> 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.