Toby Howell

And as part of his promo tour, he went on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk about the state of entertainment today.

In one soundbite that is going viral, he acknowledges the fact that more people are watching movies at home these days.

And those home viewings usually involve a lot more distractions than a movie theater.

Kids running around, lights on, pots boiling.

And downstream of that distraction-filled environment are shifts in the movie-making business.

Big action sequences that used to hit in the third act have been dragged to the first five minutes to try and wrangle people's attention.

But the biggest change is that Netflix is encouraging verbal repetition of plot details.

According to Damon, filmmakers now get explicit guidance that it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue.

Once you realize Netflix is doing this, you can't unhear it.

So Neil, at this set in Davos where we are recording a podcast episode, do you want to open your mouth and respond to me about this narrative phenomenon?

Yeah, you can roll your eyes and blame Netflix for putting out what you might describe as slop, but actually look inwards and blame yourself because they do know that you are watching with your phone in front of your face.

And I feel like everyone has experienced this where you want to show a movie to one of your friends and you look over and they have their... Oh, that's the worst.

It's the worst thing in the world.

But so Netflix has said...

it is a lot of second screen viewing is kind of like the technical term for it.

You have your first screen in front of you, but in the background, you need to know what's actually going on.

Like, how are they going to kill this Demogorgon?

So you're kind of hearing that subconsciously.

And that is why they're doing this kind of annoying Netflix speak as some people have been branding it.

And it's also a little ironic too, because Matt Damon is biting the hand that feeds him in this case, but he's also sort of setting the groundwork for another movie that he has coming out, which is the Odyssey, which is,