Mstyslav Chernov on ‘20 Days in Mariupol’; Fubo files lawsuit against announced sports megastreamer

KCRW sponsors include Search light Pictures presenting the new movie The Greatest Hits music takes those places what if it could literally take you back in time the greatest hits is a hypnotic Journey Through the connection between love music and memory now streaming on Hulu from KCRW I'm Kim Masters and this is the business filmmaker and War correspondent mlav chernof faced grave danger shooting his Oscar nominated documentary 20 days in Mar upo but he couldn't stand idly by while Vladimir Putin's Army laid waste to his homeland you can't really stop bleeding with a photo or a video you cannot Resurrect The Dead by making a film but you still stay in there because when the crime is happening and you're just standing aside and not doing anything you feel like you are participating in the crime the ba winning director shares how an Associated Press assignment in war torn Ukraine led to his devastating Oscar Contender for best documentary he also talks about the importance of keeping the world's eyes on the war in Ukraine but first we banter stick around it's the business from KCRW I am joined by my associate and banter Matt bellany hello Matt hi there so neither one of us is surprised that a lawsuit has been filed over this Sports entity that fox Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery have announced where they are going to keep these various Sports properties where you would originally watch them now if you want to continue to watch them that way on Turner or wherever but they are also going to create the streamer which is going to be like year round Sports people are calling this spu that's the madeup nickname in Hollywood so this is a big deal or could be but fubo has filed a billion dollar lawsuit I mean a billion dollars people name numbers and lawsuits all the time but you know trying to make an impression here a billion dollars and they are claiming that this is putting them at a huge disadvantage and that these companies have twisted their arm to carry expensive stuff they don't want and now they're saying this is an antitrust problem and that this needs to stop yeah it's an interesting one here because fubo TV has positioned itself as a sports focused streaming service has a few million subscribers and now they look at their Partners on that service the channel providers and they are doing something that they do not allow FUBU TV to do they're saying it's quote extreme suppression of competition in the US Sports Focus streaming Market which basically means That these channels that the joint venture spu are putting together are specifically tailored for the sports fan in a way that these companies do not allow fuboo TV to put together you have to take other channels if you want the sports focused ones from the big providers and it's a pretty obvious connection there to say well wait a second if you are going to favor yourself over your partners that's not fair we'll see if it is I mean I think these companies will argue that you know it's their right to put together a package that they want to put together if they want to do it if others don't want to subscribe to them they could not subscribe um it'll be an interesting challenge to see what a judge thinks of this yeah I mean this is the kind of uh fallout we thought would happen and here it is already let me turn to the unfortunate Madam web this was a Sony picture that opened the past weekend and did not open well I mean people there was almost a loathing of this movie that was remarkable people gave it a C+ Cinema score I think which is a really bad score on the way out of the theater so it gross $26.2 million which is not nearly enough for a film that Sony claims cost 80 million when it really probably cost a bit over 100 million and this represents a couple of things one of which is that Sony has had the rights to Spider-Man related stuff and they are trying we trying at least to create a universe a Madam web Universe where there would be other Madam webs and they would I guess fight crime I don't know because I have not seen Madame web although I know you find that hard to believe and also you know if you want to look at it through a certain lens another alarming sign of superhero fatigue to the point where you know if I'm James gun trying to retool the DC properties at Warner Discovery this might make me nervous you know he's had a lot of success but it the question is if you you come at it a certain way like I think with Deadpool might for Disney the audiences may show up but if it's a bigger problem that's like entrenched weariness with these superheroes you know that's going to be a huge impact on multiple Studios yeah the Sony Marvel spin-off Universe has sort of been the redheaded stepchild of the superhero genre and I think they're walking into a general superhero fatigue where it's got to be great you can't just release a superhero movie now and expect audiences to show up we saw that last year with things like The Flash and Shazam 2 and even you know some of the Marvel MCU stuff like the Marvels Sony has never really gone all in on this stuff yeah they've green lit the spin-offs they have venom and they kind of lucked out with that it did really well with Tom Hardy they have two other movies still to come out this year and the spiderverse don't forget the SP well that's a whole separate thing the animation has actually worked worked for Sony the spiderverse movies are actually great they won an Oscar and they've done very well but the liveaction stuff they're hanging them all on these rights to do Spider-Man and Spider-Man universe movies and the audience is sniffing out that these are not a-level Heroes they are not being given the kind of budgets that produce the you know big moments that people like in these movies they are making them for 88 hundred million dollar not 200 million which is what Disney spends on those movies if not more and it just feels like it's not enough and these days in the theaters not enough is going to lead to losses yes I mean Tom Rothman has been very skillful running Sony Pictures he doesn't have a streamer which may be a blessing you know because he can be an arms dealer and not worry he's got a very lucrative Netflix deal as well which these movies you know go to Netflix after a few months right so he's got that instead of trying to make a streamer work and he's very well known for leaning on budget he's done very very well with a not great hand but this particular thing just feels like too little and maybe too late maybe I mean you never know if one of these things was actually good maybe it could break through but the other thing about the Sony Marvel movies is they haven't been good neither critics nor fans have really liked them so where does that leave you it just sort of leaves you no man's land and that's what happened this past weekend 26 million for an opening frankly they're lucky they got there because it was a big holiday weekend and Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday like that was probably smart of them to put that on that date because in a regular weekend it would have grossed half that yeah and I'll just quickly say you know props to Paramount for dating one love the Bob Marley movie on that weekend because people are hungry for that kind of entertainment people really turned out for that one so the news wasn't all bad no but overall box office still way down this year way down yeah thank you Matt thank you that's Matt bellany founding partner of Puck news in March 2022 mrlu chernof was an Associated Press reporter covering Russia's bloody attack on the town of marup over the course of 20 days chernof captured some of the most devastating images to emerge from Ukraine despite the physical risk chernof felt a sense of Mission to show the world the Carnage that was being visited on the civilians of the town he and his team won up Pulitzer for their work then out of the 30 hours that he had shot chernov cut together a harrowing documentary now in contention for Oscar in the opening scene of 20 days in marup the filmmaker describes the Bleak situation as Russia began to besiege the town this is the first time I saw Z the Russian sign of war the hospital is surrounded doesn't of doctors hundreds of patients and [Music] us I have no Illusions about what will happen to us if we are caught so let's talk about how this came to be because I think you started out being a photographer not necessarily journalism or news or anything like that war zone or is that wrong I don't know no it is right uh I actually started as a fineart photographer that moved to documentary and I specialized in healthc care and social issues and I worked with various Nos and then Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 and me and many other uh journalists and documentary photographers and filmmakers we automatically became War correspondents because well the war started in our country as I understand it from things that I read that you were shooting in Istanbul right in Turkey when there were some protests there so this is I think well before the invasion of Ukraine many years well this um you did your research I'll credit our producer but well that was actually probably one moment when I thought I need to go deeper in documentary that was the moment I cannot say was a breaking moment in my career when I decided to become a a work correspondent but that was the first of a strong and very very real experience after which I felt that this is something I can do and if the opportunity arises that I will do and then next year revolution in Ukraine started and annexation of Crimea happened and uh then the invasion yes and you had been I think injured in 2014 police threw a stun grenade at you and here's your reaction I mean a lot of people would be like I thank you but I need to go someplace safe now but you went just in the opposite way yeah you're right every time every time something like that happened to me I think I uh I just went forward at that moment yeah I lost almost lost my eye and uh I still have some pieces of shrapnel in my leg after that and since then I had many near-death experience which I'd rather not to have but when it happens to you when a sniper shoots you I was shot by a sniper unfortunately I wasn't injured I was just let's say traumatized I think it you were wearing a vest right is that yeah I was wearing a vest uh so that saved me but for example after event like this after uh you you're facing a choice whether you continue or or or you stop it's a conscious Choice yes but if it's made then then you just stick to it and sooner or later your body comes in peace with that because it's not the brain who actually makes a choice if you think about it it's a body that that allows you to continue or not I do Wonder there's a little bit of a I mean I've never been a war correspondent but I've known some and it does become kind of an addiction I think because it's the adrenaline is pumping and you feel like it's the most important thing in the world you know because it's a war and I don't know if you feel like you have that kind of addiction yeah I I have seen um again a circle of conflict journalists is is not a very wide Circle there there's a certain type of people who do this work and you keep meeting them in different Wars across the world and there are different motivations there are people who are motivated by this adrenaline drive there are also people who are motivated by kind of a mission they take on themselves and they sometimes publicly stated sometimes they quietly do their work it's a mission of trying to make a world a better place and trying to make sure that the world knows about the tragedies that have happened but again when you state it like that and it sounds like a mission it loses its core value I am not driven by adrenaline I know the rush but I would rather not PE it uh uh but I am driven by a wish to be where the history is created for a long time I have experienced the world through screens and through books through the news and I always felt that I need to be closer to reality to really feel it to really know how is it and that event you mentioned in tuim square in Turkey in Turkey yes when I was standing in the middle of that square and there was a police car that was burning in front of me and people were running back and forth and there was a fight happening in the background and someone was injured and all of this was happening around me and I remember even not shooting that much at that point I wasn't taking a lot of photos I just looked at it and I thought this is the most real experience I've ever had in my life although it is probably the most absurd one I had at that point so that gravitation towards the reality towards something real is what drove me as a person internally but of course then there is a journalistic duty and there is a civil Duty that that drives you when I am in Ukraine for example and there is just a human motivation when people come to you and say you have to film this you you have to make sure that the world sees that and I know they know that nothing will change but also I know that they want to be heard and I I want to help them somehow and this constant feeling of frustration when you are watching doctors trying to save a child or an adult and you're just filming and you're useless you can't really stop bleeding with a photo or a video uh you cannot Resurrect The Dead by making a a film right but you're still staying there and you're still doing it because when the crime is happening and you're just standing aside and not doing anything you feel like you are participating in the crime you know I think that there are some people I mean your film is I should say very unflinching and you do see heartbreaking tragedy but some of the people did seem to feel and that's one of the another element of the Heartbreak that if the world could see what was happening in Mar opo there would be outrage a response something would happen but of course it didn't work out that way at least not yet well yeah and again as I said before probably even more important for these people is just to know that they are heard and they are not ignored that's probably the only worst thing that can happen to us as humans is when we are uh in pain is not just suffering but also to know that you ignored that your suffering and your loss doesn't just have meaning but also is denied to you by Propaganda for example by just saying that you're an actor or by saying that it's not true and it's all fake yeah that has been the Russian response is that like we have here unfortunately when there's a tragedy people say they're crisis actors pretending and that is what Russia's response to some of these images of yours has been yeah so of course then it's so important for people to feel that they are heard even if they know it's not going to change much but it it gives you the energy to keep surviving to keep fighting now did you go to marup you know because the invasion was underway or I'm trying to remember if you were already there or you went there no no um we were in bahmut at that point our team was responsible for covering donbas before the full scale Invasion and we knew maripo very well we knew donbas very well we've reported from there for eight years at that point so we saw how Russia is preparing to attack and they were quite clear about it in their media there were suggest from our sources from Ukraine military from other journalists so just piecing the puzzle together we we saw the probability of Russia's attack as Almost 100% And then we we had to choose where we will be when this happens and marup seemed to be one of the main targets for Russia regardless of what would be the scale of their attack and that's why we went there and I I I can say I hoped that is not going to be what it was but at the same time I saw what Russia did to Aleppo I was going to say because you were in Syria and I've watched so many documentaries about similar scenes in Syria and the common denominator is Russia and Putin you know yeah yeah and we know what happened to grossy and well I remember speaking to doctors and civilians in marup in the first couple days when the city wasn't yet bombed heavily and and they didn't believe nobody wanted to believe that Russia is going to do it but they did coming up after the break Mr slav chernof talks about promoting his film on the awards circuit while his home country is still under devastating attack you're listening to the business from KCRW KCRW sponsors include search life pictures presenting the new movie The Greatest Hits music takes us place what if it could literally take you back in time critics Rave the greatest hits is a music infused romance that hits all the right notes and the most original time travel story in years featuring music by Nelly Fado Beach House Jamie XX and more watch The Greatest Hits now streaming on hula introducing the KCRW donation car designed to be recycled this firstof its kind vehicle will save you time space and hassle by disappearing enjoy the luxury and comfort of turning your underused car into a donation worth hundreds even thousands of dollars the KCRW donation car already in your garage driveway or on cinder blocks outside your house act now at kcrw.com [Music] cars this is the business and I'm Kim Masters Mr slop chernoff's Oscar nominated film 20 days in marup plunges viewers into Russia's Relentless attack on one town in Ukraine as other International journalists left the besieged city chernov and his team stayed they captured unflinching footage of death destruction and war crimes March 2nd Russian strikes are causing problems with Internet and electricity all the international journalists we met in marup have left but we decide to stick with the Medics for a few days we drive to the Left Bank where the heaviest fighting is happening so when you go to Mar upul are you at that point you're not thinking about making a whole film you're doing a news job you have constant challenge of trying to get the footage that you've managed to shoot out of the country yeah that's my primary work uh and considering the urgency that was the priority always to shoot everything I see and to send it as soon as possible and to make sure it will get to to editors and to channels and that's what I was doing in marup at the same time I am still a Storyteller I'm always looking for deeper stories for I'm also a novelist writer so I'm always looking trying to look at a bigger picture and at the deeper meanings of of the events around me and after the maternity hospital bombing when I saw how rescue workers are carrying Arena on the stretcher we know her name now um yeah you're I'm just going to say you're referencing a very famous image of a very pregnant woman on a stretcher who ultimately was killed but uh it was an image seen around the world yeah yeah and I saw that and I I recognized as he was unfolding in front of me uh I recognized the importance and symbolism and the possib impact of these images and I realized that the story of maral is not just a story of marup is something much bigger and it needs to be told in a more comprehensive way that that shows the scale and a symbolism of the tragedy but again at that point my main objective was to survive to survive and to record everything every minute seems to be a little bit of a conflicting reaction at one point a soldier says stop filming other people say please film I don't know how did it go with the Ukrainian soldiers were they understanding mostly of what you were trying to do um I was mostly focusing we were mostly focusing on the civilian population of course because at that point that was a main focus and and and a main story that was unfolding so we did not interact with soldiers that much I think the relationship with with everyone inside the city including soldiers has changed over over the course of The Siege because the more desperate the situation became more people realized that they're absolutely completely trapped and that there is no information coming in and out and probably our cameras is the only communication with an outside world which is such an extraordinary thing because it's it's it's half a million City and to have only one team of journalists reporting is quite unusual but anyway the more people realized that we are the only way to communicate with the outside world more they kind of accepted us and invited us to continue our work and so we did until we just lost everything but the fact that we were saved by a team of special forces that is specializing an extraction of of Civilian hostages we were fortunate enough that they came again tells me that they recognized that journalistic work or documentary work is important at that moment so so you were working for the Associated Press I mean I know that at NPR when they had people in war zones there was always this agonizing over when to pull them out and whether somebody was going to get injured I'm sure AP feels the same way I mean was there any back and forth about you should get out now and you say let me stay or were you all on the same page um because I know well the editors who I work with and who I worked with before uh there was a mutual agreement that they leave this to our judgment uh of course any conversation with the editor starts uh from the security assessment what is evacuation plan what is uh your location what is the closest medical extraction Point what are Plan B foration you know so all this is constantly talked about and and considered and uh wait against the importance of the story and when you have trust of your editors that's probably the key of good work yes because you are the one who sees what's going on you are the one who sees the real picture I know that the AP has a relationship with public television Frontline I think uh at what point do you guys say it's a film yes so after the maternity hospital bombing I saw that this story has to be told in a different way so I started recording much more than I would need for news and you actually can see that in a film as as well how the editing and how their storytelling and shooting changes so when we broke out of a city I had about 30 hours of footage and we almost immediately started speaking to the front line I think it just like two days after we we left I remember drama theater was bombed and I felt so frustrated and so sad that we were not there and there's hundreds of people probably died and no one even can show this yes and some of the women who survived the maternity hospital bombing moved to that drama theater to that shelter and and they were killed in Death Strike and so it was very very sad moment and I really really wanted to make sure that it will not just disappear and be washed away by the Sea of information like like everything I did before in Ukraine since 2014 and in other countries I really wanted it to stay I felt like I owe this to people of marul to those families who lost everything so we started speaking with the Frontline and it was quite a small team it's me and darl mccruden from AP he worked as a as a chief producer and he was Michelle mner Frontline editor and producer and rainy Aronson who was the chief producer at the front lines and that's it so let's say a small production team we just came together and started collaborating started talking about how to make this film how to make that story and from there we went on it must seem a bit surreal to be you know here you were at Sundance you have been on Festival circuit award circuit and meanwhile the situation in Ukraine is getting worse I think and the Heartbreak of that I I don't know how you how do you manage the contrast between Academy lunch or something and uh what's going on on the ground in Ukraine yeah I remember so when I when we left after marup I went to bua which was another horrifying experience and I went to herke my hometown which was heavily bombed and for a while it seemed like it's also going to be surrounded and will suffer the same thing that Mar upul did and I was there and we started editing already so I was shooting the bombing of my hometown and I was editing already with Michelle together we started editing going through all the footage from marup and I thought that was a difficult psychological experience I was almost collapsing because everything just came back on me and I didn't sleep much and uh the contrast between two worlds sometimes it feels even more painful is if if you can say that because when you are in Ukraine you feel like you're still doing something you're still making a difference even a little but when you are on a festival circuit when you are traveling you don't feel like you're doing anything but in fact you do and that's what's holding me here that's why now I am still going and still presenting the film because right now it's not enough just to make a film or to shoot the film and then make it it's also about showing it to the people and the film we are showing is a difficult film we are inviting the audience into a war zone that's what I wanted as a director I wanted to make this experience as realistic as it can be and to bring the audience right inside the siege right inside this pain and fear so we are inviting people to be part of something uncomfortable important but uncomfortable and that takes a lot of respect and a lot of effort and that's why I'm here so it never feels irrelevant even if I am in in the spaces which are surprisingly comfortable I'm always aware of this task that I have a task to just carry the film forward and and show it to as many people as possible Mr slav chernof is the director of 20 days in Mar uple the film can be streamed on the PBS app or the PBS YouTube Channel free thank you so much for talking to us today thank you for this conversation and that's the business Joshua faram produced and edited today's program with help this week from Sue marges and Nick lampon who mixed the show you can stream the business as well as other great KCRW shows on kcrw.com or wherever you get your podcasts I'm Kim Masters we'll see you next week on the business KCRW sponsors include Search light Pictures presenting the new movie The Greatest Hits music takes us places what if it could literally take you back in time the greatest hits is a hypnotic Journey Through the connection between love love music and memory now streaming on Hulu