King of the Castle

“Let me get this straight, have you ever wanted to be in the entertainment business?” “No, Mr. Perenchio.”

“Do you watch movies?” “No, sir, not too much.”

“Do you watch television?” “Not too often, Mr. Perenchio.” “Do you know anyone in the entertainment industry?” “No, sir, I don’t.” “Have you ever been to Los Angeles?” “No, Mr. Perenchio”. “You’re perfect!” he said, and hired me.I was just being honest, but it turned out he wanted a blank slate. That’s one of my other life mantras: never lie to anyone about anything. You never know what’s going to happen. And I feel Mr. Perenchio could feel I was just telling the truth. The prospect of going to California was totally new to me, but the idea of working with him was just exciting to me. And like that, Mr. Perenchio convinced me to move out to the West Coast. Looking back, was there anything that you learnt at HBS that prepared you for that fateful meeting with Jerry Perenchio? And for embracing that opportunity when it appeared to you? Harvard Business Sc hool changed my life. The two years at HBS gave me confidence that I could be in an environment with some really talented people – some really intelligent people – and hold my own. At the end of my first year at HBS, I think I was well below the top half of the class. I was adjusting to having been in the Air Force for so long, and the fact I had been immersed in classes like classified thermodynamics and advanced calculus at Union was ultimately not helpful – none of those had much to do with Harvard Business School. But my second-year grades were very good, so leaving HBS I felt confident and had a sense of self- assurance. There’s something about an MBA from HBS which provides an immediate affirmation that you’ve survived a great, rigorous program, at the best school in the world. And I’d learnt a bunch of things along the way. In fact, in my interview with Mr. Perenchio, he asked me some very rudimentary financial questions, just to prove that I understood my way around a balance sheet. They weren’t sophisticated questions, but he just hit me with them in rapid fire succession, to try and get a sense of what I knew about business. Because of HBS, I felt confident in that moment. The school is impressive to people because they know that you’ve already come through a pre-selection process, and they therefore feel confident in their selection of you. So, you arrive in Hollywood without any industry experience. It seems a world so far away from anything you could have studied in the HBS classroom. Did any classes help? Well when I was at HBS, there was no BEMS (The Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports, taught to ECs by Professor Anita Elberse), though there was a guy named Steve Star, who was quite the impresario and taught marketing. Specifics aside, there i s no question that the training I received during business school was helpful to me, as it’s exactly what I then had to do at Procter and Gamble. But then again, the entertainment industry is another world. I was brought in as Mr. Perenchio’s business factotum and just did “busy business things” that any one of you could do. It was really only once I was on the job that Mr. Perenchio taught me my core function there, which was to negotiate deals with actors and actresses, producers, directors and writers for our television series. That was something completely new to me, but the two rigorous years at HBS did mean that I was comfortable with a heavy workload, comfortable with numbers, comfortable with making presentations, and comfortable with writing things up. And, given that half of the HBS grade was class participation, I was also very comfortable presenting oral arguments, which was immensely helpful, since Mr. Perenchio and Norman Lear didn’t care too much about reading reports. They wanted me to simply walk in and present a compelling business case. The biggest professional challenge came for me around five or six years later, when Norman came to me one day and said, “I have a shocking surprise for you. I’m going to take a break from television production, and I want you to go in my place to take over the creative management of the shows. I want you attend table readings, read teleplays (scripts for television shows), go to run-throughs, shootings, tapings, filming, editing sessions, the whole thing.” That was a complete fish-out-of-water experience for me and a tough transition. Ultimately it was Norman who stood by me, and had the belief that I could do it. It was then that I earned my creative bones – if you will. The other time that lessons from HBS and Procter and Gamble helped me out was when I was writing the business plan for Castle Rock Entertainment. It got us funding and brought over the guys from the creative side to form the company. My experience there gave me the credibility I needed to land the job at Warner Bros. Looking back, do you have any defining memories (good or bad) from HBS? One of the things I remember very strongly was the support and comradery I felt amongst my study peers. Since I’d been away from academia for a while, there were times in my first year that I felt a little out at sea, given how rigorous the program was. I had friends who were enormously helpful and supportive to me. So, instead of feeling any sense of the competitiveness that is sometimes associated with a high-pressured academic environment, I felt the opposite. All these years later, I still count them amongst my dearest friends. They are my closest friends by far. In terms of the academia, I simply remember feeling this intense, total immersion in the school environment, right from the first day. We weren’t given any particular preparation for it, and I certainly hadn’t any summer classes or anything. I just started in September with everybody else. And I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed, as if I had just been dropped into the middle of this intense and highly competitive environment. That is, before we all bonded. But looking back, the community amongst your study peers is something that I don’t think is spoken about enough. It is the sense of comradery, support, and closeness students feel amongst themselves that really contributes to the power of the HBS experience. Do you have any advice to students at HBS who want to go into the entertainment industry? Would it the advice be different to the advice you would have given to yourself, when you entered the industry? When it comes to career advice, a metaphor I’ve used in the past is to pretend you’re at a train station, and there are trains heading off in all sorts of different directions. One may go to Wall Street, another may go to the corporate life of a General Motors, another elsewhere. Some people know which train they want to board, others do not.