I don't know that I, I guess I'm not in a position to say what's normal. I'm not I'm in a position to say what I think is interesting content and interesting TV, because there was going to be a moment when I was going to walk into Ozzy's office and suspend him for this. We weren't going to fire him. We were going to suspend how many takes one.

Take one. That's it. And I would love it.

That was the one that was to take I could I get one thing.

I could do it again. Let me do it again. Hold on a second. We didn't get that right. Ozzy, I can come in here a little bit differently. Oh yes. Ozzy what the hell. Castro, what's the matter with you. You said it.

Yeah. Didn't happen that way. And what happened was that the team began to implode and the people got in Jeffrey's ear that this was not working the way that it should be working because you don't have enough say and you're not doing two takes and you're letting all sorts of things get on the air. There's a lot of focus that David's involved in and there's a lot of things that don't make the franchise necessarily look good and the team's not playing well. So we had all of his baseball people.

This is what made me crazy. Can you imagine his baseball people covering their ass so hard by saying the reason why we didn't perform in twenty twelve and that he thought was terrible and the signings didn't work was that we were on the franchise. It's laughable to me, literally laughable to me. But at the end of the day, Jeffrey went firmly over my head because he exists over my head as he's the owner and he said he's had enough and the franchise was cut two episodes short and it never happened again because every one of the other twenty eight owners not counting San Francisco in the Marlins said to MLB, We will never put ourselves in a position that the Marlins did.

Were you in breach or you're in breach of contract by not getting to the conclusion? No, it is their choice.

I would have done more episodes because I said there's been a lot of cool stuff. We're going to start trading players here soon. Like there's going to be stuff that you're going to want to be a part of that's going to be fun to watch how we dismantle this team because it's happening and it got quashed. MLB got scared, other owners got scared. And then Showtime said, if you're not going to if you're going to sanitize this this much and make us do five takes and not show us anything interesting, screw it.

And that was the end of the franchise.

It ended after the Marlins feels as though all the other owners were trying to protect you from yourself because you were all in on this. You it sounds like you would have signed up for a season.

This is why Dave never fit in that world. I mean, there are many reasons, but this is one of them, like he always realized in a way that was offensive to the people who had power. This is all bleeping entertainment. What's the matter with you guys? Why are you treating this so sacredly? It's something that over the years you and I have talked about since the beginning of me coming on your show, and that's one of the pushes and pulls I got from coming on your show all those years.

It's just entertainment. And I would say that over and over. But if you're if you go into owners meetings within Major League Baseball, you would be shocked at the way they go down. There is an aura of of self-importance, the likes of which I've not seen in any other industry. There is this feeling that what they do literally changes the world from a social standpoint, from a financial standpoint, in ways that is so delusional to me that it sort of makes me smile.

It's important. It's a business. It's a billion dollar business. But listen, we're not curing cancer, guys, but I had a very hard time in. What MLB has done is they have systematically rid themselves of any employees within MLB and any executives who had a kernel of a thought like that because it did not jive. Is it jibe or jive? It is jibe.

It did not jibe with what baseball viewed itself and its role in society.

We're winding down here. Let's get to your review of the week. Sometimes it's a series, sometimes it's a movie. David, what is the review?

So I watched the movie. So this has been a long month. So I'm doing a lot and nothing personal obviously is going on. We just had a year celebration yesterday.

It's been a year of happy anniversary. Thank you.

It's hard to imagine not all shows last year. I'm proud of it. It's growing. I'm enjoying every minute of it. October is a busy time because I'm also on CBS Sports HQ doing analysis of the games and these playoff games last. I think they're seven hours each. It's really quite something. But I still need to watch a movie. But sometimes I watch a movie that I can watch that I've seen before where I know that if I close my eyes a little bit that it's OK, because when I open them again twelve minutes later, I know exactly where I am.

So in the middle of the night last night I watched a movie called About Time. About Time is a movie that was written and directed by Richard Curtis. And it's about time travel, but it's not like The Time Traveler's Wife, which which actually may be with Rachel McAdams. Also, she stars in About Time with Dominic Gleason, who is Brendan Gleeson son, the guy from In Bruges, that great actor.

Yeah, you know, him and Bill Nighy, who is was in love, actually love actually that you know who has the number one, the surprise, the number one hit of the holidays, which is still a very big deal over in the UK. Christmas is all around.

And it is it was a movie that I love. I love the soundtrack. I love the characters. I love the romantic nature of the story. I, I suspend disbelief. There's so many holes in the plot. And Richard Curtis did an interview about all of the holes that that relate to time travel. And his answer when he gave this interview that I saw was so perfect. He said, yeah, but that's not the point of the movie.

So there are some movies that you watch and you and there are too many plot holes. You say, wow, that's bad writing or that is just a bad job of editing. But in this case, the plot holes are totally meaningless in terms of what the rules are of time travel and what moments you can go back to, because it's done in such a way that that makes me both laugh and cry. And as I'm getting older, I'm loving movies more and more that make me do both.

I like that feeling because I don't get it often enough and I sort of want it more now. And so I was in the mood to watch a movie like that. If you haven't seen it, it's called About Time and it is well, well worth your time, which, you know, as an audience I take very seriously.

David, thank you so much for joining us. Also, thanks to Dan for a guest appearing on this week's David Simpson show as part of the local hour. We'll talk to you next week.

All right. Take care. Thank you.