Keep sharing good news without ads.
#NoDespair
So what you're about to watch is a conversation that I had with the management team of Lur. If you are on social media, Twitter, Facebook, any of those, YouTube, you've probably seen a little bit of content from Lur.
It's spicy, it's interesting, it talks about the problems, you might say, with Christian entertainment in general, and really entertainment as a whole, non-Christian as well. I mean, lots of people complain about the LGBT messaging and the feminist agendas that you get in mainstream entertainment, and it's disgusting, it's absolutely disgusting, it makes movies horrible, it makes them pretty much unbearable, and even a lot of secular people realize this.
Lots of people complain about that, and that's fine, but Lur is actually seeking to do something about that. They're seeking to maintain a platform that can not only compete with the big players like Netflix and Hollywood and all that kind of stuff, but also delivers entertainment in such a way that it can be quality, number one, but also sidestep all of the bureaucratic nonsense and the tech censorship that you're seeing become so ubiquitous these days.
It's a really interesting set of ideas and technology that's intended intentionally to bypass cancel culture and all that nonsense, so they can have their little ghettos with the LGBT and the lesbian films, and we'll actually have real stories that are quality and actually have a real worldview attached to them and all of that kind of thing.
So this is a great conversation, I hope you'll find this video helpful. Okay, so thank you for joining us, I've got on the line Marcus Pittman and Maceo Jordan, and why don't I give you guys a brief introduction, but I'll let you guys sort of explain a little bit as well.
You two are like the brainchildren of Lur, is that right?
Yeah, that's pretty much right. Maceo is the CEO, I'm the CCO, Chief Creative Officer, and we are just now, things are really starting to roll as we're building out Lur and stuff, and for those of you guys that might be new, Lur is a platform we're designing for essentially to make it so anybody can make the movies that they've always wanted to and not have to worry about being deplatformed or canceled or all those sort of things.
Wait, wait, wait, hold on, let's stop. Right there, I thought Lur was just a social media account that would zing Christian media every now and then, that's what you're best known for.
Well, that seems to be how the marketing's working, so we just took a little bit of inspiration from Wendy's and just pushed it from fast food to Christian movies, but no, yes, there is more. We are planning an actual website technology platform that will be used to provide fundraising and distribution for Christian films.
So got it, got it. So the tagline of the video that we're doing right now is, Lur, we're more than just spicy tweets. There we go. Yes, absolutely. Okay, cool. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about that because I think every time I see you post something on Facebook or Twitter or something, there's a number of comments that are like, what's Lur?
And you just kind of explained it briefly, but for people that are interested in what you're doing, Marcus, I think there's a lot of people that interact with your tweets. Some are interested, some are other things.
Just interacting. But explain it a little bit. What's it all about?
Well, I'm going to say, go ahead and do that. You can kind of break it down as a CEO should. Yeah. Yeah. So we're really fighting a battle is the way I like to frame Lur and not to get too melodramatic about it, but it truly is for the heart of the country, the heart of Christianity.
And I want to lead with this because I think it's so important to get this conversation out into the world, if you will. We're at a weird point in American history where on the floor of the Senate, on the floor of the House, we have believers being actively discriminated against, being actively questioned for their belief and disparaged for that belief in a lot of cases.
Now specifically, why do we create Lur? Well, we created Lur because people are being discriminated against because they're Christians. Most people don't know, but there are roughly six to eight people, individual human beings that control everything that goes into the major media platforms.
And that's not even talking about the kind of cabal that leads the broadcast mediums. But when you consolidate that much, we'll say control, if not power in one person, we really do have to have a conversation about what's their ideology, what do they believe?
And fortunately in America, we can make money doing what we believe just like they can make money doing what they believe. So yeah, we are going to go beyond the spicy tweets. The spicy tweets certainly are part of our mission and our overall marketing.
But at the end of the day, we want to bring back Christianity into the main conversations in media, bring back the stories from the scripture for what they truly are in a way to, meaning those stories are a way to frame a society.
And I think what we've lost touch with is that it's truly the stories in a society that bind us, they're what bring us together as people that we can identify with beyond all this tribalism that we're dealing with now.
But in a way that transcends skin color or surface beliefs or predilections, you know, these little things that we would prefer in life and really get to the heart of what we're about, redemption, forgiveness, compassion, grace, mercy, you know, that's Christianity, not the kind of nutcase that you can see in a variety of shows.
Yeah, no, that's great. And, you know, one of the things that I've kind of picked up along the way somewhere is that, you know, the Bible, you know, God could have given us an instruction manual like you would get, you know, with a VCR or something like that.
What's a VCR anyway? But he could have given us an instruction manual like that, which are dry and just, you know, sort of this is what you do. This is what you don't. This is what you do when something goes wrong.
But he didn't. He did give us laws, but even the laws are in a narrative. They're in a story and, you know, they're intended to be passed along and told to your children and stuff like that. And so there's got to be a reason for that.
Marcus, you're always saying, you know, the best story wins. What exactly do you mean by that?
Yeah, well, one of the things that we talk about a lot is just there's a battle for the story that's taken place in the Bible, right? So the first part is, you know, Genesis, God creates everything through stories in six days, right?
So he speaks everything into existence. There's six, you know, poetic explanations of the creation of Jason so much better talking about the poetry than I am. But if you got our newsletter, he said it pretty well.
But essentially, so you have this first story that comes to being. And then the second story is, you know, has God really said, right? So the devil said, did God really say not to eat of the fruit? And so there's two different narratives that are being crafted in the very beginning of Genesis.
And we ultimately get the ending, which is that the seed, well, the snake will be crushed under the foot of the woman, right? So we know the ending. But there's this constant battle between, you know, the line of Cain and the line of the other one.
Abel, that's right. That's right. I always forget that one. But yeah, so there's only those two lines. The stories are competing. And so that's sort of what, but when we look at it more on a broader scale, when we look at the world like Netflix or, you know, Netflix and Disney and like Maceo was saying, there's six to eight people that decide all the stories for our culture, right?
And people say we're in a culture war. Well, you can't have a culture without stories. And we don't have stories. Christianity doesn't have stories. We have theological blogs. We have a lot of books on theology and stuff.
But we really haven't had good stories since P .S. Lewis and Tolkien. After that, everything's kind of, I mean, that were probably the last, some of the last time we had Bunyan. That was a great one, right?
So we had Pelham's Progress and stuff. But really ever since then, we haven't had any really great stories that define our culture or what we're trying to do. And so what we're trying to do is to create a way that allows for the best story to win, allows for users to decide, hey, I want to hear this story.
I want the story to be told and to represent me.
Got it. And it almost seems to me like we're at a point now where we've had such a poor showing with the storytelling and with this kind of stuff that now we're in a situation where we've got these big tech censors that they won't allow a good story anymore from a Christian perspective.
And so that's part of what you guys are doing as well, kind of addressing that whole idea of we got to get past the censors as well.
Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things that especially in, I'll call it mainstream Christianity, and what I mean by that is there are people who will get in and study their Bible. They've got the highlights and the stuff sticking out of it.
But really, I think that my experience, at least being in ministry, is that the everyday Christian hasn't taken that deep of a dive, right? So they've got a surface relationship to the scripture. They really can't effectively defend their faith against a well-trained atheist or well-trained LGBTQ, whatever it is now.
And one thing that we have to keep in mind is that our opponents are trained. I mean, when I was in the street ministry, we had sort of a mini class before we went into someplace like San Francisco because we needed to understand that in San Francisco, they hold classes for how to attack evangelists, how to fight back.
I mean, that's the language that they use. And so what we really need to understand is that this is an overt ideology. This is not something that happened by mistake. These are not people that just are like, well, you know, it's just those Christian stories aren't that great.
No, they hate us. They hate the idea of a savior. They hate the idea that the reality of humans is that we're sinful, right? They want to believe that we're all internally good. And so we've got this foundation that needs to be laid, which is, yeah, in the beginning, God, right?
That's all we really need to start with. And so I think once Christians sort of wake up to this idea that at these executive levels, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and even Amazon, Walmart, as you start to go out into this corporate world, they are openly hostile to not just the Christian message, but Christians individually.
So we're not saying, you know, it's not a call to arms in the sense that, you know, we're going to get our pitchforks and torches, but it's a call to arms that we need to be active about it. Right. And so we started talking about the spicy tweets.
Yeah, that's part of it. But we're not here to play around. You know, we're going to compete in the realm of capitalism, in the realm of, you know, who's got the better business model. And we're going to build something big that supplants Hollywood.
There's no reason why, when you're talking about competing worldviews, that the, we'll call it family-friendly and Christian media shouldn't dominate it. Who doesn't want to teach their kids not to steal, not to lie, be good to your neighbor?
I mean, what's wrong with that? You know, so it's something that has to be done, though, in a real sense. So we're out there raising money. We're in our seed stage now, which means we're bringing on accredited investors.
And we're eventually looking for larger partners that can build out an infrastructure to not just rival, but do away with Netflix and Hollywood. So my vision is within five years, no one, a creator is not going to even dream of doing something family-friendly outside of Lorde first.
It's like, they're going to pitch us first and they're going to like, well, I guess if Lorde won't do it, then we'll have to go to Netflix. It's like, they'll be cousins on the street corner.
I love that. You know, one of the things that you said that I absolutely love is, you know, this other worldview, this secular sort of worldview, it's an intentional worldview. It's overt and they're attempting to do this.
There's a guy, his name escapes me right now, but he's a YouTuber who covers comic books and he himself is a homosexual, but he also recognizes that that lifestyle is not something that can sustain itself.
And so he sees that Marvel and DC comics are pushing LGBT dogma. And he says, this is bad for society, that you shouldn't be doing this. And he understands that they're doing it intentionally. They're antagonistic to traditional values, which are Christian values here in the United States.
And that's a bad thing. And he says, you're doing it intentionally and it needs to stop. And so even he can see that it's an intention. It's not just the way things go. It's an intentional, it's a replacement of Christianity.
In other words, they're trying to replace it with their own dogma. That's interesting.
That's interesting stuff. Yeah, and you have to think too, that a lot of the Christian entertainment industries are funded by these major organizations, right? So Sony just bought Pureflex. Well, this is the same Sony that's pushing LGBT stuff in The Last of Us 2.
And the trans characters and all this other stuff, this is all the same. And we see that with Christian music and a lot of those contracts are with Universal and all these other major corporations that hate our guts.
But they're okay as long as we're in that bubble. They made a little cage for us. And they're like, you guys can be within that cage. But as soon as you step out, say like Mel Gibson did, we're going to come after you, call you anti-Semitic.
We're going to throw everything out against you. And we're going to make it so nobody else wants to do a movie like Mel Gibson ever again and compete with our movies on the same weekend, right? So that's sort of like the thing that we know we're up against.
And the only way to really defeat that system is just to bring it down to the level that everybody can be a part of it, to decentralize it. That's great.
That's great to hear. So you mentioned, Maceo, that you're looking for accredited investors right now. And I wanted to ask, what else? What's the next steps for you right now besides that? Is that the primary focus or are there other things that you're looking for right now?
Well, of course, we've got to build out a good bench of both creators and individuals that want to work in this kind of environment. We're actually officially a public benefit corporation out of Delaware, which, roughly speaking, is to protect, promote the Christian ideals out there in the world.
So we have a fiduciary responsibility and the statutory backing now to use our powers for good. And so anybody that identifies with those beliefs is going to love it here. Somebody who doesn't, I mean, obviously, it's going to be difficult for them to be on the team, but certainly investors.
But really, we need people talking about these issues. It's so funny. The way I say it, of the team, I'm the one that's been rolling around in the muck the longest. And so I've been a businessman for 20 years.
And it's not like there's a cabal and smoke-filled rooms exactly. But there's this really interesting thing that happens where Paul in the scriptures called out, say, Simon the coppersmith. It's like, okay, he called somebody out and said, look, don't get near this guy.
He's bad news. But today, there's this kind of flip flop floppy nature, not just in Christian circles, but just generally in business, which is, I won't call you out on your stuff if you don't call me out on mine.
And we'll just kind of pretend like it doesn't happen. And it's just a byproduct of this incestuous nature of business where one person's making money with somebody else. For example, most people don't know this, but Sony actually took stuff out of their so-called family-friendly movies, specifically because it went against their ideology.
Not because it was bad scripting, not because it was bad dialogue, but because ideology reigns. And that's what we need to start talking about, not just as Christians, but as people. It's like, do we as a society really want some dude or woman at Sony saying, no, let's not include that producer because they tweeted something out six years ago that we don't like?
Because that's what's actually happening right now. So we want to bring that conversation out into the open, not in the sense that we're throwing stones or trying to bring everybody down or tear them down rather, but just so that we can understand what the playing field is.
This is not a fair playing field. A lot of this happens behind closed doors. It's not something that you ever have the smoking gun, but I think most people realize that it's happening. And so these investors that we're talking about, they're going to have to ride a storm.
I mean, coming out, if you will, we can see what happened to Mel Gibson, Matthew McConaughey, forgetting the Guardians of the Galaxy, Chris, dead air. Pratt. Pratt, yes. There's these minor statements and people are being torn down.
But I'll add this finally. One of the things that I'm personally doing, this isn't necessarily a team thing, but my personal call for especially entrepreneurs like me or people who managed to scrape together a bunch of money is this.
It's time to decide if you want your treasure here or if you want your treasure in heaven. Because we've no longer got the luxury of saying, well, that's going to happen later or it's not so bad. Sure, sure.
So I think it's high time for us to do it. We've got a lot of things going on with streaming now that makes it super simple to do. It's very cost effective. And so I think overall, as far as timing goes, it couldn't be better.
Yeah, no, that's great. You know, when Marcus first told me about this thing, obviously there's that aspect of it. Right now, there's a lot stacked against people that want to produce a movie that's actually good, that has Christian values, a Christian message, but also has quality.
There's a lot stacked against a person like that. And so there's that aspect of, you know, we want to do the right thing. We want to do the best work we possibly can do for God. That's a good cause in and of itself, right?
But my thing, I think, is that maybe not right away, but I think that there could be a lot of financial benefit to this as well. Because I personally think that the movies that get made these days with all of this weird messaging, like even just look at Star Wars, for example, like, you know, Star Wars could have been way better.
It could have made a ton more money than it did. And the reason I think it didn't make as much as it could was because of the preposterous storylines that they included that were social justice related, completely preposterous stories.
Look, I love Star Wars, but when something's preposterous, I don't like it as much. The shooting in the space, that only goes so far, right? So there's also, I know you guys are both in this for the cause and for the money as well.
But I think that, you know, yes, of course, we want to have our treasure in heaven. But I think there's a financial upside to this as well, because these will be better stories.
Well, the financial upside is essentially that, you know, everybody's eating a bowl of rice and you come in there with a steak. The thing is, we're at the point where we have to convince them that the steak is actually better than the bowl of rice that they have right now.
And so that's sort of what, and one of the things that's been pretty amazing is just since we started doing this is the discussions we've had with pretty A-list content creators that would shock you, that are saying that there's a lot of upheaval within these major studios right now because they're forcing these agendas.
And even the pagans are like, these are terrible stories. We don't want to make terrible stories. So I think if you just build the platform, you know, cancel culture only works because there's nowhere else to go.
But if you have a true competitor, like when Lore becomes a true competitor up there with Netflix and Netflix says, well, we're going to cancel you. And then the people are like, oh yeah, well, I'll just go to Lore, right?
So it's like no big deal. Like there's no difference financially for them or anything and their stories are better. I think once that sort of options are available, like that's what's going to stop cancel culture.
Right. So completely, you know, it's like, it's like the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference, right? Well, it's like, well, you can be canceled from the gospel coalition conferences circuit, or you can, but then there's the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference.
You can be invited to because you were canceled. No, let's rather go to that much better conference anyway.
And I love what you said again, like, like the stories are terrible. And even the pagans can see that. Like, again, I got to reference this comic book. I'm gonna try to figure out who this is. I'm gonna try to remember, but he, he is himself a homosexual.
And he's saying, you know, I I'm reading Iceman, my favorite, you know, character. And half of the book is him at his gay wedding. Like, this is not what I want to read Iceman for, you know what I mean?
I'm reading Iceman because he destroys villains. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, that's the thing. So it's like, this is, this is garbage and they pump out this garbage all day long. And they do it because they're sold out to their gods.
They, I mean, they're, they're religious in the most fanatical kind of way. So they pump out this garbage. And so we definitely can compete with that. You know what I mean? A steak is better than rice, objectively.
You know what I mean? So, you know, depending on who you are, I guess.
But it is, you know, you know, Lord of the Rings was a great movie, but it was great because it was written by a Christian worldview, right? And they were just co-opting, Peter Jackson was just co-opting the Christian worldview.
Didn't even include the best parts of the movie. You know, he took out, you know, the best parts of Lord of the Rings, but still even what was left was still a great story of good fighting evil. And it wasn't Christianized and cheesy and really an insult to Christian art.
And so I think that's what we're going to see. We just need a place where, you know, creators can come. And, you know, we, like we say, we say, love God and make whatever you want. We told some content creators that have been, you know, they're in the industry.
And they were like, well, if we were to do stuff with lore, what would we make? And we're like, well, you can make whatever you want. You guys are experts. And they've never had that before. They've never had that because they're in these bureaucracies that are massive and we're just like, well, if you have a good story, just make it.
Sure. Yeah, looking at how Hollywood makes movies, it's, if people understood, which I'm not, I don't want to make it out like I'm Spielberg or something like that. But I, some of the people I know we've had in-depth conversations about it.
I have this weird need to know how stuff works. Most movies are made by a committee. And even worse, you know, you've got, you have people that'll, you'll go into this big meeting and there's somebody who's literally waiting to make a comment about a script or a scene because they know, number one, if they don't say anything, it's going to look bad.
But number two, they've got to like position themselves for, you know, a future inside of that company. And so, you know, anybody that's written a script understands that that's how it goes. Scripts, I don't know if I can even say rarely, it's probably never, you know, end where they started.
And so for the creators, you know, we are literally saying full creative freedom. The best story will win. The caveat that I will say, that's going to be some harsh feedback because, you know, truly people will be able to interact with creators to give their input on movies.
Not in, you know, this crazy open sense like YouTube, because that devolves very quickly. But with their money. Well, that's right. They'll vote with their money, which, you know, at the end of the day is where it's most important.
And really, you know, what we're cutting out is something called Hollywood accounting. Now, again, most people don't like to talk about this. But the reason why you have a phrase that's called Hollywood accounting is if you get involved in Hollywood, like they have figured out 97 different ways to siphon money out of a project.
And this is just this crazy world where so many productions don't make money that the studios put that onus or that loss on everybody else. And that's just dishonest. You know what I mean? It's like you're the businessman.
If you're taking a loss, don't push that on everybody else. And that's the root of this evil, right? So it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. So if you want to strike to the heart of it, it's that there's so much money going into entertainment.
And the people that are involved truly love it more than God. They love it more than probably life itself. And we're saying, look, yes, there's going to be money involved because that's how people are going to vote.
Yes, there's money involved because we've got to crush Hollywood and Netflix and Amazon Prime and everybody else. But at the end of the day, this is the medium of exchange that we have. And so the thing that excites me the most is to let these creators, probably for the first time in modern media, run amok.
I mean, that's what we want. We want creators running amok, creating things that the audience can then enjoy, vote on, and promote and support.
That's great. That's great to hear. And I think you mentioned earlier that the way that streaming works now, the way that equipment is purchased, it's cost effective to do it that way now. Whereas before, it was unattainable for regular people to get the same quality.
Look, I'm a little bit of a history buff. So if you look back through thousands of years of history, you had what? Patrons, right? So if you look at a Da Vinci, a Michelangelo, there were rich people that had to support them.
Why? Because if you're an artist, generally speaking, you're not out there building something or raising crops. And so that model survives to today. I mean, if you look at most artists, that's how they think.
Like when I talk to them, because I've been in marketing a long time, and I try and talk to them about marketing stuff and marketing their art and how to treat it like a business, they're so focused on, well, if I just had a patron, they don't describe it like that.
But that's really underlying their language. So we're saying, look, we can, for the first time in history, cut out these false gatekeepers. There is no reason why some, I was about to use probably a questionable word, some guy at Netflix, I was gonna say schmuck, okay?
I can say it, I'm Jewish. So there's no reason why that guy needs to be in charge of it. Like, what does he know? Seriously. In fact, when I look at Netflix, I'm gonna get on a bit of a rant here, so I'll end this quickly.
I see the main issue with what's going on with our stories is that we've lost the defining hero. So you've got Captain America, right? Grew up wearing socks in my hands, carrying the trash can lid shield.
But it was definitive, good versus evil. But if you look at like the Jessica Jones and even the Power Man that they have on Netflix now, like I saw half the first season, I'm like, this is not Power Man.
This is crazy. This person is making, he's making decisions like I would. What we've lost is something to aspire to. That's what stories are for. It's not this thing to say, well, they're just like you.
It's like, no, no, no. You need to live into that. We want our children to live into this greater role in life, not the like muck that we have now. Hey man, that's good stuff, man.
That's good stuff. All right, let me ask you one more question. A lot of people that follow my channel, they're probably not accredited investors. I probably have a few accredited investors, but what about the regular person?
How can they help at this point?
Well, there are actually several ways that they can help in a very real way. Number one, you got to talk about us. I mean, that's it. We cannot hide this under a bushel, if you'll please pardon the reference.
That's number one. Number two, we actually have a crowdfunding campaign that will go active probably quarter one or quarter two, and that will enable people to actually invest. And now because we're a public benefit corporation, here's the reality of it.
Our shareholders can hold our feet to the fire. Like if we don't uphold the values that this corporation was ensconced to uphold, they can do something about it. That's why we want everybody who can invest to be able to invest.
It's just right now due to the regulatory environment. Yeah, we've got to do it in a certain way, but certainly first quarter of next year, second quarter of next year, they'll actually be able to invest and participate as shareholders.
But right now we need everybody talking about it. We need people referring people to us. If somebody knows a big time producer or an artist, anybody that is disgruntled with the situation they're in, they need to talk to us.
We can't do this alone. We need the support, not only of the community, but more importantly, we need the support of the artists. We need that creativity. We have to unleash these people on the world, man.
I can't wait. I can't wait to see what happens.
With what we're about to do here. Well, it's definitely infectious enthusiasm. No question about it.
Marcus, anything to add there? No, I would just say that one of the ways, of course, probably prior to the crowdsource investments that people can get involved is probably going to be through funding content that we're going to announce soon.
So that's a way that that'll happen probably sooner than the crowdfund investment. So hopefully first quarter next year, we'll have some, we're already working on some content for the platform. This is an exciting stuff, man.
It seems to be coming up quick, man. The first quarter next year, that's right around the corner.
Yep, it is. Yeah. So I think that's going to happen. Yeah, I have a today mentality. So that might be partially my fault. We'll see, we'll see. But yeah, should be first quarter. Well, God bless you both.
This is good stuff, man.
I'm excited about it. And if there's anything else that I can do for you, let me know. But thanks for coming on and I'll post this stuff right away and we'll see what we can do to spread the word on this, okay?
Yeah, pray for us, brother. I will, I will. Well, God bless you guys. Have a great rest of the day and have a happy Thanksgiving. Yeah, thanks, AD. You too, bro. Bye. Yeah, guys, I hope you found that helpful.
And if you are able to get involved as an investor, whether if you're an accredited investor or even if you're more of a crowdsource type person, please consider doing so. Obviously, this kind of stuff needs capital.
And I think that these two brothers have their heads on straight. They're willing to put their money where their mouth is. And also, I think they have the idea to get it done. So I hope you found that video helpful.
Please consider checking out lore .tv. Check out their Twitter feed and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I hope you found that video helpful. God bless.
