Even the smallest person . . .
I was asked to give a motivational speech to an audience of current university students and alumni as part of being honored by my college fraternity, Chi Phi, with its Walter Cronkite Congressional Award in New Orleans on June 21.
“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”
These words are spoken by the Elf Queen Galadriel to a frightened Frodo Baggins in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
She is referring, of course, to Frodo’s daunting quest to destroy the evil Ring Of Power in the fires of Mount Doom.
But her words can, and should, apply to us all, in all our endeavors.
I was incredibly fortunate to make my dream of making a movie of THE LORD OF THE RINGS come true. I first read the books when I was 12 years old—around the same time I discovered DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.
Yes, that’s right, you are looking at THE LORD OF THE GEEKS. But it didn’t turn out so bad for me, did it?
Let me tell you how much of a geek I was:
In 1981, when I first stepped onto Fraternity Row at the University of Southern California, I was wearing a “Hang Ten” T-shirt with bad 70s green and orange stripes, bell-bottom jeans, and Hush Puppies.
I want you to take a moment and let that image form in your mind.
You may involuntarily shudder now.
I walked into the Eta Delta house of Chi Phi. Brother Brett Breckenridge looked at me, and shook his head in disbelief. There were no words to express how he felt in that moment. It was probably the first and last time he was rendered speechless.
Nonetheless, the Eta Delta brothers of Chi Phi accepted me as a pledge. Were they hard up for dues? Perhaps. Although I prefer to think that they saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself during all those years of high school Dungeons and Dragons games.
So I am indebted to Chi Phi, if for no other reason that my fashion sense improved. I traded in my Hang Ten for a Button Down, my Bell Bottoms for 501s, and my Hush Puppies for Top Siders.
If it was Monday Night Dinner, I upgraded to a Blue Blazer, Khakis and Penny Loafers.
Somehow, the fact that I was a Jewish kid from Los Angeles did not deter me from dressing like a yachtsman.
All kidding aside, Chi Phi at USC was a life changing experience for me. It took me out of my comfort zone, and introduced me to a diverse group of guys I probably would not have come to know and befriend otherwise.
I learned how to tie a Double Windsor, and did community and charity work for the first time.
I also discovered gin and tonic, and Keg parties. But, hopefully, my positive contributions to campus and civic life mitigate against that in the final analysis.
But my biggest achievement at USC, by far, was on the college newspaper.
I joined the Daily Trojan staff as a freshman, the same semester I pledged Chi Phi. I had a burning ambition to be editor one day, and I worked very hard at it. When I was finally senior enough to run for the position, I lost.
When I returned to the Chi Phi house, I was not jeered for failing. Nor was my rival berated. My brother Peter Rooney told me, “Well, I guess you’ll have to run again next semester and win.”
This simple, correct advice from my Chi Phi brother broke me out of my moping. I remembered wrestling in high school, and losing relentlessly. Younger and dumber, I impulsively quit the team. It was the only time I had ever quit anything, and I always regretted it.
Winston Churchill said that the secret of success is “moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm.”
I ran for editor again next semester, and won.
Nonetheless, it would not be the last time I had to learn Churchill’s lesson.
Which brings me back to THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
There are so many stories from the five years I spent working on the trilogy. But, of all of them, there is one that feels most appropriate for tonight.
It has nothing to do with THE LORD THE RINGS, as it occurred before a frame of the film had even been shot. But it has a lot to do with why I worked so hard to help the films get made, and the lessons I learned about not giving up from my years at Chi Phi.
In January of 1999, I was at the Sundance Film Festival. My job then was to watch independently produced movies, and buy the best ones for my company, New Line Cinema, to distribute theatrically.
I had been doing this job for some time, and had had a few successes. One of them was SHINE, New Line’s first Best Picture nominee. Another was RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, which introduced Jackie Chan to American audiences.
It was a midnight screening of a film called THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT which could have cost me my job—and seared into my mind forever the lesson of not denying a core instinct when you are fortunate enough to have one.
I liked THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT when I watched it. I walked out of the theater at 2 a.m. thinking the film reminded me of the 70s B-movies I had seen as a kid at the Pickwick Theater And Bowling Alley. Films like THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK and BLUE WATER, WHITE DEATH.
In fact, when I met with the filmmakers of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT the day before the screening, they told me that had seen and dug BOGGY CREEK too.
I should have bought THE BLAIR WITCH, sight unseen, right then.
I bet you can see where this story is going. It is so NOT a happy ending…
Back to the snowy sidewalk outside the Egyptian Theater in Park City, Utah. The BLAIR WITCH has just had its midnight Sundance screening, I have dug it, and I am thinking I should buy it.
Then, several of my peers exited the theater and began trashing the film. A mentor of mine from another company, a man who had pulled me out of traffic at the Toronto Film Festival because I was too busy yapping into my cell phone to see that I was about to be hit by a car, yelled out loud to no one in particular:
“That ain’t no EXORCIST! That ain’t no OMEN!”
My confidence in the BLAIR WITCH was shaken.
It was further shaken by my staff. All younger than me, presumably hipper, and more culturally relevant.
They didn’t like the film either.
Result: I made a half-hearted bid on the BLAIR WITCH, and, needless to say, the filmmakers wisely went with the richer and more enthusiastic offer from another company.
The BLAIR WITCH went on to gross over $140 million in the United States alone, to become one of the most successful independent films of all time.
And I was in a lot of trouble.
I was in trouble, not only because I had ultimately made the wrong call, but because I had had the right initial instinct and then failed to see it through.
My boss, Bob Shaye, the founder of New Line Cinema, wanted to know the difference between my bid and the winning bid.
It was $400,000.
I can still hear Bob asking me, “So, for $400,000, you let a movie you liked, a movie you liked enough to bid on, go to a competitor? And now it has grossed over $100 million?”
Yes.
It was like a scene from one of those TV medical dramas, when the doctor loses a patient on the operating table, and then has to face a peer review about what went wrong and why.
Ahhh, happy times…
I joke about it now, but this bone-headed decision on my part really did put my position and my credibility in question.
When I was finally let off the hook for my colossal stupidity, Bob said to me the following, which I think bears repeating for anyone in any business. It’s something I have never forgotten:
“Nothing is ever as good as you’d like it to be, and anything that is good always costs more than you want to pay. Don’t let the good stuff get away.”
Thus endeth the lesson.
Thankfully, this lesson was still fresh when my friend Peter Jackson called to say he was having trouble getting THE LORD OF THE RINGS made at Miramax the way he wanted to make it, and that there was going to be a three-week window for Peter to present the project to other studios to see if he could find a new backer.
If he failed, he would be off the project, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS would have been a very different movie experience.
And here is what a genius Bob Shaye is: When he found out that Miramax was trying to force Peter to make one film of the three books, and Peter was trying to convince ANYONE to make two films of the three books, Bob said:
“There are three books. Why aren’t you making three films?”
And thus the road to history was paved. I moved to New Zealand, worked harder than I have ever worked in my life, actualized a childhood dream into my adult professional life, and met my wonderful wife Rachel who is with me here tonight.
And, with all respect to THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the billions of box office dollars and the mountain of Oscar hardware it won, hearing Rachel say she’d move to “Sodom and Gomorrah” Los Angeles to marry me was the biggest highlight.
Bottom line, all that I am and all that I have achieved is a result of the love and the fires that have forged me.
It is thanks to my family, who cared less about my B-average than the fact that I was learning something interesting.
It is thanks to the Eta Delta brothers of Chi Phi Fraternity, who helped mold the boy into the right kind of man.
It is thanks to New Line Cinema, particularly Bob Shaye and his partner Michael Lynne, and the unique corporate culture that enabled me to go from…
— Making straight to video sequels…
— To buying films at international film festivals…
— To working on THE LORD OF THE RINGS…
Only a company like New Line would take such a bold risk—let alone put it in my hands.
And finally it is thanks to New Zealand, where I learned more about film-making than I ever thought possible, and where the love of a good woman helped put me back together after five years in the trenches.
In closing, and because I want to be absolutely sure this has come across, I am going to steal from Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, who said recently at a commencement address at San Francisco State University:
“What is the secret of success? Winston Churchill, he said it was moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm.
“Guys like Elvis Presley and Michael Jordan, Dr. Seuss, Henry Ford—all of them had failure in common.
“Jordan was literally rejected from his high school basketball team. Michael Jordan was not good enough.
“That guy Churchill finished last in his class.
“Henry Ford went bankrupt not once, not twice—three, four, five times went bankrupt.
“Dr. Seuss tried to publish that darn green eggs and whatever ham, not once—five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three times he was rejected. Until a publisher finally said, “All right, what the heck do I have to lose?”
“And Elvis Presley got an F in music.”
And to further steal, I’ll quote my Eta Delta brother Michael Coates, who said to me recently:
“You can create the life you want. Just figure out what you want to do, and be willing to accept the sacrifices and struggles to get there.”
If two Hobbits can get from the Shire to Mount Doom, and live to tell the tale, then what’s our excuse with our brothers, our spouses, and our families behind us?
Of course, there’s no excuse at all…
Thank you. And good night.