WEBVTT

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Old he is, folks, it's
show people fake good money to see this

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movie. When they go out to
a theater, they want cold SODA's corner

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in No monsters in the Projection Booth
Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring? Shut

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it off. Hey, folks,
welcome to a special episode of The Projection

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Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with

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producer Adam Leipzig all about his career, well highlights from it, because he's

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had one heck of a career and
he's still going strong. It's great talking

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with him, and I hope that
you enjoyed this inner. How did you

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start in the business. You've had
such an incredible career. I've always wanted

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to do something for audiences. From
my earliest recollection. I started wanting to

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be in theater and then actually was
in theater. After I left college,

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I became part of the company that
was then called the Los Angeles Actors Theater,

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now known as the Los Angeles Theater
Center. I was one of the

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people who built the Los Angeles Theater
Center and had a great seven year run

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in theater. I produced more than
three hundred plays, shows, music events,

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poetry events, dance events, performance
art events back at the time when

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performance art was a thing called performance
art, and at a certain point I

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just wanted to work for larger audiences. So in effect, I walked across

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the street into movie studio land landed
a job at Disney Studios, and thereby

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hangs a tale. Tell me about
your involved with the Olympics. I was

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reading a little bit about that.
That sounds fascinating. In nineteen eighty four,

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Los Angeles hosted the Olympics, and
part of the things that happens with

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the Olympics each Olympic here is that
there is also an arts component. There

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is an Olympic Arts Festival. At
the time, the gentleman who had been

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appointed to run the Olympic Arts Festival
was Robert Fitzpatrick, who was the dean

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or president of cal Arts. And
he did something pretty amazing for which we

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should all always be grateful. He
brought amazing international artists to Los Angeles,

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including Pina Bausch and Georgia Strailer and
Peter Brooke. And that's when search de

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Sole first left Canada and came to
the United States. So he did all

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of those things, but he deliberately
or just subconsciously fully excluded Los Angeles artists,

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and this did not sit well with
Los Angeles artists, and we had

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a series of meetings and how I
became the spokesperson for the Los Angeles Arts

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Contingent to ensure that we were represented
during the Olympic Arts Festival, which ended

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up happening, and it was great. The mix of local and international was

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fantastic. The international artists were able
to experience Los Angeles creativity, and we

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Los Angeles artists saw work we had
never seen before and probably never would have

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seen because we couldn't afford the international
plane ticket. When you joined Disney in

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late eighties, what was the state
of the company back then? Because I

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know they've gone through so many changes
and just so many regime changes over the

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years. This was really the first
regime that we think of as contemporary Disney.

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What was the state of the company. You would need a microscope.

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There were eight people at the studio, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, five

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people, and met I was at
the far bottom of that totem pole.

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And the company hadn't made an animated
movie in forever. We hadn't made a

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movie that grows more than one hundred
million dollars. Ever, there haven't been

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a Disney Live action movie forever,
and under their leadership, we reinvented the

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studio. We reinvented the Disney Live
Action brand with one of my very first

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films, which was called Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids. This is also

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the time that a Little Mermaid and
Lion King were made, which reinvented the

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Disney animated brand, and it was
a pretty great time. Honey, I

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Shrunk the Kids. I remember that
was pretty subversive in its original tone,

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but then got toned down a little
bit to be more of a kid's movie.

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Is that correct? Or am I
completely off base? I don't think

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that we really toned it down.
I think it's about how old you were

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when you saw it, at what
you understood and read between the lines.

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So if you look at the movie, it's no different today. This is

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one of the amazing things, Mike, right. We movies stay fixed,

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they don't change, and we see
them at an interval of a decade or

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two decades and it seems like a
different movie. But we changed, the

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movie didn't change. So in Honey, I Strike the Kids, the husband

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and wife have separated. Clearly the
marriage is not working, the family is

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falling apart, and the psychological representation
of that is that dad has ignored the

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kids so much they can't even see
them. How do you represent that in

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movies? They're the size of the
fingernail on your little figure. So all

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of that is there, and actually
all that psychological truth is there. And

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I know that as the adults working
on the movie, these are things that

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we talked about a lot. I
know that as adults watching the movie,

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adults got it. And I also
know that a lot of that psychology is

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embedded in the film and you don't
really have to understand it to enjoy the

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movie. Where was Disney had two
when it came to the more adult fear

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you were talking about, You're an
adult, you understand it. But Disney,

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I've read that line between adult and
kids films and it feels like now

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they have a pretty good balance for
it. But how was it back then

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for you? At that time,
we add we had another label. We

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had a label called Touchdone Pictures,
So movies that did not fall under Family

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Fair gave out under the Touchdown Moniker
even though they were all made by the

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same group of people. They were
just branded in a somewhat different way,

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so the audience would know. So
the audience would that what the movie was

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going to be, who was going
to be for. And I think we

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did something very successful in that we
really relaunched the Disney brand because the Disney

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brand to have great meeting. I
think that the Disney brand is still the

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only brand that means something to an
audience that when you see that magic Castle

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at the beginning of a trailer or
the beginning of the movie, you know

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that you're going to get a certain
kind of entertainment. And I think that's

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still the case from what I understand. You helped Shepherd through quite a few

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projects and some things that we've even
talked about on the show before, but

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one that we haven't covered yet was
that Poets Society. That was huge for

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me when I was a young person. You were saying that that's one of

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the movies that no matter where I
go in the world and someone in Google

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stocks me and sees that I was
involved in that film, there's always somebody

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who's seen that movie. And it
doesn't matter what generation they're from. People

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have seen that movie and it's really
wonderful. Deadpost Society was the first script

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that Tom Shulman wrote. He won
the Academy Award for writing that script.

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Based on that script, we ended
up hiring Tom to write Honey, A

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Strength the Kids. There's a direct
connection between these films, and it was

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the first time that I was able
to work with Peter. I also worked

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with Peter on his most recent film, which was now about a decade ago.

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It was called The Way Back.
Yeah, Deadposts. It still holds

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up. It's a very significant movie
and inspires a lot of people. I

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know that there was already world according
to carp but I think Dead Poet Society

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really helps cement Robin Williams in people's
minds as being a very versatile actor.

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And then you even worked with him
again with Good Morning Vietnam. Robin could

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do anything. He was that smart, that fast, that witty, that

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verbal, that great sense of play. He always had shining eyes. And

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I was in New York when I
got a text that he had died,

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and I just went to the floor. I couldn't believe the very person was

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very meaningful in my life. Are
you still working for Disney when you're doing

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things like roommates or the associate or
I'm working sideways for Disney. Looked so

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what had happened Those eight people that
were part of the company when I joined.

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When I was there were seven plus
me at the very bottom of the

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Dunam pole. Over the course of
a period of time, the company got

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bigger. Those seven people expand into
one hundred to thirty people, into three

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different divisions, and I got promoted
up and up, and at a certain

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point I wasn't making movies. I
was supervised people who made movies, and

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I had to stay out on the
lot, and I was and I had

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one of those those offices in the
Disney building with the seven dwarves on it

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and all of that. And when
I would finally be able to go to

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the set, which was occasionally,
I would hear a PA calling down the

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hall to warn people suit on the
set, suit on the set. So

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this was terrified for me because I'd
come out of theater and I came into

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movies because I wanted to make movies. I made a kind of lateral move.

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I moved to a company called Introscope. I was owned and financed by

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PolyGram. PolyGram at that point had
put a bunch of money into the movie

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business, and we had a distribution
deal through Disney. So I was still

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making movies that Disney distributed, but
I was not working for Disney. I

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was working for the company that produced
movies, and that's where I did Roommates

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and The Associate and several other movies. I have to tell you, I

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love The Associate. Thank you me
too. If anything, it's as relevant

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now as it was back in Cashwell
was at mid nineties, early nineties.

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I think it does it maybe even
more relevant. What a great cast Whoopie

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Goldberg, Diane Wees, directed by
Donald Petrie. So much fun to make

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with the great Eli Wallack. What
a joy to work with actors of that

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generation. Actually made two movies with
Eli. We're shooting at New York,

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obviously, and it was great to
shoot in New York. We had every

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world cast except for the person who
was supposed to be Whoopie's assistant ended up

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being played by Diane Wist. And
I just wanted Diane Wist. I don't

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know why. I just thought she
would be perfect for And she was represented

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at that time by a legendary agent
named Sam Cohen, and Sam was famous

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for representing almost everybody, for not
returning phone calls, and when were in

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his office taking tiny scraps of paper, putting them in his mouth, chewing

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them and swallowing them. And so
I offered the part to Diane and she

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said no, and I call it
Sam, and I said, I'm offering

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her the part. And he said, first he didn't call me back,

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and then finally what he called,
And then I started calling him every hour

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and finally he has stopped calling me. She said no. I found her

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address and I sent her flowers,
and the next day I called and said,

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we're offering her the part. Sam
said no. I sent her flowers

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the next day, and I said
her flowers the next day, and I

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sent her flowers for five days and
finally Sam says, okay, she'll do

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it, and then she did it. It was great that period of time.

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She was just on fire with hand
and her sisters and the Lost Boys,

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parenthood. There was just like there
was nothing that she couldn't do.

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Mike, I love how you love
ad No movies so well, that's great

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will be at that time too,
there were so many great movies as she

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was making. This was just yet
another really great role, and I was

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watching it again to last night,
like I said, and there are so

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many Missus Doubtfire connections or even having
a drag queen making her up and everything,

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but I have to say it's even
better for me. Like I can

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see why kids who watch Missus Doubtfire
like that one. But for me,

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the associate is really where it's at. And like I said, that business

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acumen and all that, it just
it really holds up listening audience, go

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back a few decades. You heard
it here. The associate is where it's

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at. Go watch that movie.
What are you really enjoying when you're there

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as this producer role? The best
part of being a producer is that you

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get to work with amazing people and
they're pretty much different people. Every time.

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You're solving different problems, you're learning
different things. You might be studying

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open heart surgery for one movie and
you might be walking on the stock exchange

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for another movie. You're always finding
your curiosity, intrigues, You're always learning.

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And I love being a producer because
you get to create an ecosystem where

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creative people can do good work.
And it's so important. And you're the

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producer, You're not the writer.
You're not the director, you're not the

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actor, you're not the cinematographer.
Hopefully you have made sure that you have

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great people in all those roles.
Your job is not to do those roles.

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Your job is to make sure that
they have the resources other people,

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time, money, creative inspiration,
the right locations, the right words to

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say so they can actually execute what
they want to execute. And I just

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love it. Can you tell me
about when you formed Tarabella Entertainment? That

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was my first solo production company.
It was after I had left Interscope.

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At that point, I was out
on my own. People like me,

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I think people in our business in
general, we rock and roll between having

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someone employ us and employing ourselves.
Times from other people give us a four

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one kay, and we have to
make our own for our one k.

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If our company makes enough money to
give us a four our one k.

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And at that point I was out
on my own. I was developing my

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own projects and I just set up
a company. I've always been a bit

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of an Italian file and Terrabella means
beautiful earth, and I thought it was

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a beautiful name for a company,
so I called it that and we did

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some work. One of those films
that you helped producer, helped to create

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was Titus, which we've covered on
the show. Absolutely loved that. It's

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one of my favorite Shakespeare adaptations.
What a movie me too, I agree,

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one of my favorite Shakespeare adaptations also, And what a great opportunity and

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what a great pleasure to work with
Julie Taymore directing her first movie. Julie

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and I had never worked together in
theater, but we had known of each

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other from theater and we respected each
other. We had a common language.

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It was my job as producer on
that film was to get Julie's brain on

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the screen, and I think we
accomplished getting Julie's brain on the screen.

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We had an extraordinary cast and Tony
Hopkins, Jessica llang Alan Cumming, Harry

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Lennox and on and armor and motorcycles
at leather and tree stumps and wow,

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yeah, pretty extraordinary. Was shot
in Rome and a couple of weeks in

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Croatia. The opening and closing scenes
which take place in the coliseum are in

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Pula, Croatia. We shot there
a year after the war. The soldiers

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in that scene our soldiers from the
Croatian Army. It was freezing cold,

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and somehow they followed their commander's orders
to strip naked, put on a little

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bit of armor, and they could
covered in mud and march around at night

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in the freezing cold. And it
was a very hard movie to make,

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Mike, it was just it was
really difficult, and it was so hard.

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Thought I was going to be in
movie jail after no one ever let

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me make a movie again. But
sometimes the tension of the most difficult movies

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creates a crucible of quality that you
get at the other side. What was

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so difficult about it just all of
the moving pieces, or it's a big

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movie and for what it was low
budget and it was done independently. We

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ultimately Searchlight distributed it, but we
did it without studio backing. But the

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biggest problem was that, as so
many independent movies, the financing didn't come

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together until about five weeks before it
started. And that means we made that

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movie with five weeks of prep.
If you've seen that movie, it is

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insane to make that movie with five
weeks of prep. But we had to

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do it then because of actor availabilities, locations, whether all those other exigencies

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that you cannot control. So we
were never caught up. We were always

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running behind, and it was nutty
and it was the director's first movie.

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Now, one of the interesting things
about Julie is that she does not draw.

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That seems like a shocker because everything
she does is so visual, so

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how could she not draw? Like
she sees something, and of course she

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draws it and says to the art
director or the production designer or costume designer,

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here make this, but no,
that's not what happens. She sees

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something in her head and then needs
to express it with words or sometimes with

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gestures, but she doesn't draw.
Part of the role that I played was

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finding ways that the other creative people
on the show could understand and make visual

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what Julie saw in her head and
expressed without visual cues. You need tell

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me the story of March of the
Penguins and how you bring that to the

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United States. At that time,
I am running National Geographic films, and

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I had not made feature documentaries before
I joined National Geographic. But once I

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was at National Geographic, the docs
are so much part of Geo's DNA that

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we started doing documentaries. The first
film that I released at Natchio was called

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The Story of the Weeping Camel film. I remained super proud of also a

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first film by the directors beyond Bassura
Dava and Luigi Folorti. But when you're

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running nat you hear about people who
are making movies about nature and wildlife.

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I heard three insanely committed frenchmen who
had wintered over in at Artica with sixteen

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millimeter cameras. Decided this is a
movie that we have to have, and

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I actually made an offer to buy
the film sight Unseen while they were I

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think, while the footage was still
coming out of the lab, because I

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figured, we got one hundred hours
of penguins and Antarctica, we've got to

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be able to cut something out of
it somehow. But as I was doing,

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the filmmakers got their movie into Sundance, so I was not able to

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do buy it preemptively and went to
Sundance with some arrangements with some distribution companies

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that would work with us, because
at that point Natchio did not have a

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distribution company. And the English speaking
audience doesn't know this. The French speaking

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audience does know this that the film
that was unspooled at Sundance consisted of French

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speaking penguins who spoke in French telepathically
to each other, and also a kind

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of Euro edm techno score which really
didn't play. It played in France,

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and that was the most version that
was released in France. So if any

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one of the audiences French speaking and
you saw it in Quebec or you saw

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it in France, you saw that
movie. But if you saw it anywhere

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else, you saw another movie.
And Mark Gill, who was running Warner

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Independent at the time, saw the
same thing that I did, which is

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that the visuals were amazing, but
what you heard did not work for the

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US and the rest of the global
audience. We bought the film in at

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the end of January, and very
quickly we hired a beautiful poetic writer,

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Jordan Roberts, who wrote poetic words, asked Morgan Premant to speak those words.

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We hired a gorgeous orchestral composer,
Alix Warman to write an orchestral score,

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recorded the score, and at the
end of June, very very soon

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after buying that movie, we released
it under the title March of the Penguins,

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and you know what happened. It
remains the highest grossing nature documentary of

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all time, and it remains the
second highest grossing documentary of all time,

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and it won the Academy Award for
Best Documentary Feature. And it was great.

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It was one of the great moments
of my life. And you started

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the whole Penguin franchise and even to
the point where Robin Williams comes back and

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does a voice and Happy Feet.
Yeah, Orders didn't green light Happy Feet

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until March of the Penguins, did, Okay. I think Natchio should get

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royalties from Happy Feet, and I
think I asked, but I think they

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said no. Tell me a little
bit about the other documentary that you were

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behind, Plastic Ocean. I'm super
proud of that movie. Plastic Ocean came

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to me because the filmmakers had shot
a bunch of footage and they did not

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know what to do with it.
It was incepted by a woman named Joe

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Ruxton, who was running the natural
history unit for BBC at that time.

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She had gotten fired up about plastic
in the ocean. And I had shot

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and ran out of money, and
shot and ran out of money, as

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happens with documentary films. And then
this gentleman named Craig Leeson, who was

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a director and also appeared in the
movie, joined and also shot and appeared

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in a couple of scenes, many
scenes, and they didn't know what to

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do with it, and I think
they'd been through a couple of iterations trying

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to figure it out and they weren't
able to. I was really interested in

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the film because I care about the
issue. I never really thought a lot

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of people would see the movie because
I think if you have the choice between

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a movie about plastic in the ocean
where you know it's not going to be

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a good time, or I don't
know, Mike like top Gun, Maverick

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Black Panther, Wakonda Forever Ill like
we're going there right. But instead it

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happened. And the way it happened
was that I asked them to sent all

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the footage they had and they put
it into a giant of giant crates,

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which is the size of a grand
piano. They had a a plywood There

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were two hundred hard drives that had
been in storage in Bristol, England.

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They brought them over to a post
house in West Los Angeles. We opened

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up the crate, we pull out
the straw. There's all these hard drives

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that they bought in different parts of
the world over about a period of eighteen

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months. No cables, no connectors. First month was spent finding cables and

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connectors to extract the footage. And
there were two key things about tying the

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story. First, there are these
two characters. Craig, who is a

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man who's a fish. He grew
up in the ocean and loves the ocean,

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and we follow him on this journey. And the other character is a

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woman who actually is a fish.
Her name is Tanyu Streeter. She is

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a free diver. She dives below
the crushing depth of World War two submarines.

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I don't know how she does that. She's like a real life Marvel

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superhero character. She's amazing. So
the idea of the movie became to take

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two characters that you can relate to
and follow them on this journey around the

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world. There had been other documentaries
about plastic in the ocean. I wanted

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to create the definitive global movie about
plastics in the ocean, and I did

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not want it to be partisan.
I did not want it to be anti

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business. I wanted us to be
something where it was like we were simply

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laying the evidence before the jury,
journing our cards over one by one,

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trusting the audience to be smart and
make and render its own verdict. And

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the value of that is that the
film became the primary advocacy tool for changing

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processes and businesses and laws it chade. It has changed more than one hundred

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and fifty laws around the world,
including the national laws in India and Australia.

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If anyone in the listening audience lives
in a state or a province where

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there has been a plastic bag or
straw ban or limitation, it's because that

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movie was used as an advocacy tool
with the legislators. We were invited to

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the United Nations. We screened it
at the UN. It was placed in

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every US embassy in the world,
so a lot of people saw it.

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It's had an amazing impact. It
continues to have an impact. In fact,

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I was just interviewed by someone who
is about to go to college.

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She is a senior in high school. She was interviewing me for a local

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publication on the East Coast, and
she told me that she saw the film

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first in middle school biology class and
it made her want to become an environmental

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Scientist's seriously, Mike, that's as
deep and meaningful as it gets. It's

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just amazing. It's amazing to be
able to make anything to make you know,

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I make movies, but to write
a book or to write a song

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or any kind of creative work that
then it touches people that you would not

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normally be in the room with.
But you can touch people at scale.

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Yeah, I can't even imagine the
difference of that feeling. Here. I

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am telling you how important something like
Dead Poet Society was to me. And

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then you've got other films and this
film that actually makes a difference to the

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world and to your kids' grandkids,
etc. Yeah, it's a good thing.

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It's a good thing. I knew
if you've written a couple of books

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and one of them was Ash ten
years ago. Now insidetrack for independent filmmakers.

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Do you think there are still a
pretty good intention of independent filmmakers in

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twenty twenty three? There is a
good contingence. The business sucks. The

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spirit to make independent films has not
died, It has only expanded, But

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the business has really changed. It
was already changing pre pandemic. The pandemic

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accelerated the change independent film or art
film or whatever we want to call it.

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A quality cinema is down more than
thirty percent from pre pandemic levels,

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and the question is will it recover
or will it not recover. I think

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that people really became quite used to
watching those films at home. The quality

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of what you can watch at home, the size of the screens, the

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quality of the sound increased. A
lot of people just got there, and

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that became a tradition. I don't
think it ever goes away. I think

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it goes through surges. Like the
ocean. It accelerates and it decelerates.

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I think we are still in a
decelerating time. I see in other parts

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of the world greater excitement and interest
about independent cinema that exists right than exists

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right now in the United States.
I don't see the number of submissions to

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festivals like Sundance or slam Dance really
reducing that much. It means that the

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movies are there, and that's still
the universe that I'm in. I enjoy

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big studio movies, I personally do
not want to spend three or four years

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of my life on one of them. To me, I'm doing something else

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now. Anywhere I've titrated myself away
from producing films to launch a new company.

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But I enjoy working on independent films, maybe because it's harder. It's

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harder to make a movie with fifty
people than five thousand people. It's harder

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to make a movie for two million
dollars than two hundred million dollars. And

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maybe I just enjoy that challenge.
And I think I also enjoy the spirit

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of independent filmmakers and the creative ideas
that come from the limitations that we face.

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You can't just throw money off the
problem, and you don't have enough

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time, right you should be moving
in twenty four days instead of one hundred

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and four days. It's a really
different situation. How did the pandemic affect

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you? Pre pandemic, I had
started a new company, and the company

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that I've started is called Media U
mediau dot com. And the concept of

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MEDIAU is that we need to put
tools of storytelling, media making, filmmaking,

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streaming series, anything that happens on
a screen. We need to put

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those skills and those tools into the
hands of as many people as possible because

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the world gets better when more people
have the capacity to authentically tell their stories

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and whether they are storytellers in front
of the camera, behind the camera,

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in the back office, doing data
analytics on the streaming platform. It just

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makes it better when there are more
voices that have those skills. And the

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media business has remained something that feels
really impenetrable, really hard to get into.

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It seems like a giant wall without
a door. How do you get

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in? And film school costs I
don't know, but two hundred and fifty

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three, three hundred fifty thousand dollars, who's gotten that money, who wants

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to take out those student loans?
Who's got four years? How do we

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make that change? So we had
started MEDIAU before the pandemic. The concept

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had always been that we were going
to be a virtual remote training mentoring experience.

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We just tried to do a few
things. Then the pandemic hit and

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the barriers that people had to learning
online evaporated. And so now as we

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have more things, more things,
more courses, more opportunities for people those

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that disbelief that you can't do an
online, you can do it online.

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Everybody learned how to do an online
on faculty at the Business School at UC

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Berkeley, where are teaching the NBA
program and a couple of other things.

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Because I had started MEDIAU when we
went to the pandemic, I immediately turned

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my courses into online experiences, not
power points with narration, not somebody staring

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uncomfortably at the camera, try to
read write experiences. And it was they

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were so good that the Business School
sent many other faculty members to meet to

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say, here's how you do it, so you do it. And so

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the thing about MEDIAU is that when
you take a course at MEDIAU, it's

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not somebody with elbow patches lecturing at
you. It is an experience. We

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are filmmakers. We make it exciting, we make it entertaining. We find

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that people binge watch our courses the
same way they've binge watched the latest show

393
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on Netflix, because they're just fun
and they're good, and they're all very

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practical. Everything that we do is
practically focused. It's not film theory,

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00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:07.640
although I love film theory. I'll
go with anybody eyeball to eyeball, But

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that's not what media does. MEDIAU
believes that creative people who are motivated and

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00:31:12.400 --> 00:31:17.920
work hard should be able to pay
the rent with their creativity. That shouldn't

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be so hard. In the year
twenty twenty three, it shouldn't be,

399
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and there is a global idea here. There's a lot of talk now about

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sustainability. We think about sustainability a
lot. We think about social equity.

401
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We think about the quality of the
society that we're living in. Why is

402
00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:42.960
the world unsustainable right now? Why
is their social injustice? Why is our

403
00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:48.319
society not of the quality that we
wanted to be. It's because the stories

404
00:31:48.319 --> 00:31:52.200
that we have been told that resident
in our heads, that form the patterns

405
00:31:52.200 --> 00:31:57.279
of the behavior that we follow without
even thinking about it. Because those stories

406
00:31:57.319 --> 00:32:04.839
are unsustainable, because those stories are
unjust, because those stories are about socially

407
00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:08.720
uncomfortable and inequitable situations. We change. We have to change the stories,

408
00:32:09.079 --> 00:32:15.119
We have to change the narrative.
Because the walls that we face as people,

409
00:32:15.240 --> 00:32:22.400
as creative people, socially, culturally
seem to be so tall, so

410
00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:28.319
impenetrable, so thick, so dense
of a kind of concrete that they cannot

411
00:32:28.359 --> 00:32:32.799
be broken down. But what does
break them down? Empathy? And how

412
00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:38.039
do you scale empathy with story?
And in fact it is a kind of

413
00:32:38.599 --> 00:32:45.599
asymmetrical combat where we're the ewoks,
but the ewoks can win. Yeah,

414
00:32:45.599 --> 00:32:52.359
it was very interesting going back and
watching your head talk from thirteen years ago

415
00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:58.480
about the real culture wars and everything
that you're saying at that time is still

416
00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:01.200
as relevant in twenty twenty three.
Yeah, that was before I even had

417
00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:05.559
the idea for media you, but
clearly I was thinking along the lines right.

418
00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:08.160
Yeah, that was remarkable. And
your other ted talk how to know

419
00:33:08.319 --> 00:33:13.079
your life purpose in five minutes,
that was wonderful as well. I get

420
00:33:13.160 --> 00:33:16.720
emails every week from people. It's
now what like years ago, nine years

421
00:33:16.759 --> 00:33:22.160
ago? It's back, but I
get emails every week from people who have

422
00:33:22.240 --> 00:33:27.079
seen it. It's like you put
forward five questions that people can answer,

423
00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:31.559
and they send me their answers.
It's amazing. So you're running media you,

424
00:33:31.559 --> 00:33:37.039
you're working at the business school.
You still writing a lot. I

425
00:33:37.079 --> 00:33:42.240
write business plans, I write decks, I write emails. You've got your

426
00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:46.480
hands pretty darnful these days. I
am. Yes. Are you still doing

427
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:52.680
any producing? I actually just finished
producing a movie we shot in Sicily in

428
00:33:52.759 --> 00:33:55.720
the fall. I really was stopping. I wasn't going to produce anything because

429
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:00.880
MEDIAU demands time, and I know
that I won't produce anything for at least

430
00:34:00.880 --> 00:34:07.200
another year. Just producing more MEDIAU
content which I am producing, but one

431
00:34:07.359 --> 00:34:12.320
of Media U's trusted counselors and advisors, a woman named MICHAELI Scolari, who

432
00:34:12.360 --> 00:34:15.239
was a producer herself, whom I've
known for about a decade, wrote a

433
00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:20.079
script and about a year ago she
gave it to me, and I'd really

434
00:34:20.119 --> 00:34:22.800
do not like to read scripts from
friends, because usually they're terrible, and

435
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:25.320
then I have to say, I
really, you're a nice person, but

436
00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:30.719
please don't write any more scripts.
I'm sorry, or maybe it's just not

437
00:34:30.840 --> 00:34:32.480
for me. It's not you,
it's me. I just didn't get it.

438
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:37.920
But Michaela's script was brilliant, it
was so good, and then she

439
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:42.480
asked if I would produce it.
Michael has never directed before. I like

440
00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:46.400
producing movies for first time directors like
MICHAELA, like Julie Tamoor, like Joe

441
00:34:46.480 --> 00:34:52.519
Johnston, like John Turtle, tab
like etc. Etc. And I said,

442
00:34:52.599 --> 00:34:55.280
yeah, I'd be happy too.
So we just finished shooting it in

443
00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:01.400
Sicily at the end of last year
the end of twenty twenty two. We

444
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:07.119
are finishing it now or starting our
final mix in about two weeks, and

445
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:08.599
I'm really happy with it. It's
going to be a beautiful movie. It's

446
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:14.159
called Sicilian Holiday. Are you on
social media? Do you do a lot

447
00:35:14.159 --> 00:35:19.719
of updating? I have been off
social media for the longest time because I

448
00:35:19.760 --> 00:35:23.280
don't know. I just Twitter is
weird. Now Twitter is really weird.

449
00:35:23.400 --> 00:35:30.679
I saw that Elon must just declared
NPR state sponsored propaganda media. So NPR

450
00:35:30.719 --> 00:35:35.480
has stopped posting on Twitter. But
in the past few months, I found

451
00:35:35.480 --> 00:35:40.800
TikTok and I'm loving TikTok. I
think TikTok is really great. And what

452
00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:45.960
I've been doing recently is I did
a you can do wet on TikTok where

453
00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:49.239
you look at someone else's video and
you make some reaction to it. Someone

454
00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:52.199
had done a list of their favorite
movies. They were top ten, and

455
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:54.119
I didn't I liked some, I
didn't link some, and I made this

456
00:35:54.199 --> 00:35:58.679
offan comment like you've got ten I
don't know, like I got three hundred

457
00:35:58.719 --> 00:36:05.199
favorite movies. And then I actually
press send, and there was what happened

458
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:07.559
in the comments, Hey Adam,
what are your three hundred top movies?

459
00:36:07.880 --> 00:36:14.760
So I am in the middle of
doing my top three hundred movies on TikTok.

460
00:36:14.920 --> 00:36:19.000
I'm backwards counting. I started number
three hundred, which was Yellow Submarine

461
00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:22.880
and then moving all the way up
to I will get to the top ten

462
00:36:22.360 --> 00:36:25.559
sometime in the next month. And
no, I will not reveal now what

463
00:36:25.639 --> 00:36:30.119
they are. You have to wait. But that's been pretty great. That's

464
00:36:30.119 --> 00:36:32.199
awesome. I don't tend to look
at TikTok, but I will look at

465
00:36:32.280 --> 00:36:37.400
your TikTok. Check out my TikTok. And I've not put the top those

466
00:36:37.440 --> 00:36:40.440
top three hundred videos in a playlist. I'm doing ten per videos. It's

467
00:36:40.440 --> 00:36:45.880
going to be a total of thirty
videos to get up to all the way

468
00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:47.880
through the top three hundred. And
here's the crazy thing, Mike, and

469
00:36:47.880 --> 00:36:51.679
you would it would be the same
for you because you're such a movie buff.

470
00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:55.199
I've left out movies I like three
hundred, Like I couldn't even have

471
00:36:55.239 --> 00:37:00.000
a hundred because that's crazy talk.
There's so many more than one hundred movie

472
00:37:00.559 --> 00:37:02.679
I'm leaving out movies. I'm gonna
have to videos about, well, I

473
00:37:02.719 --> 00:37:06.320
didn't put in that movie because you
know, I don't know. I just

474
00:37:06.519 --> 00:37:08.239
doesn't resonate with for me that much
now. But it's still a good movie.

475
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:15.519
There's so many good movies because movies
have been in existence for twenty one

476
00:37:15.559 --> 00:37:20.239
hundred thirty years. There's a lot
of content. It's not as you and

477
00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:23.280
your audience knows. It's not just
the US, it's all around the world.

478
00:37:23.760 --> 00:37:29.880
Every country has a tradition of cinema, and my list is idiots more

479
00:37:29.960 --> 00:37:34.559
weighted towards English language movies and particularly
in the earlier days, the Hollywood movies.

480
00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:38.039
But it's global because I love movies
from all over the world and they

481
00:37:38.119 --> 00:37:43.199
teach me things and they give me
windows on perspectives that I wouldn't otherwise see,

482
00:37:43.199 --> 00:37:45.800
which is one of the reasons that
I love them. Mister Leipzig,

483
00:37:45.880 --> 00:37:49.079
thank you so much for your time. This was so great talking with you.

484
00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:52.199
Mike, Thank you so much.
It's been great talking with you.

485
00:37:52.239 --> 00:37:55.719
What a pleasure to talk with someone
who loves movies and culture in the way

486
00:37:55.760 --> 00:38:00.000
that you do, and the generosity
with which you ask your questions. And

487
00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:04.119
I know your audience can't see you, but the brightness in your eyes when

488
00:38:04.159 --> 00:39:12.039
you ask them the off