OK, what's in the diary today, five teen calls and a video presentation, not with this cough when a cough gets in the way of your day.

Bandler non drowsy, chesty coughs helps clear your chest and provide deep penetrating relief. And it's non drowsy formula gets to work fast.

OK, can everyone mute their mikes? Fenland non drowsy, chesty coughs Always read the label. See Banjanin Doriot. Hey, Peter, how are you? I'm good, I'm sportin the one of your many team colors uniforms. I love it. I love it. I usually record my introductions to my guests after they leave. Great. But you I want I want you to sit. I want you to sit here and take it. No, no, don't do that.

Hey, everybody, you have found it. This is the podcast. This is what you were looking for literally with Rob Lowe. And my guest today is the legendary. Hollywood figure, sports figure, businessman, producer, author.

Peter Guber. I mean, I know I've known you for how many years now, for four since nineteen eighty three, yeah.

And I know you know, I've always wanted to have you on the show, I love you as a just as a man and a person and all of those things.

But last night I figured it's time to be professional, really is what it was about. I figured, like, you know, you know, professional people.

So are people that masquerading as professional people that professional? Well, that's true.

You've seen all shapes and sizes. So here, OK, you own you're the co-owner of four pro teams, including the Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors.

You are a number one. Number one, New York Times best seller Icer cannot claim that I'm a New York Times best seller, but never went to no one like you have. I read last night, which I recommend to anybody out there listening to go and read your what you wrote for the Harvard Business Review, which is the four truths of the storyteller.

See, I write for stupid things like Vanity Fair. You write for the Harvard Business Review. That's one of the many differences in the size of our brains.

This is my favorite, though, the movies you have produced. Have earned three. Billion. Dollars at the box office and have fifty five Academy Award nominations. I'm just going to give you a little bit of a list. This is I'm sorry of turning this into this is your life, but fuck it, I don't care. It's too good. All right. So you have been and listen, you've been a studio head. You've run. So that means you literally have said, make this movie, don't make that movie.

You produced movies, which, as you know, means from the ground up working on them. But however you've been involved in them, the movie list is shampooer Taxi Driver The Way We Were A Few Good Men.

Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle.

A river runs through it. City Slickers, Basic Instinct. You produced Rain Man, Batman, Color Purple, Midnight Express, Missing Flashdance. And then when you decided to dabble in television, there was that show, Seinfeld. But more importantly than all of that, you produced Youngblood with me. How do you like that? I do. You know what it's like.

Ty Cobb said it ain't bragging if you've done it, dude, and you have you have done it. So I'm really, really thrilled to have you on on the show.

But I got to put it right next to that because you're all right, because you're you've been in show business your whole life. All right. Big aspect. I let I did not do it. I participated in it. I helped that. I coerced that. I coached it. I ran the company or I put the thing together.

And there it's these are all collaborative enterprises to say that the word I did it. No, I was there. I helped it. I nurtured it. And being responsible is one of the people that were deeply involved in it. Yes. But you cannot take singular credit for anything in showbiz.

Well, and that's the other thing that's great about you, is your you're so humble and so willing to to spread the glory and the praise to others.

And as you know, there there are you know, we got one in the White House.

We get others like me, me, me, me, me, me, I. And but it's true. What we do is a collaborative art for sure. I mean, and I think people who aren't who aren't film makers or TV makers will be shocked to know that anywhere along the production line, someone can elevate it beyond measure or fuck it up immediately. True. Which was which do you think is is harder for you, Oscar? Which is more interesting later.

But what what did you do, which was harder running, having to look at a script and going, yeah, I think this story about two estranged brothers, one of whom with severe mental disabilities, is a massive hit. But it doesn't sound like it when you when you pitch Rainman. But you you greenlit it. It was it hurt. Was it harder to to greenlight movies and pick and choose what to make with with your investors money? Or was is it easier just to produce movies and Clim put them on your back and try to sell them.

Well, the last one put them on the back and try to sell them. That was Raymond who started out as a television script, rough television script, the very moral wrote. And we labored with it for nearly five years before we got to the Academy Awards. So the journey was long, arduous and at all times uncertain, with many directors doing it, developing it and then dropping out of Sydney. Pollack did it for a while and dropped out of it.

You know, Spielberg did it for a while and dropped out of it and a lot of directors dropped in and out of it. So these these projects are generally marathons as opposed to sprints. And so what you really say is what's really harder, what takes more tenacity or skill or endurance? They all do at different times, in different ways. And, you know, if I used to say this, the. Some people, because I don't remember and I'm not attributing it to me, I heard it from somewhere, but I own this statement because it relates to what I do.

If I made all the pictures I passed on and passed on, all the pictures I made, I probably would be still sitting here talking to you. Oh, I'm not sure I could take any credit for anything that you think that's the batting average?

Yeah, well, you know, it's a funny thing if if you're in the game, a lot of stuff comes across your screen and you're picking and choosing and you're developing things and some things work, some things don't work and circumstanced shines on you. The movie God is very perverse. You know, just when you think your life's over, they give you some film or some of the last dance. They give you your last act and they give you young blood for us that, you know.

I mean, yes, you just you're not in charge, but you're in charge of how you react to it. So, you know, you have to have too much hubris to believe that, you know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I did this. I worked ten years. I look at what I did, look what I did.

And sit down those fifteen seconds of the award, whether it's the Golden Globe, whether it's the Grammy, whether it's the the beer in Germany, whether it's the Donatella says, ah, I was I was talking about the Cezar with someone that fifteen seconds for that piece of plastic or metal isn't what it's about.

It's the journey. It really is the journey. It's what makes up you, you what hold you together. It's the stuff that you look at and say, yeah, I know what I went through to help get that produce may develop the changes you do and you have to take that has to nurture you. It can't be the the credit or the box office or reviews. It has to be your own internal engine that you match to that you feel is fulfilled by the process.

And I think that's what you do.

Do you feel like it's harder to look? I'm just looking at some of the credits again. I mean, a river runs through. It is not made as a movie today. No fucking way. That's a good start. That's a really good story.

So I'm all right. I'm not. It's a story about fishing. No, no, but listen, that's what I'm going to tell you. So I'm all right. I'm running too much fishing in it. But listen, it's a great story. All running Sony, the whole company holds a gigantic company. And I wasn't running the movie companies. I was John Galt and I wasn't running the studios at that time. There were two different studios, the men running it and women running it.

And I wasn't the had a production. There were people there. And we was to give the budgets out to each company what they would do. And one day this rascal comes running into my office and saying my and says, we have to make this movie. We have no money in the budget. It's a river runs through it. I said River runs through what? And it says that that's the river. I said, but I don't make that decision.

Go see them. He said, no, they don't want to make it. They won't make it. You're the I'm saying I don't do that anymore. He said, yes, you've got to look at it. So what's it about? It says fly fishing. I said, I'm going to choke to death right now. I'm going to reach across this table and make sure you never can speak again to anybody. You want us to make a bit of a fly fishing?

Fly fishing? Are you crazy? Fly fishing if you can't back time and time again. Then he brought Bob Redford back. Bob Redford was the director at that time doing it. He said, I want to make it and make it. Now, when Robert Redford back, he had me at hello. That was one of the problems. You know, there was they weren't even even even with fly fishing, even with fly fishing. Here was the problem.

He said I said, you don't have the money in the budget. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take five million, give you five million more out of the next year and give it to you this year. But you're going to pay for it next year. You're going to have less currency in your company. I'm going to tell the head of studio, head of your studio and the head of production that. But, man, you better catch a fish man.

And he did, you know, so so everybody makes decisions along in the process. That happens to be one of the seminal decisions that got that picture made with Sony. It might have been made with somebody else. Somebody else could be sitting here talking about that movie. You know, fate and circumstance plays such a part in success and failure.

But and by the way. But I don't believe today, whoever's in your position at that company now and in that exact same thing happens and somebody comes in with who would it be? It was Redford then who would who who? First of all, here's half the problem. Who would it be today?

It might be Leonardo DiCaprio, could be that Leo, could be Matt Damon, could be Christian Bale. There's some really fine superstar actors that still move the meter. I mean, nobody guarantees it like it was back then. More guarantee. But, you know, you're making you have to if you're in the movie business, you have to make movies. You have to greenlight mean you can't wait, you know, but what you think the perfect script is, I waited once for the perfect script with Mike Nichols and Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson and a whole and and all those hacks.

Forget those guys.

It was called I remember that was called, but it was a flop. I know what it was called, it was was it the Elaine May was did Elaine Mérida, who wrote I wrote it. It was it was with a high quote. It was to film shampoo and that film, both women greenlit at the same at the same time for Warren Beatty and. I mean, so we pick so we pick the topics that we don't want to make, the one about the hairdresser.

We don't want to make that ridiculous film the hairdresser. We want to make the other one with Mike Nichols. Well, we made them both. And Mike Nichols was a flop and the hairdresser was shampoo was then go figure.

If you'd sat in the screening room, though, and seen both as a double feature before you released him, would you have known the difference?

Well, let me say I would have probably been insecure as I was when I made the decision. I'm not sure it's the old story. When can you tell us a hit? You can tell. Is it when the box office fills up? You know, just nobody really, really knows the till the audience turns up because you wouldn't. But I think shampoo with a unique picture with Hal Ashby directing a really, you know, well done. And Julie Christie and Warren Beatty and Mike Nichols picture with that cast and and and and that director, you know, holy moly, that was the gold standard.

But, you know, there are no sure things in in baseball or in movies now.

And I look and look at movies. I look at things like, you know, by the Midnight Express, one of my favorite movies doesn't get enough credit today. I mean, my memory of Midnight Express was it blew.

It blew my mind. It blew. It just it it's like Cuckoo's Nest, so it's like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for me were a movie that that is seminal, formed like what it means to be an actor. I remember being in the movie theater and it was so intense and all of those things erm I, I'm not wrong in that right.

That my recollection of experiencing it as a 15 year old boy.

Is exactly as it was, correct? A giant mother of a hit that nobody even suspected that I was a producer then and Columbia didn't even want to know if they made the picture, didn't want to release it, then you want to release it. So they decide they take it to France, to Cannes, where we could get buried, you know, in the in the director's section. And it's like anything it took off around them and it made a big change.

I remember when the government they said the government is going to prevent this from coming out because prodrug and this and they're not going to stop, stop, stop. I thought, OK, that's what's going to happen. Instead, the government said this is the best anti-drug film we've ever made. We're going to play the music and all the customs calls for the next three years for everybody coming back to the country.

Man, if I was carrying a joint and they started playing that Giorgio Moroder theme, I would lose it, right?

Oh, my God. I mean, that movie made going through customs more frightening than swimming in the eye was way more frightened of going through customs than people were seeing jaws and going in the water.

One hundred percent.

Hold that thought. We'll be right back. OK, what's in the diary today, five teen calls and a video presentation, not with this cough when a cough gets in the way of your day.

Bandler non drowsy, chesty coughs helps clear your chest and provide deep penetrating relief. And it's non drowsy formula gets to work fast.

OK, can everyone mute their mikes? Fenland non drowsy, chesty. Coughs Always read the label. See Bantling Datasheet. Hey, everybody, if you're like me, your friends might be getting really sick of hearing you talk about your favorite video games. That's why we created a good game.

Nice try. The newest podcast from Team Coco. It's hosted by Twitch streamers Sonja Reid and yours truly. Aaron blared. Each week we kick out about gaming with people like T Pain, Ben Schwartz, a lot of peers and a ton of other great geeks. We talk about the games they love, the games they hate, and we'll be offering up reviews and giveaways. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts and follow Team Coco podcasts on Instagram for weekly guest lineups.

So it's funny you said Rain Man was a TV series, I want to circle back to that for a minute. It was a TV series. Did I hear you right? You said the TV movie, the Week TV movie.

The way it's funny because how how the how everything in life comes full circle.

I had a meeting with a very famous producer about two years ago who wanted to work with me and do something in television, and he owned the TV rights to Rain Man.

And and I was like, and he's like, and you'll play the Tom Cruise part and blah, blah, blah, blah.

I started thinking about I said, wait a minute, let me just let's let's just walk this through to its logical conclusion.

If it works as a any form of a TV series, which is a big if. That means that whoever is playing the Dustan part is killing it, right, which means I will be sitting in the front row of every awards ceremony applauding him with a statue.

Right. Am I wrong? Was that thinking exactly. Under-represent a thousand million percent, right? Absolutely right. I actually thought Tom Cruise should have been nominated and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. I thought he was great in that movie. Great.

He was great. He's great in it. And it's one of those parts that he's the movie doesn't work without.

I mean, Dustin's got the showy and crushes as he is want to do. But that movie doesn't work without Tom in a supporting it. And I just that's what 40 years of being in show business gives you, is that kind of perspective.

So I'm like, yeah.

So if we catch the decision that they had you, what about and you know, it didn't sound right.

Well, what about here's you know, what it was interesting is you also were involved with one of my favorite movies, American Werewolf in London.

And I love that movie so much. And I and I was talking to Jason Bluhm, who does all of the great horror movies. Today is an amazing business. There's a really smart man.

And and just I mean, he's crushed. It went under and crushed it. And I said he wanted to do something. And we were trying to I said, let's is there a version of a movie like American Werewolf in London to be done?

Because it's been forever. It's another one of those movies that I think is underappreciated.

And there are generations of people, I don't think, that are as familiar with it as they should be. And he was like, you can't make that movie today.

So what do you mean you can't make it? Cannot make it because I make horror for a living. I wouldn't know how to sell it because of that tone. And I thought, what a shame, yeah, what a shame, but he's he's right, the scenes. An American Werewolf in London where Griffin Dunne is decaying in the movie theater over and over and talking to the McNorton. It's just it's hilarious and and frightening.

And they don't think I could do it today. Films are always most always live within the period they're made. Very few film, very, very few films, very, very few films, you know, transition into another era, another period in the filmmaking or the narrative. I mean, you take a film like Godfather, you can still watch it today. Young lives will watch it and find it, you know, compelling and beautiful and interesting, but more reflective.

It doesn't have the pacing or the or the or the tone of today's films. So, yeah, it's it's a it's a contemporary art form. And so you you run that risk of films having that that short short lifespan, but powerful lifespan. Well, then how do you how do you avoid the old man yelling at the clouds?

I mean, like then the days when we used to be able to take time to tell us, like, I don't find anything wrong with the Godfather pacing. And yet, you're right, it wouldn't be made like the day couldn't be made like that today. And you've been through all of it. And one of the things I another one, the things I love about you is your perspective on life is that of somebody who's still in their 20s.

Like, there's no notion coming from you that. You it was better. At a at a former time, this, although clearly. Clearly, some things had to have been better. I'm not saying all of it, but it's so easy, even at my age, to look back and go, man, music today sucks. You want great music. I will I will pitch you nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty five and go ahead and beat it.

Go for it. And I never get that off you ever. You're like today is the best day that ever was. How do you do that.

Well you know I. I have a motto, The past is history. The future is a mystery. The president's a gift. That's why they call it the present. So I try to live and do what I need to do today to feel fulfilled and positive and constructive in my life and participating with the tools and resources that the marketplace gives me. That's my dog barking. I got to tell him to shut up. Shut up, OK. He got quiet.

That's that's direction. That's good, Director. That's real power.

Another thing I that I didn't notice about, you were really a juror in the Winona Ryder shoplifting trial. Yeah.

That was an out of body experience, you know, and that was truly I retreated to it to another place. I retreated into a place where I couldn't believe it. But, you know, when you ask the question by the the main judge with the D.A. sitting there and just ask you one question when you were being reviewed or whether or not being on the trial and I wanted to be off no matter what, I didn't want to be in the jury and any jury, he said.

Let me ask you something, Mr. Goober. I want to know this answer. Yes or no? Will you tell the truth when you give the truthful answer to your view? Now, I thought I say, no, I won't. I hope the planet. Yes, I will. Excuse me.

My fate is sealed. I'm I'm I'm sorry. I said yes. I will, of course, always tell the truth. But is there any reason that you shouldn't be on this jury? I said I could list thirty five of them. Of any of them change your mind. He said no, I was correct. So that was it. Two weeks. They did two weeks of listening to people and really getting a sense of what a jury's about, which I said I'm never going to break the law to be in front of these twelve people.

Never, never, never, never. Because they you know, they had all predispositions of what the person did and how he did it or she didn't know what it was and it wasn't. No, it wasn't. No pretty television show, that's for sure. Really.

So behind the scenes of of a of a of a jury, it wasn't like 12 angry men.

It was like 12 angry people. Because they when they when the one of the jurors, a male juror said, well, you know, she has to be guilty.

She went in and bought two barrettes just before she took the stuff supposedly to barrettes for twenty five dollars apiece. So I said, sir, my daughters also bought perhaps twenty five dollars apiece at stores. So it's not would that make them guilty, too? I mean, the whole idea that the way people see and focus in these things is scary with a jury, you know, you know, it's they bring their own predisposition, their anger, the drama to it.

It was. It was both boring and interesting at the same time, two weeks that it was too much. It should have been should have been all done in an hour. But it's what my my my dad is a lawyer.

An Ohio trial lawyer has been for over 55 years, and he just marvels in California. He said the average case in California would be one day. Yeah. In Ohio. Hi. Crazy. It's crazy. That's crazy. I'm I'm I also love your your. And then we've got to get into sports at some point.

But I love that you're so articulate and specific about the power of storytelling and and it's power beyond showbusiness.

I mean, obviously in showbusiness we have got nothing if we don't have stories. But you have you have a very fine way of talking about its power in the larger scope.

And I agree with you, I would argue that storytelling might be the most powerful tool that man has. Don't you think?

Absolutely. If you really realize that at the end of the day, people couldn't transmit or transform or move anything, any information across the population without narrative. You couldn't hold the information unless you had the context of narrative. You couldn't hold it. You couldn't remember it, remember it. The idea is narrative gives the emotional base, the contextual base to information which propels people to action. So the idea that you can have the skill, whether it's through voice or writing or talibe, just plain visual skill of telling your narrative, telling a story is a totally empowering tool.

And Despot's used it to great extent and it made it great careers and turned worlds around. And, you know, poets have done it and and magicians have done it with words and dialogue and gestures, all part of storytelling, because you want to move people to action. I use the word that I use for that, I think is that I it's emotional transportation. It moves people emotionally. And when you move people emotionally, you you capture them.

You can't just give them information. It's resonant, memorable and actionable when it is in a narrative form. And so teaching young people how to understand and decode information, decode story and how to decode it so they can get people to collaborate and conform to laws and rules or work together in industries or businesses is a crucial, a crucial, crucial humanistic tool. And without it, you're in deep trouble. Do you think? That storytelling is has the same kind of people practicing it that it had in the past, I guess what I'm really asking is, do you think is there any notion that storytelling is slightly a lost art or no?

No, I think that whether it's three lines on a television commercial or whether it's a speech by a. Political foe or somebody that you're in favor of or whether it's editorial? I don't think anything could be lost from that importance of narrative. The idea that the idea that you can shape how you see something, you shape it with narrative, you shape with what it means to you. How do you feel about it? That contextual reality is why we're alive.

It is the center qua non of our humanness. We do it now religions. We do it in our faith based. We do it in our social area. We do in our political area. In our sports area. You know, they won for to two piece of information you don't remember. They won four to two with two outs and two strikes and no balls in the ninth inning. And they won forty two. How did they do that?

You know, so it has the ability to create curiosity and people it has ability to be able to transform people's actions, to move them to action. So it's an art form that's not really taught really well because we learned at Hawk from our parents when we were young either to shut up and don't say anything or or just give me the information. We learn it with all kinds of repercussions if we don't learn it well. But the real masters of it, whether the despot's or whether there are heroes, have really been the archetypical people who have delivered narrative and success.

And you'll see it in sports people and you see it in movie people you see on television, people see it in politicians, you see it and everybody you see in mothers and fathers. If a mother or father can narrate to their children with their stories, they can give them tools and resources, resourcefulness they can use all their life. Information is a cold comfort. It doesn't do much. It's only when it's it into a contextual reality of narrative that it provides propulsion, what I call emotional transportation, and moves people to action to believe in something to do something to take action, to reconsider something.

And without that, you don't got it. Well, you know, that's what I believe. I I teach that. I think that's the most important thing.

You know, I'm so do I would have run through a motherfucking wall right now. It's got me so pumped.

And that is let me give you the silicon nuts that you're a great actor. I want to tell you something. You hate me. You just say you hate me. You just love to test me. It's disgusting. You don't like what I life's about doing things like saying, OK, now there's another me. You love me more than anything in the world. The greatest thing had great success with me and all the hate me guy that you hate.

The other guy. This other person gives you a script and the love your guy gives the hey guy gives you got the guy you love, gives you a script and it's shit. I mean from the first three sets of the script you go, oh well how could he even get it. Just absolute shit. I love this guy. I love. But it's crap. The guy you hate is just giving you Lawrence of Arabia or The Godfather and you hate the fucker, you know, just hate him.

All right. You're going to find a way to do that script, because you know what's on the page is the goal and the other guy you love a lot, but you're going to have dinner with them, but you ain't going to do that movie. So that's the power of narrative. It speaks itself. There's a very important truth now. Actors bring great value in performance and nuance and quality, but you can't put in what God left out.

If you have a crappy script and you're in a play and you're the actor, you'll make it a little better. But crap is still crap and great. If it's great, you can make it even greater and better and give it nuance. So it's, you know, those stories are an emotional currency that we all look for in our lives and in the writings that we choose to do in movies and television or in political framework. Look at the politicians that raised people to fuera, actually just crazy action with their stories and speeches.

And look at the people that brought us great faith and hope and expectation. But their political speeches, it's, you know, it's story. Here's what I used to say. If anything on the page, it ain't on the stage. And so show me the script. I'll show you the money.

And we'll be right back after this.

Do you have any recollection of where you were when you read a certain thing, you've you've seen so many great trips, like I remember where I was when I read The West Wing for the first time to does anything pop out to you where you go, holy shit.

I remember turning the page and it was whatever. What project was that? I was a producer for I ran Sony. And that after I had run Columbia and after I run the other company that would produce for a number of years and I was friendly with Marvin Hamlisch and and different Broadway people, David Merrick and stuff. So I'd always go off Broadway to Pappe. There's such and I wanted to see the show that that just was opening that no reviews was in workshop.

And I asked I had some clout by being in the business. I asked this. Producer, I said, can I get this show, a show that was like a 99 seat theater. I don't remember what it was to one or two small theater in New York. I want to see it. And they set up a chair for me in the aisle. And I went and I saw it and I was 10 minutes into it and I couldn't sit still.

I wanted to get over so I could try to buy the show. Ten minutes into it, I had seen something that was like, Oh my God. But the time to the end, I was I had I had herpes on my head because I was sticking my arms around myself. I couldn't move. It was called A Few Good Men. And I looked at I said, we got about going back to the studio and said, you've got to go to buy a gun, a bodyguard.

I got to buy this. We bought the play. And later when I began at the studio, Rob Reiner found it, made it into a movie.

But when you read Aaron Sorkin, when you see somebody who can really put the magic of words and story and narrative together in such a way that you would watch about some story about two guys in Guantanamo Bay and think it'd be compelled to do it because it was really about something more than Guantanamo Bay. It's about something that was inherent in your life. You see that power, that narrative. It's so powerful. I couldn't sleep at night.

I just had to figure out a way to get that show is so funny because I went when we were doing West Wing that that show made Aaron.

Aaron wrote it when I was 24 years old. I wrote it on that wrote it on the back of napkins as he was a bartender.

And I can I never saw the play.

It was famous. I remember hearing about it and then the movie came out.

Obviously the movie was huge, but when we were on West Wing, we would talk about the play A Few Good Men, not the movie, the play. And they had only been a few people who'd ever played Cafi Tom Cruise part. I think Tom Hulce of all people created it. I think Bradley Whitford did it for a while. And then Timothy Busfield, that's it.

And every one of those guys would talk about how funny the play was and how many laughs there were. And I was like, I saw the movie. One of the many laughs in the movie is as good as it was.

And then I got to do the play with Aaron. We went to London and we did it at the Haymarket. And that in you're right, that play is so spectacular. It is like a Swiss watch for it, for the audience to to it just works. It works like a like a finely calibrated watch. And you got to see the original. That's so cool. Yeah, it's cool.

There's all stories all the way through. When the film came up, when I when I was running the studio with Rob Reiner. Every piece of story there is, is there's another unique piece of filmmaking, lore and story, you know, a quick one. All right, just a quick follow up, please. So so that movie was being made. And Rob Reiner, we were the owners of the Castle Rock song Sonneborn, Castle Rock. Fifty five percent of Castle Rock with Alan Horn and Rob Reiner and those guys and Rob got hold of the material out of Columbia is because Columbia was the company working with Out of Columbia's library, got a hold of the play material.

So I'm going to make this movie puts the whole movie together. It's inside the budget of the movie, gets it all together. I don't even know about it. I'm running the movie company, running the corporation, and all of a sudden I get a call. Rob Reiner, Wannsee. I said, you don't see me. You see, you've got to go see John Gold. You know, you got to go see the head of the studio.

I'm Mike Medavoy. Don't see me. I'm not making the movie decisions. So I got to say I got to say, I'm going to say and I was his friend and everything. So I see him. He said, listen. We don't have the money to get the active sugar in. I know you're familiar with the material. I hear the back. Remember they heard the story about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said I'm bored.

I want to throw them out of the office, that all anybody comes in, they're only asking you can hear the rattle. They're backing up. When you come to my office, they're not picking up. You can hear it all the way. I'm just waiting for them to bring it out from behind the back. So he said, I need the money. I said, I need a really great actor to play the the colonel role in a few good men.

I said, yeah, he said, so I want to go after I want to go after Jack Nicholson. I know you made a bunch of films with Jack Nicholson. I want to go after him. I think we have a chance of getting them, but it's very expensive, like five million dollars for two weeks work. And I have been saying no to everything and I don't make any decision or anything. I tell everybody because otherwise I'd be in trouble.

I said do it with just two words. Do it. I said, you got the money. So he says, What? You just saying it that way? I said, King is good. I remember Mel Brooks said that do it, you know, and he went and got him and he got the money and did it. So, you know, I think Jack Nicholson in that movie, you know, you want to hear the truth.

Jack Nicholson, the movie. I'll tell you the truth, Jack Nicholson was a villain. And villains make movies successful. Villains are really, really important in movies there, whether it's Anthony Hopkins or Jack Nicholson. When you have a good villain, man, that really makes the movie cook.

Wow, that's such a great story. But what what the listeners, the podcast don't really know and what you're too kind to say is no one sits in that chair today like you and says, do it. They don't what they do is they run it through marketing, they make a poster, they call Germany and see how much they can get from the Germans and then they go, well, if we sell it to what's the Thailand would be and how would it do in China?

And then they call and then they put their finger in the wind and maybe they say do it, maybe that maybe they do it and you're your kind.

But I'm sure they do it in a different way because it's different. It's a different time. But, you know, I came to that role as being a filmmaker. I came in that role that where I come in the marketing or from finance, I came in as a person that loved the the method of film and what it meant and what what base it was the storytelling. But, you know, Rob, one of the things that's interesting to look at in decision making on projects, there may be a collection of people.

It's a truly collaborative art form. I'm sure you in your life, somebody says something to you, you're working hard in a project and somebody just on the side who may be a set dresser or something will say, you know something? You know, I don't think you should wear the hat in this scene of clear blue sky. And you think I was crazy then? You think you think of that and you look you do the scene. Wow.

That was a good suggestion. You know, I mean, you you have to be you have to be open to listen to it, but you must have to have a filter, both things. You can't just take everybody's suggestion. But you really you really have to be open to the ether to deliver things to you as an actor, a director, a storyteller that are useful. You know, it's a collaborative art form at the very heart.

When you came, you said the key thing just now is you came into it as a lover of film and someone who'd been involved in storytelling and filmmaking and the nuts and bolts of it before you got into the the the big chair, as they say now, it's it's a lot of Wall Street guys and people who have come from business in other areas.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But but they're not there because they love movies.

That's not how they got there.

That may not be how they got there. And they may love movies and be there and they may not love movies, but love business, you know, but it is called show business. If it was if it was just going to show show and we all broke, it was just called business business. They'd be looking at budgets on the screen instead of actors and locations. So it is a blend of this. It is a commercial art form. And when you're spending upwards of fifty one hundred two hundred dollars million on a movie, on a film, you have to love it because it can mean the demise of your entire company.

So it does give you a little bit of sphincter arrest. You know what that is? Yes. Yes. It's like so you think about it, you know, from a number of contextual realities. Milicic, the company. Well, I'd be able to survive in it. But, you know, if you become risk averse and you're in the business of making films and making television and making stories, if you become risk averse, you know what?

You have a flop. It's called a flop. When you become risk averse, there is risk built into every new good and interesting film or television show. So if you're risk averse, you're really going to be in that. And the hallways of film posters.

Blissett Peter, come on now. You need to be honest with me right now. This is you're in this business as much as anybody. Still, you don't get you can win all the basketball championships you want because you're still in the thick of it. You you don't think that everybody today isn't risk averse? I think every decision I don't mean to sound like I have any bitterness. I'm don't it's all I mean, I'm I'm having a wonderful career and I love it.

But, dude, I got to feel like everywhere you go to sell, you have to overcome the risk averse nature that permeates the buying world out there. It's a it's a true statement. I see it, you know, and no, it's a two letter word. No. You know, and you hear that all the time. But I look at it, people like you and I, that we have to be dyslexic. We've got to think no means on.

And we just got to keep going. We just got to keep rolling. Man, if you have the belief and conviction and have some tools and resources and resourcefulness, that you'll overcome that. So maybe those hurdles are there because the business is so much riskier now and everything is so much uncertain now that those things are there. But, you know, a really good script, a really good actor, a really good director, a really good entrepreneur has to ask the panel in those waters.

I mean, you just you have you buy into that. I think the real element is today is, you know, today is that films have taken a very dramatic turn. It's very, very difficult in the theatrical business, let alone all the theaters being closed right now. But it's very, very difficult in the theatrical business to make the kind of stories of coming home or Deerhunter or, you know, being there or Forest Gump. You can't get those films made today.

Really, really, really, really, really can't know the height of what you have in. The audience is that's going to theaters is very much defined by why. OK, why I want to just do a quick deep dive on this, because you just mentioned all movies that made me want to be an actor. Yes. You mentioned the movies that on a Friday as a kid, those were the choices. You get to go to a theater and see being there.

You get to go with you to see the deer hunter coming home, that it does not happen anymore. Why do people stop loving those movies? I can't imagine that that happened.

No, but they're now nine, not nine part series on television, great writing on television, great, great products made all over the world. I mean, wonderful acting, fantastic directing, wonderful. The formats different. Now they're watching them on on a giant screen in the four foot by three foot, the Hollywood screen or they're watching it on one of these little phones like this. I mean, you make a hundred and twenty five million dollar movie and there's a kid watching it on this.

I mean, you're worrying about the art form and they're watching on this and they're listening to it live. And you worked so hard and the sound and so on, the color, the texture they're looking at, because while they're picking their nose, drinking a beer, patting their dog and groping the girlfriend all at the same time while you're competing for the movie. So that whole format of changed the darkened theater. But people have a point appointment. Go to the to go to the movie on Tuesday or Wednesday, Friday.

They plan in advance. All of that has changed. So we have to we have to change our storytelling formats. And I think what's really happened is the power of narrative, of moviemaking has been transformed so that we have these unbelievable five, six, seven, eight hour or eight segment shows with the phenomenal writing and wonderful acting being done. I don't want to call it on television. It's on television, but on a screen other than a theatrical exhibition marketplace.

So I'm compelled that that gives you the opportunity to reach them efficiently and that, you know you know, the idea is I don't put gas in my car anymore. I just plug it into the wall. So I, I drive the car so it gets me where I want to get to. So if I want to move people emotionally, if I want to be a filmmaker, a storyteller, a narrative person, a a talk show, do a podcast, if I want to move people to listen to me and fall it to me, I have to be compelling inside the format.

I'm just choosing, you know, you know, inside that format. Normally years ago, if we were to do something, it would be like this. It would be 30 seconds at the end of the news with you asking me one question. But now now you have this giant platform where you can talk for forty five minutes and not edit it and make it real life and have a whole different experience of it. So you have to surrender the past for what?

The future office?

I know you're right. And it's true. The eight at the birth of the eight hour limited series is where all the stuff that inspired me to be an actor lives now.

But then you see great work being done, all that Basic Instinct. So that was like the thing that everybody talked about. And that movie was was that interrogation scene where you look up her skirt. Come on, as an actor, you don't know where the cameras come on, what's up, Peter Guber? I'd say that narrative helped make the film successful. That yes, not the shot, the narrative, not the shot. The shot was if you really examine the shot and we had to look at that shot five times for the NBA and everything because, you know, wasn't exposed, wasn't exposed, all those issues.

But the issue, just as you framed it, became the dialogue that everybody talked about. That was the dialogue that, you know, didn't you know, what was it? What was it right or wrong, that became the pinnacle of discussion around that. So everybody, in order to have a say in it, had to see it. Say, that was that was the secret sauce, not somebody made that up, it just happened that way, you know, so the idea is sometimes the interest of the public is piqued by an experience like that.

And then people who would never go see that movie. I got to go see that movie because the water cooler, that's what people used to meet around. Everyone's talking about. I don't want to be the dunce that didn't see it. I mean, so so the idea is, if I knew all the time what made success, what was the equation of success, I'd make just make it. But I make hits and flops because I don't know that.

I just just hope that I catch the zeitgeist of the interest in the people and have the uniqueness that people want to talk about and think about it and communicate to others about the show or film. So they go see it in that particular film. That was the thing. I mean, Michael Douglas said that a really good performance. He was really, really good at it. But, you know, the end of the day that become that became the voice that that's my wife yelling at me.

That's that's that is Hillary Clinton calling his rights the voice of doom. So.

Well, listen, thank you for doing this. I adore you. I love you so much, man. And to be able to bring some of your your wisdom and just your worldview to to people, this has been my maybe my favorite podcast because of that, because I'm lucky I get to know you.

And now everybody else gets a little bit of some that Peter Guber goodness.

I only know one thing to say. You know what it is. But I do know the film in Machu Picchu.

And then I go see Peter Guber and I went to the Galapagos together and were attacked by all kinds of animals. But that is for a whole we got to do our mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

You can be Marlin Perkins forever, right?

Yeah. All right. Bye, brother. All right. Well, thank you. OK, bye bye. Bye.

Wow. So inspiring. It's you know what I think is, guys, I'll speak for myself. It's hard to have mentors. People don't. You know, we don't sometimes as men share with each other and open up to each other and pick each other's brains. Yeah, we have our fathers and things and we have our friends. But like, it's to have them for me to have a mentor like Peter Guber is such an amazing gift. And I'm just reminded of it listening to that conversation, some of which I've heard before from him.

But to be able to share that with you guys is just makes me so happy. And, you know, I mean, he's going to be 80 years old soon. And listen to him. Like that heart in that spirit is not jaded. That tired? He's curious. Doesn't claim to have all the answers. Really, really, really inspiring, and I am glad that you joined me and I'll see you next time. You have been listening to literally with Rob Lowe, produced by Daventry Bryant and Delina Termine, engineered by me, Daventry Bryant, executive produced by Rob Lowe for low profile Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Collin Anderson and Chris Banan at STITCHERY.

The supervising producer is Aaron Blair's talent producer, Jennifer Sampas. Please write and review the show on Apple podcast and remember to subscribe on Apple podcast, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast. Winter colds and flu can really drain your energy, but don't let them get in the way of your day at the first sign of a cold or flu.

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