Founders - #183 Johnny Carson

Starting point is 00:00:00 Johnny is the second unhappiest person I've ever known. I'm telling you this for a reason, right here in front of Mr. Carson. Watch your step. Johnny's mood can go up to down in milliseconds. The situation about to be discussed would be very dangerous if word gets out. Keep a tight lip. Meanwhile, Johnny seemed impatient, as if he had somewhere else to be. Henry, Johnny said, finally arriving at the purpose of our meeting.

Starting point is 00:00:28 I have reason to believe my wife is cheating on me. I also have an idea who the son of a bitch is that she's shacking up with. No wonder he'd been restless. He'd been sitting on a bombshell. Well, I'll be happy to file a divorce for you if you want. No, I don't want you to file for divorce, he interrupted. I want you to go with Arthur and me and some other guys when we break into the apartment to find evidence to prove that she's cheating on me. My first reaction was to be appalled. No way, I thought. Members of the bar do not break and enter apartments. And yet,

Starting point is 00:01:03 this was an immense opportunity at the beginning of my professional life to land a very major client and launch my career into the stratosphere. I hesitated. Suddenly, we were off into the night, into the rain, through the traffic, entering the door of the suspected love nest. In the bright light of the lobby, the sunglasses Johnny had been counting on to cover his identity proved useless. Hey, Johnny Carson, the doorman bellowed. But his delight at the sudden apparition of a celebrity in his lobby did not translate into a willingness to admit strangers into a resident's apartment. Oh no, I can't do that, the doorman

Starting point is 00:01:43 said. You wait here. I'll go get the building manager. Fortunately, the building manager turned out to be less committed to the sanctity of his tenant's domain. When I gave him a spiel about Mrs. Carson being the tenant, but Mr. Carson actually paying the bills, the manager appeared to be pondering the merits of my argument, which he did right up to the moment when Mullet grabbed his hand and slipped several hundred dollars into his palm. Yeah, okay, the manager nodded. Come on up, I'll let you in. Almost instantly, Carson discovered evidence of his wife's infidelity. The whole living room, in fact, almost the entire pad, was furnished with discards from the couple's apartment. There were even some pieces that Johnny hadn't realized were gone. Look, it's him, said Arthur. He was pointing to a table

Starting point is 00:02:30 in front of the window on which sat framed photographs of Joanne's playmate. For the first time, I realized her noontime buddy was Frank Gifford, the former New York Giants football great and sportscaster for CBS. Crushed by the overwhelming evidence, Carson leaned against the living room wall and began to weep. It was a painfully uncomfortable moment. While the rest of us tried to look away and give Johnny his privacy, it was, however, a small space and I couldn't always keep my eyes away. During one of those glances,

Starting point is 00:03:05 I could see that Carson's raincoat had fallen open. I was shocked to see that Johnny was carrying a.38 revolver in his hip. I was beginning to feel exceedingly uneasy. Armed men, an emotionally ugly scene, a man in turmoil. Many an inferno has erupted with less kindling. Just as soon as Carson regained control of his emotions, the private investigator barked, let's go. Very little was said on the walk back to Johnny's apartment. The rain had subsided, but no one felt like recapping the raid. When we reached Johnny's apartment, he thanked us and said he was tired and wanted to be alone. He asked his houseman to give me a ride back home.

Starting point is 00:03:48 As the car headed over the Queensborough Bridge, I realized I was probably one of the very few people who had ever seen Johnny Carson cry. That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Johnny Carson, and it was written by Henry Bushkin. And the entire book is filled with insane stories like that. I had a really hard time putting this book down. I devoured it in just a few days. I'll tell you where I got the idea. I'd heard of Johnny Carson before. Actually, the first time I actually thought about him, I was listening to a stand-up

Starting point is 00:04:19 by Eddie Murphy. And he talked about, this was back in the 80s, the stand-up was recorded back in the 80s. And he was talking about the divorce that Johnny was going through at the time. And he mentioned something that surprised me because I knew, you know, previously that he was the host of Tonight Show. But Eddie Murphy said that Johnny Carson had 300 million dollars. I was like, how did that was in the 1980s? I was like, how does somebody make that much money just hosting a late night TV show? So we'll get into that today. That's one of the main points of the book about the importance of ownership.

Starting point is 00:04:48 Johnny Carson's career has two completely different phases. The first half of his career, he's underpaid because he doesn't own the show. And the second half, he's unbelievably wealthy because he actually owns the show, which I'll get into. But the reason I'm reading this book, it was actually recommended by Mark Andreessen. Mark and his co-founder of A16Z, Ben Horwitz, have this, I guess it's a live show on that Clubhouse app, but it's also, they record it and I listen to it on their podcast feed. It's called One-on-One with A to Z. And you can find it by going to the A16, I think it's A16Z Live,

Starting point is 00:05:26 if you search for that in your podcast player. They have an entire list of all these different clubhouse shows. So it's not like a dedicated feed. And I think he's only done five or six episodes. But Mark's one of the most fascinating people. Any opportunity I have to hear him speak, I do. He's read probably, I don't even know, thousands of books in his lifetime, it seems. He's read probably hundreds of biographies. So he's just a constant fountain of good ideas and good book recommendations. And so he talked about, on his podcast, he talked about reading this book and being very surprised by the difference of who Carson was in his private life as compared and contrasted with who the public knew him as arguably the most famous entertainer in America at this point in history.

Starting point is 00:06:10 And so I want to jump into the book. I'm going to give you a brief bio of him. This is really not a complete biography. It focuses on about the 20-year history because the author that wrote the book, Henry, was Carson's attorney, enforcer. He did all these roles, which I'll go into in a little bit. But mainly it's on the time in Carson's life

Starting point is 00:06:30 from about 1970 to almost 1990. So let me give you a brief bio of Johnny Carson before this. He was born in Iowa in 1925, raised in Nebraska by his mother, Ruth, and his father, Homer. He served in the Navy, went to the University of Nebraska,

Starting point is 00:06:43 broke into radio, and then in television. He got his start in actually Omaha, Nebraska. And then he moves to LA, where in a typical up and down television career, this is a really important sentence and a really smart idea. He took a shot at every opportunity that came his way. And interesting enough, he wasn't NBC's first choice to succeed Jack Parr, which was the host of The Tonight Show before Johnny. He was actually the fourth or fifth choice. So Bob Newhart, Jackie Gleason, all these other people were approached, hey, do you want to take the show? They all passed, which is interesting to think about because it's this show more than anything else that's going to give Johnny Carson a net worth when he passes away of about $450 million, which blew my mind.

Starting point is 00:07:27 So Johnny starts on The Tonight Show in October 1962, and then he actually retires. He sticks with the show for 30 years, retires in 1992. But this is one sentence in the book that I thought was really instructive. He caught a break and made the most of it. And before I tell you more about how he did this, I want to tell you who the author is. So we have an idea of the subjective nature of this book. They were extremely, extremely close for 18 years and they had it falling out. He writes the book about a decade, decade and a half after them falling out. So he says, I worked for him for nearly two decades. I was his lawyer,

Starting point is 00:07:55 counselor, partner, employee, business advisor, earpiece, mouthpiece, enforcer, running buddy, tennis pal, drinking and dining companion. A good portion of my job entailed cleaning up his messes business messes personal messes and family messes and one thing that i appreciate that the that the author talks about is it was the most by far the the most complex relationship he ever had in his life the one he loved the most and hated the most and so as a byproduct of that we're going to see johnny carson in in the most positive attributes that you that a human can have and some of the most negative. I want to go to how important he was, how important it was that he focused on his main job. And this is going to come up a lot in the book where he's being pulled and pushed in different directions

Starting point is 00:08:35 by advisors and other people. And yet he just wanted to do the Tonight Show. When you read the book, there's so many crazy stories in it. It's easy to forget that Johnny was the best in the world at what he did. And being the best in the world at what he did. And being the best in the world at anything is not going to come easily, and it's not going to come without putting a lot of hours and effort into your actual craft. So this is about him setting the standard. Many people came after Johnny, but all of them kind of pale in comparison to how, because he created the blueprint for all these other people that followed after him so it

Starting point is 00:09:05 says you would think that by now the questions would have stopped after all he went off in the the air in 1992 and he died in 2005 long enough ago for people to have lost their curiosity about johnny carson but that's not the case indeed in the years since he's been gone carson's status seems to be reinforced talk show stars have proliferated, but Johnny is now beyond a star. He is the undisputed champion, the universal standard. As talented and popular as his successors might be, each of them is still doing a monologue about the day's events, still sitting at a desk making jokes with the band, still calling out tonight's first guest, and still following in Carson's footsteps across a landscape that will be forever his.

Starting point is 00:09:48 And as I was doing some other reading about Johnny, I came across this description of him by the director and producer Billy Wild. And I want to share it with you right up front, because I think it really talks about the role he he filled for millions of people. He had an audience about 20, I want to say around 20 million people him towards the uh i think that was his peak 20 million people at night so a large number of people especially given the overall population of america at the time but also the the amount of he was very prepared there's a lot of his approach to his craft i read the book and yes it's wildly entertaining really actually fun to read but i came across with a deep appreciation for how serious he took his work. So says, this is a quote from Billy Wilde, by simple law of survival, Carson is the best. He enchants the invalids and the insomniacs, as well as the people who have to get up at dawn.

Starting point is 00:10:38 No matter what kind of dead asses are on a show, he has to make them funny and exciting. He has to be their nurse and their surgeon. He has no conceit on the show, that is. He does his work and he comes prepared. If he's talking to an author, he has read the book. Even his rehearsed routines sound improvised. He's the cream of middle-class elegance and yet not a mannequin. Every night in front of millions of people, he has to do an aerial somersault performed on a tightrope. What's more, he does it without a net. No rewrites, no retakes. The jokes must work tonight. And so now this is the author more on this complex relationship, which I really appreciate him pointing out. He says, this was the most complex

Starting point is 00:11:22 and stimulating and challenging relationship of my life. The most rewarding and the most I appreciate him pointing out. He says, longer than he was with three of his wives. And he and I were closer than he was with any of his friends, family, or professional colleagues. He gives us more detail on his personality. He was endlessly witty and enormously fun to be around. He could also be the nastiest son of a bitch on earth. The truth is that he was an incredibly complex man. One moment gracious, funny, and generous. And Kurt, aloof and hard-hearted in the next. And now we get to the paradox of Johnny Carson that Marc Andreessen was talking about.

Starting point is 00:12:14 The fact that he was a world-class entertainer who happened to be an introvert and a loner. Never have I met a man possessed of a greater abundance of social gifts, intelligence, looks, manners, style, humor, and never have I met a man with less aptitude for or interest in maintaining real relationships. He was referred to as the most private public man who ever lived. So now he's going into more about understanding Johnny's complexity and the way he differs from like an actor, even though they're the same entertainers. Really, this whole section reminds me it's not what you do, but how you do it. And I would also say that what Johnny figured out is if you're going to have any kind of longevity at all, you have to be yourself. You can't play a role for three different decades.

Starting point is 00:13:02 So think about your favorite actors. Some of mine are like Pacino, De Niro, other people like that. A lot of their greatest work was done earlier in their careers. It's really hard to keep up the levels of intensity for multiple decades. And so when you think about Johnny, he really chose consistency over intensity. So it says, to understand Johnny's complexity, one must first understand his artistry and the esteem in which he was held. This is not an easy thing to do.

Starting point is 00:13:26 If you were to talk about a great movie actor, it would be simpler. His transformation into his character would be evident. The range of behavior he depicts would be obvious. The subtlety and nuance of the human experience that he illustrates would grab you by the throat. Actors played characters. They inhabited invented identities, brought to life by a carefully constructed script. But Johnny took the stage just as himself, reliant life by a carefully constructed script. But Johnny took the stage just as himself,

Starting point is 00:13:50 reliant mostly on his own native gifts. As much as he felt like he belonged in the company of other show business giants, he didn't care much for their company. He often told me that all it took to turn the most electrifying film stars into dullards was to be around them for a while. But he felt that way around everyone. There were very few social scenes in which he was ever really comfortable. He was known to describe dinner parties as torture. Ed McMahon, his famous sidekick and friend for 46 years, once said that Johnny was comfortable in front of 20 million people, but uncomfortable in a gathering of 20.

Starting point is 00:14:22 He was a habitual loner who guarded his emotional privacy. So I want to tell you a little bit about the finances behind a show like theirs, or like his. His show printed money, but like I said earlier, he didn't build wealth until he owned the show. And he had to get himself into a position where he actually had leverage to get, to grasp ownership of the show. And I'll go into detail about that because how they did it was very fascinating. And I don't even know if it was intentional. In 1979, when he was hosting the program four nights a week for 90 minutes a night,

Starting point is 00:14:51 as he had been doing it for 17 years up until this point, so from 1962 to 1979, NBC was earning $50 to $55 million per year from his show. In 1979. That's crazy. So there's a couple big ideas that you could take away from studying the life and career of Johnny Carson. One of which I already mentioned are two, I guess, the importance of focus, the importance of how much time and effort you put into what you're doing. But really another one is he really knew, Johnny knew his circle of competence and he stayed within it, which is so hard to do even when he was tempted and another smart thing he does you could wave millions of dollars at him

Starting point is 00:15:28 if it took him away from what he actually wanted to do which is talk show he didn't care he understood that after a certain point there was a decreased margin utility to an extra dollar and so he after experimenting he started radio and he started doing like these game shows once he found his niche he just stayed in it he knew that he he was going to be gifted at what he was doing he says Carson was part of the next generation he grasped that he owned the camera the way Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had grasped that they own the microphone that understanding made him more natural more relaxed and cooler and one thing we also are here's two things we also learned when you're reading this book is the fact that he was emotionally unavailable and obsessed with control.

Starting point is 00:16:11 This is about the fallout from the end of his second marriage due to him catching her cheating, which is really weird because he talks about it over and over again. Actually, I'm going to run over my point because I know I bring this up later. But, you know, he got married. He was married four times in his life. Never faithful at all. Never a good husband at all. When he finds the second wife, his name is Joanna. When he finds her cheating with Frank Gifford, I mean, he's out every night in New York City with a different woman.

Starting point is 00:16:36 So it's really interesting to think about how complicated we are as humans because he's, you know, grasping the wall, crying. I can't believe she did this to me. But he did much worse to her way more frequently. So johnny wasn't head over heels in love with joanna anymore if he ever was he probably loved her as much as he could love anyone but women had always come and gone in his world i don't think he would have been too torn up if she had merely gone what he hated was to have the emotional turbulence invade his world and this storm was huge it forced him to react to someone, which he only felt comfortable doing at times and in ways that he chose. He was constantly obsessed

Starting point is 00:17:11 with controlling all aspects of his life. And then, you know, as you can imagine, finding your wife cheating on you, even though you've been cheating on her every day. He didn't like that brought to him now. Now I've lacked control. I don't I'm not I don't have control over the situation. Now you're making me feel control. I don't have control over the situation. Now you're making me feel pain and I don't like this. And so I'm going to go backwards in the story for a minute because I want to talk about when, how Henry gets the job. He gets introduced and goes on this job interview to be Johnny Carson's lawyer, through like a friend of a friend. And he's young. I think he's like 27 years old at the time. Johnny, I think, is 45, already famous. And so we see the doubts, this inner monologue the night before the interview.

Starting point is 00:17:49 And he's just like, I don't fit in here. Like, what am I even doing? He says, sleep did not come easy that night. Try as I might, I could not imagine how this was supposed to fit into the star-studded world of Johnny Carson. And it gets even weirder when we see the interview the next day with Johnny. Carson came in and immediately got down to business. There wasn't any small talk. He seemed indifferent to me and impatient to be done. When he asked questions, he did little more than read my resume back to me. You went to Vanderbilt Law School? You're a member of the New York Bar?

Starting point is 00:18:21 I was becoming seriously confused and not a little impatient at what was shaping up to be a big letdown. Finally, he asked a question that surprised me completely. You play tennis, right? Yeah, I played in college. Why? I play tennis. It's my sport. If you work for me, I'll expect you to join me. I'd look forward to it. That was it. The interview was over.

Starting point is 00:18:42 When my wife asked me how it went, I said it was stupid. He didn't seem very interested in me. And that last line, based on my reading the book, I don't think he was very interested in other people. In many ways, I think Johnny built a world within the world. And you could speculate maybe he did this because of his upbringing. There's a lot in this book about the terrible mother he had, but it does serve as a reminder. You can be one of the best in the world at what you do. You can be unbelievably wealthy and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be content and live a happy life. He gets the interview or soon he gets the job, goes on the raid the next day. Then Johnny calls him at 2 a.m. the day after the raid.

Starting point is 00:19:18 And this is where we see the peculiar personality that a lot of humans have. There's a wide spectrum of behavior in humanity, right? So this actually says Johnny calls him at 2 a.m. the day after the raid to meet him at a bar in Manhattan. And this is the inner monologue of... I keep calling him Harry. His name's not Harry. It's Henry Bushkin. I want to call him Harry Bushkin. I don't know why. Okay, so this is the inner monologue of Henry, not Harry.

Starting point is 00:19:43 And he's talking about, like, why am I willing to get out of bed and then scurry over there at a moment's notice perhaps i felt i had felt drawn to the guy maybe it was the maybe it was just that the last two days of my life had been so incredibly different from the first 27 years that i figured i owed it to myself to see what happened next and i love that paragraph because reading these biographies, you know, this is just one of many crazy stories that we've covered. It's a daily or weekly reminder that life is supposed to be an experience. We can treat it as an adventure. We can have fun. You don't have to try to be perfect or rigid.

Starting point is 00:20:17 Life can be whatever you want it to be, whatever it is that you want to make it. And you get to the end of the book, you know, yeah, Johnnyon definitely made a lot of mistakes of course anybody would in his position but he really really lived he took advantage of the opportunity to be alive so anyways go back to this part now they're meeting up it's around 3 a.m in the morning johnny this time in his life is a heavy drinker he's drinking almost every night he also smokes four packs of cigarettes a day which is really unfortunate because he dies of emphysema. And towards the beginning of his life, he says, you know, don't try to get me to stop smoking. At the end of the life, his brother says, on the last conversation they ever had, he just kept repeating these damn cigarettes, these damn cigarettes, these damn cigarettes. So just a

Starting point is 00:20:56 reminder, we got to avoid that as much as we can. Johnny sighing heavily finally spoke. I'm not surprised that Joanne did this to me, he said. But it hurts. It hurts like hell. Maybe I drove her to it. I wasn't the best husband in the world. I should have been home more. Not out running around. Johnny was lost in self-regret and self-loathing. I'm a shit.

Starting point is 00:21:17 I have three kids with my first wife, and I don't see any of them. The more Johnny talked, the weirder this moment seemed. People I'd known all my life, my best friends, none of them would have burdened themselves to me. But here's a man I'd known for two days and he was baring his soul. Johnny continued, if a doctor opened my chest up right now, he couldn't find a heart or any goddamn thing. Just a lot of misery.

Starting point is 00:21:40 And I just want to pause there before I finish this paragraph. Think about that. He's 45 years old. He has one of the best jobs in the world.'s famous he's highly paid even though he has a crappy contract which I'll get into how they fix that in a minute and he's not happy and I think that's just a constant reminder that wealth success fame even if that's really what you want it's not going to make a great life they can add to an already existing great life but they don't

Starting point is 00:22:02 make them by themselves and we've seen this too many times. There's too many of these books that we read and we discover these people are not content. There's something inside of them that they haven't dealt with. There's a hole that no matter what they do, as much success and money they put into it, it will never fill. And we kind of see that with Johnny. My mother made sure of that. She deprived us, deprived us of any real goddamn warmth. And so everybody that meets his mother arrives at the same conclusion.

Starting point is 00:22:29 She's a very cold woman. She didn't take any pride in his accomplishments. She never gave compliments. She just, she was bereft of any kind of love. And that's terrible to have to grow up like that. But a lot of people have bad families. So the reason I left myself here is he blames, and he's not just doing this later.

Starting point is 00:22:44 He does it now, but he also does it later in the book, later in the book and later in his life, that he blames his failed marriages on his mother. But he's 45 years old when he's saying this. And my note to self here is you have to have some kind of personal responsibility. We can't control the poor life experiences we had our children, the family we might've been dropped into that wasn't loving or whatever the case is, but what are you going to do? If you never deal with that, that means the rest of your life, you're going to be unhappy. That's not, that doesn't make any sense. You got to deal with this. Whether you work it on your own, you go talk to somebody, whatever it is, but you can't be holding on this baggage 25 years, 30 years after your childhood's over. Now let's get to the money. Cause this is a really surprising

Starting point is 00:23:19 part. Again, I talked about Eddie Murphy standup saying he's got $300 million at this time. He's got almost no money. So where's the money? Facts revealed themselves little by little, like layers of an onion. Curious facts. Disturbing facts. Like the fact that Johnny Carson wasn't wealthy. Indeed, he had very little money.

Starting point is 00:23:42 He had little money because the people around him, whom he trusted, were serving him poorly. He was being taken advantage of in the deals and the managers. And this is, you know, it's a tale as old as time. Talent being taken advantage. And this is why you have to learn these things yourself, right? People being screwed over, their managers stealing money from them. I mean, this has happened millions of times to the point where we know that this is, we have to have a good defense, right? And I'll get into that later. But he says he was by and large alone and his life was a wreck. The mess in his personal life was obvious obvious carson was 45 he had been through two marriages that ended painfully he was the father of three sons whom whom he seldom saw and he drank to excess nearly light nearly every night he also had a manager and attorneys that just were not really looking after his interest

Starting point is 00:24:17 well one attorney actually does something that i would argue might be smart to do um it's this idea of deferred compensation. So this is one of the reasons he's low on money. Again, he doesn't have ownership in the show yet, but he's still getting paid $100,000 a week, but he's only getting $3,000 for that. This is really surprising to me. NBC was paying Carson $100,000 a week to host the Tonight Show. That's $5 million a year. But Carson didn't even have access to a tenth of that income. Instead, he was receiving a check for $3,000 a week, with the rest being deferred. Now, why are they doing this?

Starting point is 00:24:51 His tax attorney negotiated this deal in 1967 when the income tax rate was 70%. The deal prevented the government from devouring Johnny's income, but it left Carson with just enough to cover his admittedly extravagant expenses and nothing for savings or retirement. The company, NBC, wouldn't have to pay the balance for decades. And so here's where you could see kind of why this idea might not be a bad idea. It's also true that the real value of the deal was a hedge, a bet against Carson's talent. Had he flamed out after a few years and become a pop culture footnote, then the deal would have been an insurance policy that would have protected his money and preserved his capital for the years after his popularity had evaporated. And so there's something that's in present day that's similar to this. This is the Bobby Bonilla deal. It's called Bobby Bonilla Day. He was a very famous baseball player, one of the highest paid people. But anyways, he signed this unique

Starting point is 00:25:48 deal. He went to retiring in 2001, I think, and he deferred his compensation for the New York Mets, right? And so from 2011, over a course of 25 years, right? Starting in 2011, running till 2035, he's paid, let's say, $1.2 million every year. And this is happening, you know, a long time after he retired. Now he's in his 50s. I think this runs up until maybe he's in his 70s. When every time this winds up hitting like the news and current events every year, it happens. And people are always debating, oh, this is stupid. You should take the money, put in an index fund and just left it there. And I understand what they're saying, but they're not accounting for human nature. A friend of mine works for a nonprofit

Starting point is 00:26:26 that's set up because they help former athletes. I think it started out with NFL, but now I think they've expanded to other retired professional athletes. Because at the time, he told me the stat was something crazy. It's like, I forgot the exact number. Let's say 90 or 95% of the people

Starting point is 00:26:43 that retire from the NFL wind up in bankruptcy. And so they find them jobs they help them with money everything else but again i understand their point hey you know take the money put it in this perfect world in theory in other words yes he'd have more bobby when he would have more money than if he if he didn't defer this but now he's getting paid 1.2 million dollars a year he doesn't have to worry about money um again i i always would take what what actually happens in the real world over theory. And so Carson's experiencing something like that. Now, he's still going to get screwed because there's the people around him. They're just like vulture like the entertainment industry is really disgusting industry when you get down to it. And I'll get into more about that, how his agency like he's getting paid um three thousand dollars a week uh he's supposed to be getting paid a hundred thousand

Starting point is 00:27:27 dollars a week so his agent agency's supposed to be ten percent right so that's ten thousand dollars a week right so they send him a freaking bill for ten thousand dollars a week that's more than triple that he's getting paid um and no doubt myself talent getting taken advantage of by management is the tale's oldest time i just said that. You have to learn these things. Like Ed Thorpe, founder's number 93, my personal blueprint, says you need – so he talks about the need. If you're going to be successful in life, he talks about in his book, getting rich is one side of the scale.

Starting point is 00:27:56 Staying rich is another. So he talks about getting rich is like having a good offense, but staying rich is having a good defense, and it's very easy for you to lose your money. He talks about more people go broke on bad investments than they do just overspending their income. but staying rich is having a good defense and it's very easy for you to lose your money he talks about more people go broke on bad investments than they do just overspending their income so the idea that you need a good defense this is the role good defense is a role that Henry Bushkin is going to play for Johnny as well so he's integral in getting Johnny ownership and

Starting point is 00:28:20 after that point once they sign that deal in, 1980, Johnny will never have to worry about money a day in his life again. Sonny. Oh, so this is the manager that Henry fires as well. I guess Johnny fires him, but Henry takes over for him. Sonny was milking Johnny for too much cash. This is ridiculous here. Johnny Carson wore a new outfit on his show each night. Like any good manager, Sonny recognized an endorsement opportunity. He negotiated a deal to launch a new label, Johnny Carson Apparel. This was a very shrewd idea,

Starting point is 00:28:49 but as I studied Johnny's contract, I was shocked to realize that he owned no equity interest in the company. Instead, half of the equity was owned by the manufacturer and half was owned by the manager. Are you kidding me? Carson, in effect, was paid a salary to wear clothes from a company that bore his name while the man he had entrusted with his affairs lined his own pockets. So we see two very important ideas from just a short paragraph there. One, you have to have equity. That's where wealth is built. You're never going to build wealth without it, right? Number two, read your contracts. Don't take the word of other people. If your contracts are too long or too complicated

Starting point is 00:29:29 for you to understand, reduce the scope of the contract. No one's going to do this work for us. We have to have our own defense. No one is going to do that for you. This is a reminder. This is not where you want to be when you're 45 years old. Look what's going on, I said. His wife is cheating on him. His manager is screwing him. His agents are exploiting him. And his producer's wife has been conspiring with Joanne to cuckold him. What a goddamn mess. So what they're talking about there is producer's wife. So the producer on this is again, this is just you don't want these shady people around you.

Starting point is 00:30:00 Listen to this crazy, this crazy scenario. So his producer on The Tonight Show, his wife is the one that helps Johnny's wife set up this apartment in her name so she malleable and you can get out of bad deals with a little creativity. I asked them to handle Johnny's issue with the William Morris Agency. We all recognize they're entitled to 10% of what Johnny was actually making on the contract. And every week they would get 300 bucks. Their position that they were entitled to 10% of deferred compensation, which is now coming decades in the future, maybe a decade in the future from here. It's just crazy. weekly bill for nine thousand seven hundred dollars that they insisted on sending him was galling and insulting since they knew they were asking for more than triple than what johnny was actually earning i turned the matter over to jerry they bring in another guy jerry solved the problem with one phone call he got online with his good friend who works at william

Starting point is 00:31:02 morris and he says here's our offer drop the claim or no William Morris client will ever be booked on the Tonight Show again so you had to play a little hardball back this is a reminder now I'm going to tell you a lot of these crazy stories through these things that were really interesting to me but I don't want to gloss over the fact that Johnny was the best in the world at what he did and he focused on that that is extremely smart and important lesson. Johnny wanted Henry's help with everything but his show. Don't get involved in my show. I got that. Your roles as my lawyer is going to involve a lot of different things. But the one thing I don't need any advice on is how to run my show. Stay away from that. So that's a good idea. Now let's

Starting point is 00:31:40 let me alternate that with a bad idea. Selfishness with your children is a character flaw. Little humans are the best humans and they rely on us to be the best versions of ourselves we can be so we can serve them. We cannot be selfish with our children. And Johnny was. It's true that by any standard, Johnny was not a very good father. He was concerned about his sons, but he was not a significant presence in their lives. They don't care about the money. Kids are not saying, you know, they're not going to say, hey, give me money instead of having time with my parents. They care about your attention, right? And Johnny didn't give his kids his attention. Johnny was very much a member of a generation of men who saw their principal paternal obligation as providing for their family's material well-being. Well, then do both. It's not either or. That notion was used not only to excuse long hours and demanding schedules, but let's face it, it was also an excuse for a lot of selfish behavior.

Starting point is 00:32:31 Go back to this idea. When it came to his work, he knew he was good and he worked hard at it for a long period of time. Think about working on a show your entire life is wrapped up in his career, Something he did for 30 years, for three decades. Very few people work on the same thing for that long. And so it says Johnny Carson lived comfortably in his own skin. He may have been troubled in certain areas, but he was never tormented by insecurity. And part of a way he got away from what a lot of people feel is like their professional insecurity is the fact that he knew he put in the required work to be good at what he was doing. He did not skirt that. In fact, you can make the fact that he knew he put in the required work to do to be good at what he was doing he did not skirt that in fact you can make the argument that he dedicated so much time to it at the expense of other areas of his life i gotta tell you more about his mom

Starting point is 00:33:14 because she's she's like the next main character in this book i mean it's mentioned so many times as the day of their first visit to his new home approach they've already moved to la at this point of story johnny grew increasingly tense. Johnny warned me how difficult his mother could be, how begrudging of compliments and how withholding of affection she was. His wife, Joanna... Okay, so this is his third wife. This is confusing. His second wife is named Joanne.

Starting point is 00:33:39 His third wife is named Joanna. Joanna was bending over backward to make mom feel welcome, Johnny said. She took her a tour of the house, explaining all the features. Mom said nothing, silent, like a fish. Finally, I said, well, mom, how do you like the job Joanna did? It's beautiful, isn't it? And mom said, well, John, the wall covering reminds me of your aunt Maude's dining room. And that was it. Not another word. Ruth Carson was a person who was impossible to impress and impossible to please. She seemed to take no pride or pleasure in her son's accomplishments. More on how he worked and really think about it. The one constant in his life,

Starting point is 00:34:19 wives are going to go, friends are going to go, he changes cities and houses and everything else. But the one constant in his life was his work. and he took it very seriously i know i'm repeating myself but it's extremely important part and again something we can apply to anything in the world that we're doing he and his producers critiqued every show immediately after completion there were days when everything was perfect and there were days when nothing worked that's going to happen all of us right but johnny always knew if the show worked. He always knew. And so I went back. Remember, this is many years before my time. So I went back on YouTube. In fact, his estate still owns all of the clips and everything from the show. And I'll tell you about how much money it brings. It's insane. But I went back and just

Starting point is 00:34:59 watched a bunch, I don't know, a couple hours worth of just his monologues, the way he interviews. You know, this book is going to paint somewhat of a negative picture of him because it's being written by somebody who had a falling out with him. But I could see the appeal completely, even decades after he went off the air. He was extremely affable. It was interesting. It was entertaining, funny. I could see why he drew 20 million people to him. So now he doesn't have the deferred compensation yet or deferred compensation anymore. So he's actually making really good money. He's actually getting the money in his pocket. The tax rates are lower at this point in America as well.

Starting point is 00:35:34 But he still doesn't have ownership of the show. I'm going to get there, I promise. But he's finally making money, but he's not really interested in anything but a show. And this is going to be a point of contention and really the falling out of their relationship. And I don't think Johnny was wrong in his in maintaining his focus. And I'm going to read something from another book in a little bit on that. But it says, with my advice, Carson headed a group of investors who brought a local television station. We brought the TV station for a million dollars, renamed it. Not too many years later, we sold it for twenty five million. So just remember that part makes a good amount of money doesn't really care uh again after if he was broke he'd care but he's making enough that he's just not

Starting point is 00:36:10 going to do anything he doesn't want to do to make just a little bit of extra money including you know what they wanted to do real estate he does do like he has a failed franchise thing he does a couple things but he eventually walks through i think the author puts it like he walks through that door takes a look around like being a mogul and, you know, building giant businesses. He's just like, I'm not interested. I just want to work on my show. Johnny, at this point, he's got also, again, another crazy story being super famous, you know, has a lot of downsides, too. He's being extorted. They left a package at his house saying they're going to kidnap his wife and his stepson. And so this time it was very common.

Starting point is 00:36:51 There's a bunch of people being kids and relatives of famous people being kidnapped. And so they're saying, hey, drop off, you know, I think a quarter million dollars in at this phone booth or, you know, we're going to we're going to kill your wife and stepson or whatever. And so they threaten and they say that he has to do this. Like they want to make sure he's the one doing the money money drop the police are like hell no you you can't do this like what if you can be put in danger johnny insists on being the one to drop off the money which is really says a lot about him he's like listen i don't want i don't want to play games with this guy um i'd rather put myself in harm's way than me not, me send somebody else and then he winds up trying to kidnap, you know, my wife or anybody else.

Starting point is 00:37:29 So it says, Johnny insisted on doing it so not to make the extortionist mad and endanger the lives of his wife and stepson. That's my note. The police not only hid Carson's role, this is after it happened, when doing a dummy drop of money, like a 26 year old kid shows up and tries to pick up the I mean, what did you think was going to happen?

Starting point is 00:37:47 Guy, you know, 15 minutes after Johnny does a drop, this 26 year old kid goes to pick up the money and gets arrested. OK, guy, the police not only hid Carson's role in the drama, they in fact denied it. The official statement said specifically that Carson was never in the car, but he did pick take part without a moment's hesitation. This is one of the guys, one of the FBI agents. Johnny's got brass balls and he did. I don't think Joanna ever forgot how fearlessly Johnny put himself personally on the line to protect her and her son. Attitude for his unquestioning love for her during this time nonetheless did nothing to keep their marital dispute on fundamentally respectful plane. So that's another thing. I always think, really, I've been trying to keep it in my mind for a long time, this idea where Charlie Munger says,

Starting point is 00:38:37 listen, you're going to go much farther in life by avoiding dumb things than by being brilliant. Being brilliant is almost impossible over the long term, but being not stupid is very doable for most of us, right? And so Johnny, he lost a lot of money because he refused. First of all, why are you getting married if you're just going to cheat on them every day, right? But then the second point is like, if you're going to do that, do a prenuptial agreement. So his second wife, they get divorced. He winds up having to pay her six thousand dollars a month from 1972. So he has to pay her six thousand dollars a month until either Johnny dies or she gets remarried. Whatever comes first. If somebody's paying you six thousand dollars a month, you're not going to get remarried. Right. So he winds up paying her six thousand dollars a month from 1972 until he dies in 2005.

Starting point is 00:39:23 His third wife is making a lot more money at this point. He's the one to paying her, I think $35 million after their divorce. And the reason I say it's easier to be not stupid than be brilliant is he knew this going in. He warns Henry's like, don't let me do this again. And he keeps repeating that same

Starting point is 00:39:41 easily avoidable mistake. Moving on, this is repeated over and over again in the book. Obviously, when that happens, it's very important. He could perform in front of 20 million people, but not 20. Johnny, who generally suffered fools not gladly, or almost not at all for Johnny, sustaining fake sociability for hours and hours was taxing to the max. So any introvert in the world knows that feeling. Another thing about Johnny, he has to be the number one priority. And if you don't do it, and this is where Henry messes up later on too.

Starting point is 00:40:13 Anybody in his life that's not going to put, whether he was married to you or he's hired you, if you make it clear that he's not the number one priority in your life, that relationship is going to end. Johnny needs a cause for war. In the case of Joanne, it was her infidelity. In the case of Joanna, it was her desire to attain independent status through her charity work and then by starting a fashion consultancy. The rule that he applied to agents and managers and lawyers also applied to wives. He had to be number one without a meaningful number two. And now we get into kind of like, you know, the sad part of his life. And it's got to be really

Starting point is 00:40:52 hard being that famous. You never know if people actually want to be your friend or if they just want, you know, he could make or break your career. He could sell your product. There's all kinds of things that, you know, being friends with him, there's benefits to that. And from his perspective, it's really hard to know who actually cares about him as a person, almost impossible to know, and who's just using him. But this comes from an article that's being written, an interview that he's doing. And really, you shouldn't have to pay your best friend. Johnny had very few people around him that he wasn't paying. And now I think about maybe none. When you're at home, the interviewer asked Johnny, whom do you entertain?

Starting point is 00:41:29 Henry Bushkin, Johnny said, my lawyer, who's probably my best friend. The answer left me profoundly touched and somewhat astonished. We were certainly friends. And although we socialized together frequently, and although our wives were close, never did I think of him as my best friend. I was always working when I was around Johnny, thinking of what he needed. Guys whom I could just relax and hang out with, that's who I'd call my best friends. It had simply never occurred to me that he thought of me as his best friend. Okay, so let me go back to the business end of his life. 1979, he gets the idea. It's never clear to me if he really wanted to quit if he

Starting point is 00:42:06 would have followed through on it but his threatening to quit NBC went to being the best idea he ever has because this is how he gets ownership of the show Carson had at some point beginning 1979 decided to bail on the most coveted spot on television giving up the job would mean giving up a compensation package in the neighborhood of $10 million a year in 1979. That's crazy. I'm done, he said. I'm tired. 17 years is enough.

Starting point is 00:42:30 I'm 54. Can you imagine me doing this when I'm in my 60s? That would be absurd. He actually does the show until he's 67. Johnny, you can't quit like this. You have a contract they won't let you out of. They'll never let you walk. Make it clear to them that I'm not leaving so I can work for someone else. You know your show is the most

Starting point is 00:42:49 profitable on the network. They'll come after you for all the money that they'll lose in advertising revenue. Fred Silverman, the guy running NBC at the time, has got a million problems at his network. You're the only thing he can count on. He'll go nuts. I don't care. It's not his ass in front of the camera every night, and it's not yours. Nobody can force me to work. They'll figure it out. What was that line? So he talks about, you know, you're indispensable. Nobody can replace you. And Johnny says something really interesting. He said, they'll figure it out. What was that line Charles de Gaulle said? The graveyards are full of indispensable men. Johnny had absolutely no fear about the consequences of his decision, but I did.

Starting point is 00:43:32 And that's one of the reasons we work so well together. And so this is the state of the show when he wants to quit, which is really, really surprising. Carson was an unrivaled asset who earned the network immense profits. When he took over the show, the show averaged an audience of 7 million. In 1978, the nightly audience averaged 17.3 million people. Shows usually hit a peak after a couple years and then start losing viewers. Carson had more than doubled his audience. I already said this before, but I'll remind you, Carson's show in 1978 was earning NBC between 50 and 60 million dollars. There had never been a credible competition from any quarter and

Starting point is 00:44:05 there was none on the horizon johnny's intentions baffled them who the hell quits in their prime so henry goes to meet with uh president of nbc and other people and says henry we want our guy to be happy but you must think me nuts to let this fucking guy go you're an attorney you know it doesn't work that way we've got a contract and it's got two more years to run. So this is where there's like the debate is because the show changed from New York City to L.A. California has a law where it limits a personal service contract up to seven years. It can't be longer than that. And their point was like, you know, he's already fulfilled that. That contract's null and void because you moved to California.

Starting point is 00:44:41 I'm moving over all the part. I just want to tell you what Fred Silverman said. Don't expect us to roll over because of some technicality. If we have to tell our sponsors Johnny's leaving, we'll stand to lose $50 million a year. We'll go after Carson for that. We'll sue his ass for $100 million. And so Henry points to Sal, like this is a bad move. You're going to sue the most beloved entertainer in america for 100 million even if you win that one fred you lose and at this point we still don't know why he wants to quit it's really never resolved so says johnny was tired and frustrated but what i really didn't know was how much of those feelings was due to the accumulation of the normal day-to-day bullshit that everybody

Starting point is 00:45:19 experiences in any walk of life and how much was due to the situation at nbc at this point they had low ratings. Really, they're struggling. Fred was brought over to turn around NBC. And the only bright spot really was Johnny's show at the time. And so now Henry's talking about the difference between what Johnny's making and what other people are making. And he talks about who actually has the money.

Starting point is 00:45:44 And the summary and this the summary of the section is equity makes all the difference being a star in hollywood is a fabulous thing but the real money and power went to those who own the companies that produce the programs it was aaron spelling who called the shots and raked in the dough and live like the sultan of brunei or put another way merv griffin who was a rival of carson's but never his peer but was so much richer than Johnny because he owned the game shows like Jeopardy and The Wheel of Fortune. And so once word gets out that there's going to be a lawsuit, it winds up being a private litigation that's settled by a mediator between Johnny and NBC to see who's right about the technicality of the contract. At this time, ABC hears about this. So this is really smart, too, even though they're not allowed to. Henry goes and meets, has a meeting with ABC that, you know, was so, quote unquote, not a meeting.

Starting point is 00:46:31 But it's like getting around there within the letter of the law, but certainly violating the spirit of law at this point. Later on, ABC insists on them meeting international waters. I mean, there's just some crazy stuff that goes on in this book. It says it was not a bad little meeting. i had managed to approach the line of proprietary propriety without crossing it and the intelligence i had gathered was priceless i now knew how much abc was interested in acquiring johnny and how much they were willing to pay for the privilege i knew that we were holding better cards than mbc if johnny won the lawsuit he was facing his choice of some highly interesting opportunities if mbc won all they would get is two more years of an increasingly disgruntled host.

Starting point is 00:47:08 So what they're shooting for is what Merv Griffin, Aaron Spelling, other people had. Think about this as if they can do it, why can't you? He would be positioned to become a veritable entertainment mogul. Merv Griffin had done it with his talk shows and game shows, and he built a very substantial business for himself. Dick Clark had done the same, building a huge production business that did american bandstand the golden globe awards and all sorts of specials neither man had the star power or the access to talent that johnny possessed so the judge winds up agreeing with johnny and bushkin and so this is interesting before he was being compelled to do something now johnny can choose if he wants to do it or not,

Starting point is 00:47:46 and that seemed to soften his desire to want to quit. Johnny's feelings about the network began to soften. Now that he no longer had to stay, it was starting to seem possible that he would. So now they can actually start to negotiate with other people in earnest, and they find out what ABC was offering. And it's crazy. ABC would double Johnny's salary, whatever it was. They didn't even ask what it was. They just said, we'll double it. Johnny would have

Starting point is 00:48:08 carte blanche to do as he pleased. He would own the show and he would control the time slot immediately after his show. So in other words, leverage obtained, right? As grateful as we were for ABC's attention, what we had in our hands now was not a contract, but a lever. At minimum, it would be a convenient template for whatever he might decide to ask from NBC it could also be something more powerful a minimum bid that would spur further largesse something also happens he wins another Emmy as he's about to negotiate with NBC which I'm sure doesn't help or excuse me doesn't hurt but he doesn't care and this is really the way Johnny thinks about something about this. I'm going to read this to you. Reminds me of what Steve Jobs said. So let me tie these

Starting point is 00:48:49 two together for you, if you don't mind. Johnny was suspicious of flattery that all too easily came to people in his position. He knew audiences and was pleased when they liked his work. He knew ratings and took pride in what they proved about his appeal. He treasured the respective peers in the industry. Awards, however, were all but irrelevant. He had two, this is the most important part of this section, okay? He had too keen an appreciation for how much work and talent and discipline went into success to be flattered by praise and adulation. That is very similar to what Steve Jobs said. He's like, listen, most people do not know the amount of craftsmanship required,

Starting point is 00:49:34 the amount of craftsmanship that lies between a good idea and a finished product. And when you know how much work you put in and how hard it was, it relieves this insecurity, this imposter syndrome. Likeoster syndrome like no no i know why this is good now this is very interesting so they're figuring out okay do we want to take abc do we want to stay with mbc what do we want to do here and they go to speak to lou wasserman so lou wasserman i should write read a biography on him because he was probably the most powerful hollywood tit titan for multiple decades. He ran Universal and MCA. Well, I guess MCA and then Universal is the proper sequence of events.

Starting point is 00:50:12 And he's much older at this point. You know, he's been around forever. So Johnny goes and asks Les, like, what should I do? And this is just a reminder. Sometimes the best advice is the most simple advice. And they make their decision based on one single data point. Like most oracles, Wasserman gave an opinion that was simple and sensible. It's not prudent, Wasserman said, to ask people to change their nightly viewing habits. Once they are used to

Starting point is 00:50:37 tuning into a given channel, they find it hard to make the move, no matter how good an alternative is being provided elsewhere. Was that it? All of our thinking and talking and arguing and agonizing came down to the belief that Americans won't change the dial? Wasserman's advice sealed our decision. So now we've entered the second part of Johnny's career when he finally gets equity, when he finally is able to build, when he's able to finally reap all the benefits of how much work and effort he put into. And this is bananas. They brought in NBC with them. Well, I can't read. They brought him what was by far the richest deal ever offered to any single individual in the history of television

Starting point is 00:51:21 and entertainment. Carson's salary would be $25 million a year. For that, he worked one hour a night from 11.30 p.m. to 12.30 a.m., three nights a week, 37 weeks a year, with 15 weeks off. In addition, Carson became the owner and producer of The Tonight Show. He also took ownership of all the show's episodes that had been made since his arrival in 1962, and this is going to blow your mind. To the extent that they existed, into the 70s, the networks routinely destroyed, discarded, or taped over much of their programming.

Starting point is 00:51:57 Are you kidding me? And then this is a reminder to sell your byproducts. Of the old shows they did have, though, they created this thing called Carson's Comedy Classics. These were edited clips from old Tonight Shows, okay? They were a series of half-hour shows that Columbia Television bought for $26 million. Carson had zero cost for the material.

Starting point is 00:52:22 This is really interesting, too. Johnny Carson occupied a position the likes of which had never before existed and had possibly never even been matched except perhaps many years later by oprah winfrey that's an interesting way interesting parallel to think about johnny carson as like the oprah winfrey of his day so that's the good right now here's here's something a reminder of a mistake to avoid. You've got to keep your ego in check. He winds up doing like the, Frank Sinatra asked him to host like the inauguration, I guess, I don't know, it's not even a parade. I guess some kind of, something on TV where they needed to host for Ronald Reagan.

Starting point is 00:52:56 It was like 1981 or something like that. Johnny didn't want to do it, but he idolized Frank, so he agrees to do it because he thinks around, you know, he's forced to talk to a bunch of politicians. He doesn't like doing this, and it's not part of a show. But what happens is the next day he was he he was told that he was going to be like personally escorted around the White House by Reagan. I think they'd known each other earlier. I think Reagan, in fact, no, Reagan had been on a show previously. Obviously, Reagan was an actor before he was a politician. And he just flips out because he winds up having to go on a tour with like other people and he's throwing a fit yelling at henry yelling

Starting point is 00:53:30 at uh the people that organized this thing for frank sinatra so much that somebody up somebody got reagan to call him the next day and apologize and it says when the newly inaugurated president united states made the call to soothe the wounding feelings of a talk show host and his socialite wife he had already had much on his mind soviets in afghanistan sandinistas in nicaragua the well-being of the american hostages who had just been released a prime interest rate that stood at 20 it was truly a testament to the power and prestige that johnny had had now gained uh as a performer and a person that the president called him over a minor, minor issue of protocol. It was also a reminder that Carson's ego had grown so large that only a call like that could pacify him. Back to Johnny's work ethic. He wanted. There's this dichotomy here.

Starting point is 00:54:17 He wanted to stay busy, yet he also wanted a lot of time away of one of the things that surprised me when I first got to know Johnny was how often he went on the road. You might think that a television host who did five 90 90 minute shows a week and earned a seven figure salary would be content to enjoy some time off. But Johnny really preferred to work. He didn't want to go home. Domestic life bored him. Besides, he didn't like relaxing all that much. He liked performing. He liked being on stage, being the center of attention and doing something he did with supreme excellence. There's also something I want to bring to your attention. There's an entire chapter dedicated to the shenanigans that went on in Vegas in the 1970s. So I'm just going to pull out a couple of highlights and really, again, everything else that we're thinking about here, trying to learn from the greatest entrepreneurs in history, trying to avoid their mistakes, copy their best ideas.

Starting point is 00:55:09 It's also like we need some reminders that life should be fun. I think it was Elon Musk that said, you know, there's got to be a reason to get out of every day. A lot of the stuff he does and pushes himself to these extremes because he thinks it's like he's on the grandest adventure you could possibly have. Right. So this is them just they're just reflecting on some of the best times of their lives and he's writing this 30 years after it happens and it's just like let's have fun let's reflect i mean you're gonna miss the times when you don't have the opportunity to have if you like not only like go out and have the these

Starting point is 00:55:41 experiences so you always have the memories your whole life but you're gonna regret not having those memories if you don't go and make them so he talks about you know all the people coming through vegas at this point there's entertainers after the shows they'd all meet up johnny carson frank sinatra being all these people bob hope uh just everybody you could possibly imagine that was famous at the point and it says the scene created these gatherings was beyond anything i'd ever experienced everyone in attendance was supposed to bring new material, and Carson was no exception. Johnny told jokes brilliantly, and armed with great material and freed from television sensors, he was hilarious. He always held his own in the unofficial contest to see who could deliver the night's topper.

Starting point is 00:56:18 These were the funniest moments of my life, and I'm pretty sure they were among the happiest of Johnny's these sessions also often lasted until 3 or 4 a.m. or however long it took Johnny to come down off the high of performing in front of a live audience I was usually ready to drag my exhausted self to bed but often Johnny was ready to soldier on in this next section my my note is longer than the highlight it says says he agrees to do a show at Caesar's Palace. What's interesting is the challenge of matching Sinatra was more important to him than the money, and also a reminder that the longer you stick with what you're good at,

Starting point is 00:56:55 the more time your value has to compound, which produces oversized returns like these. And this is the highlight from the book. I was pretty pleased with the terms I negotiated. Eight weekends a year for $2 million. But the money was not the deciding factor. For Johnny, it was the challenge. I might as well play the best hotel on the strip, Johnny said, and let me see how I can do against Sinatra's counts, meaning how many people, how many tickets he can sell

Starting point is 00:57:18 compared to how many tickets Sinatra can sell. More, I mean, there's crazy stories in the book from Vegas, as you can imagine. That's going to happen with, you know know unbelievably wealthy and famous people one paragraph for you here i felt well enough to go back to the party to my surprise the three girls were skinny dipping in the rooftop swimming pool while johnny wearing nothing but an apron served them wine from a silver platter more on the unusual benefits that if you let, if you keep constantly adding value and let it compound over a long time, get you. Coca-Cola offered to buy Johnny's company for a hundred

Starting point is 00:57:50 million dollars. And they offered Johnny a seat on their board of directors. And he was just completely not interested. He's not interested in the money he's done. He's like, why would I go and sit on the board of directors? And Henry's like, this is one of the most iconic companies of all time. He's like, I want to do my show. I was on a atlanta to meet with the chairman of coca-cola who as it happened was also a big fan of johnny's we had a terrific conversation they wondered if we might be interested in selling how about a swap this is their production company by the way i asked carson uh how about a swap i asked you give us coca-cola stock uh and we will talk about a deal that delivered us 100 million dollars uh johnny i just said, you know, he's not interested.

Starting point is 00:58:25 I'm skipping over that part. I can't say I was entirely pleased with Johnny's decision. This is also going to cause a riff later because Johnny does not want to be an entertainment mogul. He wants to work on his show. And again, this is where I think Henry's wrong. Henry's like, I negotiated this contract. He could have owned television.

Starting point is 00:58:42 He could have invested in real estate, done all these things. I'd be running the business for him. And I'm going to read this paragraph. It comes from the book I did last week, which is Buffett, The Making of American Capitalists. And again, I don't think how many people realize this. If you study the history of entrepreneurship, study how the great fortunes are made. It's not a scattershot approach. Does Jeff Bezos need to make any other investments besides in the wealth that he generated from Amazon? No, Johnny didn't either. What is better use of his time and money than dedicating to a show that's going to make

Starting point is 00:59:13 him hundreds of millions of dollars? I don't understand this frame of thought. So it says, what John D. Rockefeller, the oil cartelist, that's an interesting word, Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron sam walton the retailer and bill gates the software nerd have in common is that each owes his fortune to a single product or innovation bingo almost all of jeff bezos wealth is going to come from amazon almost all of mark zuckerberg's wealth is going to come from Facebook. Almost all of the Google guys' fortune is going to come from their own company. Johnny is no different. And so this is where, again, you're being hired to put his needs in front of your own and you get distracted.

Starting point is 00:59:58 That is a cautionary tale for us. I don't think Johnny was mistaken. Again, he's already wealthy. His show is going to make him more money. Why is he? He starts producing other shows. He's like, I don't think johnny was mistaken like again he's already wealthy his show is going to make him more money why is he he starts producing other shows like i don't even like this like why would i do that it just doesn't make any sense time is literally what life is made up of why would you spend it doing things you don't like to do that makes henry's wrong here and this is this is here we did my next note i wrote myself, why would you start a company that needs to produce hit TV shows? Says he didn't know. Johnny didn't know what went into making a television series successful.

Starting point is 01:00:32 He wasn't even a particularly enlightened viewer. Johnny Carson performed on TV. He didn't watch it. So then why are you pushing your client to start shows and to figure out how to produce a hit sitcom? He doesn't make a sitcom. He makes a talk show, a talk show that's the most popular in the world. That's where his time and effort should be. He starts going to another divorce here. And really, the reminder is note to self. What's the point of success if you don't enjoy it? I really this book made me ask a lot of questions. Like you say, if you look, if you could see the notes in the book, I'm like, there's just, I have a lot of questions. I don't understand the logic or the decision

Starting point is 01:01:08 making here. Right. And it made me think of the, the book, the autobiography of the guy from Kinko is Paul, Paul Orfala. I think it's his name. And he says something in that book. That's really, really wise, you know, from somebody that has ADHD and dyslexia. He's like, I don't have answers. I have a lot of questions. And so I'm just going to keep asking questions. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that simple thought, right? Johnny changed during the divorce proceedings, and I don't know if he ever entirely changed back. He was always capable of being a miserable prick. The nasty remark, the stony silence, the surprising indifference, that had all been part of his repertoire ever since I knew him. But they were usually interruptions in a generally more genial mood now these stormy moments came more frequently and there was an overall harshness and impatience impatient intolerance that wasn't there before this is also where they start to they're deviating uh henry's also becoming more successful his his law practice and part of the procedure brought by johnny johnny carson's growing he running Carson Productions. He's doing deals.

Starting point is 01:02:05 And again, he forgot them. Pat Riley says something that's really smart. And he said it when he was recruiting LeBron James, but he said it over and over. He's like, always keep the main thing, the main thing. And so when he recruits LeBron, LeBron hadn't won championships at the time, meets with him, drops whatever.

Starting point is 01:02:22 How many rings does Pat Riley have? Six, five, seven, something like that. Just drops them on the table. This is the main thing. You want to win championships, you come and play with me. And that's wind up working, right? But he also talks about in his own life. In fact, I should read the autobiography of Pat Riley because he's a very interesting person. I hope I'm as half as cool as he is when I'm his age. He's in his 70s to this day. But we see here that Henry didn't keep the main thing the main thing. Johnny did keep the main thing the main thing. That's really, really smart.

Starting point is 01:02:48 I know I've repeated myself. I'm sorry. But, oh, it's such a powerful idea. And I want to slap myself in the face with that idea to make sure I don't forget it. Making money beyond a point was a distraction. But also, why direct attention away from the show? These are my own notes. That's where he will receive the best return.

Starting point is 01:03:03 I've already said that to you. His profitable clothing business closed up shop in part because it required Johnny to model the clothes and advertisements. And Johnny no longer had the patience to spend a day or two modeling and return for a couple million dollars. This is what I meant about. This is not very different from Ed Thorpe. I mean, you know, Johnny's way more flawed. I feel Ed Thorpe, founder's number 93. Out of everybody I've learned from the podcast, he's just, he might be the, he's the one that didn't, he didn't over-optimize in one area of his life at the expense of others. He took care of his health, had a good relationship with his wife, good relationship with his children, didn't work past and pursue more millions of dollars after he already had more money than he could ever spend in his life. Lived a life of adventure. Did things with Claude Shannon.

Starting point is 01:03:47 Invented one of the first wearable computers. Wrote a best-selling book on how to count cards in blackjack. And he's still alive to this day. Go watch YouTube interviews. I just watched one. It's probably been a year or two now. Maybe a year and a half. I don't remember when I did that podcast.

Starting point is 01:04:01 But he's 87 years old in the interview. I was like, this guy mastered life. So many people we study, you know, lost, didn't keep the main thing, the main thing. And Ed Thorpe realized the most, the most likely outcome for a great life, a life with no regrets, a life that I truly enjoyed is to have a, is to identify the things in my life that are most important to me and balance those things together. And so just like Johnny sitting here and saying, no, you're not getting two days of my time for a couple million dollars when I'm already making, at this point he's making like $50 million a year

Starting point is 01:04:33 or something like that. And Ed Dorp turned down multiple investment opportunities that he was pretty sure. You remember, Ed Dorp created what many people believe is the first quantitative hedge fund. And then later in life he realized, he didn't like working for a little bit. He didn't head a big company. Later in life, I think it was like four or six people he worked with. There's some wisdom in there, too. I think a lot more people are satisfied with small companies, is my guess.

Starting point is 01:04:56 We just saw that in the Amazon Unbound book I just did. You know, you get to the end of the book and you realize, oh, wow, being the CEO of Amazon isn't fun. How do you know it's not fun? Because Jeff Bezos gave up the job. And if he wanted the job, he'd keep it. So anyways, back to the story. We just see, we see what Johnny's doing here is not, he's not the first person to come up with this idea that, you know, what's an extra $2 million if I already have hundreds, right? Especially if it's requiring me to do something I don't want to do. So it says he closed up the clothing company because he no longer needed the money he declined to make a commitment to buy this hotel in vegas called the aladdin because it

Starting point is 01:05:30 would require him to appear he was actually again another smart thing a lot of these deals they come with like strings attached okay i'll let you buy the hotel but then you got to perform 12 weekends a year well i don't want and 12 weekends a year whatever it was i forgot what let's say 10 weekends a year for the next five years no i don't i don't want to do that i want to work on my show and then spend the time how i want to spend it uh he declined to make a commitment to coca-cola and i'll skip over the rest i want to get to the main point here making money beyond a certain point held very little interest for him to him making money or excuse me to him making movies was a distraction so now they're talking about he's got the production company.

Starting point is 01:06:06 They're making movies, shows, and all this other stuff. And he eventually, he doesn't sell it, but I think he closes it down. So from Henry's point of view, bad idea. From Johnny's, good idea. All my wealth is coming from my show. You're asking me to do things I'm not interested in that will take me away from doing my show. So Henry just described him. He said, hey, this guy's being, you know, depressive, being more of

Starting point is 01:06:26 a prick, I think is the word he used, than normal, but also we see the same person that could be unbelievably mean to you, can also be unbelievably generous, Henry's mother dies, and we see Carson has a famously generous side, he went on some sending, there's, when he lived in New York, there's a guy that owned a steakhouse, would never let him pay for a meal, decade and a half later, the guy comes, has trouble, Johnny sends him $100,000 without him asking. He could be unbelievably... This is a paradox. We're all very

Starting point is 01:06:51 complex creatures. I'm sure you can be... I know I can be sometimes mean and unbelievably generous at the same time. And hopefully over a longer period in life, we realize that's important to be as kind as possible. I always go back to what Jeff Bezos's wise grandfather said. Very wise person, very profound idea in just a few words, pulls Jeff out when he's

Starting point is 01:07:12 a kid, says, hey, Jeff, one day you're going to learn it's harder to be kind than clever. And that we'll probably be happier in life if we're just kind to the people around us as much as we can. Even in my grief, I was conscious of how uncommonly considerate Johnny was being. But this just blew my mind. Sorry, Henry's dad died, not his mother. I don't know if I said his mom died, but I meant to say his dad. He asked for my mother's phone number to call my mother personally. And that wasn't all.

Starting point is 01:07:37 When I arrived at my parents' apartment, I found that Johnny had sent a beautiful flower arrangement as well as platters of food. He knew it was a tradition in Jewish homes to have this kind of food on hand to offer mourners. When I called to express my appreciation, my mother got on the phone and broke into tears as she thanked him. Now back to the negative side. Some people would say that being friends with Johnny is really just friends in name only. Joan Rivers was a permanent guest host because later in his career he only would host three or four days a night. So you'd have a permanent guest host for a few years.

Starting point is 01:08:03 She actually takes an opportunity, presented by Fox as a new network at the time johnny never talks to her again when she does this uh but she talks about that like you know he called he says i'm his friend but we're we were never really friends later in her memoir joan offered a credible explanation as to why she felt she had to act the way she did as joan points out being one of johnny carson's nearest and dearest show business friends didn't entitle you to much. For example, it didn't mean he ever spoke to you, at least not off the set. Johnny almost never greeted guests in their dressing rooms before the show. He wanted to save all the energy and spontaneity for the audience. Beyond that, the list of people whom

Starting point is 01:08:37 he liked to socialize with was short. Typical introvert, right? And Joan's name wasn't on it. Instead, she spoke to intermediaries instead of Johnny so he always kept the buffer he did this all constantly he just he did not he did not seem to me very interested in and he had a short like a small circle and then anybody outside the circle he kind of closed himself off that's what I was talking about earlier where he built a world within a world and so she jumps at it because it's a tempting offer. She's got good money. She had the prestige of her own show instead of being a guest host on somebody else's. And she was the first woman ever to have a late night show.

Starting point is 01:09:12 Now this is a crazy, oh, this is a crazy part. Johnny's mother died later that year. The wicked witch is dead, he said, when he called with the news. It was a bittersweet remark, jokey without being funny. In other words, it was true. He loved his mother as a son must, but he did not like her.

Starting point is 01:09:32 From all that Johnny told me, his mother ignored his needs and burdened him with guilt. She was indifferent and lacked emotion. She damaged him, damage that manifested itself in adulthood and difficulties with bonding, decision decision making, and depression. Johnny Carson enjoyed the adulation of millions, but his mother could not love him. He carried that pain and spread it all of his life. This is another idea where we touched on earlier, consistency over intensity. He had probably been funnier longer and more consistently than any other comedian who ever lived. On The Tonight Show, Johnny just kept rolling on and on and on, never deviating, seldom surprising, seldom surpassing, but always delivering. Let's go back to Johnny's unique view on money and the freedom it brought him. Unlike Sinatra

Starting point is 01:10:19 or Crosby or Hope or any other truly wealthy entertainers, Johnny had The Tonight Show, a cash cow that week after week paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary. And it was relatively easy money. Sinatra had to travel the world giving concerts. Johnny had to drive to Burbank. Once he got control of The Tonight Show, he was earning so much money that it was like monopoly money. He was free to do literally whatever he wanted. He could ignore a sweet deal from Coca-Cola because he didn't want to make a lasting commitment. When he didn't like modeling for photographers for two days a year, he could afford to close down his multi-million dollar

Starting point is 01:10:52 clothing company. When he got tired of playing nightclubs, he bailed on Las Vegas dates. When he decided he didn't like going to see the rushes of movies in production, he closed up his company's successful movie division. And when he got tired of being the And again, we see that contrast. Henry hates what he's doing. Johnny, from his perspective, is acting completely rational. He's spending all his time where it's most valid and what he likes to do. I would do the same thing. And so during this time, Johnny hires Bear stearns to try to sell carson production henry and other people are running carson's

Starting point is 01:11:30 production he doesn't want it to be sold and henry goes behind his back and does something he tries to like excuse this behavior towards the end of the book but dude you were supposed to be serving johnny you didn't you go and try to negotiate a deal that you were not authorized to do and then you hid and lied from from about it. He just forgot priority number one. And again, what question? Here's another question. This book left me with a bunch of questions. Why would you not tell Johnny? It's his business. He owns it. Here's the thing. It would be much better if they bought Carson Productions. So Henry is having a conversation with the guy running the production studio

Starting point is 01:12:06 they have a show that's being it's called amen never heard of it before but it was successful in its day and they found a company that would let the show continue on and let this producer and henry still run it and then johnny wouldn't have to worry about it and so henry likes what he's hearing he's like okay i'll go meet with them in secret. And this is going to destroy his almost two decade relationship with Johnny. Implied but unspoken was the additional benefit that we wouldn't be working with Johnny anymore. I like the picture that Ed had painted. And unbeknownst to Carson, I met with the Tribune people. After long consideration, they advised me they would offer 60 million dollars for the business. And instead of going directly to Johnny, he goes to somebody else, another one of Johnny's advisors.

Starting point is 01:12:48 This is where Henry's going to make bad. The reason I'm reading all this to you is because he makes bad move after bad move after bad move. These are poor strategic decisions and kind of being a snaky, weaselly person. If you're being honest about this, I was unsure of myself. I called Fred for advice. Don't tell Bear Stearns about this, he warned me. It really wasn't up to you to talk to other people about selling the company. Let them get the best offer they can. Fred also gave me some personal advice. Face facts, he said.

Starting point is 01:13:17 Johnny's involving new people. It's because so far he likes what he's hearing from them. So give them some space to show him what they can do. But don't make the mistake of underestimating Alex or Michael Klein, who are also working for Johnny. And this is where he does another dumb thing, another bad move. That was sound advice, and I didn't follow it. I felt compelled to advise Michael Klein of the offer. Why did he do this? Because, again, he's thinking of himself. If Bear Stearns of Michael Klein, they get Johnny a deal that might not let Henry run the company. So he tells him about this other idea, even if it would be less because Bear Stearns thought they could get 90 million. But Henry's coming to him with a deal

Starting point is 01:13:56 for 60 million, but he gets to run it. This is just bad, bad move guy. I felt compelled to advise Michael Klein of the offer. Keep it confidential, I told him. Yeah, so other words, don't tell Johnny. What are you doing? If everything else fails, that deal's out there. He directly went to Carson and told him that Ed and I were trying to steal his company. Carson summoned me to his Malibu house. I talked to Ed Hukenstraten, Johnny continued, referring to one of Beverly Hills' most prominent lawyers. He'll take over. Let's talk about you. What's fair between us? At that moment, I realized the guillotine had fallen. And it's also his fault. He tries to, later on the book, he kind of, you know, gets a little, trying to justify his actions, which I understand if you're in his position, you know, we might do as well.

Starting point is 01:14:40 But from an outsider's perspective, dude, you brought this on yourself. No need to offer an explanation, no point in engaging in a discussion, and certainly no call for sentiment or nostalgia. One year's compensation paid over the next 12 months, I said plainly, and my share of the proceeds when the company is sold. It's a deal, he said. We shook hands, and I left. And just like that, my 18-year association with Jarnie Carson came to an end. And this is where he gets into his justification, but really the bottom line is he wanted what was best for him when he was hired to do what was best for Johnny.

Starting point is 01:15:11 I did nothing that harmed his interests, but it's true that at some point his goals and my goals, which had always been united, diverge. The contract he's talking about. Now he's going back to the deal he negotiated where he gets ownership, production company, all this other stuff, right? The contract also could have allowed him to be rich, powerful, and influential producer of films and television programs, the likes of which Hollywood had yet to see. If only that's what he wanted. I helped him walk through that door, but after seeing what life was like on the other side,

Starting point is 01:15:45 he decided it wasn't for him. He didn't want the aggravation, and he certainly didn't need the dough. But having walked through the door with him, I discovered that I liked running the company, doing deals, working with creative people. Running Carson Productions suited me, so our interests were in conflict. And then he goes into the destruction of a relationship that was one of the most important relationships in his life. And it's really a reminder that you have to pit people over money. You can always make more money. But if you truly care about the people in your life, don't let it fall apart over a business deal. The issue that promised the greatest potential for anger and bitterness, the amount due to me for my percentage of Carson Productions,

Starting point is 01:16:27 was handled with professionalism. I got more money than I would have under the proposed terms of the company's sale to Coca-Cola, but I lost the friendship of the most interesting man I had ever known. I was not a winner in this deal. Johnny terminated our relationship in a three-minute conversation, a swift, unceremonious end to a long and profitable run. There was no final act. It felt as if someone unplugged the projector in the middle of a movie. I never saw Johnny after we broke up. The truth was, I missed him and hoped he was missing me too.

Starting point is 01:17:08 And he really wraps up what this entire book is about with one sentence. My attempt to paint an accurate portrayal of the most thrilling, fun, frustrating, and mysterious relationship of my life. A portrait of a man i loved and that is where i'll leave it it was an absolutely entertaining great book mark andreessen as always is going to give us good book recommendations if you want the full story and you want to support the podcast at the same time you can buy the book using the link to show notes on your podcast player and if you want to further support the podcast the best absolute best thing you can do is buy a gift subscription for somebody that you know. I'll leave a link in the show notes if you want to do that as well. That is 183 books down, 1,000 to go. I'll talk to you again soon.

Founders - #183 Johnny Carson

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