a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: The Future of Entertainment and What David Petraeus and the Olsen Twins Can Teach Us

Episode Date: May 25, 2015

If there’s one business on planet earth that makes Silicon Valley look sober and level-headed it’s Hollywood, says Marc Andreessen. Hollywood and Silicon Valley meet in this segment of the pod which features Andreessen in conversation with Brian Grazer, the super-producer behind half the movies and television you’ve watched in the last three-plus decades including Empire, 24, Parenthood, Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights, The DaVinci Code, 8 Mile, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Real Genius, Splash… You get the idea. Grazer and Andreessen talk about the future of the entertainment business; why TV is in a golden age of creativity; and how technology and the kinds of stories that Grazer produces can feed off each other -- or not. The conversation took place at the launch of Grazer’s book, “A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life,” which describes the “curiosity conversations” Grazer has held for the past 35 years with a succession of artists, scientists, politicians, technologists and people of every stripe. You name them, and Grazer has sat down with them to try and learn their secrets.

Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. Hollywood and Silicon Valley meet in this segment of the pod, which features Mark Andreessen in conversation with Brian Grazer. Grazer, that name rings a bell, I'm sure. He's the super producer behind half the movies and television you've watched in the last 35 plus years, including Empire, 24, Parenthood, arrested development, Friday night lights, Apollo 13, Real Genius, splash. Anyway, you get the idea. The two sat down at the launch of Grazer. book, A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life, which describes the curiosity conversations, as Grazer calls them, which he's held for years with a succession of artists, scientists, politicians, technologists, and all kinds of people. Mark and Brian pick up talking about Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the similarities and differences. Let's shift a little bit about the entertainment business. As context, my interest in the entertainment business, one is I'm a huge consumer. I love all the movies and TV shows. But the other is, if there's one business on planet Earth that makes Silicon Valley look normal and sober and level-headed, for sure, for sure, it's your

business. It is. And so I think there are a lot of parallels. There are differences between the businesses, but there are a lot of parallels, a lot of things to draw on. So a couple questions. One is, what is the thing that you are most excited about in the next 10 years of your industry, of your business? God. I think everybody's trying to find the better way to merge narrative form with the scalability of what you guys do. Because that hasn't been fully realized yet. What do you mean?

How so? Because I think that's what you guys do. You find ways to multiply the amount of possibilities in which people can experience things. So I'd like to be part of that movement, the movement of bringing narrative I mean, look, I get to enjoy some benefits of that with Empire because it has such a social media dimension that is, I mean, like Twitter has been such a big part of it and other social media, but that isn't really what I mean. I kind of mean, like, I mean, like finding the day and, the way to do day and global day and day in the way that people will want to experience it day and day like that, where everybody wins. I don't think anyone's found the way where everybody wins. Right, the way for the movie business to work economically today, their staging of releases across different windows, and so things get stretched.

Different people see the movie over the course of months, right? Right, right. Whereas I think what you're going towards is there could be more of a sort of a global conscious, there could be a single cultural moment. Yeah. When something comes out, it's literally not possible today. Exactly. But you'd have to come up with a new model to be able to do that.

Yes. Okay. I'd love to see it happen, and I'd love to be part of having it happen. Because ultimately, you just need great stories with sexy hooks. but I mean the easiest thing I'd like to say is like this Uber thing

I mean it's like I mean it's just like everyone's driving around and those music expresses all day long and everything like that this guy found a way to do this thing

it's the same I mean it's working pretty well congratulations that's not sure you're part of it you and Ron Conway over here

the beneficiaries of everything good don't get me started okay all right Okay. What are you most concerned about? A lot of people, a lot of people, well, actually, let me provoke the question a little bit. A lot of people in L.A.

are, you know, for the last 10, 20 years have been extremely, I would say, stressed and upset by the impact of technology on their business. And the music industry has certainly been through their share of sort of chaos. And a lot of people in the movie and TV business have, I've had, you know, they've had sort of very hostile conversations with me over time. Like, why are you screwing everything up? And so, like, as you think about the impact on your technologies, do you have a concern that the impact of the impact?

the technology is going to be to make the business that you're in a worst business? Yeah, I think, I mean, well, it's made it a lot less lucrative for artists in the last five years. I mean, it's made it, I mean, I'm thrilled that, I mean, I'm grateful that I had 20 years of like

that was the real golden era, you know, for, so I, where you, you know, I could get 25% of first dollar gross on movies. But, so that's completely vanished because of technology. Why? Well, well, first of all,

the most negative would be piracy. And the counterargument to piracy would be, you know, Furia 7 comes out, and it's grossed, it's the top, it's the highest grossing Warner movie ever, maybe? Yeah, Universal movie. It's like the universal movie ever. Empire, your show, Empire, the ratings are off the charts. They're off the charts, yeah. You know, the Empire has the kind of ratings the TV shows used to have in the old days.

I guess, you know, I know, because... The big entertainment companies still make a lot of money. It's tough to do this with Mark Andreising, because he has the counterarguments. I mean, he does. I've seen him on stage with tough, way smarter guys than me. So, technology today works best on the, on the mega hit thing. And I think, you know, Empire is a mega hit. And which you just, and Fast and Furious and the Marvel movies for Disney, it's amazing.

Those mega hits, it's working. But it doesn't work for the doubles. The singles and the doubles where, you know, there were time you could make $20 million just on a, on a movie. If I said the title, you wouldn't even. You know what I mean? So, and a double. So that part has changed. The middle has changed.

But I think that ultimately, where I believe it will go is that ultimately, every business operates on quality. So if you can create sustained quality, then you'll always be in demand. Technology will find you or you'll find it. We won't create it down in Hollywood, that's for sure. But that's what will happen. I mean, I think what would really interest me is entertainment and education.

I think that's where the big void is. That would be for me the future. That interests me because I'm curious. So curiosity factors into both things. So the way education works, because I do think that the way the education system in America, I think that's sadly, I mean, I think feel that that's suffering. Certainly public education. So I think there are, I think there'll be ways to augment education to make it better for the majority of the population in America.

Do you have any projects like that now? Are you looking for them? I am looking for that. Always looking for that. I mean, and there are projects that are, I mean, Apollo 13 is a commercial movie, but it does that. But I mean it in a different way. I think there's a way to make that work for schools, for schools and out of schools. And I'm working on a complex thing.

that might work that way. It's called a curiosity complex. That is interesting. But there should be a way to do it visually. There should be a way to do with LDF screens or skins that you could replace. You could probably revolutionize the education system. It sounds like a very good startup pitch

and term sheets in the mail. I'd love to do it. So let's come a couple more topics before I wrap up. So one is, I think one of the things that's kind of very both surprising but also very clear is, you know, we're in the, in a lot of ways, we're in a golden age of television, right? Yeah, the, the, from a creative quality standpoint, yeah. I mean, I've been watching, I mean, I just, basically, it's a miracle I'm even here today

because I very easily could have stayed up last night and watched all of Daredevil. Wow. Episode 5 in, and I almost have to physically force myself to, like, not watch the next episode. Is that cool? It's so good. Wow. Okay. It's phenomenal.

But, I mean, there are literally, it's, I don't know what it is like, just like last fall, it's, like, 300, 350 shows on TV, and then, and not all of them are fantastic, but the ones that are good are just extraordinary. And now Netflix and Hulu and all these other, you know, Amazon, green lighting, all these new shows, drama, comedy. So, like, television is like, you know, you guys are, you know, rest of development. Like, you know, there's just extraordinary projects that you're doing. There is an argument today that basically the quality is, is effectively, or largely are all going to end up on television, which is the great directors, the great writers, the great actors are going to be naturally inclined to go to television. They can tell longer form

stories. They have more creative control. The economic model lends itself. well to kind of appealing to a highly educated audience. And then on the other side, there's a sort of a very dark view in the future of the movie industry of sort of an even darker view of what you said, which is, you know, great superhero movies can do well, but basically movies that either appeal to kids or to international audiences can work, but sort of movies appeal to adults basically fundamentally can't work anymore. Yeah. Like, do you believe that?

Is that, since you do both movie and TV, is that your kind of core operating principle right now, or do you think that people are either too optimistic on TV or too dark on movies? this will be easy i can totally agree with your point of view um i do pretty big deal for somebody like you who's made a lot of high quality movies yeah because there's there are those movies that i've made that are tour to their pedigree tour de force kind of films i didn't make the king's speech but i like the king's speech

but i've made frost nixon i make so i do like to make movies that are that become oscar nominated films that are that are thoughtful adult films and i think and there's really very little interest in people paying for those right now. I mean, I can get them made just through sheer physics, just the force of me. But it's not attractive. So it's mostly what you just said. And for the most part, that's why I've kind of shifted my focus or balance into television.

I started in television, but then I kind of got kicked out of television. And then I think I totally agree with it. It's TV. And do you think this will, like 10 years from now, do you think we'll be sitting here, And we'll think the same thing. Like, will TV just build from here? I think it will. Okay.

I do. Okay. Because those platforms are economic. Yeah. They make sense for everybody when they're working. I mean, there'll be a point. You see right now there's just such a proliferation of platforms. But eventually, that'll find its way.

It's the right. Yeah. Good. All right. Well, we have a few minutes left, and so I want to close on a lightning round. And so I... Oh, we're looking that way. Not that this hasn't been a lightning round, but now I'm going to go really.

fast. Okay. So I'm going to run through a list of names of people you talked about in the book, who you've met with in curiosity conversations, and we'd love one sentence on each of them of kind of the most interesting or provocative thing that you took away from the conversations. You know this will be hard. Ready for this? Oh, this is, you're going to be, you're on the ball. I don't know. You're in the zone. You're in the zone. Jeff Bezos. So I'm, yeah, okay. Very smart, very focused. Very smart, very focused. Very smart, very focused, interested in physics, totally captivated by the fact that I met with Edward Teller wanted to know everything about that Star Wars program.

Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, father of the hydrogen bomb. Who was working, creating the Star Wars program when I met with me. SDI, yeah, okay. Different walk of life. David Blaine. Oh, my God, I loved meeting with David Blaine. He's a magician.

He blew my mind. He did stuff that I couldn't imagine. It was at a Greek restaurant in New York. And we took the room, and he just did from one thing to the next to the next. and he really, he changed his physicality in front of me. Blew my mind. Naomi Campbell. Trouble.

I would not have suspected that from her press coverage over the years. Throwing telephones at assistants. I never met a suit. I wasn't really, I didn't think to even meet a supermodel, but one of my assistants was, once in the fashion mission, because you want to meet the most important supermodel in the world. I can make that happen. And I go, okay, sure.

Naomi Campbell walks in. And I didn't know I was going to soon be dating her. Well, that was problematic. That's an interesting twist. She said, I'm going to ruin your life. And she did. Oh, interesting. And then I said, just please lose, eliminate the area code to the city of Los Angeles.

And that was about a year in the penalty box. And then we then became friends. And then she's now an empire. Well, there we go. Fantastic. It all comes together. Steve Jobs. So smart.

So smart. And I could feel that there could be a level of intolerance pretty quickly because you had to be within his world. On the ball and in his world. Yeah. Did he lose patience? Did he snap at you? No, he didn't snap me. But I ended it before he could.

Yeah, okay. Statute of limitations. Exactly. I'm going to be in the conversation. Total change of pace. Mary Kate and Ashley Olson. Oh, okay. I met them.

They were like a gigantic event in the world at one moment, at one point in time. They're tiny, super tiny. And they're kind of business phenomenons. I mean, they've created this business. Basically, I did it because my daughter was in the love of them. In fact, infatuated. And my daughter was having a 16th birthday, and I thought, I knew they wanted to be in show business, blah, blah, blah. I kind of used it.

Met him. And I said, would you please come to my daughter's birthday at the Chateau Marmont? They did. They did. There you go. Fantastic. The hero daddy. I was such a hero daddy.

It was unbelievable. Good, good, good. Total change of pace. David Petraeus. Oh, David Petraeus went like this. Was this before or after the scandal? Long before the scandal. Long before this scandal.

When he was in the military or when he's just a military at the Pentagon, the general. One of the top generals. So, so basically what happened is I got to know Charlie Rose about 15, 16 years ago or so. Got to know Charlie Rose. I'm drinking with Charlie Rose and Graydon Carter at the Waverly Inn. It's 11 o'clock. Everybody says, let's go home. And Graydon says, let's hang out.

Charlie goes, I can't. I got to go meet with Petraeus tomorrow in the Pentagon. And I go, I go with you. he goes great and I had a jet and I said I'll fly us we'll go so we went to meet general Petraeus and it was interesting because other than the private jet part of it everything was so no frills I was shocked that Charlie had to stand in line and it was Harris flying all over the place and he was that Charlie Rose and we got in and very professor super professorial and smart and he's not what you imagine of military general

is. You mentioned a guy in the field and he's an in-elect. He's a PhD, right? It's a PhD. PhD from Princeton, among many other accomplishments. Yes. So, super intellect, fun to talk to. Yeah. It's interesting how many of the top generals actually turn out to be PhDs or of serious advanced education. Yeah, well, that part, yes.

Yeah, I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Music producer, Rick Rubin. Oh, my God, Rick Rubin. I brought Rick Rubin to Empire, actually, because I said, these guys have got to get it, like get it a little more, you know, because he created Def Jam. I met him. He's probably the most influential music producer. of the last 30 years?

Yeah, I mean, he does it all. I mean, he created Def Jam. He does, you know, he does from hip hop to Anthony Keatis, the chili peppers, blah, blah, blah, to Johnny Cash, to Neil Diamond. I met him 30 years ago, and he was really heavy, super heavy guy, but doing yoga. So he comes into my office, he's 300 pounds, and he just sits on my desk in the yoga mode, and I don't know, didn't really talk. You know, he had this whole kind of trippy energy about him, but totally loved him.

Very pure guy, but still with a big beard. It was just a great meeting. We stayed friends. We've been on boat trips together. We swim in the, we do a lot of things together. And I think he's got a really interesting story. He was treated when he grew up as a king. Like, he grew up middle class, but his parents, every interaction was, Rick, you're a genius.

You're a genius. They never said anything bad. So when he got out into the world, when somebody said to him, I'm not sure I'd like it. He literally was hospitalized. He couldn't work. He was hospitalized, and then, like, he was an infirmary for a year. Wow. He couldn't work.

Wow. Because he was infantilized in a way that was, so I think he, interesting guy. You figured out his way through it. He did. A couple more, Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie, that was super interesting. I wanted to be Salman Roshty because of... When the Fatwa was still.

Padma. No, Padma was his wife. Yeah, because I was going to go. give you a Podma story. The Fatwa was the death threat. Yeah, that was a death threat. It's important to get those two right. I know, I know. Sometimes they coincide, but in his case, they were actually totally separate. You're right, you're right, you're right. See, this is the problem. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but I thought of Podma because basically he was pawning Padma off on me. Oh, interesting. So I thought

was really interesting. Yeah, I would find that interesting too. Well, he was in the midst of the death threat thing. But he was dating Podma, And Padma, you know, all men are governed by women. And he was, she really wanted to be an actress, I guess. And so he met me, I wanted to meet him for him. He wanted to meet me because he had a Godma. Immediately, like, could I meet Padma? Yeah.

Which I did. Were you disconcerted by the idea of meeting with somebody who was under an active death threat? I was freaked out about it. Yeah, I was freaked out about it. I wasn't, yeah, I was freaked out about it. Yeah, I think that makes some sense. Serena Williams. just loved her. I mean, she's, I mean, she's everything I think you would imagine or hopes

you'd be. Really loving, a childlike, and it's very, super innocent. Super, super innocent in every way, you know, just, just been doing tennis her whole life, as you guess. And so she's never really had real childhood or socialization. And she's very shy and sweet and soft voice. But super sorry. You just admire like crazy. All right. Last and final. Pressure's on. Ben Silberman. Ben, oh, my God. I love Ben Silberman. I don't know where he's sitting.

And Pinterest. But I met Ben before I really knew what Pinterest was. And I just liked Ben. Jack Dorsey was a friend of mine and a very selective guy, slightly, you know, cool, slightly elitist. Doesn't like everybody. We were at the Allen Company. There's 300 people.

He points to Ben. He goes, that's a little. a good guy. And he didn't say that about anybody. So immediately I took to Ben and every time we go to the Allen company, we hang out together and I always ask him if he'd go shooting skeet with me. And we do that with a few other guys. And I now use Pinterest. I love Pinterest. Yeah. What do you use Pinterest for? In this curiosity complex, what I'm able to do is I need a different ways to simulate the worlds that I'm creating. And so I can get these amusement parks all over the world or rides,

and I can pin them and put them in different buckets. Fantastic. All right. It's the next big blockbuster movie. There will be a credit to Pinterest at the end of the credits. Fantastic outstanding. Brian Grazer, thank you. Wow, thank you. All right, thanks.