the legend I'm I don't say that L the

legend Michael obitz is in the building

arguably one of the most successful

Talent agents ever he R from working in

a mail room to become a super agent

representing some of Hollywood's biggest

stars one doesn't get to a place of

success without having made mistakes

people say all kinds of things about him

really really all kinds of things about

him we went out to win and when you go

out to win you make certain sacrifices

we were tough and we were aggressive and

I had a philosophy of win at all costs

when we did uh the cost was huge rise or

fall on our own Deeds our own brains our

own willpower it's no crime in being

vulnerable with people everybody has an

issue I want to leave the planet a

little better than when I came on please

join us in welcoming Michael loit

wow thank you so

much Michael all right we have been

we have been trying to make this happen

for three years you're a hard one to get

a hold of

um if you don't know

Michael you shouldn't be

here Michael um co-founded

CA and his book is uh fantastic by the

way yeah who is Mike Ovitz yeah it's

such it's such a read you could just

skim through it by like read right

through it because it goes by so fast

it's incredible um in 1975

where um you know Michael is really

known for transforming Hollywood and

transforming the media business um one

of the big Innovations of many in

Michael's career has been the the the

the innovation of packaging which really

changed the power dynamics and the

trajectory of uh how content was made in

Hollywood um Michaels had we were just

talking about this kind of three careers

both as the founder of CIA and then

later um a partnership with Andy Grove

in 1993 where you formed the

ca Intel media lab and really tried to

bring technology to Hollywood and then

later joined up with Mark Andre and have

helped Mark and Ben since then scale up

and recent horowits and really change

how Silicon Valley operates and um it's

just an incredible reinvention story but

one where it seems you've brought a

similar sort of set of Innovations to in

in all three phases maybe you can tell

us a little bit about those three major

Transitions and the you know the the the

way that you kind of made the decision

to kind of reinvent yourself and uh

bring technology and media together well

first of all uh thank you for having me

I I'm honored to be here uh I must say

I've been going up to the valley since

1992 probably hard for most of you in

the audience to believe this but I'm

much older than all the guys up here um

and these are four of the uh not just

the smartest but the uh most effective

men that I've met up in the valley with

respect to what they do how they do it

and then lastly I have tried since they

started the all-in podcast I have

applied 15 times to be a

best and I I have been rejected by one

of the four up here which I will not say

which

[Laughter]

one but we all want to have what they

have and I was saying to David in the

backstage it's so fantastic how they've

set something up that is so interesting

to listen to to learn from even to push

up against you don't have to agree with

it which is what I like about it but to

hear it from something we all want in

our lives which is close friends where

you can say whatever you want as a

matter of fact some of the stuff they

say to David I find offensive but I

think I too he he he handles it really

well so back to the question um I I have

an insatiable appetite for information

and for trying to stay up with things

that are current I started in the

entertainment miss this when I was 17

years old believe it or not I was the

first tour guide at Universal Studios

they had hired five uh men and five

women and uh I really learned so much

about the media business and and how

they made entertainment because

Universal was in every area in film

television music books everything and

it's all the same by the way it's just

different uh iterations of it it's all

made to entertain people and I got the

bug uh I went to

UCLA uh took me 3 years to get out of

there I couldn't get out of there fast

enough but I went to the first class and

the last class that's why when I was

here I got really scared cuz I kind of

missed the classes in between because I

worked full-time at 20th Century Fox and

just had a blast uh and then I went into

the agency business in my early 20s I

was at Universal was a tour guide I saw

uh these men uh and women dressed really

well being received well by everybody on

the studio lots and I I said wow that's

interesting what do they do I found out

they were agents and I realized I could

get a very wide education and I've

always been interested in making myself

smarter about things because I'm not I

don't have the gift that a couple of

these guys up here do which is or all of

them which is raw intelligence I've I've

got uh educated intelligence I have to

really work at it and I really

enjoyed that time and and getting into

it we broke off when I was 26 A bunch of

us for a whole series of reasons from

the William Morris agenc he started CA

with a very simple thesis which was that

we were going to do something as a team

rather than

individually and it just worked really

well artists enjoyed having a group of

individuals to talk to which is not

dissimilar to what these four guys have

accomplished artists liked being

surrounded by multiple people with

different uh skill sets so that worked

really well uh in

1992 uh you could smell in La something

going on up North but the thing about

Los Angeles and the enter and

particularly the entertainment Community

is it's an incredibly siloed Community

they don't accept people very well from

the outside which by the way makes it

very inbred and it's not particularly

wise it may be smart for the moment but

it's not wise so I started going up to

San Francisco to see what was going on

up there and then in the middle of ' 92

I called cold Bill Gates and he it

wasn't the Microsoft of today it was a

small company company and I went up and

met with Bill and then he introduced we

talked for 4 hours about where my

business and his business could converge

and the only thing I will tell you is

neither of us had any idea but it was

the start of a discussion Bill

introduced me to a man named Nathan

mirval who I'm still friendly with today

who was the first CTO of Microsoft and I

was an advisor to three of the four

major record labels and I remember being

uh at one of the music uh labels that

had 25% market share and there were

stereo speakers in there and Nathan had

said to me I can't explain this to you

but music's going to come from up there

I had no idea what he was talking about

and I advised all four companies that

something was happening and that hard

Goods weren't going to be able to be

sold and

I got fired by one of them I got thrown

out by the other three they thought that

Nathan was crazy they didn't understand

what Microsoft was and they had no

interest in computers or anything

digital and then from there I went and

met Andy Grove we started a dialogue and

we brought uh every conceivable piece of

hardware and software available to Los

Angeles put it in our Beverly Hills

Building uh the top of the building had

like eight dishes on it it looked like

we were going to take off and we invited

everyone from the entertainment business

to come in and see and test all

this to to wrap this

up it was a great thing and a sad thing

we knew something was coming we had no

idea what but the business did what it

always does it put its head in the sand

and no one looked to San Francisco go

and today when I meet with people in the

business it's interesting when I explain

to them how streaming has basically

changed the Legacy business forever and

it will never change again and it's all

because everyone that we worked with

refused to embrace change which to me is

sort of the Mantra of my life I want to

change I've changed my life personally

I've changed careers three different

times it's all about learning and about

pushing yourself and it wasn't just

media because you were very early to

helping company like like paler as an

example it's not just hey Michael Ovitz

is a Hollywood guy or a media guy you

were an adviser to a pure tech company

yeah can you tell us a little bit about

what you did with paler and how you got

involved and what role you played so in

99 um uh

a young man named Mark Andre who

happened to have been on the cover of

Time Magazine barefooted which I thought

was really weird uh and he called me

cold I didn't know who he was frankly um

I had heard of him I had heard of him

because we were doing work for Jim Clark

um who Mark was in business with and uh

he had a company that was very close to

the media business at the time I guess

you could say it was a pre- Adobe type

business

and I met with Mark and I can't explain

to you what happened but we went to a

lunch that was going to take an hour I'm

not long on lunches I don't do 1our

zooms and I hate long calls because you

can't get anything done so I thought we

were going to be an hour we were four

and a half hours and at the end of that

he said will you come on the My Board

with Ben Horwitz we starting a company

called

loudcloud and I said explain it to me

and he did and I had no clue what he was

talking about I I just didn't understand

it he said all this data is going up in

the sky and all I could think of was

Nathan telling me that about music and I

said wow now two smart guys really smart

guys a lot smarter than me are talking

about what's going on up there so I went

on Mark's board uh I'm still involved

with them 25 years later and uh Mark

basically introduced me to everyone up

in the valley Reed Hoffman Peter teal

Mark Zuckerberg everybody that he dealt

with and one of the guys he introduced

me to was Peter teal who I just had

dinner with last week and is one of the

smartest guys I've ever met and he put a

ton of his own money into paler he had

no investors he had a small investment

from

DARPA I had no clue what they did but he

called me up he said can you help me

because

we are in business with the US

government and they don't pay very well

and that I could empathize with um they

they take a lot of money in tax but they

don't pay very well and I said what do

you want me to do because you know my

coding uh is a bit limited and uh he

said I want you to help get com uh set

up a commercial business so without

going through a long boring story uh

after Peter got a dozen phone calls

being criticized for bringing me in to

do this which he actually enjoyed by the

way which is what I love about him uh I

met with Alex karp for three months in

his office I was living in San Francisco

uh three days a week and I looked at

everything they were doing they only had

at the time about 25 30 engineers and

came up with some ideas starting with

three silos narrowed it to advertising

health care and finance got rid of the

two of them quickly because Finance was

a no- breiner the whole world had gone

under with the mortgage crisis and paler

actually had an

algorithm that you could plug an address

of a house into it and they they did

this after I asked them to you could

plug an address of a house and it

scraped a million data points within one

mile of the house how many kids were

leaving private school how many

hamburgers were sold how many dry CL

cleaning stores closed it was like a a

brief in a nanc of the economy and JP

Morgan couldn't off a mortgage for the

life of them if they wanted to

because they had local branch managers

who love their jobs all the mortgages

were underwater they didn't want to make

a decision we put palent online they got

permission to plug the address in and

whatever the bid ass came up they could

close we promised we deliver in 90 days

I always over uh I always under promise

and overd deliver and we delivered in 55

days and we saved them $150 million to

the bottom line in that 55 day period

and that became a request from them the

only problem they had is they forgot to

make a deal with me for the

software so they had this unbelievable

old and no deal and uh they offered I

think 2 million for a one year license

for five years and I called Peter and he

was just dancing on his desk he couldn't

believe it and I said I turned it

down so he said you've lost your mind

and started yelling at me as only in a

nice way and I said just give me 15 days

I used to be an agent and he said uh

okay in any case 15 days later they came

back and they made a deal that was um

many many multiples of that price and

they became the first of the commercial

business at palente tier and then and

now today their business I they were

just added to the S&P sorry they were

just added to the yesterday and they

6040 I'd say commercial versus

government government Michael can we

talk a little bit about the move mov

business the entertainment business we

were just watching all this generative

Ai and I got the sense you were looking

at it um with either anger contempt or

sadness um you've made such amazing or

you know orchestrated such amazing

seminal Works um during Peak Cinema

something fredberg sax and I grew up in

defined you know a lot of um the way we

look at Art and now it feels like it's

lost in many ways I'm curious when you

see people making things with generative

AI what happens to your heart and to

your mind it's a great question Jason

and I'll tell you why first of all

streaming has basically destroyed the

Legacy business you've probably all seen

in the Press what's going on with

Paramount where the elant have purchased

the company at a at a price that's

probably 20% of what it used to be um it

was one of the great seven horsemen of

the entertainment business business I

was was talking to David about and Jason

earlier there's the entertainment

business went from a you get paid

upfront and then you get a piece of the

profits so since streamings come you get

paid up front there are no profits your

products in The Ether your books in The

Ether your songs in The Ether music is a

little better because thanks to danielc

everybody gets a royalty but it's very

different than it used to be so

streaming has destroyed

the business that I grew up in it's why

I wanted to get out of the entertainment

business you could see it

coming uh

secondly I think that the if you look

past that and you look to AI right now

it's

bittersweet the things that can be done

are mind-boggling we just saw a slight

example I'm involved uh with a company

out of Germany with three young phds

from the the University of heidleberg

they have just released their first

product uh of text to video I've never

seen anything like this in my life

visually um you can say what you want

and it shows up and I mean it's

perfect um the technology is staggering

and I've seen every one of them for

obvious

reasons the people that work in this

community and

250,00 thousand people in Los Angeles

make their living in the media

business they are all afraid of one

thing and that is are they going to have

a job or be able to work so if you talk

to a production designer the man or

woman who comes up and draws and Designs

every shot so they can light it and

figure out continuity and who's wearing

what and what they're going to shoot so

they can get their to minutes of film in

12 hours because that's what you get you

work two 12 hours a day you get 2

minutes of usable

footage I am working on a project right

now with Netflix and a production

designer I interviewed asked me at the

end of the meeting he said Michael I

need three weeks to do this project but

I'm using these two AI programs which I

approved and he said I can do it for you

in 3 days he said does that mean I'm

going to be out of a job when that 3

days is an hour and anybody can do it

and I honestly I didn't have a clear

answer to put his mind at e because the

answer is probably a little yes and a

little no but it's incredibly disruptive

now on the other side of the

coin is it going to have emotion and

heart if you look back all the way to

the history of video games to Pac-Man

which was a a nothing game but a it was

viral in the world it had no heart it

was nothing it was just some thing

eating other

things but look where we are today with

full motion video video games and once

you get the face and the eyes right in

video games and in animation and

animation has done the best of that it

sucks people in emotionally so the

question Jason can AI do that or do they

need a human being to do that and nobody

has the answer can we just talk about

the the community aspect because the

implication of generative AI is I sit in

front of my screen and I say show me

something romantic comedy horror film

sci-fi here's the premise and you get

something or you have some directions

and everyone ends up with personalized

content which is

effectively what you know distributed

social media did everyone's kind of

consuming different Tik toks and

different Instagrams but everyone seems

to coales around one and then we still

all watch the same Netflix show and we

talk about it we have a conversation

about it does generative AI change the

nature of media which is a shared

experience a community experience that

we all talk about or do we end up in a

world where everyone's got their own

Media or their own content and what's

how does the jury kind of

ultimately decide that I think I think

it's an individual decision from all of

you sitting in the audience it's binary

you either want passive entertainment

because you're exhausted you want your

brain taken to another place I used to

love to watch big set movies that were

took me outside the United States to

relax when I was in the agency business

I mean we watched 105 minutes of film

every night just to get a sense of what

directors do but when we were stressed

believe it or not even being in the

business we would go back to pictures

like David leans Lawrence of Arabia or

Stanley Kubrick's 2001 or um any of

these pictures that transported you

James Bond the early I represented

connory the the early Bond movies were

made for a nickel and took you all over

Europe and there were places I just

wanted want to experience the other side

of that coin on the binary side is

active entertainment do you want to

create your own ending do you want to

change characters do you want to try to

put a movie together do you want to go

to a site that has the rights to an old

movie star like Clark gel or Humphrey

Bogart or Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper

or the greats of the 40s and 50s and

make your own movie it's all individual

I think everybody will make up their

mind Netflix an experiment with a show

with a bunch of different endings and

it's fascinating you never heard

anything about it I want to ask you

about attention spit can I ask a

question yeah sure of course um let's

talk about um free speech and censorship

when you were building your business you

had these free speech absolutists like

Larry Flint who are not anywhere related

to your business but over there fighting

for a certain set of basic rights um and

then underneath that as a result I think

there was like this envelope that it

created for

creative people to just go and push the

boundaries tell stories explore things

um how is that the same as what's

happening now and different so you know

you talked about working with Netflix

one of the jokes about Netflix is it

sometimes starts with sort of like an

agenda per se say around content and you

know even if it doesn't necessarily map

to good content it reflects certain um

ideas how do you think about that just

well it's a it's a great question

because it's like at the Forefront of

every conversation um this company I'm

working with in Germany it's called

Black Forest they you know they put

certain guide rails on what can be done

and then they found someone uh you know

someone on X used the content to I mean

use the algorithms to create something

that was questionable right but they

can't stop it they're just the provider

so it's a debate going on all the time

when I started in the business in the

60s the every the there was only three

television networks seven Motion Picture

companies there was five publishing

companies that publish books and there

were five record companies and they were

The Gatekeepers to everything we read

heard or saw and as agents and the

reason I became an agent is we became

the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper which

no one had ever thought of so we

basically took 75% of the talent to the

company within eight years of

starting and we went to The Gatekeepers

and we told them what they could have

versus them telling us what they could

have so we would uh Michael kryon who

was a longtime client gave me a book um

and it was a book about three people uh

on a island off the coast of Costa Rica

and it was an amusement park with

Prehistoric

monsters and the Monsters got out and I

read the book and I called them up I

said my son likes dinosaurs I like

dinosaurs and my dad likes dinosaurs

we're doing this movie I called Steph

Spielberg and I said I need you to read

this tonight which I've never done in

all the time I represented him and he

said you have to get permission from My

Wife and because he wasn't allowed to

read at night so I called Kate who was

also a client and she said it was okay

he called me at 6:00 the next morning

and said I'm

in it was the first time in my history

that a filmmaker had said to me I'm

going to do a movie with no script I'm

going to do it off the book it was that

good and Jurassic Park has probably done

four or five billion dollars of box

office minimum plus ancillary rights and

I think that when I think about it it

suffered the same thing that happened

when I started in the business there

were actually was a

department at the three networks that

read everything looked at everything and

told you what you could not do and some

of it was so

ridiculous that the creative people went

crazy some of the biggest fights as

agents we ever had was protecting our

creatives against the authority of what

what was the censorship department and

we're right back there now we are right

back there now this whole concept of AI

how do you protect I had a conversation

yesterday something I never thought of I

was looking at Cyber companies and I was

on the phone with someone that works at

a big cyber

company and he gave me a

thesis asked me what I thought how they

could protect the following someone does

a piece of

AI that

is you Troth and it's got an

invoice with you on it approving that

that invoice should be paid right the

invoice looks very legitimate it's got

your wiring instructions and it goes to

the

company and it's not you and it's not

your invoice and you your office

automatically pays the bill they see you

they see the invoice they pay the bill

how do you protect against that that's

just the tip of the iceberg and it's all

everyone's talking about right now how

do you handle this there was this

incredible moment I guess from Robert

Evans to yourself um Bob Delhi of the

studio head the person who could make a

gut decision to Greenlight something as

you were sort of just describing with

Jurassic Park and then something crazy

happens the accountants the

financiers take over and they OU the URS

and the and the people who have taste um

and then we're all suffering through the

78th Marvel movie or television series

that is just done without any care or

thoughtfulness and we lose these adult

movies that you made that your

contemporaries made uh um that Define

Cinema that Define art that defined

storytelling whether it's the Godfather

the conversation shape culture you know

and I'm I'm curious when you look at

those Studio heads in that moment in

time is there any chance that could ever

come back because we're I think part of

the reason why people don't have an

attention span for Cinema and for this

incredible art form that's being lost is

because these Bean counters these

bureaucrats are not letting the artists

make important work anymore like you did

it's a different world I got I'm so

lucky I can't articulate it enough I've

seen both so I got to work at the with

where there were people running Studios

like Lou waserman ran

Universal uh dick xanic ran Fox and all

the um the executives were they didn't

work for big companies some of the

companies had stock that traded just you

know on its own and those that didn't

were private Universal was Private up

until I sold it to matsoua Electric it

was a private

company

and I was telling this story to someone

at dinner the other

night no one that studies film when I

teach at a film class I will ask how

many of you see black and white movies

almost no hands go up how many of you

have seen movies prior to 1980 no hands

go up how many of you know who Frank

kapr is or David lean or Stanley cubrick

I just go right down the list of the

greats that set the foundation for the

American cultural ethos in entertainment

and and at one time entertainment was

the second largest export of the United

States which no one realizes between

movies television books and Records

second largest export after aircraft

those numbers don't exist

anymore and

it's it's a different world and I tell

this story about

how a man named Irving thalberg at

MGM in the late 20s and 30s at 28 years

old pumped out 350 films a year and if

you look at the titles they're some of

the greatest movies ever made

it was all from his stomach he didn't

have any data he didn't look at Tik Tock

which none of us should look at anyways

but that's a different issue um he

didn't see reals he wasn't on Instagram

he wasn't looking at short form

content the you know the one negative

thing that the valley has done for

creativity is they have trained viewers

which I thought was imposs possible 20

years ago to consume content differently

I want it

short I want it fast I want to ease drop

on other people they don't need to be

celebrities I'm going to make somebody

that's celebrity that isn't a celebrity

and has no

talent but they seem to know how to put

makeup on so I'm going to follow them

and there's data coming out of your

eyeballs you have the streaming service

is giving

filmmakers data on who's looking at what

how old the character should be how

good-looking this one should be how badl

looking this one should be what should

the heavy look like who the director

should be based on the past 20 films

because we've put it in the

computer it doesn't work like that and

social rules social is and this is a I

mean you know I don't know if you want

to comment on that before we wrap we are

uh running a bit late but that's it

David we could keep going I mean um but

there is a there's a there is a big um

he's a bestie yeah there's there's a

you're best now I'm trying out here so

you guys I need you guys to convince the

one of the four guys up here that I

should be with them on this podcast wow

that would be be honor you know Michael

it used to be that Hollywood kind of set

culture Hollywood

um Hollywood kind of created whatever

social phenomenon became The Fad dour

but now um there's culture there there's

there's social rules and restrictions

that are being imposed on Hollywood I I

no one wants to talk about it out loud

but how much do you feel like the

business is constrained and challenged

Now by you know these social movements

well I mean let's start with the woke

movement okay I wasn't going to say it

yeah okay here we go I mean I I don't

have any problem raising it if it

doesn't bother you guys I think I'm okay

with

[Applause]

it it uh it's hard to believe that it's

had a huge impact on what you see what

you read not what you hear musicians

have been really clever about getting

around that because if you watch some of

their music videos they just do what

they want to do but it's short form it's

3 minutes around under can I just make a

quick observation as we wrap up here so

I didn't really understand what Michael

had done to disrupt the agency business

until a couple of decades ago I had the

opportunity to visit the original

William Morris office and the original

CA office that you designed with imp and

the original William Morris office it

was like this honeycomb where the each

agent would have this little office and

then uh there was an outer office where

they had their assistant and there'd be

a hallway to get to that it was and you

know there'd be like a longer hallway

way no one could ever see each other

everyone was kind of on their own and

then if you visited the original CIA

office it was this open space it was

like this modern office like get see in

a startup where everyone could see each

other and it immediately helped

underscore and helped me understand that

how significant this team approach that

you had to team packaging was and why

you could do such a fundamental

disruption in the industry so that's

observation number one the second

observation is that when I read your

book the one of the concepts that really

stood out to me was that when you talked

about packaging and putting together a

package you always had this concept of

what you called the motor which is it

was the element in the package that

would make it go so in the example you

gave with Jurassic Park you had the

element of Steven Spielberg and really

in that case the element was the IP that

you got from Michael kryon right and you

put that together there was two elements

two elements in that case but that

always stuck with me and you know even

when I'm dealing with startups I'm

thinking about what's the motor here

it's frequently the founder in their

vision should be um but it seems to me

that uh that you were the motor not just

for CA but really for an entire era in

the entertainment industry and I want to

give you credit for that well thank you

thank you Micha amazing we'll have you

back

again yeah