“I think that the belief was is that over 50 years China would become more like the west so that when they did take over Hong Kong, Hong Kong would be the same as that it always had been.”
For seventeen years, Chris Fenton served as president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group and GM of DMG North America, internationally orchestrating the creative and business activities of DMG—a multi-billion dollar global media company headquartered in Beijing. He has produced or supervised twenty-one films, grossing $2 billion in worldwide box-office. As an author, Fenton chronicled much of that work in Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, & American Business.
20 years working in the US-China arena around ideas of culture and commerce gave Fenton a high level of applied expertise that he used to assist individual and companies. In the fast pace environment of rapid globalization and business between the US and China, it was difficult to step back and survey the big picture. A tweet from the Houston Rockets general manager in support of Hong Kong independence set off a firestorm between China, the US, the NBA, and its fans that caused Fenton to step back and fully recognize the fraught nature of US-China relationship. “What I didn't see, and I didn't even think of, was how the American public was going to perceive that situation as something that woke them up to the pandering that our capitalistic endeavors were doing in regards to getting access to that market.”
Fenton identified what he termed, “Fenton’s five forces of diplomacy” in describing key elements of the US-China relationship: national security interests, politics, human rights, commerce, and culture. Commerce and culture currently represent the two areas where US and China are able to align easily.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Chris Fenton
President (2002-2018)
DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:08)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology, politics and increasingly we've had some interesting guests in the field of entertainment. And the guest that we have today crosses a lot of those different lines, it's going to be a very interesting talk. SALT talks are a series of digital interviews we've been doing during the work from home period in lieu of our global conference series, the SALT Conference. And really what we're trying to do is provide our audience a window into the minds of subject matter experts who are leading investors, creators, and thinkers. We're also trying to provide a platform for big, important ideas that we think are shaping the future and changing the world.
John Darsie: (00:48)
Today we're very excited to welcome Chris Fenton to SALT talks. For 17 years Chris was the president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group orchestrating the creative and the international business activities of DMG which is a multi-billion dollar global media company headquartered in Beijing. And he's produced or supervised 21 films grossing $2 billion in worldwide global box office revenue. As an author Fenton chronicled much of that work in his new book which is out today. Congratulations to Chris on the release of his book. The book is called Feeding the Dragon Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood the NBA and American Business. You can learn more about the book at feedingthedragonbook.com. We highly recommend it.
John Darsie: (01:37)
As you'll learn during the talk Chris has a very practical real world experience on dealing with China and he offers really practical insights into the path forward for U.S. China relations. At present he speaks regularly as a China expert and serves as the CEO of Media Capital Technologies having concluded a successful term as senior advisor to IDW Media Holdings focused on streamlining operations, expanding international business and restructuring investments.
John Darsie: (02:08)
Chris also hosts U.S congressional member delegations on diplomatic missions to China focused on trade, media and investment. He's a trustee of the U.S. Asia Institute and serves on several company boards. Chris is a contributor to Real Clear Politics, the Federalist and the Rap, and he regularly appears as a U.S. China commentator on Bloomberg, Fox News, Fox Business, BBC and CNBC among many others. Chris holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Cornell University and he resides with his wife and his two children in Manhattan Beach, California.
John Darsie: (02:45)
So, hosting today's interview as usual will be Anthony Scaramucci the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also the chairman of SALT. And just a reminder, if you have any questions for Chris during today's interview you can enter them in the Q and A box at the bottom of your video screen. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:05)
Well John, thanks so much. Chris, I'm very excited to have you on. This is incredibly timely. Some of your issues were on the front page of your local newspaper and the LA Times today which I appreciate you sending me this morning. But I want to start where I always start in a SALT talk is I think we have a lot of young people on as well and we would love to get your background, your backstory. I know it has something to do with Olive Garden. I keep hearing that it's central to your backstory and it's had some impact on your life. So, why don't we start there Chris?
Chris Fenton: (03:39)
Yeah, there's not a lot of uniqueness to it. I think there's similarities to a lot of middle class, upper middle class upbringing. So I was born and raised in South Florida. My father was an engineer for United Technologies. I had one sibling, a younger brother, two years who's actually with United Technologies now and my mom. Thank God they're both still around. And we moved to Connecticut when I was in high school, went to Glastonbury High School, public school there, and graduated and shot off to Cornell University, got an engineering degree.
Chris Fenton: (04:18)
In 1993 when I graduated school we were in a bit of a poor economic environment. I didn't have a lot of opportunities. I was not the best student in the world, I think I was a C plus B minus at best. So I hopped in my car, stayed in a bunch of fraternity houses across the country and just tried to find a city I wanted to live in and set roots. It took me about six or seven months to do so and a buddy of mine who was a hotelee at Cornell was working as the beverage director of that Pretty Woman hotel at the foot of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and he talked me into visiting for a couple of days and I never left.
Chris Fenton: (05:01)
I was flat broke at the time so I wanted to get a bartending job like I had up at Cornell and I looked around and realized oh my God every beautiful actor and actress works their way up through the bartending hierarchy of every nice restaurant over the course of a decade. So I realized that wasn't going to get a good job that way so I got the first job I could get in order to pay my rent which was as a waiter at the Olive Garden and that's where the journey into Hollywood started.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:35)
And how many breadsticks did you have at the Olive Garden before we get into the more serious stuff?
Chris Fenton: (05:41)
I wasn't a breadstick consumer. I was eventually fired because I was addicted to tiramisu and I would sneak into the freezer every night and eat a bunch of them and then smooth the plates around so that no one noticed they were missing.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:57)
That's a good thing to do pre pandemic but. John and I live in the same hometown, there's an Olive Garden on Old Country Road that I had to stop going to in 1995 because I was, unlimited breadsticks not a good look for me. I want to dive right into the book. You're pretty much talking about your career, China, U.S., China relationship this book is coming out in a very timely way it's right before the election. There's a lot of stress in that relationship right now. We were talking before we went live to our SALT attendees about you can't go back to where we were, we have to go forward. What happens here Chris? Lay it out for us, what do you think happens here?
Chris Fenton: (06:47)
Well, it's funny after spending almost 20 years in the U.S. China space and the exchange of culture and commerce I became a bit of a practical applied expert in that space. I'm not a [inaudible 00:07:03] think tank expert with a PhD in China studies. I didn't live in China full time ever during that time. I spent a lot of time on planes going back and forth. But just over that amount of time I gathered a lot of information and intel and experience and expertise. And quite frankly, I felt like a lot of people could have just fallen into the same position and done the same thing. But it was a very colorful journey.
Chris Fenton: (07:29)
So, one of the things I really wanted to do at some point was to write those memoirs out and I had a bunch of opportunities from publishers that were interested and they approached me more on like a, "Hey, give us the 10 best business practices to abide by when dealing with China or some sort of expertise type of book." And I said, "No." I always looked up to Michael Lewis and the way he wrote it and I always loved Liar's Poker which I'd read 100 different times and just thought it was a really, really entertaining, engaging look at something that could be very off putting for most readers because maybe they don't want to know much about the intricacies of Wal Street. But he wrote it in a way that engaged almost anyone and that's what I wanted to do with this.
Chris Fenton: (08:14)
And part of that was to engage readers in 15 years of what we had been doing under this mission of rampant globalism and how that rampant globalism was great for capitalism but on top of it, it was great for Americans. And to open the market of China any way possible, any way you could, was in the best interest of everybody. So, we always were stuck in the fog of war during those colorful years of trying anything we could obviously within the rules of law in order to open that market more and more and we succeeded more and more. But what happened as I started thinking about the proposal for the book was all of that colorful journey was going to add up into, "Hey, and we've got to continue doing this. This is great for us."
Chris Fenton: (09:09)
But then something happened when I got back from the last congressional delegation trip I had in September. I Took three members of Congress over there. We met with Carrie Lam and the protesters. President Trump was in the middle of a lot of tweeting and really heavy handed rhetoric towards the Chinese during that time. We went up to Beijing, we met all with the officials up there and we got back and a month later the Daryl Morey tweet, the Houston Rockets GM who I didn't even know who he was I just knew Houston Rockets, biggest brand in NBA when it comes to China because of Yao Ming. I knew the moment that tweet came out and I saw it I was like, "That's going to be a terrible situation for the NBA," and I was right.
Chris Fenton: (09:54)
But what I didn't see and I didn't even think of was how the American public was going to perceive that situation as something that woke them up to the pandering that our capitalistic endeavors were doing in regards to getting access to that market. And that was the moment that made me go, "I'm going to tell this journey. I'm going to explain how we all got here to this date but I'm also going to put out there that we need to change things." This turned out not to be the best experiment out there. It hasn't worked out the way we wanted it to and we need to come together as a country to address it.
John Darsie: (10:35)
Chris, there's a part of your book where you talk about something called Fenton's Five Forces of Diplomacy. You talk about all the different areas where countries can find common ground and build some level of consensus. But obviously in the United States, in China, we have very different political systems and a lot of different value systems. But you talk in the book a lot about how the exchange of culture and commerce is so important if we're going to find some common ground and avoid a cold war between the two world superpowers. Can you talk a little bit more about those five forces and why you think on a practical level that exchange of culture commerce is so important?
Chris Fenton: (11:14)
Yeah well, a lot of times in regards to dealing with North American companies in China during my tenure of doing this I've found that the more in the weeds you got with China the harder it was to get something done. So, China's a lot like an onion and if you keep peeling away there's just more and more peels. And on top of it, with the depth of my experience in China there was only so much I was going to learn before I got over my skis in explaining things about that country. So, one of the things I did was try to comprehend and then also be able to explain the super power relationship.
Chris Fenton: (11:54)
And I had a meeting once with Andy Campion who's the CFO of Nike and I was talking about how I feel like there's five different bars of service that work between the two superpowers. And he said, "Well, that's like Porter's five forces in business. Why don't you call them Fenton's five forces, a diplomacy?" And I said, "Hey, that's a great idea." So, that's where the name came from. So let's talk about what the five forces are.
Chris Fenton: (12:19)
Assume that China and the U.S. Are cell phone and cell tower. To have a perfect communication between the two of them you want five bars of service. Those five bars of service in my view are national security interests, politics, human rights, commerce, and culture. Unfortunately, we have learned that in politics they're not coming any closer to the way we run a democracy. They're very happy or at least the CCP is very happy running that country as a communist country. Human rights, we have definitely seen some huge differences there. National security, we're starting to see them as a dragon spreading its wings whether it's the South China sea or issues and other parts of the world with the belt and road initiative, et cetera.
Chris Fenton: (13:05)
We're starting to realize that there's three forces that we need to agree to disagree on. So that leaves us with two left, commerce and culture. One thing I know from 20 years is that they love the culture from the West. It's aspirational, it has freedoms that they don't have, it has really interesting things that they are excited about and they engage in. And that is the same as some of the movie posters behind me or wearing a really cool Nike pair of shoes. The second thing is there's a lot of commerce going on between the two countries. We are very entangled in that web so this idea of de-coupling is very difficult. So we have two bars of service that seem to be working pretty well. And quite frankly, even through all this crazy rhetoric and a lot of the barking between both sides that commerce and cultural exchange is still happening. So my feeling is if we continue it under a fully rebooted bilateral relationship which we need to address we can avoid a cold war or even worse something that escalates to war.
John Darsie: (14:11)
So you've been advising a few House members on Congress's China task force. You're also working with the Senate side as well. You talked about the idea of a larger reset. What do you think it's going to require to too put that reset in motion and to baby step into a more healthy relationship between the United States and China?
Chris Fenton: (14:31)
Yeah I mean, well one thing about China is that a lot of times when somebody goes over there and sees the opportunity with that market they get overwhelmed with how big the potential is and oh my God the world's our oyster and they can never get anywhere because they're thinking too big and they're not thinking about intermediary steps. And you bring up the idea of baby steps in this reset and I agree there's got to be baby steps that we can accomplish that continue to build towards a true resetting of the relationship. So, in some of the conversations I've had with congressional members, and by the way I'm not the smartest guy in the room I'm just offering suggestions and I hope everybody comes together and offers voices from different points of view to get this done.
Chris Fenton: (15:18)
But some easy ones, I mean are as basic as, I mean, one thing they're fighting is the WTO designation of China as a developing nation. I think we should get the WTO to actually call them a developed nation at this point. That's something that even we had the fight early in our industrial revolution with the United States until Europe said, "Hey, you've caught up to us now in fact you stole a lot of our stuff and all that kind of thing so you're going to be on the same footing as us." We need to do the same thing with China. We need to also do this and as you guys know in the financial services...
Anthony Scaramucci: (15:55)
Well Chris, let me stop you for one second. Why do you think we haven't done that thus far? It's been almost 20 years as the WTO introduction.
Chris Fenton: (16:03)
Honestly I don't know the answer to that question. I'm assuming there's a very strong lobbying effort to keep it the way that it is and that's keeping us from being able to get that done plus the WTO involves other countries too that are involved with that designation. But it's something that seems very obvious to me. On the China side I know because I've been in the meetings with our congressional members when they pitched the idea of, "Well, we're still developing. Have you been to a third tier city? Have you been to a fourth tier city? Have you been to our suburbs? They look like any developing nation. Our per capita income is way below yours and at the level of developing nations." I mean, they have every argument in the book you can imagine. So, there's obviously a lot of forces fighting on it but it seems like a pretty basic principle to come to an agreement on at least if you're not China.
Chris Fenton: (16:55)
The other thing too is and this is the same situation where the accounting practices by companies over there, particularly the SOEs that have state secret laws that they're hiding behind they haven't had to partake in the same accounting practices that other companies do when they're accessing capital markets here in the United States. That's obviously something that we're seeing a push for and that's something that should get done.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:24)
What do you think of the new national security law that was invoked in Hong Kong? What kind of problems do you think that presents for China with the West?
Chris Fenton: (17:35)
Well the biggest, I mean one problem when you work with China for a long time is you start to understand their point of view a little more. When I was there with three members of Congress it was obvious that you started to absorb the idea that Hong Kong was always China's so China did have a deal to take it back with [inaudible 00:17:58] And I think that the belief was is that over 50 years China would become more like the west so that when they did take over Hong Kong, Hong Kong would be the same as that it always had been. Unfortunately, we have learned that China doesn't seem to be coming more to the West and on top of it that 50 year agreement ended after 23 years just a couple months ago.
Chris Fenton: (18:23)
The national security law is obviously something that's really it's happened as we are looking the other way and it's creating a lot of issues. I mean, in one particular instance and it falls in line with some of the issues that I have with Hollywood's business in China is cross border censorship. So you have cross border censorship of movies where a movie studio is told to change certain things in a movie not just for the China market but for the world to see. And we're seeing the same thing through the national security law where the voice of anybody outside of the border of Hong Kong or China could be punishable under this new form of law because China's calling it in the jurisdiction of the world partly under their domain.
John Darsie: (19:17)
So Chris, I want to go back to the Hollywood piece. So, that's the crux of your experience in China is bringing large Hollywood productions to the Chinese market and obviously it's a great cashflow stream for a lot of these studios but it involves a lot of cross border censorship. As you mentioned, there's a couple of example case studies that we've spoken about in the past one of them is Looper, another one is Iron Man Three. Could you talk through those case studies and explain to our audience exactly the process that takes place with these studios in bringing movies to the Chinese market? This was the subject of the article in the LA Times this morning about whether Hollywood is cowtowing to the Chinese excessively. And just explain the challenges of that from a business perspective. And then obviously you talked about the general public's reaction to the NBA's decision to go soft on the China thing. Could you just talk us through that process?
Chris Fenton: (20:09)
Yeah, for sure. Well, one thing in regards to the baby step approach of changing things so that we add up to changing a lot of things in the microcosm of Hollywood there's a lot of simple changes that I think we should push for too. For instance, we only get 25 cents of every dollar that a movie makes in that market whereas the global average is between 45 and 50% so we need to change that. On top of it they have severe regulations over how many of our movies, our international movies get into that market so that's another issue that we need to address which is this quota situation that most other markets don't have.
Chris Fenton: (20:50)
Moving into the censorship world one of the things that I'm okay with because Hollywood has been okay with it with other countries like Japan, Korea, middle East, et cetera, is that there is a censorship of the content within the borders of China. So they might see something that they feel is offensive or maybe there's drug use or maybe there's criminal activity in the movie scene that they want to remove from the film. And we comply by doing that the same way we would do if we were showing something in the UAE or in Korea based on what are the standards for their censorship practices.
Chris Fenton: (21:32)
Where I have a big issue is what I call cross border censorship and that's when as Senator Ted Cruz said in regards to this latest Tom cruise movie the flight jacket that Tom cruise wears had the Taiwanese flag on it. Obviously the CCP in China don't recognize Taiwan as a separate country nor having their own flag so they asked to have it removed from the movie. But they didn't ask to have it just removed from the movie that's shown in their territory they asked for it to be removed from the content that's shown around the world and for me that's a big problem that we need to address.
Chris Fenton: (22:11)
One issue that's super offensive about it is the fact that you could argue that the biggest goal of the CCP is to keep 1.4 billion people just happy enough that they don't revolt so that there's another Tiananmen Square incident. And you could argue if they see certain things like the Taiwanese flag which might, and for independence from the PRC at one point or whatever, and that might instill discontent towards the government that the government wants to have that off of the flight jacket in their territory to keep the populace happy.
Chris Fenton: (22:47)
The issue is for me that's super offensive is they have a firewall in China. So if that flight jacket with the flag on it is shown in Peoria, Illinois they have a way of keeping the majority of their population from seeing that flag. Yet, they still want us to remove the flag not because they care about their own populous but they want the rest of the world not to recognize Taiwan as a separate country or they will censor LeBron James or Daryl Morey outside of their country even though they could firewall them inside. Because they don't want anybody on the outside of their country talking about Hong Kong protesters and their fight for freedom and the support for that, that's a big issue.
Chris Fenton: (23:32)
And we saw that when we did certain things like Looper. Looper, we actually took a movie that was supposed to take place in the future. It was a movie that starred Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Bruce Willis played Joseph Gordon Levitt 40 years in the future. In the future in that movie it was supposed to take place in France. But over time we were able to convince the filmmaker Ryan Johnson who now is directing the Star Wars movies to take a flyer and say, "Hey, let's move the future to China because China's probably going to be a big part of the future in the world today and 40 years from now."
Chris Fenton: (24:10)
He agreed, we moved it and we actually put Shanghai as the center location of the future. And we worked with the Shanghai municipal government to design their skyline the way they saw making their future 40 years to be. And keep in mind, time travel is censored in China. They do not like any content with time travel because they want to control the narrative of the past and they definitely want to control the narrative of where things are going. But we convinced them they could control the narrative of where the movie goes by working with us with the plot and with the locations to make it look like the city of the future.
Chris Fenton: (24:53)
Now, the one thing that they did do that we almost lost all our money on is they came to us and said, "Hey, we want seven minutes of that Shanghai footage in the film." The problem is only about three to four minutes of it really worked. So we cut out the extra three minutes and they said, "You know what? If you do that, we're not releasing the movie in China." Then we actually had to take that seven minutes and put it into the Chinese version of the film so they at least had it there. And then they fought with us to get it into the global cut because they wanted the globe, the sea, all of that footage. It was a big war between us and China Film Group and the state of administration or radio and film and television that we ultimately won over with various other concessions. But it was a perfect example of how they're not just trying to control a narrative in country they're trying to control a narrative outside of their borders. And that's a real problem we need to address as a nation.
Anthony Scaramucci: (26:00)
You're on top of a lot of different things commercially and you're seeing the world in this real politic sort of way. So, envision for us what a good future would look with China in terms of the health of the bilateral relationship, respect for the two systems and not brow beating each other too much but also not stealing intellectual property and so forth what do you say?
Chris Fenton: (26:27)
It's a great question. So, the book partially because it tells a colorful journey it brings in a lot of characters like myself and you realize we weren't evil doers or greedy capitalists we were actually on this mission under the guise of globalism is good for everyone. And you learn that and you see the collaborative effect between the two countries working together in various different case studies that I walk through in the book in an entertaining way. And you see the comradery that's built between the two superpowers, how it's covered in the press and how it's seen by the leadership.
Chris Fenton: (27:04)
So, we know that it is to our benefit if we can do something like this in the future not just decouple fully. But what we need to do, obviously in order to feel good about that type of cultural and commercial exchange moving forward as we need to address a bunch of things that have come to light recently. I mean for instance, repatriating manufacturing particularly in the areas of national security interests we have to do. We either have to bring them back here or we need to bring it to Western allies.
Chris Fenton: (27:36)
Number two is we're realizing and [inaudible 00:27:40] was on I guess a month ago with you guys talking about this theory of the fourth turning which is something that I find an interesting theory also. But if you're looking at how globalism and particular relationship with China has caused an effect, a negative effect on probably 90% of Americans you realize that a rebalancing or a resetting or a fourth turning needs to occur to address the system so that 90% of the country is feeling benefits of what we do moving forward. And part of that is rebuilding our middle class, rebuilding a labor class, rebuilding skillset jobs that come back here and are repatriated.
Chris Fenton: (28:21)
So, when we repatriate manufacturing obviously national security issues are a big issue, but also ones that create jobs here are another big one. On top of that we want to make sure that we, and we talked about this earlier, we rebalance the trade that is going on between the two countries, the tariffs, the quotas, the technology transfers, the IP theft, the forced joint ventures. For instance, Disney owns just 43% of their theme park in Shanghai, China owns the other 57%. In order to sell cars like GM in China they have to give a JV ownership to China of 51% in order to get access to that market. We need to change that.
Chris Fenton: (29:09)
I mean, there's a laundry list of different things that we need to do. They're all very tangible and a great sort of, "Hey, check that box, check that box, check that box." There's going to be compromise on a lot of that stuff but the important thing is, is we can get it done. There is a road to victory in that kind of situation that we can follow on a baby step approach and then create a better bilateral relationship on the back side of it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:36)
I think it's very smart. I just want to follow up and then John ask some questions from the audience. So, as a capitalist you're doing the right things, pragmatism, you're trying to intersect with a system that's different from our system and be respectful. There are some things going on inside of China. I don't know a lot about them but there's concentration camps, potentially. They deny some of that. Western investigative journalists say that there are concentration camps where there is Muslims that are being held in certain situations in China. As a capitalist how do you feel about that and how do you feel about aiding a system that is doing that? Is that something that we should be doing, not be doing? Should we be ignoring that as capitalists? What's your recommendation there?
Chris Fenton: (30:27)
Well, I think as a human being you don't want to support it and a capitalist is a human being. And there's no capitalist I know that supports that kind of treatment of other human beings.
Anthony Scaramucci: (30:38)
No, but hear me out. If you're over there doing commerce in China and it's supporting their markets and it's supporting the government and that government is doing that how do you reconcile?
Chris Fenton: (30:48)
So the reconciliation is as a unified front. If Bob Iger at Disney says, "We don't stand for the way you're treating the Hong Kong citizens or the [inaudible 00:31:03] and we want that to change ASAP." There's shareholders and investors that obviously are inspired and passionate about creating revenues from China and they'll simply replace Bob or whoever takes his spot with the person that does comply, it becomes a whack-a-mole situation. If LeBron James comes out in support of the Hong Kong protestors which is the right thing to do he'll get all his endorsements replaced by some other basketball player. In fact, if we don't even unify with our Western allies on this but we get all of Hollywood backing the idea we might find [inaudible 00:31:43] out of Germany or Studio Canal out of France or Bollywood taking the spots of some of our studios.
Chris Fenton: (31:49)
So, I talked about it earlier but one thing we need to do is obviously keep this from being a third rail issue. Joe Tsai the Brooklyn Nets called it a third rail issue when the human rights issue was talked about in terms of the Hong Kong protesters. We need to air it out. I mean, this is not, the amount of compliments I've gotten about how I'm being a squeaky wheel here from friends in Hollywood is really flattering, it's amazing, it's nice. But the fact that they end every email with, "I can't say this stuff publicly but I'm glad you are," that's the problem. We need to talk about this stuff we shouldn't be ashamed of it.
Chris Fenton: (32:28)
I mean, we were under this mission of globalism is great and look the other way with certain things but now we're woke to it or whatever the word is we want to use. So let's talk about it and create rules for the road. What are we okay with and what aren't we okay with and everybody has to abide by it. I mean, the accounting practices thing which is not even a human rights issue well have Goldman Sachs comes out and says, "We're going to stand for the way it should be." Well, JP Morgan comes in and takes that business. But if everybody's on the same playing field suddenly we have a way to address this stuff and we might actually be able to create change.
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:10)
It makes sense it's just it's a big issue for people. We're all trying to reconcile. Listen, I'm pro the diplomatic bilateral strengthening of that relationship. We can't live in each other's systems and we can't police people internally any more than other countries can police us internally. So, but it's hard, it's a very hard issue for a lot of people.
Chris Fenton: (33:33)
Well, I'll tell you I was [crosstalk 00:33:34].
John Darsie: (33:35)
As Chris writes in the book there was one person who called him out on some of the obsequiousness and [inaudible 00:33:41] that he practiced toward the Chinese and that was his wife so it's a lesson to all of us always listen to your wife.
Chris Fenton: (33:48)
Yeah. I'm ready for The Mooch and the Mrs. to come back. That was one of my favorite podcasts when working out.
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:54)
Yeah. We're going to bring it back after labor day actually but we put it on hold because of everything that's going on. But yeah, no, she takes a cheese grater to the side of my head for about 45 minutes. And Fenton let me tell you something, it's a lot cheaper than therapy. So trust me that is definitely coming back.
Chris Fenton: (34:12)
By the way, you're a 100% right. It is like rainbows and unicorns to think this is easy but what we definitely need to do is at least start talking about it. There's so much ostrich in the sand going on right now and we all know it's there, it's that elephant in the room. I mean, I even suggested to one senator's chief of staff the other day, "Why don't you call up one of those C suite guys and just get together in Omaha or something? Don't tell anyone and actually say hey what are the pressures? What are the things that are causing you not to be able to talk about this and address it? And I as a Senator I'm going to tell you the pressures that I have that are making me talk about it." And how do we find a Venn diagram that intersects at some point, so we can actually deal with this thing and quite frankly move on. We need to figure this out but it's crazy and it's bifurcating the country in a terrible way.
John Darsie: (35:09)
So, just to further dive in to the complexity of this issue so you've been critical of the hypocrisy of the NBA silence on Hong Kong but you've defended people like LeBron and Disney executives for example for their silence and for the approach they've taken towards China. Could you square those two points of view for us?
Chris Fenton: (35:34)
Well I'm not, it goes to the whack-a-mole thing. I mean, if we don't have a rules of engagement that everybody's abiding by what's the use of somebody standing up and saying something because they're just becoming a sacrificial lamb? I mean, it drove me crazy, I got called onto a lot of shows right after the Daryl Morey tweet and in fact it was a Bloomberg interview that I did where they asked me about LeBron. And they asked about Senator Marco Rubio who was telling him, "You've got to say something." What's crazy is that the personal sacrifice that LeBron makes by saying something that we all want him to say is huge whereas a senator telling him to do it there's nothing that really affects that senator personally, there's no sacrifice. It's just a good soapbox stance to take and it's something we all want to say but we can't.
Chris Fenton: (36:31)
What we need to do is set up a situation where everybody's following the same way. If we're cool with what's going on with the [inaudible 00:36:39] and the Hong Kong takeover and all that stuff then no one should have to talk about it publicly. Because we're saying, "Hey, we're good with that as a nation so LeBron we're not going to put you on the spot about it." But if we're not good with it as a nation then we've got to say what we are good with as a nation and if somebody does speak up about it we've got to back them.
Chris Fenton: (37:00)
And Disney is the same way, Disney has a really difficult situation with Mulan. That's a movie which by the way is not coming out when it's supposed to which I think is a blessing in disguise because I don't think United States citizens are going to be super excited about watching a two hour tentpole movie with a lot of Chinese faces, Chinese locations and Chinese mythology right now. But on top of it, Disney has a problem where the two biggest stars of that movie have spoken up on behalf of the CCP supporting them and the takeover of Hong Kong against the Hong Kong people.
Chris Fenton: (37:36)
So in a perfect world, Disney would come up and say, "We don't agree with that. We support the rights of the Hong Kong people and the fact that they have another 27 years before the turnover." But Disney can't do that they have so much money at stake in that market. And if they do it, you know what Universal's theme park that opens up in Beijing will just take all the business away from Disney's theme park in Shanghai. It just becomes a sacrificial lamb whack-a-mole situation so we just need to be unified on it.
John Darsie: (38:07)
Chris, we're going to leave it there. I know you have a lot of media hits today on the release day of your book so congratulations again. Hold the book up for our audience so they can go find it. It's feedingthedragonbook.com. You can find out more about the book. Chris talks about his career in Hollywood, a lot of the issues that we spoke about and he writes about them at much more length. So go check out his book. it'll be worth your time.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:28)
Chris, it's a fascinating discussion. I hope that we can get you back before the election if that's okay because I'd love interview you as we're heading into middle October.
Chris Fenton: (38:38)
I would love to be on. I'm completely honored and humbled to be on this to begin with. I mean, your guests are unbelievable. The stuff that I've learned from listening to them has been incredible. So thank you for having me on and...
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:51)
We feel the same way about you, your pragmatism and realism in dealing with this issue is something that we're going to need no matter what direction we go from a political perspective. So thank you Chris, I greatly appreciate you being on.
Chris Fenton: (39:04)
Thank you guys. Take care and be well.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:07)
Okay. Thank you.