Raúl Castillo says that playing a gay character on HBO's drama "Looking" has been really good for his acting career.

"I feel like I couldn't have found a straight role with that much complexity, because oftentimes with Latinos we go into roles that are written specifically for Latinos and they're either tropes or one-dimensional representations of who we are," Raúl Castillo recently told Business Insider.

Castillo played Richie Ventura, the tough, closeted neighborhood barber who was the unconventional on-and-off love interest for main character Patrick (Jonathan Groff). Castillo, who's straight, calls the role "a gift."

"Richie was a fully formed, fully fleshed human being," the 38-year-old actor said. "So if anything, he's been a great gift for me as an actor because I think people see sides of me that they wouldn't normally have gotten had I played a 'straight role' or sort of typical Latino role you're used to seeing on TV."

Interestingly, Castillo has been attached to "Looking" ever since its genesis as a short film. Titled "Lorimer," the 2011 short film was written by Michael Lannan and directed by Andrew Haigh, the team behind HBO's series adaptation.

And, according to Castillo, not much has changed from the film.

In it, "there's something about finding moments of intimacy in unexpected circumstances," Castillo said. "And I really think that's what the show did brilliantly."

But there was one major thing that did change.

"At the time, the story was set in New York instead of San Francisco," the actor told us.

With "Looking: The Movie" premiering on Saturday, fans of the actor can next see him on "Easy," "Drinking Buddies" director Joe Swanberg's upcoming anthology series for Netflix.

"I feel really lucky to be in a place after this show, and after the experience of working on 'Looking', where I'm getting to work on interesting characters and interesting projects," Castillo said. "And I feel like in a lot of ways 'Looking' kind of opened up those doors for me."

SEE ALSO: HBO confirms 'Game of Thrones' will have a shorter season 7 — here's when it's airing

DON'T MISS: HBO changes its mind and cancels its rock drama 'Vinyl'

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Now that new music comes out every Friday — but not always on every streaming service — it can be hard to know where to find the next great song.

To help you out, Business Insider compiled this rundown of the best new music you can stream right now.

Note: Some songs contain NSFW language.

SEE ALSO: The 5 best new songs you can stream from the week of July 15

MORE HERE: Here's the most popular music artist in each state, according to Pandora

HONNE — "Til The Evening"

"Til The Evening" — the lead single from British electro-soul group Honne's debut full-length album, "Warm On A Cold Night" — plays to the duo's strengths with a pleasant cascade of synths and a soaring chorus. The whole album is worth checking out.

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Regina Spektor — 'Bleeding Heart'

The first single in four years from singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, "Bleeding Heart" combines Spektor's eclectic lyrical approach with an atypically upbeat pop sound. The result is one of the most accessible songs of her career.

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PARTYNEXTDOOR — 'Not Nice'

PARTYNEXTDOOR's influence on Drake's music over the past few years has been unmistakable. "Not Nice," the latest single from PARTYNEXTDOOR's upcoming third album, sounds like a "One Dance"-style hit with an even heavier Caribbean groove.

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Another actor whom fans what to see be the next James Bond has said a familiar line — "there have been no talks."

When asked about the possibility of being the next Bond, Idris Elba told Michael Strahan on "Good Morning America" on Thursday that there have been "no talks" between him and the famous franchise's producers.

"It's the wildest rumor in the world," said Elba, who was on the show to promote his new movie, "Star Trek Beyond."

"If I'm really honest, man, I think I'm too old for that," said Elba, 43. "I can't be running around in cars, and ladies and martinis — who wants to do that?"

Well, that last part might have been Elba having a little fun. Daniel Craig, the current Bond, is 48, and unless he decides to hang it up, the producers still want him to do another movie.

When asked in June about the chance of being the next Bond, Tom Hiddleston, another supposed 007 front-runner, had a similar tone, telling an audience that "your guess is as good as mine."

But don't worry, Elba fans, you'll be getting a lot of him in the coming year. Elba is shooting the adaptation of the Stephen King novel "The Dark Tower," and he will star opposite Hiddleston in "Thor: Ragnarok." Both are coming out in 2017.

Here's Elba talking about Bond on "GMA."

SEE ALSO: The new James Bond movie might not hit theaters until 2018

Join the conversation about this story »

AMC debuted the trailer for season seven of "The Walking Dead" at Comic-Con. Not only did it show more of fan-favorite Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), but it also offered the debut of two newcomers, King Ezekiel and his pet tiger Shiva.

Yes, next season of "The Walking Dead" is going to have a tiger on it. 

In the comics, Ezekiel rules over another group of survivors at a place called the Kingdom. Though "The Walking Dead" has been teasing theappearance of Ezekiel, it wasn't certain we'd be seeing Shiva but now we finally confirmation.

But we still have a lot of questions. How was the tiger done for the show? Did the crew use a real tiger on set in Atlanta, Georgia? How much of it was CGI?

At the show's press conference Friday afternoon, I asked show creator Robert Kirkman and showrunner Scott Gimple about bringing the cat to life on AMC's hit series.

First off, Kirkman let it be known that the tiger's name is pronounced "Shee-va," not "Shiv-ah."

Second, Kirkman revealed a real tiger was not used for filming.

"I was asking Scott [Gimple], 'How do we plan on doing this thing?' He pointed out that it's not particularly humane to have like a live tiger on set and it's also very dangerous for the actors."

Even though there wasn't a real tiger used on set, Kirkman didn't waste an opportunity to poke fun about what it would have been like if one was there.

"When we needed it to really act, we wouldn't feed it," joked Kirkman. "But yeah, so I was like, great! No real tiger. I can still come to set. That sounds awesome because I would not have gone to set if there had been a real tiger anywhere near set. So there's no real tiger at all. It's all magic."

"It's the dragon from 'Game of Thrones,' shrunk, slightly changed in proportions," showrunner Scott Gimple interjected. "And we add ..." 

"Tiger lens," Kirkman suggested.

"Yeah. It's just a filter," Gimple played along. "You guys don't have that on your phones?"

Nope. But we're game for anything combining "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead." Now, that we know Shiva isn't a real tiger on set though, we're far more interested in seeing the green screen and effects which go into filming those scenes. 

"The Walking Dead" returns to AMC Sunday, October 23 at 9 p.m. 

SEE ALSO: "The Walking Dead" exec producer promises great answer to season 6's frustrating finale

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: AMC just dropped the first trailer for the next season of ‘The Walking Dead’ and it gave us chills

It's been about a week since Pokémon Go's tracker — the tool that guides players towards hidden Pokémon — has worked as intended.

The tracker sits in the lower-right corner of your screen and shows you which Pokémon are in your immediate area.

When a Pokémon is far away, it shows three little paw prints. As you get closer, it goes down to two paw prints, then one, then the prints disappear and the Pokémon will appear on your map.

It's like a hot-or-cold game. At least, that's how it works ideally.

For the last several days, for reasons unknown, it's been showing three paw prints no matter how near or far you are from a Pokémon. It's been frustrating a lot of players:

The rumor on the street is that Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, purposely turned off the tracker to ease the strain on the servers, which have been unreliable since the game's launch just over two weeks ago. Regardless of the reason, players are getting annoyed. 

But Nick Johnson, the Pokémon Go master who recently became the first to capture all 142 monsters currently available in the United States, says he used a very clever workaround to find and catch 'em all. Plus, here's a bonus method that Johnson didn't use, but that could work for you.

Download Ingress

Before Niantic made Pokémon Go, they were best known as the creators of Ingress, a similar kind of map-based real-world game, but with more of a science-fictional bent. 

Not only is Ingress still up and running on both iPhone and Android, but players like Johnson find it to be an indispensable tool for Pokémon hunting, since Niantic brought a ton of data from the older game to the new. 

This is Ingress:

See the white dots on the screen? In Ingress, that's called "exotic matter," or "XM," and it's the key to the whole affair. Players like Johnson have noted that areas where the XM dots are concentrated in Ingress also have a very high correlation with where Pokémon pop up.

So if you're having trouble finding a Pokémon that's showing up on your tracker, and you're really dedicated, you can switch over to Ingress, find an area with a high concentration of XM, and walk towards it. Once you're over it, switch back to Pokémon Go, and a Pokémon should appear.

"I found more than a few rare ones by spotting them on radar, then ignoring the radar and using the Ingress in-game map to navigate to those hotspots," Johnson told Business Insider. "May not work 100% but definitely helped me."

This comes with a massive caveat: Pokémon Go draws a lot of battery, and so does Ingress, so tread with caution or carry an external battery pack on your Pokémon hunts.

PokéVision

There's a second option, not used by Johnson, but loved by plenty of others. It's called PokéVision, and it'll show you all the Pokémon currently around any address you plug into it. 

 Here's Central Park's Grand Army Plaza, as viewed through PokéVision:

Dang, that's a lot of Pokémon. No wonder Grand Army Plaza has become such a hotspot for Pokémon hunters.

The timer you see below each Pokémon shows how long they'll be at that particular spot. If you make it to their precise location before the timer expires, you're all but guaranteed to find that Pokémon.

In a brief excursion to test PokéVision, it wasn't 100% reliable: I tore out my front door and jogged a few blocks to succesfully capture a Gastly that PokéVision had spotted before time ran out, but I wasn't quite able to locate an Eevee that it assured me was close. And at one point, I caught a Squirtle that PokéVision had completely failed to mark on the map at all.

This might feel like cheating to you, so use it at your own discretion. Also, it uses data taken straight from Niantic, so it seems possible that they could change something and turn off PokéVision's access. So enjoy it as much as you can, for as long as you can. 

In the meanwhile, we're still waiting for word on when Pokémon Go's radar glitch will get fixed. So if you don't want to stop your hunt, you have some options. 

On a final note, Johnson says that a good idea is to pay close attention to your fellow players. If you're out hunting, and it looks like the crowd is about to stampede in one direction, it's probably time to stop what you're doing and open your map.

"The stampeding horde was also an awesome form of real-life push notification at Grand Army Plaza," Johnson jokes. "I caught a few things just by following the crowd or hearing other people shout out that it had spawned."

SEE ALSO: 12 clever tips and tricks for Pokémon Go from the first guy to catch all 142 Pokémon in the US

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A reporter was caught playing Pokémon GO during an ISIS press briefing

Aston Martin's marketing boss Simon Sproule has just finished off a lunch with one of the luxury car brand's customers when he meets us in the Charlotte Street Hotel on a rare sunny June day in London.

"I have been in the car business a long time, but I never had lunch with customers before I joined Aston Martin," Sproule said. 

"I think that says a lot. Not that I'm anything special, but that the CMO of the company is taking the time to sit down and have lunch with a customer, one on one with him and his son, talking about the business and showing him a few pictures of what we're doing — and he paid! I offered, but he paid. That's the luxury business."

But while Aston Martin, famed for being the choice of fictional spy James Bond, clearly has a personal rapport with UK luxury car buyers, the brand has struggled to achieve the same rate of success in the US.

Sproule said: "We sell approximately 15 to 20% of our cars in the US. The US market [for Aston Martin] is about the same size as the UK right now and it should be about three times bigger, just for our natural volume and our natural competitive share. We think we are underperforming in the US versus our potential. There's nothing wrong with the cars, nothing wrong with the brand, we've done all the checks. I think our challenge is saliency and awareness."

People think of Ferrari as red sports cars, Lamborghini as "more extreme" Italian sports cars, Rolls Royce do big luxury sedans, but what do people in the US think of Aston Martin?

"If you said define Aston Martin to a lot of American consumers, I think they would struggle," Sproule admitted.

If you said define Aston Martin to a lot of American consumers, I think they would struggle

Aston Martin does have plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Production is up to 3,500 cars a year, a rate it has never achieved before in its history — and it has ambitions to produce 10,000 cars a year soon to get closer to the volumes of vehicles produced by the likes of Ferrari (around 9,000) and Bentley (around 10,000). Earlier this year, Aston Martin also signed a deal to build its first electric car, in partnership with Chinese tech company LeEco, to rival the Tesla Model S.

Sproule doesn't see Tesla (his former employer, where he was vice president of marketing and communications) as a direct competitor — "it's like saying I am going to buy an apple or a lobster for lunch, it's like two different things" — but there is no doubt their customer segments have some crossover.

Aston Martin plans to increase its US advertising and events budget in areas where affluent buyers live — the west coast, south Florida, the east coast, and the Hamptons, for example — and it is in conversations to bring on board a brand ambassador.

Finding a US brand ambassador

Aside from James Bond, Aston Martin's only brand ambassador to date has been tennis champ Serena Williams, who came on board last year. She was already a big fan of the brand and has been to visit the car manufacturer's factory in Warwick, UK.

Sproule said the reason Aston Martin has not chased down more brand ambassadors is that it hasn't felt the need, or hasn't found itself in a position where someone has come along and genuinely invested in the brand.

He added: "I get plenty of agents and celebrities calling me saying: 'I love Aston Martin, I'd be a great fit for your brand.' I say: 'Well, do you drive one?' [They reply:] 'No, but I would!' It's like, I'm sure you're very nice but this has to be authentic. It's really important to the brand. Serena has been with us as a customer and she gets who we are. We are currently talking to a couple of other people who get who we are."

We ask whether a rapper might be a good fit for the brand, recalling Rick Ross' 2010 single "Aston Martin," featuring Drake and Chrisette Michele.

"I'm fine with it. I know some brands sort of recoil at that. But look, the nice thing about Aston, we hope, is we feel that we are quite an inclusive luxury brand. So you don't go into an Aston Martin [dealership] and feel intimidated. You should be able to breeze in, have a look around, and move on," Sproule said.

What happens after you buy an Aston Martin

Another area Sproule — who came on board in November 2014 — plans to transform, is aftercare.

At the moment, when you buy an Aston Martin, you get a warranty, you receive a magazine around once a quarter, and that's it.

Sproule thinks that isn't good enough right now, so the company is currently redesigning the whole owner experience — partly through technology, employing platforms like Salesforce, so Aston Martin can keep the conversation going with customers after they make their purchase.

It's not just a case of giving them more stuff though, Sproule explained: "If you can buy a Ferrari, Rolls Royce, or an Aston Martin, you've probably got a lot of things and you probably don't want or anything. Sending them a Swiss Army knife with Aston Martin on it, do they really value that?"

But what they do value is hanging out with the company's CEO Andy Palmer or its chief creative officer Marek Reichman up at its HQ.

"Marek is great, our chief creative officer will do a sketch on a napkin of a car and sign it and people go crazy for that stuff. They met the guy who designed the DB9 GT Bond car and they want those things," Sproule said. "They want us to organize driving events. They say: 'Please, just set it up, we don't care how much it costs, just set it up so we can go off and get together with a few like-minded friends and go off and drive the Italian lakes or the Cotswolds in our Aston Martins'."

It was that insight that led to Aston Martin signing a deal with the Quintessentially events group this year to launch its "Art of Living" website. Now fans of the brand — not just owners — can pay to be helicoptered into Le Mans and stay in a chateau, be the first to drive the DB11, or be taken to Cuba on a trip curated by Aston Martin.

Sproule said: "The experience of owning an Aston Martin will get richer over time. Not because I'm going to send you a baseball cap in the post, but because I'm going to invite you to [events and experiences] — and not always charge you, by the way: I might say 'why don't you come over to the factory in the next couple of months as I've got something to show you'."

He added: "We are 103-years-old. We have only produced 80,000 cars in 103 years. It takes Toyota three days to build that many cars. We are a small family, so we can afford to spend."

Join the conversation about this story »

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Where you watch a live performance can take it from memorable to unforgettable. 

From venues built in stunning natural settings to those that were carved in 19th-century forts, the world is full of magnificent musical spaces.  

From Ireland's Slane Castle, which has hosted musicians like the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, to Sweden's Dalhalla amphitheater, which is built in a former limestone quarry, here are 14 fascinating places you can enjoy live music around the world.

SEE ALSO: The best Greek island for every kind of traveler

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The annual Bregenz Festival, which is held in Austria from July through August, is known for the incredible fantasy-like sets built on its floating stage.

Click here to learn more about the Bregenz Festival »

At SteelStacks, a cultural venue located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, grand mills rise from the stage. The venue is located in the former site of Bethlehem Steel, the second largest steel manufacturer in the nation.

Click here to learn more about SteelStacks »

The Dalhalla amphitheater is a former limestone quarry located in Rättvik, Sweden. Concertgoers are submerged 196 feet below the surrounding lush forests to see the variety of music events it holds from June to September every year.

Click here to learn more about Dalhalla »

High above the busy streets of Hollywood, Universal head Lew Wasserman is puzzled. His research team has come back to him with data telling the sad truth about the current movie business. Young people no longer want the flashy musicals, Westerns, and gangster movies that ruled the 1950s and early '60s, and they especially don’t want movie stars. They want reality.
 
It’s 1969 and “Easy Rider” is the latest counterculture movie to be a hit (it was made for $500,000 and grossed $60 million). Kids are flocking to see movies that are different and more relatable to them, like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” in 1967. In this case, the movie is about a pair of long-haired hippies on motorcycles who get high and spout about how the country is going to hell.

Wasserman can no longer ignore it. If the elderly studio head doesn’t act fast, Universal is going to be in worse shape than it is right now.

With the “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude that’s a Hollywood hallmark, Universal quickly creates a division dedicated to the youth market. It green-lights movies with a max budget of $1 million each, with the cast paid scale and the director getting final cut. 

But the new division needs stories. It so happens that Dennis Hopper, the director, star, and cowriter of “Easy Rider,” has an idea for a movie he’s been trying to make for the last decade called “The Last Movie.”

It's been 45 years since "The Last Movie" had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the festival’s Critics Prize. It was the only highlight for the film, which by the time of its theatrical release a month later in New York City became an infamous box-office bomb.

To this day, “The Last Movie” has never been available to audiences beyond its initial run and a VHS release in 1993. Instead, following Hopper's death in 2010, it's best known for the tales of drug use and partying that went on throughout the creation of it.

Business Insider recently talked to some of the people who were around Hopper during the making of “The Last Movie,” as well as Marin Hopper, daughter of the legendary actor/filmmaker, who is one of the trustees of the Hopper estate and current rights holder of “The Last Movie.” We wanted to uncover what really led to the demise of this lost classic and if it will ever see the light of day again.

A risky bet on New Hollywood's rebel

Dennis Hopper, 34, was struggling with his ultimate personal vision, “The Last Movie,” when Universal came calling. 

Though Hopper was suddenly a player in Hollywood thanks to “Easy Rider” tapping into the counterculture, he couldn’t get the production company behind the movie to green-light his passion project. A big reason: Hopper had decided not just to direct but also to play the lead in the movie after he couldn’t find the right actor during a series of auditions.  

Universal had heard all the stories of Hopper’s erratic behavior over the years, first as an up-and-coming actor who had small parts in the James Dean movies “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” (he admired Dean immensely), then as a bit player on a slew of TV shows, where he got little respect and gave even less back. And then there were his off-set antics involving drugs, fights, and firearms.

But the studio was willing to gamble and agreed to make the picture on an $850,000 budget. Hopper got paid just $500 a week, according to the book about '70s Hollywood “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” but he retained complete control of the making of "The Last Movie."

Hopper lost 30 pounds and cleaned up his look for “The Last Movie” by shaving his mustache and cutting his long hair, the memorable traits from his “Easy Rider” role. 

In the movie, written by Stewart Stern, Hopper plays Kansas, a stuntman from the Midwest working on a Billy the Kid Western shot in Peru. But after a tragedy on the set, Kansas decides to give up on movies and stays behind in the foreign country. With dreams of finding gold in the mountains, his life becomes complicated when he’s told by the village priest that natives are “filming” a movie with a camera made of sticks and causing violence because they aren’t aware that movies are fake. Eventually Kansas becomes their next victim.

The baby-faced Hopper informed Universal that he would be making the movie in Peru. What that studio didn't know was the region had become the cocaine capital of the world.

“Every coke head in LA wanted to work on the picture in order to smuggle drugs back up north,” author Peter Biskind wrote in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.” 

'It was one long sex-and-drugs orgy'

The cast touched down in the small Peruvian town of Chinchero in January of 1970, and needless to say, none of the locals knew what they were about to witness.

Suddenly the town was crawling with stars like Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Michele Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas (who was briefly married to Hopper), legendary director Samuel Fuller, and Kris Kristofferson, many of whom were indulging in the region’s healthy supply of cocaine.

“Of course there was plenty of good cocaine,” Dean Stockwell, who played Billy the Kid in "Last Movie's" film-within-a-film, told Uncut. “The natives there would happily give you leaves to chew on, and there was this little type of rock that’s got certain minerals in it, that precipitates the effect out of the leaves, and they all chew it. There was what you’d call processed coke as well. Was I aware of the amount of drugs being consumed out there? Yeah, oh yeah. But we kept it to ourselves, apart from the leaves, which everyone was doing. We weren’t stupid, we were just stoned.”

But reporting from the set for Life magazine, Brad Darrach described a more raucous environment:

“Somebody made a cocaine connection and a number of actors laid in a large supply at bargain prices — $7 for a packet that costs $70 in the States. By 10 p.m. almost 30 members of the company were sniffing coke or had turned on with grass, acid, or speed. By midnight, much of the cast had drifted off to bed by twos and threes. At 2 a.m. I was awakened by screams. A young actress had taken LSD and was ‘having a bummer.’ At 3 a.m.,  I heard a rapping on the window beside my bed. A young woman I hadn’t met was standing on a wide ledge that ran along the side of the hotel just below the windowsill. It was raining and her nightgown was drenched. ‘Do you mind if I come in?’ she asked vaguely.”

And things only got crazier as the production went on. 

Darrach wrote that one night a group threw a “whipping party” in which an actor chained a girl to a porch post and thinking she looked like Joan of Arc, lit a fire at her feet. Another actor swallowed five peyote buds too quickly and almost died.

“It was one long sex-and-drugs orgy,” Hopper admitted to Uncut about the production of "The Last Movie." “Wherever you looked there were naked people out of their f---ing minds. But I wouldn’t say it got in the way. It helped us get the movie done. We might have been drug addicts but we were drug addicts with a work ethic... The drugs, the drink, the insane sex, they all fueled our creativity.”

According to Darrach’s reporting, most of the shooting was improvised. Hopper’s drive to tell something real and un-Hollywood led to little structure. Hopper and other key crew members would talk out scenes on-set and then shoot them immediately.

But Hopper also showed his genuine talents as a director — albeit not always responsibly. When he wasn’t getting the performances that he wanted, Darrach wrote that Hopper would halt production and put on a performance of his own to evoke the emotion he sought. In one instance, he got an actress worked up to the point of hysterics and then put the camera right on her as she cried uncontrollably.

“If I foul up now, they’ll say ‘Easy Rider’ was a fluke,” Hopper said on the set of the movie. “But I’ve got to take chances to do what I want.”

After production wrapped in Peru, Hopper notified Universal executives that he was headed to Taos, New Mexico, to edit the movie. He told them it would take a year to complete. 

The moment that 'destroyed the film'

If “Easy Rider” was any indication, the editing of “The Last Movie” would not be a smooth experience. And to distract Hopper even more from the task at hand, he agreed to be the subject of a faux-documentary about himself.

For "The American Dreamer," directors Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson filmed Hopper in Taos while he was in postproduction on "The Last Movie," though this was hardly a nonfiction work.

"This is an actor playing an actor in a film that's supposed to be a documentary," Schiller told Business Insider.

According to the codirector, the idea was to make something that could play on the college circuit leading up to the release of "The Last Movie," further building up Hopper as an icon for a new generation.

Now with a beard and long hair, Hopper seemed more interested in living the life of a vagabond than finishing a major movie.

“The thing I remember most is the strong smell Dennis had,” filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky told Business Insider via email when asked about his memories of visiting Hopper at that time. "He was drugged up, as he always was, and he slept fully clothed. Ugh, the smell!"

Though Hopper put on a face of control and confidence among his hangers-on in Taos, internally he was struggling to find “The Last Movie” in the editing room. Hopper asked Jodorowsky, among many others, to see a cut of the movie. The Chilean director, known for cult surrealist classics "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain," did and gave Hopper a harsh criticism. 

Legend has it that after watching "The Last Movie," Jodorowsky told Hopper that he had failed and only made a conventional Hollywood movie. This motivated Hopper to destroy that cut of the movie and completely redo it with a more experimental eye.

But Jodorowsky told Business Insider that isn't the whole story. He didn't just give advice to Hopper — he got involved in the cutting, too.

"With the help of an assistant, I sat in font of an editing machine and in two days edited the entire movie," Jodorowsky said. "What was left was a magnificent version."

Hopper didn't settle on Jodorowsky's version. He continued to tinker with the edit, which is what Schiller and Carson found themselves walking into when they began filming Hopper for "The American Dreamer."

"I have great regard for Jodorowsky," Schiller said. "Don't get me wrong, he does incredible experimental films, but I think that f---ed around with Dennis' head. He felt all of a sudden here's somebody I respect and he's telling me I got to do it entirely different. I think that's what destroyed the film."

"A samurai never repents," Jodorowsky said of his version of "The Last Movie. "This truth can hide but cannot ever hurt. One of these days someone will find my version, which I feel would have saved the movie."

Though "The American Dreamer" isn't a straight-up documentary, it's honest when Hopper talks about how audiences will react to "The Last Movie."

"If it's nothing more than 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' Orson Welles' second film that made no money, I'll be a very happy man," Hopper said in the movie. "If the audience doesn't accept it then it will be a long, long, long time before we can dream about that audience that I thought was there."

"In that scene he's already telling us that he's going to fail," Schiller said, looking back on it now.

Following the award-winning Venice premiere in August of 1971, the movie played in New York City, and no one showed up. (Universal executives insisted on Hopper recutting the movie, but with his full control, he refused.) Hopper had made a film that even baffled his core hippie audience. In two weeks, it was gone from theaters.

A year after gracing the cover of Life magazine, Dennis Hopper was now an outcast in Hollywood. Though he'd find acting work, he wouldn't direct another movie for close to a decade.

The rebirth of 'The Last Movie'

“I think my movie, personally, is one of the most important films that have ever been made in America... I don’t know if anyone is going to see it, but I feel the film is going to take care of itself in time and be around as long as there are films.” —Dennis Hopper talking about “The Last Movie” on “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1971

The failure of "The Last Movie" served as a lesson in what became known as "The New Hollywood" of the 1970s. Studios were willing to give control to bright filmmakers eager to tell new stories, but they also wanted to make a profit.

Wasserman's strategy turned out to be flawed. Yes, young audiences rejected conventional stars and Westerns, but they also weren't keen on movies that were too real and obtuse. Later, as the decade and "The New Hollywood" waned, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would pave the way for the new model that sustains the business to this day: the summer blockbuster.

But thanks to Hopper's iconic career, "The Last Movie" has grown more fascinating to audiences who never got a chance to see it.

The movie is far from terrible. Though its jump cutting makes story structure a challenge, in the numerous times I've watched it (if you dig deep on the internet, you can find a bootleg copy), I see a powerful story about the death of the American Dream, though Hopper delivered that message better in "Easy Rider."

The breaking of the fourth wall and improvisation (there are a few scenes that really shine) have a mix of comedy and pathos. And the beautiful cinematography of the Peruvian landscape by "Easy Rider" DP László Kovács and Kris Kristofferson's original songs give off that unmistakable '60s feel.

Hopper saw that the film could have a second life, so in the early 2000s he bought the rights to "The Last Movie" from Universal. For years he held private screenings of the movie (it's also been shown at a few film festivals), and there was even a moment when he and Stern thought of remaking it with Hopper directing once more and a younger actor in the lead. But that idea never materialized into anything serious.

Marin Hopper told Business Insider there is currently no set plan to re-release "The Last Movie," though she's been working to get it off the ground. She said it was something her father was still striving for before dying of prostate cancer at the age of 74.

"It was an exciting time when he got the rights back," Marin said. She recalls her father sending her a pouch of Peruvian blue opals while he was filming the movie when she was a young girl. "He thought it was such an important work."

Hopper hopes to not just resurrect the movie, but also create something that crosses over into other mediums.

"It's our desire to release it in a luxurious way, with an art book, as there are a lot of beautiful set photos, and then there's Kris Kristofferson's songs," she said. "We want to celebrate all of that."

It's still in the "idea stage," but there's hope for this sex-and-drugs-fueled vision yet.

"We're moving along," she adds. "It's all coming soon."

SEE ALSO: The biggest box office hit the year you were born

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You wanna be the very best, like no one ever was?

Take a page from the handbook of Shaylor Duranleau, the cosplayer who became the unexpected star of San Diego Comic-Con with his elaborate Pokémon GO-inspired costume.

When we first spotted Duranleau in the lobby of the convention center, he couldn't make it six feet without being stopped for a photo. On Friday, he dressed as Ash Stormrider, a mash-up of Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum and a member of House Targaryen.

Here's how the look came together. 

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Meet Ash Stormrider, "master of the first generation," "victor of the 'Orange Isles,'" and "first of his type."

"'Pokémon GO' is something I've been training for my entire life," Duranleau tells Tech Insider. "Now it's a reality."

The phenomenon hit when Duranleau was 10 years old, the same age as Ash Ketchum. He says he's been a fan ever since, pre-ordering all the new games and even cosplaying as Pokémon trainers over the years.

Duranleau was inspired to create this brilliant "Pokémon GO" and "Game of Thrones" mash-up of House Targaryen's sigil, a three-headed dragon.

"I do a bunch of mash-ups and they all start with one small idea and it kind of grows from there," he says. "This sigil is a take on House Targaryen's three-headed dragon. This is a three-headed Charizard."

Duranleau designed the graphic himself and ordered a banner online.

His cosplay features three evolutions of Charizard from the expanded universe perched on his shoulders.

Original story here

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Something strange is going on at Universal Studios Hollywood.

The theme park has managed to attract a kind of customer not normally associated with the attraction: millennials.

Jeff Glueck, CEO of Foursquare, published a post on Medium discussing the company's analysis of amusement and theme parks, an $18 billion industry.

It found that the category overall has a pretty slow growth rate of just over 3% this year from Foursquare's US data.

Universal Parks & Resorts, the Comcast-owned company that operates Universal Studios Hollywood, is growing much faster than its competitors thanks to new attractions and innovations targeted to the millennial generation.

Foursquare found that in the last two years, millennials made up almost half of Universal Studios Hollywood's entire attendance.

When the theme park opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter three months ago, millennial visit growth for the opening week was 63%, leveling off the following week to 58%, higher than a baseline week before the attraction opened. When The Walking Dead attraction launched just two weeks ago on July 4, the zombies drove a 35% surge in millennials compared to the week before.

"We can predict at least a 10% growth for the SoCal park this year," Glueck said.

As millennials are now the world's largest demographic, building relevant products to get them "off the couch and into theme parks" is key, according to Glueck.

"More broadly, Universal represents a case study for companies hoping to reach this critical demographic," said Glueck.

Foursquare, the company behind social-media check-in app Swarm, has had success with predictive insight in the past with its own unique set of data. The tech company used foot-traffic data, which includes explicit "check ins" and passive location trails to accurately predict footfall, and therefore sales, at McDonald's, Chipotle and Apple.

Interestingly, not only can Foursquare use location intelligence to predict a rise in visit share and ticket sales, but the company can look at the theme park's dynamic pricing structure aligned with visit data to pinpoint the best days of the years to visit various parks.

In the case of Universal Studios Hollywood, the company found the fewest crowds and cheapest pricing through the remainder of 2016 to be in early December. If that wasn't precise enough, it pinpointed the single best date to be December 8, 2016.

For summertime visitors, weekdays during the second half of August are predicted to be the best days to visit.

The service offered by Foursquare is evidence of the growing use of "alternative data" on Wall Street. This world comprises obscure data sets that can be turned into tradable information. The sets range from weather reports and web traffic to satellite imagery and social-media data.

Alternative data is increasingly being used by traditional long-short, quantitative, hedge, pension, and mutual funds to track industries ranging from construction and retail to tech and real estate.

SEE ALSO: There's a hot new trend that could change the face of investing

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At just past the halfway point of 2016, it's safe to say this has already been an exceptional year in music.

Surprise album releases from Beyoncé and Radiohead electrified the industry this spring, and Drake's "Views" has been a massive hit on the charts since its release in April. 

As I scrolled through my own music library, though, revisiting which albums grabbed me the most in the first half of 2016, none of those three acts actually made it on to my list of favorite LPs.  

Read on to see which albums made my top 10: 

SEE ALSO: Here's the most popular music artist in every state, according to Pandora

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10. Kendrick Lamar — "untitled unmastered"

Despite being a collection of throwaway tracks from his 2015 masterpiece “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Kendrick Lamar’s “untitled unmastered” plays remarkably well as one cohesive body of work. The album came into being after fans (most notably LeBron James) clamored for studio versions of Lamar's outstanding series of “Untitled” performances on late night television — tracks which now rank among the rapper’s best work. Perfectly imperfect in its execution, this project further demonstrates the singular vision and artistic genius of Kendrick Lamar. 

Standout Tracks:  "untitled 03,""untitled 06,""untitled 08"

9. Andrew Bird — "Are You Serious"

Andrew Bird, a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, released his most accessible album to date with this year's "Are You Serious." Focusing his eccentric lyrics and eclectic sounds into traditional pop-song structures, Bird produced some of his strongest melodic work to date on this album. Simultaneously inviting, challenging and altogether well-wrought, "Are You Serious" is an elegant addition to Bird’s accomplished and prolific catalog of music.

Standout tracks:"Capsized,""Roma Fade"

8. dvsn — "Sept. 5th"

The debut album from an alternative R&B group that consists of Paul Jeffries (aka Nineteen85, the producer of Drake's mega-hits "One Dance" and "Hotline Bling") and singer Daniel Delay, dvsn's "Sept. 5th" is a refreshing and sonically compelling body of work. Delay's falsetto and melodic sensibilities flow seamlessly with Nineteen85's diverse soundscapes of guitars, synthesizers and heavy bass. Following in the footsteps of The Weeknd, Drake, and other successful Canadian pop acts, dvsn manages to incorporate and transcend its influences on this wholly original debut. 

Standout tracks: "Try/Effortless,""With Me"

Warner Bros. has kicked off its three-hour movie panel at Comic-Con Saturday and after bringing out the directors for its next several superhero movies, the studio revealed the first trailer for "Wonder Woman" online.

Right after its Comic-Con debut, Warner Bros., who has had trouble with leaked trailers online in the past, revealed the trailer online.

Starring Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, the film will tell the heroine's origin story. "House of Cards" actress Robin Wright, Chris Pine ("Star Trek Beyond") and Connie Nielsen will also star.

"Wonder Woman" will be in theaters June 23, 2017.

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Warner Bros. surprised fans with some footage for next year's big DC team-up movie, "Justice League."

The movie's only been in production for a short time, but director Zack told the crowd in attendance they prepped footage for fans in attendance. 

Warner Bros. shortly released the footage afterward online which shows Batman and Wonder Woman going around recruiting members for the Justice League. Ezra Miller's The Flash was easy to convince by Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck). 

"Justice League" will be in theaters November 17, 2017.

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In order to boldly go where no one has gone before, you've got to be a pretty awesome leader.

Over the years, the "Star Trek" franchise has given us many characters who've acted as inspirational, pioneering leaders.

Throughout the franchise, these captains and commanders have had very different approaches at times. In his book "Primal Leadership," Daniel Goleman (along with coauthors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee) revealed that people tend to fall into one of six key leadership categories.

Here are these six emotional leadership styles, as exemplified by different "Star Trek" commanders. If you can effectively master one of these styles, you'll be setting yourself up to live long and prosper:

SEE ALSO: Lucille Ball is the reason we have 'Star Trek' — here's what happened

The visionary leader

Captain Jean-Luc Picard always promotes a clear vision of what Starfleet is all about. He motivates his crew members to be the best they can be can empowers them with the knowledge they need to get out there and make it so.

Picard is leading at a time when Federation ideologies and practices have matured. In dealing with threats like the Borg and complex relationships with traditional enemies like the Klingons and Romulans, he provides excellent insight. Visionary leaders are great for times when a new direction is needed.

The coaching leader

Captain Jonathan Archer is definitely a coaching leader. He's got to be, as the captain in command of the first Starfleet starship. Archer helps his crew members recognize their strengths and weaknesses. He also forms close connections with his team, even coming to an understanding with his Vulcan first officer T'Pol, whom he initially had a contentious relationship with.

Like some coaching leaders, his style can come across as micromanagement sometimes — chronologically, Archer is the first captain to start accompanying landing crews on potentially dangerous missions. Still, all in all, his methods help lay the groundwork for Starfleet's long-term capabilities.

The affiliative leader

Captain Kathryn Janeway is a classic affiliative leader. She's all about creating harmony within her organization and healing rifts between different groups.

She demonstrates this by bringing together her crew and the rebel Maquis faction at the start of the series. Janeway even leads her Voyager team to band together with adversaries such as the Borg and Species 8472.

It's here! Marvel just debuted a new trailer for its next movie, "Doctor Strange," starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme and it looks trippy and wonderful.

It's unlike any Marvel movie we've seen yet as it will deal with the mystical and magical. In the second trailer for the film we get our first good look at the movie's villain, played by Mads Mikkelsen ("Hannibal").

The film definitely has an "Inception" vibe.

"Doctor Strange" is in theaters November 4.

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Freshman year of college, I quit TV. OK, to be fair, by that time it was streaming — but the point is: I stopped.

Up until then, TV had always been a big part of my life. Growing up, I would always come home from school, plop down on the futon, and flip through the television channels.

Watching TV became a bonding activity. My brothers, mom, and I would sit around the TV and watch a show or two together every night. By high school, I had my own laptop and started streaming episodes of my favorite shows off of Hulu.

This habit intensified when I got to college. I would return to my dorm room and binge watch, burning through one episode after another. It got to the point where I was watching more shows than I could even keep up with: Grey’s Anatomy, The Mindy Project, NCIS, Law & Order: SVU, the list goes on.

Was it an addiction? I’m not sure. But every time I flipped open my computer screen, a sense of anxiety would swell in my chest. Anxiety that watching TV wasn’t productive, that I was wasting my life consuming the carefully constructed lives of fictional TV characters instead of building my own.

And so I stopped. I couldn’t tell you the exact date I stopped, just that one day I decided to take a break from watching TV for a while, and I guess that break never really ended. This is what has happened since I stopped watching TV over two years ago:

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1. Some people don’t know how to respond when I tell them I don’t really watch TV anymore.

I think some people see my rejection of television as some sort of moral action, some sort of pious self-denial. But it’s not like that at all — this choice just happens to make me the most happy with the life I’m living.

2. I've missed out on a lot of pop culture.

Entertainment is deeply embedded into our culture. By not watching TV, I essentially threw out one of the easiest ice breakers to reach for when first meeting people. I have to find other common ground to connect on. But often I’ve found that it’s actually led to more meaningful conversations. 

And, no. I've never seen an episode of "Game of Thrones."

3. But I no longer feel like I have to “keep up with” anything.

With entire seasons available instantaneously on Netflix these days, I guess I’m not even sure if people have to wait to watch most shows anymore. In any case, I like being free of the commitment to stay up-to-date on shows or to finish a series.

Mark Cuban likes to call Tower Paddle Boards, a San Diego-based company that sells stand-up paddleboards, one of his best "Shark Tank" investments ever.

The company's growth explains why. When Cuban invested $150,000 for 30% of the company in 2011, Tower Paddle Boards just had $260,000 in revenue. This year it expects to hit nearly $10 million in revenue.

But there's another reason that makes the 11-person startup special: Tower Paddle Boards is super efficient, having achieved that growth by working only five hours a day.

"Mark's response was positive when I first told him about the 5 hour workday," Tower Paddle Boards CEO Stephan Aarstol tells Business Insider. "He looks at it as, 'OK, it works for your company, but it’s not going to work for everybody."

Aarstol believes that a shortened workday could motivate employees to work more efficiently. And he is proving to be right through his own company, Tower Paddle Boards, which continues to expand, even after a year of rolling out the five-hour workday. Last year, it was named the fastest-growing private company in San Diego. Aarstol even published a book titled "The Five Hour Workday" this month.

"Our productivity just went off the charts. We're still growing, and we're still super profitable. There are no downsides," Aarstol says.

Replacing an outdated standard

The inspiration for a five-hour workday came from Aarstol's own experience. Having run multiple startups over the past 15 years, Aarstol always felt like eight-hour workdays were an outdated standard.

He felt like a lot of time was being wasted at work. By forcing people to work fewer hours, he saw employees getting more creative and efficient, all the while achieving the same level of work. 

"Having that constraint on time forces you to come up with creative solutions. Everybody gets that with money — we’re just applying that to time," he says.

So last September, after a three-month trial period, Aarstol rolled out a five-hour workday full time to his company. All 11 employees now come in to work at 8 a.m. every day and leave by 1 p.m. And despite shorter store hours, his sales numbers haven't dipped at all, he says.

Aarstol says the best thing about having a five-hour workday is that it's a great recruitment and retention tool. Employees love it because it allows them to spend more time pursuing other activities. It ends up boosting morale and nurturing more creativity.

"When you talk about knowledge workers, it’s about managing energy. How much real work gets done in a day?" he argues.

Aarstol believes his five-hour workday idea should be applied to more companies across the whole country, which is why he published a book about it. It boosts productivity, helps hire smarter people, and creates a healthier lifestyle, he says.

"This is sort of what kind of life do you want to live question," he says. "It’s a choice. We can create a world where we’re off by 1 p.m. every day. This shift is needed."

SEE ALSO: This perfect SAT scorer got rejected by the Ivy Leagues, but got on 'Shark Tank' and is now backed by Mark Cuban

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Malcolm Gladwell is angry, and he wants you to know why.

That's not to say that the bestselling author walks around in a rage all day — he's actually quite collected and soft-spoken most of the time, and ready to make a joke. But in his new hit podcast "Revisionist History," he explores certain topics in a way that readers of his books "The Tipping Point" and "Outliers" may find surprising.

Take, for example, the way he devotes three episodes to ways he considers the United States' education system is failing low-income students. To him, it's a subject worthy of nothing less than moral outrage.

We recently sat down with Gladwell to discuss what he wants to achieve with his podcast — which he confirmed has been approved for a second season — and how his worldview has evolved since the massive success of "The Tipping Point" launched him into pop culture 16 years ago.

We also discussed two of the biggest stories in America today, the presidential election and the public's relationship with the police.

When he got mad about a perceived injustice he was talking about, he'd raise his voice and throw up his hands, but often before cracking a smile, enjoying the energy of the discussion.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Richard Feloni: With "Revisionist History," what are you finding that you can do with the podcast medium that you can't do with a book?

Malcolm Gladwell: There's an immediacy to it. I went on my Twitter this morning. The latest episode dropped last night at midnight and by 7:30 a.m. this morning there's already a long stream of people commenting on it on Twitter. That's very different from a book, which takes a long time to kind of gain traction.

Also, there's more freedom in the medium, more freedom to use emotion, to be outraged. A lot of these episodes are angry — or even funny — in a way that my books are rarely. My podcast unleashes my id.

Feloni: There are recurring topics that you keep coming back to in your career and that you have really strong feelings about. How do you pick your battles?

Gladwell: When it comes to battle picking, you ask yourself two questions: What is something that not enough people are talking about, and what is something that I believe I have something unique to say about?

So the battles I've chosen are not the most important ones facing humanity. There are lots of issues more important than where billionaires donate their money, to use the example I discuss in the latest episode of the podcast. But I do think it's something we don't talk about enough, and I think that after 15 years of writing books and 20 years at The New Yorker, I now have a kind of platform that allows me to be heard when I sound off on these subjects. And I think it would be a crime not to use that platform.

And I think as a Canadian I do have something unique to say about America's educational system, which to an outsider is completely absurd. I mean, it's so nuts, that you kind of have to be from a different place to sort of speak to its inherent absurdity.

So I chose to dedicate three episodes of "Revisionist History" to what's wrong with the American educational system because it fits my two criteria for battles.

I like to go back and forth between my tried and true hobby horses and new things. I don't want to be like the angry old guy in the corner who is always ranting and raving about the same things — but I don't mind doing that just a little bit!

Feloni: You reach conclusions in your work in a way that prompts your audience to either do something or see the world in a different light. Do you find that always shaping these theses affects how you live your own life?

Gladwell: Since becoming a journalist, each time I engage with subjects I become more radicalized.

If you met me as a 21 year old, I was actually conservative. And I would describe my politics back then as quite complacent. I am now substantially to the left of my 21-year-old self. But it's not so much about political positioning as it is that I'm now substantially more outspoken than I was back then.

Writing about these various things has made me a little bit angrier, and it's certainly fueled my passion about things.

Feloni: Can you give me an instance where a certain topic has made you angrier?

Gladwell: I did a piece for The New Yorker in 2009 about concussions in football, and I am a serious football fan. I had watched football for 25 years without ever entertaining the notion that I was morally complicit in what the game was doing to people. And then I wrote that article, which made me think about, "Well, wait a minute. What does it mean for me to sit and watch and give my implicit consent to the economic enterprise that is football when the game itself is harming a huge number of its participants?" That's a very uncomfortable thought. It's not a thought that sports fans normally have to ask themselves.

I continue to watch football but now I'm conflicted about it! I think I am in the process of divorcing myself from the game. It's hard because I'm a serious fan. But every year I watch less and every year I feel guiltier about the football that I do watch, and the delight I take in people harming themselves. It's just crazy.

There are a million other sports you can watch that do not involve the physical destruction of the participants, right? I actually find myself watching a lot more basketball and a lot less football. So I am finding more productive outlets for my sports fanaticism.

That's a small example. But also, I give money to things that I think are worthy causes, and my definition of a worthy cause has been profoundly shaped by a lot of my writing.

Feloni: There's a section in your book "David and Goliath" where you mention that your views on affirmative action have evolved since you first publicly explored them in "Blink" eight years earlier. What's an idea commonly associated with you that your readers may be surprised to hear you no longer believe in?

Gladwell: In "Tipping Point," there's a chapter trying to explain the fall of crime in New York City. I talk quite positively about the broken windows theory [which states that cracking down on small crimes prevents larger crimes]. And that was written at a time, the late 1990s, where that idea was very much en vogue. I think that it had a place in New York's transformation, but I do think that in New York, and other places as well, that idea was taken too far. It led to a kind of punitive policing, which I think has clearly become a big problem.

By "David and Goliath," published three years ago, I was talking about the opposite, about a woman in the NYPD who has had extraordinary results in reducing juvenile crime rates in Brownsville, Brooklyn by reaching out to the community, building relationships with the families of young offenders, and winning them over.

That's a case where my views have evolved substantially, and I hope that people don't take that chapter in "The Tipping Point" too seriously, because I just don't think it's relevant to 2016.

Feloni: I would assume that these ideas about the relationship between authority and the people it is intended to protect has been front of mind when we have a week of violence in Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, and Dallas.

Gladwell: A theme of "David and Goliath" is this idea of legitimacy, that civil societies work when the citizenry perceives their governing institutions to be legitimate, and that is based on three principles: fairness — that everyone is treated the same; transparency — that you know exactly what the consequences of certain actions are; and responsiveness — when you feel that you can stand up and complain and that you will be heard.

What the police do doesn't work unless the population believes in what the police are doing and believes in the legitimacy of the institution of the police force.

So the first task of a police force is not to fight crime and enforce the law. It is to establish legitimacy with the law-abiding citizenry and then fight crime and enforce the law. I think that's the issue.

When we look at the events in Ferguson and those that follow, the sad fact is that in many places in this country, the police have lost their legitimacy. They're no longer perceived to be transparent, predictable, open, and listening to the population, particularly in the African-American community.

At the same time, I think it's important to understand that we are talking about a small percentage of the police in this country and the populations in this country. By and large I think the policing of this country is done in a really good way. I think that we have a lot to be proud of, but I think we've gone awry a bit in the last couple of years.

The militarization of police, and the particular defensiveness of the police has led to these really troubling incidents and I don't think it's a trivial issue. I think that restoring the legitimacy of law enforcement has got to be one of the single most important tasks facing the country.

Feloni: From what you've seen and researchers you've spoken with, what are some things you think could be done to restore legitimacy?

Gladwell: One of the things I think the police have to do is to stop behaving like armies. There's a really brilliant writer named Radley Balko who's been writing a lot about this.

I saw that one photo recently of a young African-American woman standing calmly and peacefully in front of a group of cops in full on, not just riot gear, but equipment that made them look like they were in Fallujah! You can't have that — you can't have cops with automatic weapons and armored cars looking like they are about to take out ISIS in the middle of an American town. I mean, that's just crazy. I suppose you could make a case that they are under siege, but none of that is worth it. They are driving a wedge between themselves and the American population.

Every cop will tell you that their real job is being a social worker. That's what they do all day. The large majority of police officers in this country never even draw their gun, let alone fire it. They do conflict resolution, right? And if that's their job, why do they need to look like they're an occupying force?

The one thing that came out of Dallas was that the police chief reminded us what the real role of the police is — talk about a guy who with grace and dignity and wisdom took an incredibly volatile situation and showed what intelligent law enforcement ought to be doing, which is restoring peace and harmony to the communities that they are obliged to serve. There are plenty of police officers out there who do the job right and I think our job is just to elevate those people as role models.

Feloni: With the Republican National Convention this week we've officially seen Donald Trump rise from someone who many wrote off to now the GOP candidate.

Gladwell: Trump is an innovator who has shown how out of step the political establishment was. Which I think, probably, in the long term will be healthy. We have to figure out how to reinvigorate our political institutions and he's demonstrating to us the urgency of that task.

My biggest reaction to the convention is that I'm always surprised when people don't take the long view. So you have an extraordinarily successful democracy that's been around for going on 250 years, and it's been successful because of the strength of its institutions, and because people have respected those institutions.

The kind of rhetoric that people are using now strikes me as incredibly damaging. You may hate Hillary Clinton and you may have good reason for hating Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is one person who even if she's elected will be gone one day and you still have the task of keeping American democracy going.

You know, do I think a Trump presidency would be bad news? Yeah, I do, I'll be honest. Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!

Feloni: From "The Tipping Point" forward, the most common critique of your work is that you take a very complex topic, oversimplify it, and then draw conclusions that may be incorrect or harmful. What's your response to these critics?

Gladwell: Well, I would say first of all, anyone who wants to challenge the status quo always gets that response. Ninety percent of the time, that's just bull. That's just the way in which people choose to prop up their own privilege or their own particular position. So mostly I shrug it off.

And then other times I'll say why is simplifying things such a negative accusation? That's my job. That's called journalism! There is nothing more common than critics of journalists accusing them of practicing journalism. It is our function in the world to take things that are complicated and render them in a form that non-experts can follow and make sense of.

Do I occasionally oversimplify? Of course I do! That is my job as well. Sometimes you have to oversimplify.

If the choice is between keeping an issue in the dark because most of us can never access it, or reducing some of the nuance past the point where experts feel comfortable, I will always choose the latter. If you can introduce a topic to someone in a form that is digestible, then they can start adding back the nuance. We can have a conversation and we can start talking about the complexity, but you've got to start the conversation. My job, the way I see it, is to start the conversation.

I did a podcast episode on the liberal arts colleges Bowdoin and Vassar, and I used as my metaphor for how amenities have gotten out of control at American colleges the fact that the food at Bowdoin is over the top [and that means less money for scholarships]. Is that the whole story about amenities? No. I'm very plain in the episode it's not the whole thing, but I'm using that as my way in. I want people to say, "Wait a minute, what does that say about American colleges that you can get food at liberal arts colleges that is as good as what you would get at the Four Seasons?" Once you get it, once you grasp that point, then we can start to have a much more sophisticated argument.

There are some people, who I'll charitably call snobs, who are dismissive of any conversation that doesn't begin with the full level of complexity. That's just not how the world works.

Feloni: In the sixth episode of "Revisionist History," you revisit the argument that millionaires and billionaires who donate money to rich universities are wasting their money, which could do more good at much less wealthy institutions. It's an argument that you publicly started on Twitter last year when you criticized hedge fund manager John Paulson for his $400 million donation to Harvard. Business Insider then collected reactions from some of Wall Street's biggest power players upset with you. Did you see that?

Gladwell: Yes! That was hilarious. Round up all these incredibly, really smart and sophisticated investors who have made billions of dollars and get them talking about a relatively complex social issue and they sound like idiots!

They give money to Harvard or Stanford because all their friends pat them on the back, they get their name on a prestigious building, and they get associated with all of the incredible brand value of those institutions, but they haven't thought, clearly, about the social justice implications of what they're doing. And they get uncomfortable when someone says, well wait a minute, you have not thought as seriously about your philanthropy as you have about your investment decisions and maybe you ought to take it as seriously.

You know, John Paulson thought deeply and brilliantly about the mortgage meltdown of 2007/2008. If he devoted even a fraction of the time, energy, and thought to this philanthropy as he did to that, the world would be such a better place. All I'm saying is you guys have IQs of 160, you have billions of dollars in the bank, and you are accustomed to deep and thoughtful analysis — for God's sake, think about your philanthropy, don't just write a check to the fanciest institution you can find!

I thought it was profoundly telling that instead of responding to that criticism by saying, "Actually, you know what, maybe I should think twice about where I give my $100 million," they got all defensive.

Feloni: What's your advice to high school students considering college, or recent college graduates embarking on their career?

Gladwell: This is connected to the point I make in the episode of "Revisionist History" where I compare how Bowdoin and Vassar spend their money.

What I would like is for high school students in this country not to ask the question what school has the best reputation and can make their résumé look the shiniest, but ask which school is doing the most for the United States? And that's why I said in that episode, don't go to Bowdoin, go to Vassar, and don't let your friends go to Bowdoin, and don't give money to Bowdoin! It's a deliberately provocative statement, but the gist of it is that you get the system that you choose. And if we want an educational system that takes social justice more seriously, we have to choose that.

And my advice for college graduates is don't reflexively give money to your alma mater, something particular to Americans that I find extraordinary. Take Princeton, for example — it has more money on a per capita basis than any educational institution in the history of educational institutions. There is no scenario where it can spend all the money its endowment generates every year. If there is anyone who gives a single dollar to Princeton, they have completely lost their mind. I will say that without reservation.

When people reflexively write checks to institutions that have billions of dollars in the bank, they are essentially committing a moral crime. Your money could do good in this world and you're choosing instead to waste it. People have to do a better job of that. You've got to find places where your money's going to do some good and direct your dollars towards that institution.

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Terry Crews has spent his career destroying stereotypes.

After his pro football career ended in the 1990s, all 240-pounds of him went into acting. Although he was initially pegged as being the big tough guy in many of his early movies, he has since been able to establish himself as a unique funnyman, which includes being a regular on the TV show “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and playing the now iconic role (thanks to the presidential election) of Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in the cult comedy “Idiocracy.”

In his latest venture, Crews decided to strip the stereotypes pegged to the city of Detroit for the Travel Channel’s series “Celebrity Adventure Club.”

The show is simple: the network asks where a famous person wants to travel to and they make it happen. Crews passed on exotic locations and returned to the region where he was born and raised to show its resurgence. The episode, premiering Saturday, looks at Detroit and his childhood home in Flint, Michigan to show the ways the community is thriving after years of economic and, in the case of Flint’s water issue, ecological hardship.

Business Insider chatted with Crews about his spotlight on Detroit as well as why he keeps his political views to himself, the reason the anti-Trump fake ads he was supposed to make with the "Idiocracy" creators won't happen, and how the police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling inspired him to tell his experience of having a police officer point a gun at him.

Business Insider: How did Travel Channel pitch you being part of “Celebrity Adventure Club?”

Terry Crews: They were picking certain celebrities and I was very honored. They had a really nice list and the fact that they came to me was a big honor. So they basically said I could do a doc on any place I wanted. 

BI: Anywhere in the world?

Crews: Anywhere in the world. But then it hit me there's one place in the United States that everyone has heard of but no one really knows, and it's Detroit. Unless you're from there you don't really know Detroit. It has never been a travel destination. People are hyper-alert to the negative things that have happened there, but if you go there you see people riding bikes and birds chirping, it's a beautiful place. So I wanted to give another view and show the good things that are happening.

BI: You showcase so many things in the city, was there one that stood out for you?

Crews: The farming. That was crazy. You can't get more inner-city than Detroit, and the fact that these areas were being repurposed [as farms], and there were amazing people who knew all about farming and how it went. And they produce so much food they have to volunteer people to take the food!

BI: You also highlight your hometown of Flint, which has gone through a lot recently with the water problems. How is Flint now and how is your family?

Crews: The water situation was going on the whole time we filmed there. But while we filmed it turned out that was the last time I saw my mom in person alive. She died four months after we filmed there. So I decided this is not about the water crisis, this is about my mom. There was enough news on the water crisis, so this was about my mom and my family. I never knew this would be the last time I would see her alive so it was a very personal thing for me to edit. We thought about bringing up the whole water thing but we decided it has already been handled.

BI: But outside of the show, how is the situation in Flint now?

Crews: My father is still there. And people ask, ‘Where is Terry Crews on the issue of the water crisis?’ and the way I felt was I saw so many people using the situation for their own agenda so I made contributions anonymously. I didn't want "Terry Crews shows up with a truck full of water," because that doesn't solve the problem. I lived in Flint. You give the whole city a truck full of water they will just need it again next week. It's not just the pipes, the whole system is bad. I stayed out of it [publicly] because I didn't want to be a political football. Listen, Flint has been going through this for 30 years, man. When I was in high school there were problems. That's what made Michael Moore's career. Flint has had bad stories for 30 years.

BI: So you wanted to bring some positivity to the region with the show. 

Crews: Exactly. I'm an incurable optimist. You have to see the good. You have to find what your thankful for to get energy. If you concentrate on what's wrong all the time you will run out.

BI: Is it still hard to believe that Donald Trump, a real presidential nominee, is being compared to your "Idiocracy" character, president Camacho?

Crews: Wow, it went non-stop. Believe me I've been hearing it every day and even at the convention I was like "This is a Camacho opening!" [Laughs] It blew my mind. No on knew how prophetic it was when we were doing [“Idiocracy”]. Again, on an optimistic note, I really really think America needs to see what’s happening. I think now everybody sees the game. When you saw the whole plagiarized speech it was so "whoa, that really, happened!" And I think now it forces people to really make decisions. To me, this stuff only makes you better. And you have to put it out there. But I am shocked it was so quick, that's all. I thought it would take 400 more years. [Laughs]

BI: Is it true Mike Judge, the director of “Idiocracy,” is doing anti-Trump fake ads? Is Camacho coming back?

Crews: You know what happened, it was killed because Etan Cohen, who wrote [“Idiocracy”], went out and said that we're making anti-Trump ads, but we weren't. This is not what we were doing. I'm not anti-Trump, I'm not anti-Hillary [Clinton]. I'm not pro anybody. What happened was we were going to do a whole thing about everyone. We were literally going to show a cage match between Camacho, Hillary, Trump, [Ted] Cruz, all those people. It was going to be funny. But when you make it an anti-Trump ad what's funny about that? Now you killed the comedy. When you have totally picked a side, there's no funny anymore. So I thought he killed it. Even Mike said it, he was like, 'Dude, I don't know what possessed him to call them anti-Trump ads because that's not what they were.' And I said, 'I know.'

But it's funny because the media made Trump. When it was good for ratings you pumped it up. Now you complain. It's too late. And let me say again, I'm not anti-Trump or anti-Hillary, but what the media has to understand is if you live by the sword you die by the sword. Etan Cohen got happy and was like now we're going to knock him down and I was like "I'm not doing that." I never built him up in the first place. 

BI: So at one time you guys were going to do something but since the debates have ended you've squashed it. 

Crews: Squashed. It's killed. And everyone was coming to me saying "Can't wait for you to do the ad," and I was like, “I’m not doing any of that.” Everyone wanted me to go against Trump, and I'm like, I’m not your gun. You're not going to use me to knock him down. I’m on no side at all and that's the clear message I'm trying to say.

BI: And it doesn't sound like you want to make public who you’d vote for.

Crews: That's my private decision. And people are angry. I'm just like I'm not getting into that. I'm not that dude. I will never stand for any agenda. Because what if the side you're on is wrong? Then you're stuck. I can't do it. 

BI: You gave a very moving Facebook video post following the Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shootings. What motivated you to post your thoughts?

Crews: My heart broke watching those videos of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. And I just felt, you can't tell me there's another way. That's all I wanted to say. And with the media, and the coverage, when are you hyping it up to a point where now subconsciously it makes people who are not black feel safer that this is happening? And that's just a theory. I didn't accuse anyone, people were coming at me on Facebook about it. But then on the other side, as a black man, subconsciously, it makes me hyper-vigilant. If I get pulled over tomorrow I'm thinking about the videos, I'm thinking I'm going to get shot. And the day I posted that video that night the Dallas shootings happened, I couldn't believe it. And that's the hyper-vigilance I spoke about. 

BI: And some people will be reading this and think, what's celebrity Terry Crews know? But you state in your video that you were pulled over once in LA and the officer walked up to your car with a gun drawn.

Crews: Yeah. This was my first time in LA and the cop had his gun pointed at me. And I remember I had my hands at ten and two [on the steering wheel]. And I said I'm not going to move my hands because I knew he could kill me. And I was just like why does this police officer have his gun out? But it was after the LA riots, so maybe it was police being hyper-vigilant. But I knew to be calm. I didn't speak until I was spoken to. I wasn't going to give him a reason. I mean, just as a Caucasian male walks through an alley that's full of gang members and he feels very intimidated, I used to feel that way walking through a bank. A black man walking into a bank and you have all of these older white gentleman looking at me, I felt very intimidated. These are the realities of how you think and you don't even know why. The hyper-vigilance. One by one I've gone through the things in my own life in my own head that take me out. And that's what I was trying to tell people with the Facebook video. To think things out. And another thing we need are good police officers, and there are a lot of them, to stand up and say this is not me. That would heal so much. But a lot of times these people don't say anything. And it gets people more ramped up. 

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