Michelle Miller:
Hi guys, my name is Michelle Miller. I'm a New York City based actress and host of the podcast, Mentors On The Mic, where I interview accomplished entertainment, everything, right? Anybody in entertainment about how they started and how they moved up to where they are today, and a lot of my guests include Brandeis alum, so I highly recommend the podcast, and I am part of the arts alumni council. We create all these different groups, all these different events, and part of what we're doing this year is creating a monthly series called Showbiz@Deis. We're super creative. We love it and Arnon Shorr who you can see here, we have been organizing different events, and this is our second installment.
Michelle Miller:
Last month was graphic novelists, and this month is TV film executive. If you have any suggestions on our next few, let us know. We're taking suggestions. Next month will be... Arnon, can we tell them? Can we say? Okay, so next month will be TV writers. That'll be really fun. Definitely come and check that out as well and a little bit about a Brandeis Arts Network. It's a group exclusive to Brandeis undergraduate and graduate alumni, and enables anyone involved in the arts, both professional and just enthusiasts to engage, share, and experience the vast array of artistic endeavors of fellow Brandeisians on campus across the country and abroad.
Michelle Miller:
The Brandeis Arts Network also encompasses and support the efforts of the performing arts network and the Brandeis alumni in film and television. Definitely join those Facebook groups. We'll be in the chat shortly. If you feel the need, just follow those links. We'll get more information about alumni, about events, super fun and what else? I want to thank everyone at the arts alumni council. I want to thank Arnon obviously. I mean he's going to come back in a bit to... You'll hear him speak at the Q and A and Courtney of course, she's the above person who's going to help send the links in the middle of the chat and such. Yeah, that's it. Thanks everyone for coming. I want to get right to it. Let's introduce our panelist.
Michelle Miller:
I'm going to have them introduce themselves. Let's start with Labid. Labid Aziz, can you introduce yourself please?
Labid Aziz:
Hi, Labid Aziz, Class of 1999, and I am currently the COO, CFO of Justin Baldoni's content studio entitled Wayfarer Studios. I've been at this for about a year and a half, and we've officially been around for a little less than a year. In that time, we have produced and financed our first feature with Warner Brothers, which is now on Disney Plus. Think about that for a second, but we were the first ever acquisition by Disney of a non-Disney produced movie acquired for Disney Plus. Very honored to have that privilege and on our belt, and we are a content studio. We are in podcasts. We are doing documentaries, we're doing docuseries, we're doing scripted television, both limited and episodic.
Labid Aziz:
We're doing feature films. It's our bread and butter, and we're also now getting into animated television and hopefully animated features. We hired Andrew Calof from Amblin Partners back in July of last year. Prior to Amblin, he was at New Regency. We're very lucky to have him as our head of production and development. As of this week or Friday, we announced two more additional executives, Tracy Ryerson, our head of scripted and Endyia Kinney-Sterns, head of unscripted. We're a small, but quickly growing and mighty little team. We're having a lot of fun. We shot five movies in COVID, five micro-budget features just to see what would happen. We're about to be finished with those and bring them to market. We just launched our first podcast.
Labid Aziz:
We launched our first book called Man Enough based around the TED Talk that Justin gave, and we have three features that we're gearing up for in the fall.
Michelle Miller:
I mean definitely underachieving. Is there anything else? I mean that's just a whole list of things. You guys are super active in such a short amount of time. That's amazing. Thank you Labid.
Labid Aziz:
Of course.
Michelle Miller:
Debra, can you introduce yourself for us?
Debra Curtis:
Hi guys, I'm Debra Curtis. I am Class of '91. I was in English and American literature. I'm trying to remember what the language was.
Michelle Miller:
American studies. Was it American studies?
Debra Curtis:
No, literature. I was on literature.
Michelle Miller:
Right, literature. Yeah.
Debra Curtis:
I moved out to LA two weeks after graduation for an internship to the Television Academy Foundation and almost 30 years later, I'm still here. I work as a current programming executive. Basically, what that means is you have your development executives who develop and sell the shows, and then my team takes over as soon as they get ordered to series. Then we oversee the shows for the life of the series. I spent 15 years at Sony Television, having started as an assistant and got promoted up, spent 12 years as an executive at Sony Television and most recently, was head of current programming at eOne, at Entertainment One. I've worked on more than 40 television shows, something like 1400 episodes of television, both comedy and drama, exclusively in scripted programming.
Debra Curtis:
Some of the shows that I've worked on have ranged from the rookie, which is on ABC right now, to Hell on Wheels that was on AMC, to the Shield on FX and Rescue Me. I was working on the first season of community and dating all the way back to my very exciting first year as an executive on, this is for the older generation, syndicated show called V.I.P. with Pamela Anderson. No show is too small and yeah, that's me.
Michelle Miller:
I used to love V.I.P. when I was younger. That is great. I have all these memories came flooding back.
Debra Curtis:
It was a fun show to work on.
Michelle Miller:
Yeah. Thank you Debra. All right, I'm just going in the order of how I see you guys. Ben, can you please introduce yourself to the audience?
Ben Feingold:
Sure. I start as a corporate lawyer in New York, was headhunted into Columbia Pictures as assistant general counsel. I had no desire to be in the film business. Sony bought the company. I was moved to California to start the corporate development department, and we started launching channels. The game show Channel SCT India, the HBO channels overseas. I was asked to run Home Video in '94. I launch the DVD business and then the Blu-ray business. In Home Video, we made about 500 movies. I had a big budget, and then we started Screen Gems. The company's just said they wanted more profits, so I said I needed to add or leasing entity. Then I started the first digital deals. I made the first output deal with Netflix in 2002.
Ben Feingold:
I left in 2006. I did venture capital investing, and then I started making movies. I made 11 movies between 2012 and 2015 with my own money, all profitable. Then in 2015, Peter Goldman and I bought the Samuel Goldwyn Company from his father's estate. For the last five years, we've been rebuilding Samuel Goldwyn films, and it's a joy to mentor. My staff is anywhere between 24 and 30, except for the controller and the operation's person. We currently have 30 new movies a year that we're doing distribution on. Hopefully, we have Another Round which is the Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Vinterberg movie. We're hoping to win Oscar and that's it. I'm a lucky guy, but I believe in working hard which I will do probably till I die.
Michelle Miller:
Yeah, it's a great thing to share with all of us, and we're going to definitely ask you for advice because it's great that you're mentoring, and you're doing this. This is all form of mentorship, so thank you. All right. Lindsay, can you give us a little spiel about yourself please?
Lindsay Donohue:
Sure. Hi everyone, I'm Lindsay Donohue. I'm the Class of 2007. I currently work at FX, the cable network. Now you can find us as FX on Hulu. A lot has changed since first started in the industry. We used to be part of Fox, and now we are part of the Disney Corporation. I've been there like I said 11 or so years, and I'm a development executive. My title is VP of development and basically as Deb was alluding to, there's a team that we helped develop and identify shows meet, with writers, hear ideas and eventually, you choose the ones that feel like they're going to make great shows, and you get a good script. You help shepherd them into production.
Lindsay Donohue:
Over the last few years, I've worked on everything from A Teacher to Mrs. America. I worked on the first three seasons of Fargo, the first season of American Crime Story, The People versus O.J. Simpson. Yeah, it's short and sweet.
Michelle Miller:
Excellent. That's amazing, that's wonderful. Thank you. Then last, but not least, Adina Pitt.
Adina Pitt:
I don't know how to follow all these incredible... This is really, really nice. Thank you for including me in this. I'm Class of '88, and I was a double major. I was a theater arts and early childhood education major. I had to create my own path because I wanted to go into children's television, and that didn't exist as we had to be creative which hopefully I was, but spent the last couple of decades working in children's media very happily, started my career after graduate school as a temp at HBO. Then spent four years at HBO in their acquisitions department, and then moved over to Nickelodeon's, spent 10 very happy years there in kids television, and have now spent the last... I'm not even going to tell you how many years at what was Turner is now WarnerMedia.
Adina Pitt:
I am basically in charge of all content acquisitions, co-productions and content partnerships globally for WarnerMedia kids. That involves Cartoon Network, Boomerang, HBO Max and it's just been a real privilege to work in a field that I've loved so, so, so deeply for many years. Every day is a new day, and I get to talk to new creators of all ages really, because creativity doesn't have any age. It's just been a real privilege to also represent Brandeis because I want you to know, I'm originally from Puerto Rico and there weren't a lot of Puerto Ricans going to Brandeis at the time. I was noticed want to Epstein for those of you who are old enough to know what that reference is from Welcome Back, Kotter because I is one of the few Puerto Rican Jews who went to Brandeis.
Adina Pitt:
Actually, I met my husband there as well who's also in the entertainment business. It feels like it's all come full circle. It's lovely to be here and happy to answer any questions related to a demo that sits in the two to... I'm going to say 11, maybe we could stretch it to 14 outside of that, I don't know how hip and cool I'm going to be for any of you, but it's been a real privilege to have had a hand in shaping what kids have been watching for several decades and to work with a global talent community that is quite exceptional. I hope my kids go into this field, but try not to be a Jewish mother, but there you go. Anyway, so happy to meet the panelists, and I just wanted to just give a special shout-out to Debra because Debra graduated with my husband.
Adina Pitt:
I haven't seen her in a really long time and we had this. I can't believe that we had to see each other on a Zoom call for Brandeis to reconnect...
Debra Curtis:
It takes us being on a panel together to catch up, then I'll be on the panel.
Adina Pitt:
That's right, that's right. Anyway, thank you so much for having me.
Michelle Miller:
Oh, that's so nice. I really at some point want to ask you guys how does everyone know each other, but that's good to know. Michael Pitt actually, your husband was on our first panel for TV and film back in April last year. If you guys want to Google...
Adina Pitt:
Like a lifetime ago. Yeah.
Michelle Miller:
I know it's crazy. That was our first virtual event in the space like this.
Adina Pitt:
Yeah, he's 85 years old now. Yeah, I'm just saying. Yeah.
Michelle Miller:
Oh, that's your age everyone. Great. Okay guys, I'm going to just do a quick poll of the audience. I want to have an idea of where our audiences are. Are they mostly alum, are they mostly students, are they mostly people in entertainment, people general interest. The first poll that I'd like to do is who are you guys. Are you a Brandeis alum? Are you a current student? Are you faculty staff? Are you family friend? I just want to get an idea because that'll also help me with my questions in figuring out because we have a lot of alumni, great. Love it. Okay, great, it's good to know. I'm going to have to wait the full minute because I'm happy too, but I feel like people would answer really quickly.
Labid Aziz:
I've never seen or how cool is that.
Michelle Miller:
Isn't this great? Yeah, this is good for us to just that we can start, so I can figure out what kind of questions to ask. Because if we had mostly Brandeis students, for instance, I would have delved into more your first jobs in entertainment, but you guys already touched a little bit on that for your first when you're introducing yourself. Great. Most of you alumni, great. Then one more question guys, bear with me, why are you here? Are you here because you have a general interest in entertainment? Are you in entertainment? Are you interested in growing your career? Do you want to enter the industry? Poll number two should be coming up. Hang a second. Maybe I did it too fast.
Michelle Miller:
Okay, cool. Why are you here? Interested in growing and starting... Oh, this is a bit more... This is exciting guys because you're-
Debra Curtis:
I feel like everyone has finally found the polling button in the bottom right now.
Michelle Miller:
I know. See, I mean it's a useful thing. Okay, so great. It's mostly general interest and an interest in growing your career, few interested in starting. Wonderful, okay. We have a good gamut... Okay, this is great. Good for me to know. Thank you. All right and this is perfect. I'm going to bypass the question about how you guys started and like I said, you guys really started to delve into... Ben, you got your law degree and you were a little hesitant to join the film industry. Can you guys give your thoughts as to what is an executive because a lot of people ask me that, and what are some misconceptions about the role of an executive? Why don't we start with Ben because he has his mic off and it's just convenient.
Ben Feingold:
I mean what would a very good executive in the entertainment industry does its business, plus creative. The business part actually is probably more important in my view, but I say I'm a business person with creative instincts.
Michelle Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Feingold:
The most important thing is to understand trends, trends for the consumer, so to migrate as an executive. If you're a Disney, you migrate into streaming. We migrated into DVD early on for the benefit of Sony. The top executives have to actually migrate the companies to where there's revenue for the company to survive and prosper. For the creative executive, it's to make content which either serves the current need or is inspirational, in other words to be ahead of the curve. The things that are most inspirational are more successful than programming type of content.
Michelle Miller:
I love that. Thank you. Does anyone want to add on about either the role of an executive or common misconceptions?
Adina Pitt:
I would chime in.
Michelle Miller:
Please.
Adina Pitt:
By the way, I just want you to know I'm in a closet in New York City. This is really spacious and fantastic. I'm very jealous of all you LA based people. I actually love everything that Ben said, but I would add that I think it's also about people and culture because I think you have to set the tone of it's not just the work, but the environment in which you're working and also just surrounding yourselves with great people and also inspiring people to do the best work that they can. It really is a reciprocal kind of a thing, where you realize over the years, how important every single person that you work with is to the process. There is no hierarchy when it comes to that, and I mean that both within a company and within an industry.
Adina Pitt:
You're going to get some things right and get some things wrong, but I would just encourage everybody to be open to meeting as many people and networking with as many people as possible, because you really just don't know what great things can come of that, what great relationships. Frankly, it's super enriching for your own soul to just surround yourself with as many people as possible. That would be my addition to this
Michelle Miller:
I love that.
Debra Curtis:
Lindsay, where you going to jump in otherwise?
Lindsay Donohue:
Yeah, yeah. I was just going to add to I mean, I think I can just speak from our company's culture at FX, but our ethos is that our job as an executive in the creative process is to really be a collaborator, and our job is to fulfill an artist creative intent with them, right? It's not telling them what show we want them to make. It's making sure that when we buy an idea that we're all on the same page with what we want it to be, and making sure that the best idea of that gets either executed on the page or on the screen. I think a misconception is that we're scary people, but you can't let your guard down with us. I think what we find is the best collaborations come from a place of trust. We're all just people, and we genuinely care. It's not always about bottom line. It really is about the creative.
Debra Curtis:
I'll jump off of what she's saying, which is very much in line what everyone else has said. I think the two things in addition I would add is that, and coming from a creative exec perspective, the couple of things that you don't realize going into the job, which are critical skills to have is being a people person because you have to build relationships. The industry is built on relationships, whether I'm a studio executive staffing a show and reading writers, and so then my relationships would be with the agents and managers. If someone I don't know or I don't trust or I don't respect their taste sends me a pile of scripts, I'm more unfortunately readily reading the scripts that come from the agents who I know to be trustworthy and respectful and have good taste.
Debra Curtis:
Those relationships are critical. If you're a writer looking for an agent, it's really important to know what your agent's reputation is in the business, because relationships are key. Then jumping off of relationships, my job is to oversee production. When I would go to set, I would make a point of not wearing the most formal business suit. We executives have the nickname of being the suit. I would always make sure I was wearing like a cute top, I look presentable, but I'd be wearing jeans. If I'm there all day, I'll be wearing sneakers or super comfortable shoes because I'm going to be running around all day. I'm going to be on my feet all day. I'm not going to presume that they're going to have a chair for me.
Debra Curtis:
I think the best compliment I ever had was when I was on the set of Rescue Me for the first time in New York City and I was trying to figure out the cappuccino maker. Somebody asked if I was the new PA getting a coffee for somebody, and I had to find a way to tactfully say, "No, no, I'm actually your studio executive," without sounding like a total egotistical.... I won't... Yeah, we're family friendly here, so we'll watch the language, but...
Lindsay Donohue:
I would have been like, "How do you take your coffee and hey, you're over budget. Let's get this shit going." I would have been like, "Yeah, let's do this. The coffee is going to make you go like hello, come on, let's go."
Debra Curtis:
Yeah, I think relationships are key and being able to maintain relationships is a skill you don't think about when you're looking to be an executive.I think that's particularly true in our business.
Michelle Miller:
It's great. I mean it's something that you said leads me to my next question. This idea when you are approaching... Let's say for the people who are interested in becoming an executive, there are different paths in entertainment, right? We talk about this all the time. There's really not many linear paths, but I feel like for some of you anyway, there has been more of a linear path. Then it begs the question, in entertainment, are there such things as linear paths? Everyone has this different journey, and I don't want to call anyone out, but I'd love to get an idea of do you feel you've had a linear path in this field, or do you feel like it's a bit of a zigzag all over the place?
Lindsay Donohue:
I can speak as someone on the rare side of that who has had a pretty linear path. My first job after Brandeis was at an entertainment agency, and I was at...
Michelle Miller:
As a talent agent, right?
Lindsay Donohue:
Working for a talent agent as an assistant, and then I moved to LA and got a job at FX. I've been there now for 11 and a half years, which meant I was an assistant to executives who worked in current programming and then I assisted the CEO of the company, and then was eventually promoted to becoming a manager, working in limited series. I have to say it's so rare and it's a very FX thing. I have colleagues who have been there for 20 years. It's pretty rare. It's much more common to jump around and move and see if a studio life, it's you. Do you want to be at a production company? Do you like being a by or out-of-network? I think it's much more common to do a stint of a few years at a place, and then move on to another, but I'm sure my fellow panelists can hop in there.
Michelle Miller:
Love that. Who wants to join in with their journey?.
Debra Curtis:
Yeah. Oh, go ahead Labid.
Labid Aziz:
No, go ahead Debra, please.
Debra Curtis:
I know my mom and dad are on this, so I have to say I got really lucky in that my folks were super supportive, but also like, "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" My very first internship was at a Broadway theater. It was the summer after my sophomore year, and I went home for the summer. That spring prior to going home, I was taking Jay Vijay's American musical theater class, and I had gone into his office to say, "I don't want to be an actor. I don't want to be a writer. I don't want to be a director." He told me about this internship at Circle in the Square Theater, and it was an administrative internship. I was really fortunate to have had this fabulous mentor at Brandeis who guided me and sent me on a creative path that I didn't even know existed.
Debra Curtis:
I did that, that summer and the following summer, I stayed up to take a class with the late John Edward Hill in theater management, but the theaters were all dark in Boston during the summer. I got a job at a TV station and doing broadcast promotions. Then my senior year, my friends were basically the question come March, April was, "So what graduate school are you going to next year?" That wasn't my path, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was interviewing at Radio City Music Hall and ABC Daytime. I just know I want to do something creative, I just didn't know what. One of my friends who still my friend Sydney Susskind who was class of '92 said to me, "I'm applying to the TV Academy Foundation Internship Program.
Debra Curtis:
They have 25 categories. I'm going for production management. You can go for anyone in the other 24 categories," and so I did. I went for broadcast promotions because that's what I had done the previous summer, and I got the summer internship program. I moved out to LA, and Sydney and I were roommates that summer. She went back to Boston to finish her senior year, and then subsequently came back out to LA. Then once I got to LA, it was a question of okay, I can be unemployed and cold in New York or unemployed and warm in LA, which am I going to do? It took almost a full year before I found my first full-time job, which was as an assistant to Dan Adler who is a Brandeis alum, class of '81 I think who was an agent at CIA working in the Ovitz offices.
Debra Curtis:
The only reason he hired me was because I went to Brandeis. He was like, "Well, you're smart, you went to Brandeis," and that opened all of these new doors of learning the business from the inside out and trying to figure out like okay now, I'm here what do I do? The next year, I went to work for a TV agent in the company. I moved internally, then I went to go work for a writer for six months. Then I went to go work as an assistant and development, and tried all these different things. Within the first I would say six years of being an assistant, probably had eight different jobs and at every job, learned more and more about the business, but also learned what I didn't want to do.
Debra Curtis:
I learned okay, I don't want to be a line producer because that's person is responsible for numbers and budgets. I don't want to be an agent because I don't want to negotiate, I'm not good at that, I don't want... It's like by taking off the don'ts, but then also learning what those people do eventually made me a stronger executive and what I eventually ended up doing.
Ben Feingold:
Labid, are you going to go next, or you want me to go next? It's up to you.
Labid Aziz:
I'll chime in a little bit. I've just been listening to these amazing panelists, and it's just refreshing to hear these stories. My story I think is fairly unique, but hopefully not too unique and hopefully others may benefit from the story. I was a bio and pre-med major at Brandeis. I came in guns blazing, wanted to be a pediatrician, was going to go to the pre-med track and bio, the sciences. That was the whole thing is my parents wanted a South Asian...
Adina Pitt:
Debra, he's the theme of the next show that you produce right here.
Debra Curtis:
Yeah.
Adina Pitt:
This is where the magic is happening.
Debra Curtis:
We're on it, and then Lindsay is going to buy it.
Adina Pitt:
That's right, that's right. That's right.
Labid Aziz:
I did that and for two years, I floated through Brandeis, didn't really have any purpose. I did acting and I was in dance and theater in high school, but in college, I needed to be serious and I needed to just focus and do what mom told me to do, but luckily, my roommate and my closest friends, freshman year all happened to actually be doing theater, or wanting to be in movies, or wanting to be actors. By default, literally every month for the first year and a half of my college career for fun on the weekends, we would just make movies. We figure it out, we script it, we dress up, and we shoot it. We'd edit it on the maybe roles in the basement of the library, and we did that for two years.
Labid Aziz:
For me, it was just fun helping my friends, but I really, really enjoyed it. One of the teachers that my friend who I was doing a lot of these movies with told me to take the class was Henry Felt. We had a documentary filmmaking class. I just took the class because I enjoyed this craft. Then I really, really just liked it, but I didn't know what to do with it. I came back my junior year, and I remember being miserable and not wanting to pursue the arts, but also freaking out because I'm like, "What do I do with my life if this is not the thing?" I ended up taking a year off just to reset, and then Brandeis let me come back a year later.
Labid Aziz:
I ended up getting a psych and the religion program going on, but the thing that was the trigger for which then led to this career that I fell into, I was a ham on campus and I was the emcee of a lot of the cultural shows from mela two different ethnic groups and cultures. I even had a hand in starting Culture X, which I don't know if it's still around. I was the original emcee for that and helped found.
Michelle Miller:
Any current students can verify that for us. Yes, Culture X.
Labid Aziz:
I was the founder of that, me and one other person, but I realized as I was the emcee of the shows, I had this amazing opportunity to speak to this captive audience of 202,000 people. As a South Asian Muslim at a predominantly Jewish University, I saw things through a lens that not everyone may be was sensitive to. I decided to use the platform as the emcee for these shows to make what I could call vice-like videos back in the '90s. It was 2- to 5-minute videos, featured me or my friends as was an entree for me as the emcee and in these videos with comedy and music, the whole thing, I tried to shine a spotlight on the issues on campus. There was hate crimes happening. There was religious intolerance.
Labid Aziz:
There was just discord in the microcosm of our community, and I wanted to put an end to it. I used this platform to make these short form little documentaries vice videos, and I just did it for fun, and that was it. I got a degree in psychology, was minoring in Near Eastern Judaic Studies. Then senior year, spring semester when I had no plan for graduate school, when I had no idea what was going on, my mom was on my back, a friend of mine came up to me and said, "Hey Labid, we just saw your video in Gordie Fellman's peace and conflict resolution class, and it spawned a 3-hour long conversation of how we took the ideas in your video to talk about and promote and actuate change on the campus and beyond."
Labid Aziz:
It felt like my soul was knocked off its feet in the most amazing way, and I made a promise to myself that day that I wanted to try to replicate that feeling every day for the rest of my life. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but that was the feeling that I wanted. It was my drug. The next few months, I just figured something out with a friend of mine. I made a pitch to then President Jehuda Reinharz and the four of the deans of the school, and I convinced them to let me come back to school, create a post-baccalaureate program with Henry Felt and the head of entrepreneurship at international business school.
Labid Aziz:
They actually paid me to come back to school for a year and paid me to help make videos to promote Brandeis and Shadow Light, but ultimately it was the beginning of my career, and that then led to my first company which was really creating media tools and content, documentaries, PSAs, whatever to fight public policy at the state local and federal level. I worked with the ACLU, Harvard Law School. I thought the No Child Left Behind Act, NAACP, boys and girls club. I was fighting for health care reform, civil liberties reform, education reform. That's how I fell into this career, and then I realized I was being didactic and preachy and delivering messages on VHS, and it wasn't really going out into a broader community.
Labid Aziz:
I was like, "How do I reach more people?" Then I fell in love with cinema because I realized in the power of entertainment, you have the ability to plant seeds. In planting those seeds, you have the ability to have them germinate in the audience and have them become their own idea. Hopefully through that dissemination of seeds and ideas, maybe you can hit critical mass and in the end, in the long run actually have fundamental change in society that hopefully makes us better. That's the crazy story of how I got into it. Then I realized after making a bunch of stuff as a director, producer, editor, cinematographer that I had a lot of friends who are way more talented than I was, and that my gift really was protecting the creators.
Labid Aziz:
I was really good at numbers and the business and negotiating. A mentor of mine who was the CIO of Putnam Investments in Boston, he took me under his wing and was like, "Look, you need to learn the real world." He taught me how hedge funds work and how money works, and this was in '05 and '06. Then by the end of '06, he said, "Here's some money. You match this money. Go to LA, put a business plan together for a film fund, put a team together and if you do it, I will give you the money." That's how I moved to LA in '07. To flash forward a long 13-year story, that began the journey of my business career and I learned a lot.
Labid Aziz:
What I can share with this community here, one of the big ticket items that I tried to do that gives you an idea of the kinds of things I was doing behind the scenes to learn the business. I raised money for Bob Burney before he went to Amazon to learn P and A and distribution. I wanted to learn from one of the best and then in 2015, I was backed by the New York City Pension Fund and I tried to buy New Regency from Arnon Milchan. I spent eight months opposite Arnon and Roy Salter who's a big banker in the business, and I tried to buy a New Regency from Arnon.
Labid Aziz:
Long story short, I spent 13 years learning the business and then in the last couple years, I was blessed to have met Justin Baldoni and Steve Sarowitz, who then saw the potential in me because I didn't have anything to show for the 13 years of behind the scenes learning. I didn't work at a studio, I didn't have a job. I always had to make my own money. I raised money from China Mainland, brought it into the US. I never really had a traditional job, but I knew something in me was determined and meant to do this. I just kept pushing much, disregarding my mother and my wife and everybody else. Steve and Justin saw that I had the makings of something. They gave me the responsibility of building and running their studio. That is my unique story in how I got here.
Michelle Miller:
I love that and I love that particularly, first of all, it's very inspirational, but it also sheds the light on a possibility for people who maybe have had other jobs and how they can then enter the entertainment industry in a different way. I mean like I said, you started obviously in entertainment, did some finance stuff, and did other things and came into it again in this way, but I think it really ignore the New York City sounds in the background, but I think it sheds light on how people can do that, can leverage the experiences they have to do what they want to do in such a beautiful way. I hope that I articulated that, as well as I wanted to.
Labid Aziz:
Absolutely, but also, I mean I share the Jehuda story because if it wasn't for Jehuda and Dean David Gold and a few others, I wouldn't have been given the chance. They saw something in me back then, and they were like, "We're going to give you a shot." It starts from Brandeis. As I think Debra, I heard you say, whenever I hear that you're a Brandeis alum or you went to Brandeis, you're thinking it really puts a smile on my face in my heart because I had the most amazing experience. University supported me, and I wouldn't be here had they not early in my career.
Michelle Miller:
Oh, I love that.
Labid Aziz:
I'm so grateful for the alumni network, yeah.
Michelle Miller:
Well, thank you for sharing your story with us and you can see the comments people are responding to your story. Adina and Ben, did you want to shed a little light on your journey so that people can feel they can relate or understand, or figure out their own path? I mean every path is different, but I shedding light on our own individuals.
Adina Pitt:
I can't even follow that. I mean it's just so incredible.
Michelle Miller:
Yeah.
Adina Pitt:
You know what, I'll make this super brief. I had a goal. I wanted to get into kids television, and I had gone to New York for my... I went to NYU for my grad school, for my master's. Honestly, it was a mission to get into kids. It took me a really long time. It took me four years to get a job. I mean this was before internet. This was calling, writing letters, this was reading trades, really hitting the pavement. By the way, I always felt very privileged throughout this whole process because my parents helped me out so much, but the reality is, is that I never thought any job was too small for me and I was always so grateful to be welcomed into whatever temp job.
Adina Pitt:
I have never had a job that I have asked my team... I've done every job that I've asked my team to do. I feel what I feel very honored is that in spite of this wonderful education is to start from ground zero, and you keep building up and therefore, you understand what you're asking other people to do. I take great pride in that, and I think there is especially now as I have a college student and a soon-to-be college student in my home. COVID, this pandemic and what it's doing for that job search, I mean forget my journey. My journey, I worked really hard. Let me just say this has never been easy. It's not been easy to be a woman in the entertainment industry.
Adina Pitt:
It's not been easy to be a Latino woman in the entertainment industry, but I don't harp on the negative. I am all about the positive and I move forward, and that's my truth. I think everybody needs to just keep forging ahead. Don't let anything blind you, just keep going, but when I meet with a lot of young people who are looking to break into the industry and we're doing this virtually, I try to put myself in those shoes. I don't know that there are enough words to describe how hard this is because energy and all those things that get communicated face to face, you can't do that virtually. You can do some of it, but you can't do all of it, and I just want to say for anyone who's looking to forge their paths and start their careers, this moment right now is exactly that.
Adina Pitt:
It is a moment and try to make the best of this moment and know that we're on the other side of this saying the same thing, and we're all trying to survive and do it. We're all in this and we will get past this, but I actually think in a weird way Michelle, this is a particularly defining moment personally in my career, certainly my husband. In my family, we're an entertainment family. This is a very defining moment, this COVID experience and what it has done to our industry and the impact on the people and on the content. If there was ever a time to rally community and just be supportive, it's now. This was an important reminder of what it felt like to be so vulnerable graduating from college and graduating from grad school, and looking for a job and being out in this world.
Adina Pitt:
Everything that I knew was different and to be able to reset. I find myself very candidly on par with every person who's looking for to produce a show or to get a job that I'm no different to you. Yeah, I work for a company, but I'm putting myself in your shoes because guess what? This is a such a sobering moment, and it's really powerful. I really want to look back at this and say, "I wish this hadn't happened, but what can we take away from this and what can we..." I hope for all of us that we learned something really wonderful about it. Forget my journey Michelle. It's really not that interesting. I will tell you it's not. Work really hard, met a lot of people.
Adina Pitt:
Some of them were great, some of them were terrible, but I'm just going to say this, okay, I'm looking ahead and it's a privilege to be able to sit here and to be able to say that we can network and we can talk to people within our community, within the Brandeis community and say, "Hey, we know we got you. We understand. This sucks and let's just call that out. This is terrible, but it's not always going to be this way." I'm going to leave it at that, but I want to let Ben say something, but thank you for letting me. I'll get off my soapbox.
Ben Feingold:
Yeah. I came from a very different background. Because I was trained as a lawyer, I always had this theory that I had to do a good job for the people I was working with, and I really had to give more than I was getting. Because of that, I mean my career was really I went to Sony. I started the corporate development department. We had no channels. We went to Japan and they would say make better movies, that's how you make money. We would say not really. We'll make better movies, but we actually have to make our money downstream. We launched channels. It's to work hard and to innovate. There was VHS rental. We're going to do disc, then we're going to do HD, then we're going to open up in India, then we're going to open up in Latin America.
Ben Feingold:
It's to innovate, but always do a good job. Everybody that you work with, they may say you're a little tough, but that you were fair, more than fair, that you were generous with how you deal with people. Even one little Sony story I remember. You remember the show Boondocks?
Adina Pitt:
It was on our network. Of course, I remember Boondocks.
Debra Curtis:
Yeah, I worked on it.
Ben Feingold:
Let me tell you the story. I get a call from the head of TV who comes in to see me says, "We have the show we want to make. We can't put it together with the money." He tells me what it is. It's a show, it's African-American themed show, it's R-rated and I said, "So where's it going to air?" He says, "Well, it's Cartoon Network, but they're going to launch this thing called the Adult Swim. I said, "What is it?" "It's going to be Cartoon Network at night." I said, "Okay, so how much can you get for a license fee?" They say a hundred thousand. I said, "What's it going to cost?" They said about five...
Adina Pitt:
Okay, that's a lot of money Ben at that time, just saying hello.
Ben Feingold:
Yeah, but the show costs 550,000.
Adina Pitt:
Whatever, whatever.
Ben Feingold:
Then Steve Mosko okay said, "I can't make the show. What do you do?" I said, "I'll put up the money," and they're like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I said, "Here's the deal. Fox has Simpsons and Family Guy, we have nothing. It's my job to take risk and I will eat the loss on Home Video if it doesn't work." By the way, I don't need to read anything. You guys do what you do, it's not my job. My job is to actually jump into the void on something, that doesn't exist to underwrite a show because TV didn't have the money. For foreign sales, I couldn't sell African-American show at the time. I had to put up $450,000 to make the show. For the creators, they didn't know how the money worked always, but that's how it worked. Jump into the void.
Ben Feingold:
If you're doing something on YouTube or you're doing something creatively, work really hard, be very passionate about it, be willing to fail and be willing to get yelled at for your conviction, and enable people who are not like you to do things.
Adina Pitt:
That's right.
Debra Curtis:
Ben, I don't know if you've got all your screens up, but if you can see mine, I just want to show you I have my season one.
Ben Feingold:
Okay, uncensored.
Adina Pitt:
Oh my God.
Debra Curtis:
Okay, uncensored.
Ben Feingold:
They were like, "But that was the thing." There are things that make no sense, and those are the things that not only do they make a lot of money for the company, but they can change society, but you actually have to defer to creative. You have to be willing to put yourself on the line for failure.
Adina Pitt:
I think this story is so important.
Debra Curtis:
No, go ahead Adina. I was going to say Breaking Bad was the same story. They didn't want to make it.
Adina Pitt:
That was Rob, my former boss, Robert.
Ben Feingold:
Two years into Breaking Bad, I got a call from TV division. They came to my house. They said they can't make it work financially. I was gone. What can I make out of DVD? How can we make it work to plug the budget? I gave them a few ideas and they're like, "Well look, we're going to have to shut down the show because..." What was that show Lionsgate had? It was Matthew Wiener's show.
Debra Curtis:
Mad Men.
Adina Pitt:
Mad Men.
Ben Feingold:
Yeah, they were grabbing a renewal budget. They were grabbing all the budgets. They were going to have to shut down and I said, "Guys, all you have to do is live to season three, just live to season three. There's enough money in the DVD. You just have to be patient," but they were under corporate pressure. You work at a big corporations, there's enormous pressure to make money, but you have to fight that to go for a hit, and not everybody... The big companies who die, it's when the most political people get to the top and don't want to take risk.
Michelle Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), so good.
Adina Pitt:
Can I just piggyback on that because-
Ben Feingold:
Thank you.
Adina Pitt:
... there's two really quick stories. I love that so much, I can't... I was pregnant with one of my kids. I don't remember who it was and I was very, very proud. My mother said, "You should be home. Why are you at work?" I said, "I'd rather go into labor with a thousand people in the room than by myself." There was a lot of method to my madness, but I took a pitch for a show, and it was a very animated pitch. By animated, I mean he actually started standing on his head and doing all kinds of things. It was a show called Yo Gabba Gabba!, and I seriously almost went into labor because I thought he was going to hurt himself and we ended up picking up the show. I almost lost my job and that was one of many times that I would say yes to something that I think they let me say because I had the baby.
Adina Pitt:
I really think that I protected because of my kids, but I want to say I heard a fabulous story from someone who said to me I was the person who turned down Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I said, "Tell me about that pitch because I think there's a lot of lessons learned by someone else's mistakes. Forget the successes. I don't care about you. I want to hear about what went wrong because that's where..."
Michelle Miller:
I was going to ask this question. Now I don't need to. I love it.
Adina Pitt:
No, but it's like I need to know what went wrong because everyone, your failure is your greatest success. You learn from your failures. You don't learn from your success. Success is wonderful. It's the failure that really gives you so much character, and you start building those bricks, right? This guy says to me, "No, you don't understand, what would you have done in my shoes? These people come in, they put these sketches and they said it's a bunch of mutant turtles in a sewer, superhero mutant turtles and a sewer." I said, "I get your point. I honestly think about it, what would you have said?" We're not living in today. We're living in whatever that was in the '80s or the '90, whatever this pitch was, different time, different era.
Adina Pitt:
Every single time I receive a pitch hand to God, I check with so many people and say, "Is this a TMNT moment? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Is this a TMNT moment? Am I missing something here? This talking goat show, is this really... because I'm all about animals talking, right? Does this resonate with you? Am I missing something?" Then I get 14 people to say whatever it is they're going to say and then I say yes or no. Honestly, there's a gut thing, but honest to God, it is so incredible how those risks are so important in our career, but also those mistakes are so important.
Ben Feingold:
You can't win saying no and you can't win... It's you can't make money saying no, you can't win say no. I mean I passed on Ice Age when Fox was trying to dump it. They gave it to me on a silver platter, and I'm like, "We couldn't figure it out because nobody talked."
Adina Pitt:
Oh my God.
Ben Feingold:
The next time around, Resident Evil came in. I called John Kelly and he said, "I don't really like. It's smelly, it's a video game movie." I said, "John, I'm doing it." Well, everybody on game movie in the history tanked till then. Then Sony made a billion dollars on Resident Evil over by the time they got the Resident Evil 6.
Michelle Miller:
Wow.
Ben Feingold:
I was passing on Ice Age when it was given to us by Jim Giannopoulos who's now at Paramount. I mean they were trying to get rid of it, and they turned out to be the guys who started Christmas laundry at Universal who did that Minions and he did... it's the odd stuff, so have the passion. If you're a business related person, be willing to lose and do stuff with new people, voices that are never heard because society is in... Forget the right wing, whatever, but society is interested in new voice. For an hour, you get to meet somebody from a different part of the world, or who has different gender life. I have a movie that went out last weekend. It's a transgender kid who goes on a road trip called Cowboys with his dad.
Ben Feingold:
His mom doesn't it because she doesn't want him to be a boy, and a lot of transphobic comments on the movie, but honestly, I don't care because in 10 years, I know that people will think it's a mainstream movie as society evolves.
Debra Curtis:
Yeah, and I think to piggyback off of that, I think that there's so many opportunities that the hindsight is the 2020 and it's in the moment when you have to as you say Ben be strong enough to stand firm in your beliefs. We were talking on our little pre-chat, Lindsay and I were talking about the evolution of the shield. My position as a Sony exec came on once the show got picked up to series because we co-produced it with Fox TV studios, but...
Ben Feingold:
I remember it.
Debra Curtis:
Yep, I'm sure Ben, you know the story, but once it hit the airwaves, advertisers were pulling out left and right, but John Lang... No, not John Landgraf, it was Kevin Reilly was running the network at the time and Peter Ligouri. I can't remember exactly who was... They stood behind it because they believed in it. I remember let Burger King pull out, let people pull out. I believe in this show and it was for the strength of the executives who believed in the show that let it grow to become a 7-year seminal moment of television that changed a moment in time between that and Sopranos with the anti-hero being the new hero of television. Sopranos had a bit of an easier time because they were pay cable on HBO.
Debra Curtis:
Whereas, the Shield was basic cable. They were advertiser driven. Then also for the writers, if there are any writers in the audience, that was a show where Sean Ryan had been rising the ranks in television as a writing producer. I think he was either the number two or number three level producer. He wrote that script on spec. He just wrote it. Nobody paid him to do it. He didn't pitch it. He wrote it the way he saw it and he thought, "Well I'm just going to write this as a writing sample because no one's going to buy this show. It's too this, it's too that, it's too violent, it's too dark, it's too..." Your main lead is a cop who beats the crap out of a suspected child abductor just to get a confession and at the end of the episode, they find the kid who's been kidnapped, so really dark.
Debra Curtis:
It might have even been one of the first TV MA language violence... Every single letter you can have attached to the show it had, and they believed in it and they stood firm. There are a lot of shows that a lot of networks would not have had the strength of character to stand behind. I think to Ben's point and to Adina's point, you have to believe and you have to stand firm. Like Adina said, sometimes it takes a village and you have to check in with your colleagues and you have to not feel like your answer is the only answer. We're a community and we have to work collaboratively to make things happen.
Lindsay Donohue:
Yeah. Just to add on to that too, I think one of the other things as part of the FX lore with the Shield is I think you do have to also though, I think we all have our own preconceived notions when we're thinking about what it is we need, or what's next. I think at FX, the story legend goes that the last thing they wanted was a cop show. They were like, "That cannot be what we launched our drama brand with," and then they read this script. I think too it's also important to put aside your own biases that you've created for yourself and be able to say like, "Okay. You know what though, this is good and we're going to double down on this, even though it seems like a crazy idea to do a cop show."
Ben Feingold:
Yeah...
Adina Pitt:
You know Lindsay, it's so interesting. Sorry Ben, I was just going to say how many great ideas have networks and producers and creators have that have failed? Ultimately, the consumer decides fortunately and unfortunately what's going to win and what's going to lose, but that doesn't make a great show. Family Guy was canceled. Adult Swim picked it up and it got rebooted. Let's face it, right? That's one of many...
Ben Feingold:
We had Seinfeld that got canceled twice from NBC and they just...
Adina Pitt:
Yeah.
Ben Feingold:
They put them in the air in the summer because everything they had flopped, and then...
Debra Curtis:
ER was passed on by everything... I worked on Tony Francis' desk when he packaged ER in '94. Every network in town passed on it, and then NBC very tentatively said, "Well, because of the people involved, we'll take a look."
Adina Pitt:
How about 30 Rock?
Debra Curtis:
Yeah.
Adina Pitt:
That was going to get canceled, that was saved by Kevin Reilly. I did out...
Ben Feingold:
To go back to Michelle's basic point, what is the essence of an executive, so I think obviously when it comes to content, it's to give people voice.
Adina Pitt:
Well said.
Ben Feingold:
We gave John Singleton voice. We gave him...
Adina Pitt:
Yep.
Ben Feingold:
It was his voice and we would just say, "Just let John do what he does." We had Boyz n the Hood, and the theaters didn't want to book it. Sony was like, "Why aren't you making monster movies?" We're like, "We're making Boyz n the Hood," and you know what, the theaters, they all canceled that. We ended up with only 800 theaters opening weekend. We had 2000, they all canceled. They were afraid of rioting in the African-American community, and it changed the industry by giving... may he rest in peace. He died last year voice.
Michelle Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep, yep.
Adina Pitt:
Ben, can I go back to one thing that you said earlier because you were talking about, and I don't want to misrepresent what you were saying, but you were talking about going to a younger voice or going to... I want to add to that and I want to say the way. I look at this. I agree with you, but I would add that I think it's a peanut butter and jelly thing. I don't think you can just go to the new. I think you need to have a balance of experience and new ideas and find that hybrid. The reason I say that is because new does not give you strategy. New gives you like we're going here, we're going there, and there's there has to be a balance. That's my personal opinion is that you can't go one way or the other, there has to be a balance...
Ben Feingold:
But...
Michelle Miller:
Oh. Yeah, Ben.
Ben Feingold:
You need wisdom, yep.
Michelle Miller:
Yes.
Debra Curtis:
Yep, I think that's what you're saying, yeah.
Labid Aziz:
Instinct from experience-
Michelle Miller:
And Instinct. Yeah.
Labid Aziz:
... from failure as Adina said. From failure and instincts and... No, I mean just what I've loved hearing from you guys is know the right people network, be good, and hope that the people that are making decisions above you are like the Bens of the world and the Debras and the Lindsays and the Adinas who are going to take chances, but bring their wisdom to the table of nurturing and protecting and managing the risk, but giving rise to new voices. I've really enjoyed it.
Michelle Miller:
Well said. Well said. Listen guys, I have never zoomed through Q and A. I've always been the role of the moderator been like, "I'm going to be really good with time, but there was no way I would stop that conversation. That was just beautiful. Guys, I apologize the audience if your questions might not be answered, but we will get to one or two of them at least as long as the panelists don't mind if we take them, if we have them for a little bit longer. Arnon, can you choose a couple people or a couple questions to ask the panel?
Arnon Shorr:
Or there were actually a good number of questions. We definitely won't get to them all-
Michelle Miller:
Yeah.
Arnon Shorr:
... but it was just really interesting to listen to all the chatter-
Michelle Miller:
I know.
Arnon Shorr:
... just now, the back and forth conversations and the...
Michelle Miller:
That's best.
Arnon Shorr:
What I love is this sense that it's such a tiny industry and everybody knows everybody. We're really one giant family which is really cool.
Debra Curtis:
Well, the funny thing is that Lindsay and I knew each other through business, and it wasn't until we got on the email chain for this that I was like, "Wait, you went to Brandeis?"
Michelle Miller:
So good.
Arnon Shorr:
Yeah, part of the reason we're trying to do better with the Brandeis alumni networking, those sorts of things shouldn't be as surprising hopefully down the road. Anyhow, let's get to some of these questions real quick. We had one question from Eric Parker, which I'm going to expand on a little bit. He wanted to know to get a sense of how much of the film and television world is in New York, how much of it is in LA, has it changed over the years. What I'd like to add to that is how much has COVID and the Zoom era decentralized Hollywood? Do you still need to live in one of these hubs in order to break in and move up in the industry, or is it a different world today?
Debra Curtis:
I mean I think I can jump in to say I do think we will eventually go back to some kind of office environment, even if it's an office/home hybrid because there is something... Someone said earlier, I think Adina you said there's something lost in the face-to-face, and I think there's a lot of value to walking across the hall to your colleague's office to have a quick 20-minute conversation about an issue that you're having, or a fire you're trying to put out. I think now is the best time to be able to be living somewhere else and get into a job because of Zoom, but in one to two years' time, we might be back to in person. The other...
Adina Pitt:
It doesn't matter where you are.
Debra Curtis:
Right. Well, the other big thing I would say is the great thing about film and television is on a microcosm, it can be wherever you are. If you are a first-time filmmaker, you can take your iPhone and start shooting your own film to have a calling card. If you want to work in news or documentary filmmaking, you can be anywhere in the world every single city. Major city has an outlet for television. Some of the major hubs like New York, Chicago, Philly, Miami might have more expanded programming and local programming, but there is so much opportunity locally when you're first starting out to feel like you have to move to LA or New York or Toronto. If you're Canadian, I think that those places, it used to be you had to be there. I think now there are opportunities elsewhere.
Adina Pitt:
I think for physical production, my husband works in physical production, I think that's different than being an executive, right? Being on it because you can do that remotely from anywhere, but I do think wherever the shoot is taking place, you need to be nimble enough to be there. I will say that I think a lot of states... I live in New York, so I can't speak for a lot, but I know just speaking to Michael, he's on location right now. New York has prioritized production, and I know LA is probably just... This is a huge part of the economy of these states. They've got to get these things up and running, and those COVID protocols have been really extreme, but the only thing I compare this to was 9/11 when everybody left New York.
Adina Pitt:
Everybody left New York and Michael stayed put because we had just had a baby. It was like, "Well, we're staying put," and then the state and the city kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, and then that amplified. You see that across Connecticut, Atlanta, Chicago. I mean we could go on and on and on to your point Debra. I think the exciting thing for production is building your local production units and using this as an opportunity if you cannot relocate, but also having the assurance that this is an industry that is important, wherever it was vibrant before they're going to want to make it vibrant again. Everybody wants to get this up and running.
Adina Pitt:
It may not look the same initially, but certainly from the network side, from the content side, the developments and all that, you could be in who cares, nobody cares anymore. I'm on a Zoom.
Speaker 8:
I'm sorry.
Michelle Miller:
Speaking of.
Adina Pitt:
I'll be out in a second. That would be one of my children, but I just want to just acknowledge that I agree with Debra, and I just wanted to add that point that I think entertainment is definitely a priority for so many reasons, for so many states. I think it's going to be really exciting, and I think it's also going to bring out some phenomenally creative ideas. I work in animation predominantly, and that's one of the industries that didn't stop during COVID. In fact, the animators work from home and that was extraordinary. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they're producing shows. It's the most extraordinary thing to think about the hundreds of people who are in a unit, and they're all working from home and the coordination, but they're doing it and they're doing it across the industry.
Adina Pitt:
They're doing it at FX. they're doing it at Nickelodeon, they're doing it at Sony, they're doing it at wherever. They're doing it everywhere. It's absolutely fantastic, and I don't know what the industry looks like on the other side of this, but I'm excited to see because it just goes to show you for people who can't get out of their homes, for people who can't do... this is such an opportunity or people who can't relocate. I mean don't tell me I have to be somewhere because I can do it from here and I did it.
Arnon Shorr:
Thank you. Does anybody else have anything to weigh in, or should we move on to another question if we can squeeze it in?
Adina Pitt:
Sorry.
Michelle Miller:
No-
Arnon Shorr:
No.
Michelle Miller:
... don't be sorry. Let's try another question.
Arnon Shorr:
Yeah, we're here for your wisdom. That's the whole point.
Adina Pitt:
Yeah, it's not really wisdom.
Michelle Miller:
No, it's wisdom.
Arnon Shorr:
It's okay. It's a good question real quick. This is from William-Bernard Reid-Varley who is asking... This is a question that occurred to me also. I believe it was Debra who spoke about trusting the agents and the manager, or having certain agents and managers who you trust, so that when they send you material, you're more likely to want to read that material and to care about that material, the material that comes from people who you don't necessarily know as well, or don't necessarily trust. The question is for writers out there, when you're looking for representation, when you're looking for an agent or a manager, how do you find out which agents and managers have good reputations, among the executives who eventually you want reading your content?
Debra Curtis:
Well, that I think is also your own networking, right? If you're an emerging writer, you hopefully will be networking with other emerging writers and/or junior executives. It's the telephone tag of do you know anyone who knows this person? Do you know anyone who knows this person? It's also looking up online and seeing are there a deadline Hollywood articles about them, they've just sold this project, they've just sold that project, looking up on Hollywood reporter variety to see what talent are they attached to. Because almost any time a big project is sold at the bottom of the article, it'll say this person is represented by agent manager lawyer, but that's at the upper level.
Debra Curtis:
If you're an emerging writer, you're probably going to get signed by an emerging agent and at that point, it's really about sitting down with them. If somebody wants to sign you, then you need to have coffee with them and get a sense of their vibe and do they feel genuine to you? Do they feel like someone who understands your voice and understands your eventual goals? Do they also sound like they understand the business? Come prepared with questions for them, but it's also then talking to your friends and saying, "Hey, do you know this person and what do you hear?" I get texts all the time from friends who say, "Hey, my friend is meeting with this agent, or this executive. Do you know them and what's your feedback?"
Debra Curtis:
You do have to be careful obviously because if I'm giving feedback to someone who's giving it to someone else and it's negative, I have to be very careful about how I word it and what I say if I choose to say anything, because the backlash of that is that it's very tricky when you know someone who's not the greatest. I might say something like, "Oh, who else are they meeting with," and just leave it at that. Then you need to start learning to read between the lines if you get an answer like that because someone who doesn't have the greatest reputation, but you don't want to go on record of saying so that might be code, but really it's also your own gut. Sit down with the person, meet with the person. Do they get you vibe?
Lindsay Donohue:
Yeah. I think so much of it comes down to vibe, and I think too as you were talking about that stuff Deb, it's so true... I think it goes back to that idea of having a really strong network of people that you can trust. I think after doing this for a long time, I have a really good sense of who I can give super honest feedback to, and who I have to give a little bit more coded feedback to and not sugar coat exactly, but not be as direct I think as I would be because it is a small town, and you don't want to somehow feel like you're retaliated against by maybe them not sending that client to meet with you, not bringing that pitch into you. It is a delicate balance.
Arnon Shorr:
If we can squeeze in one more question just before we close, because I think this is going to be potentially relevant, especially to current students, new alumni for people who are starting out, who are emerging which is I like that term. What is the wrong way and what is the right way to reach out to executives? I remember when I was younger and looking through the Brandeis directory and seeing, "Oh, so and so is an executive at Sony," for example. I got all excited, executives, it seems important, but what's the right thing to say, what's the wrong thing to say? How would you recommend people reach out to you and when in their journey?
Debra Curtis:
I mean I think that it has changed as I think Adina was saying earlier dramatically since when we got out of school and when we were trying to make our network. I mean my first assistant job, we didn't even have email. We had internal email only. We didn't have external email in the early '90s as an assistant. Now it's much easier because of email and particularly with LinkedIn. I get LinkedIn emails all the time. I don't always check my LinkedIn, and it doesn't always hit my radar, but I would recommend a couple things and what I tried to do was lead with I'm a Brandeis student, this is my area of focus, this is what I want to learn, here are the questions I have for you.
Debra Curtis:
I think it's really important to realize that if you are able to get 20 minutes of somebody's time, understand that their role is not to find you a job. Their role is to answer your questions and give you guidance and support. Come with very strategic questions, and it could be as simple as tell me your journey, how did you get started. It can be this is what I want to do and this is where I want to get to you, do you have any recommendations of how I go from A to B, but don't expect that they're going to open up their Rolodex and give you 15 names of more people to contact, because that's not their role. Their role is to give you guidance and recommendations, but I think emailing on LinkedIn has been the primary way people have found me.
Ben Feingold:
I mean I can only speak for myself. I don't even put my name on the fact that I'm one of the owners and I run Samuel Goldwyn films. The reason is I don't want people to reach out to me.
Michelle Miller:
Ben, it was very hard to find you, and I will just say that right now.
Ben Feingold:
Part of the thing is when we bought the company, I said to Peter, "I don't want my name in any press releases. My name is not going to be on the company, but I'm going to run the company." That's because we've grown at 35% a year in the last five years, and I'm focusing on growing the company, not answering a lot of whatever or getting involved in a lot of minutia. We bought a movie today and talk about trusting, I made an offer on the movie before I saw the movie.
Michelle Miller:
Wow.
Ben Feingold:
It's not announced and it won't be for a while, but the point is I would say to the students or to the people who want to be in the industry, how do I say this kindly? What are you offering to other people?
Michelle Miller:
That's good.
Ben Feingold:
What is it that you're selling. If you have a script or a story or an idea for a project, it starts with that because there's so many wonderful people, but ultimately, the people that you're talking to are very busy. My wife started in the mail room at CAA. She wrote three movies and they got made. Then she decided to be a mom, but she just always wanted to write. She had spec scripts while she was delivering mail. Invest in yourself, invest in your creative. You can then go the Debra side, you can go creative, development executive, but to be an exec... I got lucky I got head hunted into an industry that I never tried. If you want to be in the industry, invest in your voice and in the material, so that when you reach out to somebody or you get somebody, you can tell them what your vision.
Ben Feingold:
You have a work product and people can say, "I can't believe like Labid, you've done all these things." I mean that's a mover and a shaker and somebody that's investing in their own voice.
Michelle Miller:
Right.
Ben Feingold:
I think it's the most important thing is to know what you're offering to potential people that you'll collaborate with.
Michelle Miller:
Great answer.
Adina Pitt:
I would just add that people need to have patience because I think we are dealing with generations that everything is immediate gratification, immediate, immediate, immediate, and let me tell you something it's not immediate. For some, it is immediate, but it's a very small some, and it's a tiny amount of people. For most, it takes time to incubate experience, relationships, learning how things work. You'll get there. We've all been there, we've all been 20 years old, we've all been 22. We know what that feels like, but you have to have the patience to really be in the moment and take in and learn, and not be living in the future. Because if you're living in the future, then you're giving me 75% of the present.
Adina Pitt:
I will tell you there is no shame in starting at a place where you learn to work your way up, no shame. Not everybody has degrees that enable them to start at a certain place, but even lawyers and... everybody starts somewhere guys.
Ben Feingold:
Yeah.
Adina Pitt:
Can we just have the humility and the acknowledgement that I don't care if it's 20, or 25? There are certain things that remain the same, and that is you will be a much better whatever you are at the end of your journey if you give yourself the time to enjoy each one of the of those steps. Don't rush it because some of you will cut through and you'll be fine. Good for you, but most people who live in the real world and are balancing family and work and life issues, even if you don't have kids or it doesn't matter. Life and work, it's okay to slow down for a minute and to really enjoy this journey because it goes by really quickly, whether you rush through it or whether you take your time.
Adina Pitt:
You look back and you realize, "Oh my God, look at all the time there's... look at the conversation we're having." I feel like I met Debra yesterday, and it wasn't yesterday. It was decades ago and it feels like yesterday, but I've enjoyed every second of it. I wish that for all of you is that don't live in the future, please try to keep your feet firmly planted in the present with your dreams in the future, and enjoy everything and learn and ask and fail as much as you can please. By the way, we're still doing this. We're all learning and failing, and importantly, we're all on this journey together. We're just in different places of the journey. I just want to share that with you because it's very important to me and especially as a mom of college students.
Adina Pitt:
I feel like I'm talking to my 19-year-old self, and I just wish you much so success.
Ben Feingold:
Yeah.
Michelle Miller:
Wow. Oh, yeah. Just give me all of that.
Adina Pitt:
I don't know who said that, but yes, cool.
Michelle Miller:
That was Labid, that was Labid. The voice of Labid from above.
Adina Pitt:
Oh.
Michelle Miller:
Oh, God. I really don't want to end this. I wish we made it longer. In hindsight, it should have been an hour and a half, but go figure. Thank you guys. Thank you Debra, Labid, Lindsay, Ben, Adina for imparting your wisdom on us because there's so much in entertainment, there's so much to learn. We want to create these specialized focused panels if you will and just spread light on what alumni are doing and what roles exist in the entertainment industry. You guys are just so eloquent, so captivating. We could do a whole thing on just each of you. Thank you guys for doing this, and it's so great to meet you. Thank you guys for attending, for listening, and I hope you come to future events and join our Facebook groups.