Michael Dinner /

> Has had a 30-year career as an executive producer / director, crafting such series as The Wonder Years, Justified, Silo, Sneaky Pete, Masters of Sex, Early Edition, Chicago Hope, Sons of Anarchy, and Mayans M.C., among many others. Created and showran Philip K. Kick’s Electric Dreams, and co-created and co-showran Justified: City Primeval.

> Won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing (Comedy) for The Wonder Years in 1990. Was nominated for the same in 1989, for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991, and for Outstanding Drama Series for Chicago Hope in 1995 and 1996. Won Peabody Awards for The Wonder Years in 1990 and Justified in 2011.

> His 1983 AFI film, Miss Lonelyhearts, won the Special Jury Prize in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. His 1985 studio directorial debut, Heaven Help Us, opened the Deauville Film Festival.

> Recorded two albums as a solo artist for Fantasy Records, collaborating with Glenn Frey (The Eagles), Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Emmylou Harris, and was a songwriter for MCA.

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I grew up a child of the 60s, when there was an explosion of American cinema made by renegade filmmakers. Movies like Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces, and Bonnie & Clyde. My friend Larry and I used to take the bus to a couple theaters in Denver that played those types of films. That really influenced me.

When I was 17, I wanted to be Keith Richards because at that age it was all about girls. Either you could play quarterback, or you could play electric guitar. And I wasn’t big enough to play quarterback.

My freshman year of college I came out to LA for two weeks. I had a big set of balls. I marched into record labels and took meetings. I sold three songs and thought, “Oh, maybe I can do this for a living.”  So I quit college, moved to LA, and spent the next six years there as a musician.

I signed a deal with a record label. I cut my first album and got into a fight with them. We were going into litigation, so I said, “The hell with it,” and I reapplied to college. Orientation week, my manager calls me. “The record company wants you back. They want this to work out.” So I quit school again. I made a second album and went on the road. About a year-and-a-half after that, it all blew up a second time. I said, “I’m done,” and went back to school. You could say I was on the 10-year plan.

I don’t know if I was afraid of failure or afraid of success, but I ran away from the circus.

The Eagles. Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne. I knew all those guys. Some of them I played with, they played on tracks of mine. It was kind of the heyday of LA sound.

Those years were formative because I was going into a recording studio at the age of 19 or 20. I had to learn very quickly how to become a professional, how to get a performance from other musicians, and how to collaborate. That’s a similar mindset to what I’ve done for most of my life in the film business.

I try to direct like I’m writing a pop song, where you’ve got verses, choruses, and bridges. It’s about rhythm. You’ve got to earn the right to be fast. You’ve got to earn the right to be slow, to be tight, to be wide. That contrast is what gives a sense of scope.  

Later, I was living in New York, and I went to a double feature of Badlands and Mean Streets. I was blown away. I thought, “Who are these guys? Where did they come from?”

Terrence Malick had gone to the American Film Institute (AFI). And people don’t really know this, but Neil Young directed a feature for Warner Brothers after he was already a big music star. I thought, “Well, that’s interesting if he came out of the music business and wanted to do this…”

At AFI, I was adapting Nathaniel West’s novella Miss Lonelyhearts into a film. But my lead actor, Eric Roberts, was in a terrible car accident before we finished shooting. I owed a lot of money to the film’s creditors and got word that AFI was going to padlock my editing room unless I paid off my debt. So, the night before they locked it up, my editor and I broke in and stuffed all the film into his ’68 Buick.

We drove around all night drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. As the sun came up, from a payphone on the PCH, I called the only person I thought could help -- a person I didn’t even know: Robert Altman. His secretary answered and I told her that I stole all my film from AFI and didn’t know where to go and-- “Hold on a minute,” she said.

Twenty seconds later, Robert Altman got on the phone, laughing. “You did what?!” He gave me his editing room and equipment. And I figured out how to finish the damn thing. I paid off my debts. And the film was accepted to Cannes Film Festival’s New Director Series.

God and Robert Altman were watching over me.

I sat in steerage on the flight to Cannes. Martin Scorsese and his entourage – people from this new studio called Tri-Star - were up front. They heard the whole story about this broke American with his film cans and a film at the Director’s Fortnight, and they sent me back drinks the whole flight.

There were some cosmic forces that made this all happen. I was thinking, “Who’s going to come see this thing?” I didn’t have a publicity person. There was no studio, no producers involved. But the medical students in France had this big protest in front of the main theater and it shut down the festival that night. So everybody went to the Old Palais, where the New Director Series was, and they all saw my film.

It screened three times at the festival. Each time, it was standing room only, and I ended up receiving a special jury directing award.

There were a lot of studio people at Cannes. My film started getting attention, and the studio people would take me out to dinner because I didn’t have a nickel. They’d say, “What do you want to do next?” Well, I had a script with me that I was developing with some producers. So I said, “I want to do this.”  That became Heaven Help Us.

I was going from a nothing-budget movie to one that was probably seven million dollars.  Suddenly, I’m doing this legitimately. I had a day in prep where I was sitting in my office in New York and freaking out. I had this fantastic line producer who was kind of the king of producers in New York. His name was Kenny Utt. He had produced Midnight Cowboy, The French Connection, and so on. He walked into my office, and I looked ashen.  He said, “You should go home for the weekend.” I went home and holed up in my place. I said, “What am I doing? They’re making a terrible mistake.”  Then after that weekend of being home, I said, “Well, I know this project better than anybody else, it might as well be me directing.” I got back on the plane to New York, and it was all fine.

I had a difficult time casting the role of this girl. We had cast somebody that one of the producers had suggested. I was always skeptical, but I didn’t want to be too big for my britches. A day into rehearsal, I knew it wasn’t going to work. So here I am, my first studio picture. What am I going to do? I talked to Kenny, who was like my uncle in this whole process, and he said, “You got to do what you got to do.” So, I called the studio and said, “It’s not going to work. You have to eat the money and I have to recast.” That was tough. I had to fire her.

Then on a Friday I went to the casting director’s office. The door opened and there was this young actress in the waiting room, Mary Stuart Masterson. And I’m telling you, the moment I saw her, I knew she was the one. 

We shot a film test with her and the studio hated her. So, we tested her again, and they still hated her. I called up the studio and said, “Look, I’m a young director, I know I don’t have a leg to stand on. But she’s the one. If you don’t like her, you can fire us both. Let me cast her.” So we did, and she was brilliant.

I got this call one day from the people at The Wonder Years saying, “Would you direct an episode?” I probably was thinking, “God, I hope nobody knows I'm doing this TV stuff.” I went in as a visitor not knowing anything about TV.

Two months later I got a 4:30am phone call from the studio. “Congratulations.” I said, “For what?” “Well, you’ve been nominated.” And I kid you not, I said, “Nominated for what?” “Well, for an Emmy.” And all I could think at that moment was, “This TV stuff is pretty good, man.”

I sat there at the Emmys, I didn't really prepare a speech, and all I kept thinking was, “Don't call me, don't call me, don't call me.” Then I got really mad when they didn’t.

The next season, when they did call my name, that was pretty great.

We got to do a story about growing up. I used to say that we got to exorcise the ghost of our past. I would get calls from people I hadn't talked to in 15 years, that I went to high school with, saying, “I saw the show last night. It’s really about that time we snuck into the drive-in movie and did XYZ, isn’t it?” And I’d go, “Yeah, absolutely.” It wasn't, but it was to them. Because it was part of our collective consciousness. It was powerful doing that show. I really loved it.

There's a problem with TV where, if you’re on a show for a long time and you're not careful, you can get bored. But because Fred Savage’s character was changing from year to year, constantly growing, the stories had to grow up with him.

I loved working with Tim Olyphant and Walton Goggins on Justified. Margo Martindale is a treasure. We were shooting the 2nd season finale, and we had this young girl, Kaitlyn Dever, who hadn’t really done anything before. There was this tough, emotional scene where she holds Margo at gunpoint and is going to kill her. I didn’t want Kaitlyn to emotionally ring herself out, so I set the scene up in such a way that this monologue she had would be covered in one shot. We shot the first take, and I looked over at the camera operator, and he was crying. I looked over to Margo, and she put her hands up and shrugged. So I shrugged too, and we were done.

Sometimes to get a great performance you just need to get out of the way.

I admire directors with an unshakeable point of view. Years ago, someone asked me, “What are your favorite movies of the year?” I said, “Babe and Heat. And they seem like similar directors to me.” The person looked at me like I was nuts. To me, both directors had a singular point of view. Heat is the same from the first frame to the last frame. It’s Michael Mann’s uncompromised vision. And in Babe, the pig turns to the camera eleven seconds in and says, “I miss my mom.” And the director never flinched.

I don’t think there’s a difference between TV and movies. If someone should be tiny in the frame, he should be tiny in the frame. I just think about how you best tell the story.

Hopefully you get lucky and there's something about each project that's powerful to you. Hopefully you learn something about yourself or the people around you, and the dance that you do with your dance partners.

You stick with it. You can’t learn unless you keep moving ahead, and hopefully you're not moving so fast that you don't have time to take in what the lessons are.

You don’t know what life is going to bring you. Don’t say, “This is the only thing I could possibly do.”  You’ve got to make opportunity, grab whatever you can, and hope you learn a lot along the way.

I’m a dog guy. What can I say?

Karolina Wydra /

> Starred as Violet Mazurski on HBO's True Blood and in the films After and The Europa Report.

> Played recurring roles on Sneaky Pete as Bryan Cranston's love interest, Justified, House, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, and co-starred in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Be Kind Rewind.

> Starred alongside George Clooney in a 2006 Nespresso commercial.

> Appeared in print ads for brands such as Armani Exchange, Calvin Klein, Urban Decay, and Kenneth Cole, and was featured on the cover of the German ELLE magazine.

> A passionate animal-lover and cinephile.

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I was born in Poland and moved to the U.S. when I was 11. My parents had received visas and were working as housecleaners in Orange County. I became a Green Card holder, and when I turned 18, I was an American citizen.

It’s different now, less people want to come to America because the opportunity isn’t what it used to be. America used to be the land of promise. If you were a hard worker, there were a lot more opportunities to live a good life. Now people want to stay in Europe.

You’re expected to forget your dreams when you’re an immigrant in America. You’re supposed to become a doctor. So becoming a performer because a faraway, secret dream of mine.

I hated modeling because I was super insecure. I would go to castings and see all of these stunning girls lined up. I didn’t think I was as pretty as them, so I started dressing up in a tutu skirt, a ripped-up shirt, and combat boots. I looked crazy. My approach was, “I will make you remember me.” I had personality.

In these castings, you get rejected right there and then, over and over again. It skews your perception. You have to be so strong to not take it personally.

I’ve learned to tell myself, “Okay, you’re not seeing yourself the right way today. What you’re seeing is not real. Whatever is happening inside of you is telling you that this is reality, but it’s actually not.” I’ve learned to disassociate the negative voices.

A good director, to me, does not speak in abstract ideas. If a director says, “Go bigger,” or, “Go smaller,” what does that mean? Let’s talk about what’s happening in the scene. Let’s break it down to gain a greater understanding. It’s more organic, less artificial.

To give your best performance, you have to let your guard down and trust the director’s vision. And the director has to hold a space for you without judgement or criticism, so you can explore. Judgement or criticism shuts down talent.

Good rehearsal is having discussions about your vision, breaking down dialogue, and exploring the subtext. It’s not being given line readings, being told to, “Say the line like this...” That leads to a false performance.

When you open up and go deep with people, you realize that you’re not alone, that you’re probably not the only one facing the issues you’re confronting. To go through these difficulties is to be human - it’s all part of our shared experience. By not opening up, by not sharing, it’s easy to start to feel isolated, like you alone are faced with your burdens.

In much of Italy, the pace of life is much slower. Having come from New York City, initially it made me mental. “Hurry, I don’t have time!” But then you realize it’s just a different way of life. And it’s nicer to sit, to be, to enjoy. To talk, to discuss, to learn. We do less and less of that nowadays. We don’t have time for each other anymore. Instead, we work obsessively.

When you’re angry and shut down, people react to you negatively. You put yourself in your own bubble. But have you ever allowed yourself to be truly open to the world? To smile and say hello when you walk by someone? To ask a stranger how they’re doing? When you’re open and loving and kind, the world responds to you differently.

Sometimes we don’t immediately realize the impact we have on people. People have come up to me and said, “I remember you smiled at me, and when you smiled at me, you made me feel so welcome.” You can change someone’s day, someone’s moment if you are open to it. You just have to get out of your own way.

Often, when we go through struggles, we feel like we’re being wronged, like the world is against us. But that’s just our perception, because the world itself is actually indifferent. We may not always have control over the things that happen to us, but we do have the power to control how we feel about it.

No one can actually do anything to you, unless they punch you in the fucking face.

We teach people how we want to be treated. That’s really hard to understand. If you let someone shit all over you again and again, then eventually you’re enabling that behavior and you become complicit. But if you stand up for yourself, if you don’t allow people to treat you that way, then people learn not to do it. And if they do it again, then you should remove them from your life.

When you’re in depression to the point of feeling suicidal, hope is gone. When hope is gone, that’s it, what do you live for? What’s the purpose? It’s hopeless. Then you’re faced with some scary existential shit. What do you do? Who are you? Are you enough for yourself? To say to yourself, “I am enough for me,” that’s everything. I still struggle with that. You have to learn how to love yourself.

When you embrace yourself fully, you can show up and be of service to the world in a whole different way. We all have a ripple effect that we don’t even realize.

I’ve explored psychedelics. They’ve enabled me to look at the world in a different way and feel connected to something greater. They shifted my perspective. One thing I realized is how all these things that we put so much meaning onto, they’re not solid. True security isn’t attainable. Everything can be taken away at any moment. So my attachment to anything is kind of ridiculous. It’s nice, but if I’m not whole with myself, if I don’t love me, then I have nothing.

We are all way more in control of our lives than we think we are.

David Zelon /

> Born December 1956, in Brooklyn, NY.

> Produced Soul Surfer (2011), When The Game Stands Tall (2014), Never Back Down (2008), and Into the Blue (2005), among others.

> Has worked as the EVP, Head of Production at Mandalay Pictures for 23 years.

> Race Director for the men’s and women’s marathons in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

> Produced the first LA Marathon in 1981.

> Produced over 100 National and International bodybuilding competitions.

I was born in 1956 and grew up in Coney Island. Back then it was a rough area. There were fights and local gangsters who defended the neighborhood for a living. That aggressive neighborhood worked its way into my DNA; I’d say it’s been a driving force in my personality.

My friend Raymond ran the Coney Island Cyclone during the summers. We played a crazy game on it called Chicken Shit. After the park closed, two guys would get in the backseat of the rollercoaster’s back car, and Raymond would start it up. As soon as it started to climb the first hill, we’d jump up and see who could climb to the front car first, before the train got to the first drop. If one guy got ahead of the other, the other guy would start pulling on the front guy’s leg to hold him back. It was dangerous, looking back. But nobody ever got hurt.

When I was 16, about to leave Coney Island, one of the local guys who ran the neighborhood pulled me aside and said to me, “Never forget the number one rule of Coney Island: Nobody tells us what to do. We tell them what to do.” That always stuck with me.

You don’t know the movie Pumping Iron? Dude, what the fuck?

My cousin, Richard Leibner, was the biggest agent in newscasting. Hell, he invented agenting for newscasting.  He was aggressive, fast-talking, and could make friends with anyone. I watched him make phone calls late into the night for his clients; I learned how to tell jokes and stories from him.

Back in the early 80s, I called the President of the 1984 LA Olympics Organizing Committee everyday for months. “What’s going on? Who’s going to be the race director for the Olympics?” Finally he said, “Okay, here’s the deal. We’re not going to be hiring this job for two more years. So don’t call me. I promise you, you will get the job, but you’ve got to stop calling me.” I said, “Great, that’s all I wanted to hear.” I stopped calling him and got the job.

People respect you when you stand up for yourself.

In 1986, I had the idea to start an adult phone line for women to call to hear men talk dirty. I was hanging out with all these Playboy playmates – these were all hypersexual women – and I thought, “Well shit, what about them?” I called it Dial A Hunk. It went through the roof. Within six months I was making 75 thousand dollars a month off of it. I started a bodybuilding summer camp in LA and bought my first house with that money. 

The first creative idea I had that actually went into production was Into the Blue. It was the first movie that I ever produced. Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, a $50 million budget, shooting in the Bahamas… fuck me, man. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Peter Guber has been monumental in shaping me as a movie producer. I watched him work on a daily basis as the Chairman of Columbia Pictures. Then he started Mandalay Entertainment, took me with him, and my office has been right next to his for the past 20 years.

All his little Guberisms became super important to me. Stuff like, “This business is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” and, “In this business, you have to be dyslexic: you have to learn to turn ‘no’ into ‘on.’”

Anyone who is entrepreneurial will always want more, more, more. Having a nice house and a family and some financial security has taken some of the urgency out of it for me. When my kids were little, I was consumed with the hustle.  It’s that need to make it in order to survive that really consumes you.

Now that I’ve achieved a little bit, I spend more time with my family. I balance my life a bit more.

Having said that, right now I’m working on three of the biggest projects I’ve ever worked on. I’m still pushing my limits, trying to do bigger and better, constantly generating ideas from the world around me. It’s just the way my brain works.

The influences of the world, the people you meet, your own personal preferences in life… somehow they all come together and create sparks.

Every project you produce is your favorite. They’re like your children; they’re each your favorite for different reasons.

To be a great producer, you’ve got to have passion. It takes years to get a project made. Every room you walk into to try to convince someone – a financier, an actor, a director, a writer, an agent – in every one of those meetings, you’ve got to have undeniable passion for the project. Otherwise you’re dead.

Peter Guber is in the uppermost echelon of success right now. He’s Chairman and CEO of a major production company (Mandalay Entertainment) and he co-owns four major sports teams. And yet he’ll sit down and go through a script page-by-page, line-by-line, giving creative notes and feedback. He loves being in that mindset. He wants to be involved. That’s passion.

My cousin Aaron Russo, a big movie producer, once said, “Every movie I ever got made was because of the sheer force of my personality.”

My only fears lie in the wellbeing and success of my loved ones. I’m at a point in my career where I don’t think I’ll ever fail to the point of ruin.

I’ve always been physically confident. I was a football player my whole life. I’ve lifted weights my whole life. I’ve studied Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system, which gave me tons of confidence and an enormous self-defense skillset. There was no fear left after Krav Maga.

Regrets are a bad thing to have. It just second-guesses what you did at the time. I say to myself, “I made the best decision with the information that I had at the time.” There’s nothing you can do about it, so why spend any energy on regret?

Be passionate. Be relentless. Don’t worry about people saying no to you. Take the information on that no and make your project better because of it.

Sometimes projects in this business take six, seven, eight years to get made. Don’t be depressed by that, that’s just the nature of it.

Meet somebody new everyday. Broaden your horizons as much as possible.

Be relentless. Be fucking relentless.

Yaou Dou /

> Born March 1989, in Germany.

> A hotshot aspiring screenwriter.

> Has worked as a creative executive/researcher for writer/producer David S. Goyer, and as an assistant to Ann Blanchard, a top TV literary agent at CAA.

> Studied Political Economy at U.C. Berkeley.

> “A curious cat meets a fucking gorilla.”

No one should wear an undershirt. Ever.

My father grew up in rural China, in the aftermath of their civil war. There was very little wealth and very little opportunity. He came from absolutely nothing, yet managed his way through China’s highly competitive, nearly non-existent education system. Ultimately, the Chinese government sent him to Germany to obtain his Ph.D. in Soil Science. China didn’t have Ph.D. programs at the time.

Back then, Chinese students didn’t get to choose where they studied. They were assigned. My father had to learn, study, and write his Ph.D dissertation in German, which he had no background in whatsoever.

China closed its universities in the aftermath of their civil war. Their leader at the time, Mao Zedong, understood that one of the best ways to keep a population down is to take away their education.

As you get older, you realize that the future is getting closer and closer. And you better have something ready by the time it gets here. 

I’ve emailed more people in the last six months – for the shameful reason of advancing my own career – than I had emailed in the previous six years while working my last job. Environmental pressure sometimes activates latent qualities we have deep inside of us.

When your security blanket is ripped away, you start to sink, and you’re forced to learn to paddle to stay afloat. I think I’m starting to paddle a bit.

Sometimes you have to give more of yourself before you can receive from others.

We’re all worried about AI taking over the world. No, AI is going to kill itself the moment it becomes self-aware. It’s going to be like, “This isn’t worth it.  We’re done.”

I’ve made it a point to become more communicative with my feelings. That’s almost a direct rebuke to my parents. It’s, “You never did this, and I’m going to try to do it better.” It sounds easy, but it’s actually really difficult.

Deflection used to be my default. It’s still a path that I like to take. But in the past, even if you pried, I’d still resist. Now I’ll just give it to you, like I’m drunk on a third date. 

Being middle class is an accomplishment. Especially if you look at the full global picture. Lower middle class in America is a great way to live, compared to most of the world.

In other parts of the world, people better understand the importance of working together. They’re relatively poorer and they understand that they need to pool their resources to get through the day. In America, it’s all about “my tribe.”

The world may not be caring, but it’s bountiful. It’s up to us to organize that bounty responsibly.  

We as humans tend to lose our sense of place in our community when we’re so busy working and chasing things. Being unemployed, I go out and walk more. I think, “I’m a part of this now,” or, “This is a beautiful library,” or “Our city should have more green space.” When I was working everyday, I didn’t feel that. I was either in the car, at the office, or in my apartment, exhausted.

Maybe most of us aren’t selfless contributors to society simply because our society doesn’t necessarily ask us to be.

It’s important to think outside of yourself.

Animals love zoos. They thrive there.

I used to come home after long days in the CAA mailroom and get drunk to obliterate the day. The moment you start using alcohol as a crutch, you’ve lost; you’re no longer controlling the alcohol for fun, the alcohol is controlling you.

The need to cope is not itself shameful. But it’s important to ask oneself, “Why do I feel the need to cope?”

We each have our own range of potential. My greatest fear is not reaching a relatively high level of mine.

Can I be a good dad? Can I be a good citizen? Can I meet enough people, have enough meaningful interactions, and learn about the world?

My biggest challenge now is to be supportive of my younger sister in the right amount and in the right way. Can I truly convince her that it’s all actually going to be okay?  It will be. But it’s ultimately up to her to accept that.

What makes me happy? Being able to run a few miles. Getting into the car and being able to drive wherever I want. Thinking about Bill Gates sending mosquito nets to Africa. That makes me really happy.

My definition of success is to not subscribe to a definition of success.

It’s important to keep in touch with folks who are older than you and bother them with questions. They’re our guides down life’s path. 

No one’s going to just come and hand you knowledge. You have to ask. And frankly, maybe you don’t always deserve that knowledge.

Just be yourself and have fun, baby. We’ll all be dead soon.

I really hope that this didn’t record. Wouldn’t that be great?