Speaker 1: Pushkin. Many years ago, I wrote a book called Blink.
Speaker 1: It was about snap judgments and first impressions. It was
Speaker 1: my second book. My interactions with Hollywood word at that
Speaker 1: point limited. I think someone wants options something I'd written
Speaker 1: for The New Yorker, and I'd taken the meeting or two,
Speaker 1: but nothing came of it. But then one day I
Speaker 1: got a call from Steve Gagan. If you're a movie buff,
Speaker 1: you've heard the name. He'd just won the Oscar for
Speaker 1: writing Traffic, which was an amazing movie about the drug
Speaker 1: trade directed by Steven Soderberg, starring Michael Douglas and Benicio
Speaker 1: del Toro and Don Cheedle and a million other stars.
Speaker 1: And he had just rapped Syriana, another fantastic movie with
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Wright and George Clooney and Matt Damon. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: had never met him. He says, I'm coming to New
Speaker 1: York and I want to meet with you about your
Speaker 1: book Blink. Every writer dreams of getting a call like this,
Speaker 1: I promise you. I was thrilled to bits, and Steve
Speaker 1: flies in from Los Angeles and we meet in a
Speaker 1: cafe somewhere downtown and just so you get the visual
Speaker 1: I'm short and skinny. Steve is I dun'no six ' four.
Speaker 1: He's an athlete, absurdly handsome, maybe the most charming person
Speaker 1: I've ever met. And he tells me he's obsessed with
Speaker 1: the chapter in Blink about reading emotions and how there
Speaker 1: are people in the world who are really, really good
Speaker 1: at knowing what other people are thinking and feeling, human
Speaker 1: lie detectors. So over the next few years, I am
Speaker 1: basically Steve's assistant in cooking up a story about a
Speaker 1: human lie detector. It is, I believe to this day,
Speaker 1: an absolutely brilliant script. But have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: movie called Blink? No, you haven't, And what I'm about
Speaker 1: to do is to tell you the real story of
Speaker 1: why the movie never got made. In fact, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do much more than that. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you another story about an amazing
Speaker 1: movie that never got made, and then after that, another story,
Speaker 1: and then another story. Half a dozen episodes all told,
Speaker 1: maybe even more if we get into it. Because the
Speaker 1: thing I realized in talking to Steve about what happened
Speaker 1: with our long and hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking experience in
Speaker 1: trying to turn blink into a movie. Is that the
Speaker 1: best Hollywood stories are the stories that never got made.
Speaker 1: We're calling this series development. Hell I promise you there
Speaker 1: will be more name dropping and celebrity dry buys and
Speaker 1: hilarious digressions than you can shake a stick at. We're
Speaker 1: going to call up the biggest names we can find
Speaker 1: and just have them pitch us the ideas that broke
Speaker 1: their heart. I mean, come on, how are you not
Speaker 1: along for the ride? But today my very own journey
Speaker 1: into development. Hell well, thank you for doing this, Steve.
Speaker 1: What I really want to do is for you and
Speaker 1: I to recreate, just for a moment, the magic of
Speaker 1: that day when we were jetting around LA in your
Speaker 1: What car did you have then? Was it your Mercedes Wagon?
Speaker 2: I think it was an old station wagon.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it's an old station wagon. And we went from
Speaker 1: one mogul to the next pitching this story. It was
Speaker 1: just like, it's one of the one of my greatest
Speaker 1: memories ever. But to start at the beginning. I never
Speaker 1: met you, correct, and you called me out of the blue.
Speaker 2: We have to even start before this, Okay, ok, Actually
Speaker 2: I think we should go back to the dawn of time.
Speaker 2: So there was the Big Bang, and that molic Jules
Speaker 2: carently came along anyway, so it's actually it's actually an
Speaker 2: incredible story. So I had finished my film Syriana, which
Speaker 2: took a lot, was like a four four and a
Speaker 2: half year effort, and I was and it was intense,
Speaker 2: and then I was like, what am I going to
Speaker 2: do next? So I'm sitting in Cavigtan and I I
Speaker 2: had this idea, this crazy idea, this is way before Twilight.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do a vampire love story. And actually
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do was a love store, a
Speaker 2: tragic love story with a happy ending. And I was like,
Speaker 2: kept thinking about, thinking about thinking about it, and then I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, the guy is a vampire.
Speaker 2: The love stories are as good as the things that
Speaker 2: keep the lovers apart. So picture picture a horse farm
Speaker 2: in Kentucky. It's winter that the you know, suddenly the
Speaker 2: smoke starts coming out of a chimney. You know, these
Speaker 2: big farms are all owned by Europeans who are mysterious.
Speaker 2: This guy comes to town and he meets like a
Speaker 2: veterinarian on the farm, and the sparks fly. They obviously
Speaker 2: are really into each other, but then there's also all
Speaker 2: these weird deaths that start happening around some animals, some people.
Speaker 2: Her brothers, her family decide this guy as the one
Speaker 2: who's doing it, and so they decide, you know, enough's enough,
Speaker 2: they're gonna kill him. So they poison him. Now she's
Speaker 2: in love with him. She discovers him right the sun
Speaker 2: is setting. He's been poisoned, you know, they think he's dead,
Speaker 2: they've gone. She finds him. She thinks he's committed suicide
Speaker 2: by drinking the poison. Romeo and Juliet. She's so distraught
Speaker 2: all she could do is drink the poison herself. As
Speaker 2: she's dying. The sun is setting. The vampire's waking up,
Speaker 2: and he sees her there and realizes what's happened, and
Speaker 2: he has to do the one thing that he swore
Speaker 2: he would never do, which is reveal his true self
Speaker 2: and bite her, and so she dies. But they then
Speaker 2: wakes up to internal happiness, being in love with the guys.
Speaker 2: And I was like, too much gepticism from every representative
Speaker 2: in my life. They're like, you cannot write a vampire movie.
Speaker 2: It is impossible, like you've done you know, know any whatever.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting in cave Gittan trying to write my
Speaker 2: vampire love story. I never got past page ten or twelve.
Speaker 2: And so I'm reading I'm reading your book, Blink, Blink.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting in there reading Blink quite happily. Every day,
Speaker 2: drinking my coffee, failing at writing my vampire love story,
Speaker 2: and in and out, every once in a while comes
Speaker 2: a plucky young actor that I'm pretty sure is going places,
Speaker 2: by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio, And so Leo sees
Speaker 2: me there, and Leo, Leo had been interested in playing
Speaker 2: the role in Sirianna that Matt Damon ultimately played. And
Speaker 2: in fact, if you know Leo at all, like he
Speaker 2: never really says yes, but he never says no, so
Speaker 2: he never passes, Like I honestly think he still thinks
Speaker 2: he can be in Syriana, Like it's just like still available.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, now I see him in Jitan and
Speaker 2: he's like, Hey, we gotta what are you doing? We
Speaker 2: got to cook something up? What do you what are you?
Speaker 2: What are you interested in? Let's come up with something.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I think this could be a movie,
Speaker 2: like a really you know, I think there's a movie
Speaker 2: in here. Now, if you're knowing your book as you do,
Speaker 2: you realize that's a very challenging adaptation, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Blink is nothing like a vampire love story.
Speaker 2: Right like you and I. You know, cut to a
Speaker 2: year from this point, you and I will cook up
Speaker 2: a totally different story. But he's looking at me and
Speaker 2: he goes, I'll do it. Let's do it. That's a
Speaker 2: great idea. So that's then that precipitated me. I think
Speaker 2: maybe calling you out of the blue, just say.
Speaker 1: Hi, and this is what it's like two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: Maybe two thousand and six or seven.
Speaker 1: When do we go at some point the story? So
Speaker 1: we we decided we would do something which makes no
Speaker 1: practical sense, which is turned Blink into a movie. You
Speaker 1: were from the very beginning, as ever, call attracted to
Speaker 1: a very very specific thing in Blink, the notion.
Speaker 2: Of what I liked, the idea that somebody could have
Speaker 2: a like almost a truth a truth detector, you know,
Speaker 2: that a person could have this really heightened sense of
Speaker 2: when people were being honest or not, and that they
Speaker 2: could you know, they had like incredible empathy or or
Speaker 2: who knows what it is, you know, but it's just
Speaker 2: it's like a fact of life. And for this for
Speaker 2: someone it's also it's a little heavy in some ways.
Speaker 2: But it's quite interesting in the world we live in
Speaker 2: because I just at that time and I don't think
Speaker 2: it's changed a lot. I felt like, you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of people are saying one thing and doing another. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this person would always feel a little bit ahead of
Speaker 2: that curve.
Speaker 1: This is because I had in Blink a chapter where
Speaker 1: I talked about the idea that a very small number
Speaker 1: of people may have the gift of telling when someone's lying,
Speaker 1: and I taught it's all about the research of a
Speaker 1: guy named Paul Eckman in San Francisco, is a legendary
Speaker 1: figure in light detection world. And this predates there's subsequently
Speaker 1: where all these TV shows about people who knew when
Speaker 1: someone was lying. This predates all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but way before that, you know, So you and I,
Speaker 2: you know, we get together, we start talking about it,
Speaker 2: and I think very quickly we realize we have nothing,
Speaker 2: like what are we going to do exactly?
Speaker 1: But we come up with an idea. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how this comes up, But give me your memory
Speaker 1: of the story that we that emerged out of our collaboration.
Speaker 2: So something you and I were both interested in was
Speaker 2: the looming you know, it was how giant so how
Speaker 2: corporations treated their retired employees because they had these pension funds,
Speaker 2: right that were like these giant boxes of money, and
Speaker 2: suddenly out there in the world, these like leverage buyout
Speaker 2: people and hedge fund people were going, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: look at that. There's this giant box of money. That's
Speaker 2: one thing, but then there are all these obligations that
Speaker 2: are unfunded to these workers. Now, if you could somehow
Speaker 2: buy that company and get rid of all of those
Speaker 2: unfunded obligations that are weighing down the company, you could
Speaker 2: have a really profitable company. You go from having a
Speaker 2: bankrupt company to actually a company that works really well.
Speaker 2: You know. The only bad part of that story is
Speaker 2: that the people that actually put in the forty years
Speaker 2: or thirty years of work, you know, are left actually
Speaker 2: without their pensions or without healthcare with that very reduced
Speaker 2: pension support. And I think we were sensing that not
Speaker 2: only was this starting to happen, but it was going
Speaker 2: to happen in a really really big way. And I
Speaker 2: think very quickly we kind of got interested in and
Speaker 2: we were thinking about motors, you know, and we saw
Speaker 2: this kind of general motors bankruptcy coming and that the
Speaker 2: pension stuff would be like at the dead center of it,
Speaker 2: and we ended up making up our own fictional like
Speaker 2: steel company, American Steel, and American Steel was basically being
Speaker 2: put in play, you know, by a kind of hedge
Speaker 2: fund operator who unbeknownst to him has a son, a
Speaker 2: kind of wayward son. So it's a father son's story,
Speaker 2: and his wayward son has this truth detection, the ability
Speaker 2: yeah he that he becomes aware of over the course
Speaker 2: of the film.
Speaker 1: So you see, you're you've the genius thing about your idea?
Speaker 1: Was you when you were telling it? Initially you started
Speaker 1: with we have one of these prototypical ruthless Wall Street
Speaker 1: predators who's like got the fancy apartment on Fifth Avenue,
Speaker 1: the huge house out and go in, you know, in
Speaker 1: in the Hampton's and he's everything you And he has
Speaker 1: this a son from whom he is estranged, right, a
Speaker 1: son who shares none of his father's values, but who
Speaker 1: desperately wants and cannot get his father's approval. You started
Speaker 1: with this really powerful family dynamic which was going to
Speaker 1: be the engine of the movie. What does a son
Speaker 1: do if he wants to win his father's love and
Speaker 1: yet he is incapable of competing on any of the
Speaker 1: terms of his father's world. Right, the son was a
Speaker 1: school teacher, wasn't he a school teacher or like teaching
Speaker 1: in Harlem?
Speaker 2: He was. He had taken a very long time to
Speaker 2: graduate from college, like over a decade, and you know,
Speaker 2: is generally considered a lay about and kind of a
Speaker 2: loser and definitely in his own mind. And now he's
Speaker 2: graduating maybe, and he doesn't know what to do, and
Speaker 2: the dad is sort of loosely amenable to perhaps providing
Speaker 2: him a cubicle his headge found upingtechut or whatever, and
Speaker 2: he goes to work in this kind of shark shark
Speaker 2: environment that he's not at all suited for.
Speaker 1: His dad doesn't know that the son has this gift,
Speaker 1: this magical gift of knowing whether someone's lying or not.
Speaker 1: He's no clue that his son has this. He's he
Speaker 1: perceives his son as a loser without any kind of
Speaker 1: you know, without any kind of special gifts or abilities.
Speaker 1: And he's doing his he's tossing his son a bone
Speaker 1: is not the son is still on the outside of
Speaker 1: disappointment in his father's eyes.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to place this film like in
Speaker 2: the right tone. It has like a hal ash f
Speaker 2: vibe to it, you know, it feels like a little
Speaker 2: bit like it's in the it's in the tone of
Speaker 2: Harold and Maud or in the tone of the maybe
Speaker 2: the graduate even like that's I know, that was like
Speaker 2: something I was really really thinking about, like what are
Speaker 2: the what are the pressures on young people right now
Speaker 2: when they like are looking at what's my future? It
Speaker 2: allows you to have a little bit of a shaggy
Speaker 2: dog story, but there's like, you know, like you're pointing
Speaker 2: out really heartfelt, motional and kind of dynamic you know,
Speaker 2: of wanting a father's love. And then yes, it's moving.
Speaker 1: And so the core little, the core little plot point
Speaker 1: is this weird quirk of bankruptcy law that if you
Speaker 1: to go back to your your, your, your, what you
Speaker 1: began with that they're with these companies that seemed to
Speaker 1: bankrupt but had this large pool of cash tied up
Speaker 1: in a retirement account for their employees. If a company
Speaker 1: is in bankruptcy, it is at the mercy of a
Speaker 1: bankruptcy judge, and bankruptcy law is unique in all law,
Speaker 1: and that it grants enormous discretion to the judge. So
Speaker 1: there are judges out there if they want to, they
Speaker 1: could waive a magic wand and say you can take
Speaker 1: this company out of bankruptcy and all the money in
Speaker 1: the retirement account is yours. Or another judge might say
Speaker 1: you can have the company, but you must honor every
Speaker 1: single obligation you have towards the retirement your employees. It's
Speaker 1: up to the judge. So if you're a robber baron,
Speaker 1: you're a predator, you're some hedge fun guy Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: you're eyeing a bankrupt company and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: whether you can make it work. Everything depends on which
Speaker 1: judge oversees this particular case in bankruptcy court.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly it's incredibly fun as a plot mechanism because
Speaker 2: now you're just you know, billions and billions ride on,
Speaker 2: essentially gaming the system, which which of these potential judges,
Speaker 2: if you could somehow manipulate it is most likely to
Speaker 2: be friendly to your particular robber baron.
Speaker 1: Cause yeah, yeah, So the Sun realizes this and goes
Speaker 1: to the dad. The dad is totally unsure what to do.
Speaker 1: His options are just what to do, just to roll
Speaker 1: the dice? Does he does he buy this thing, take
Speaker 1: it to bank, and take the risk that he could
Speaker 1: be completely screwed by some kind of pro worker judge.
Speaker 1: But the son comes to the dad and says, Dad,
Speaker 1: you I need to tell you something about myself. I
Speaker 1: have this gift I can I can see into someone's heart.
Speaker 1: And the dad of course rolls his eyes and says,
Speaker 1: you're bullshitting me. So the son sets out to prove
Speaker 1: to his dad he knows that he can see into
Speaker 1: someone's soul. And then Disney have a series of tests.
Speaker 1: There's the other three tests that he he undergoes to
Speaker 1: prove to his dad he has this this magical ability.
Speaker 2: So part of the thing with the with the movie
Speaker 2: that I think worked really well is that the son
Speaker 2: finds out about the gift during the during the movie
Speaker 2: as well, so he wasn't he wasn't like swaning around
Speaker 2: saying I have a superpower. He actually runs across the
Speaker 2: professor who's doing this kind of research, and the professor
Speaker 2: is a character like he's a gambling addict. He realizes
Speaker 2: that you know, they run this test where they're like
Speaker 2: it's something some some ridiculous thing. It's like people say
Speaker 2: the line I had a ham sandwich for lunch. Oh,
Speaker 2: like hundreds of people I had a ham sandwich for lunch.
Speaker 2: And he drags this kid in there and he's like
Speaker 2: who's lying and who's telling the truth. And he watches
Speaker 2: like one hundred and fifty people saying I had a
Speaker 2: ham sandwich for lunch, and he gets one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty of them right, and the guy is like immediately
Speaker 2: takes him to the race track like out to Belmont,
Speaker 2: puts his binoculars to his eyes and starts having him
Speaker 2: look at horses. Which horse is going to win this race?
Speaker 2: And he's like looking at the horse and he's like
Speaker 2: this is absurd, and the horse he's like, no, no horses
Speaker 2: have in her lives, Like what's going on? And he
Speaker 2: starts like telling him about the emotional lives of these
Speaker 2: horses that you know who are getting ready to go
Speaker 2: into the into the starting gate, and like one is
Speaker 2: like thinking about dinner and one has like had a
Speaker 2: bad sexual experience recently and feeling really shameful, and like
Speaker 2: they're all just and he's started by process of elimination.
Speaker 2: He's like, it's going to be this one. It's gonna
Speaker 2: be the Philly. The Philly's gonna win. Yeah, And so
Speaker 2: this professor, who's like literally a gambly, he ends up
Speaker 2: betting like to like fifteen grand like at the track
Speaker 2: and then money through bookies. And the kid is watching
Speaker 2: him and he's like, this guy's a psychopath, you know.
Speaker 2: And then photo finished, and then of course the Philly wins,
Speaker 2: and you know, and our character doesn't believe it, you know,
Speaker 2: he just thinks this is complete nonsense, and he sort
Speaker 2: of proves it to him over and over and over.
Speaker 1: The Professor, by the way, is based on a man
Speaker 1: named Sylvan Tompkins, one of the true legends of early
Speaker 1: twentieth century mid century psychology, who had convinced himself that
Speaker 1: he could read people's in ourselves. And also the thing
Speaker 1: about going to the horses. That's Tompkins. He would frequent
Speaker 1: the horse racing and horse races. He was a pen
Speaker 1: He would go to to the horse races in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and he would try and use all of his theories
Speaker 1: about human emotion to pick winners. So that was all
Speaker 1: straight from this he was this autodidact guy, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a book detailing his theories. And the book was
Speaker 1: The line about the book was the book was so
Speaker 1: long no one read it, even Sylvan I always loved it.
Speaker 2: And eventually he, you know, at this inflection point with
Speaker 2: his father where that where they're not you know, the
Speaker 2: opportunities inside the family business or or not. You know,
Speaker 2: they're they're they're not going to work out for him.
Speaker 2: He like, as he realizes he has like a hail
Speaker 2: Mary pitch, which is, I can actually make sure you
Speaker 2: get the result you want right right with the bankruptcy
Speaker 2: judge and the data of course is a skeptic. He
Speaker 2: doesn't believe it either, and like, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: like I hadn't. I hadn't you know, look, I hadn't
Speaker 2: thought about the scripture and looked at it. And I
Speaker 2: mean a long time, probably fifteen years, fifteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I am I didn't even I couldn't even find
Speaker 2: the blink folder. And I was like, and then I
Speaker 2: just searched for Blink and then up came a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff and like and and and the draft. And
Speaker 2: it's so funny because you get to know that you know,
Speaker 2: you put so much effort, you know, into trying to
Speaker 2: make these movies, and like it's so much love. It's love,
Speaker 2: and like it feels like life or death. And I
Speaker 2: just I just clicked on it and like page sixty
Speaker 2: five and up comes and this is this is dialogue.
Speaker 2: I completely forgotten this. This is dialogue between the kid
Speaker 2: and his dad and they're trying to like and they're
Speaker 2: they're at like a local, really cheesy drinking place in
Speaker 2: Greenwich where his half brother plays in a band called
Speaker 2: The Margin Calls. And he's there with his family and
Speaker 2: his step mom and they're all nodding along while this
Speaker 2: bro band does cover cover cover songs, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're eating like, you know, French dips or whatever, and
Speaker 2: his dad's a little tipsy and he's like and he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is all coming to a head. He's like,
Speaker 2: am I sorry? I never carpooled or sliced oranges for
Speaker 2: T ball? I don't know. I used to say that
Speaker 2: they asked Napoleon to do reading circle and Teddy's like,
Speaker 2: the kid is like, we did some stuff. We looked
Speaker 2: at pictures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Redmond. The dad is Redmond. The son is
Speaker 1: ted Teddy.
Speaker 2: Exactly who went to the Met together. I remember going
Speaker 2: to the Met. I think I do, and he does
Speaker 2: his dad, you know, his dad imitates his dad and
Speaker 2: he's like, American tycoons have to appear culture. So what's
Speaker 2: the first thing they buy? And then together they say bronzes.
Speaker 2: And now the dad's like JP Morgan Frick. Teddy's like
Speaker 2: they had books, but they wanted to be renaissance men,
Speaker 2: like the Duke of Urbino, and Redmond says, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you're a real snob, you know that Castello and Rabino
Speaker 2: like the back of your hand, but you don't.
Speaker 1: Talk about it. And then.
Speaker 2: Teddy says, and I think I remember a bedtime rhyme
Speaker 2: about how much sleep a person needs, and he says
Speaker 2: nature needs five, custom takes seven, laziness takes nine, and
Speaker 2: wickedness eleven. A his dad looks at him and says
Speaker 2: his dad looks at him for a long moment and goes,
Speaker 2: I'd forgotten it's Scottish, which is I mean, it's really funny, Malcolm.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like it's all coming back. There's a
Speaker 1: beautiful scene I remember, I mean, one of the genius
Speaker 1: things about the idea was exploiting the idea of how
Speaker 1: genuinely conflicted the sun is about this discovery of his gift,
Speaker 1: because isn't there a scene? Am I making this up?
Speaker 1: He's on a date with a girl and the date
Speaker 1: goes awry because he can tell every time she says
Speaker 1: something that she doesn't believe, and you realize that dating
Speaker 1: under those circumstances is impossible.
Speaker 2: It's you realize that, like this thing that started out
Speaker 2: as a joke is actually the thing that's defined his
Speaker 2: entire life.
Speaker 1: And he derailed his entire life.
Speaker 2: It derailed it. It's it's made it impossible to trust
Speaker 2: people in the normal flow of human interaction, you know,
Speaker 2: because the dissembling is all laid bare. He's five steps
Speaker 2: ahead of all of it, and he's just cut himself
Speaker 2: off from it.
Speaker 1: And so he is one chance at redemption, and that
Speaker 1: is to finally use his gift to win back the
Speaker 1: love of the person who he most wants to love him,
Speaker 1: his dad. Right, So the dad tests Teddy's abilities, Teddy
Speaker 1: wins each time, and Teddy is then given the job
Speaker 1: of picking between Is it three different judges?
Speaker 2: I think it must be.
Speaker 1: There are three Canada judges, because you can. You can
Speaker 1: jurisdiction shop in bankruptcy, so that there's three bankruptcy courts
Speaker 1: the father can potentially file in, and the question is
Speaker 1: which one should he file in, And the son's job
Speaker 1: is to put it in retrospect. I have no idea
Speaker 1: whether this is actually how bankruptcy all works, but this
Speaker 1: was the version that we were that we were. But
Speaker 1: so he's given the The son has given the job
Speaker 1: of figuring out who is the judge most likely to
Speaker 1: rule in his father's favor, and he goes and contrives
Speaker 1: a reason right to to meet up with each one
Speaker 1: of these judges and assess their fundamental character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember. I don't remember them all, but I
Speaker 2: do remember. One was like he pretended to be an
Speaker 2: s a T tutor from one of the judges judges
Speaker 2: wayward sons, and he gets into their house and so
Speaker 2: getting into like a kind of k conflict with this guy.
Speaker 1: Doesn't he play golf with another guy?
Speaker 2: I think so he does. He goes to play golf. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm usually longer after the turn who says that Teddy
Speaker 2: or the judge Teddy says it like he's terrible at golf,
Speaker 2: and the guy's like, yeah. The guy says, try and
Speaker 2: chip the ball back to the smooth stuff. The guy,
Speaker 2: I just I've totally forgotten all this. He's like, let's
Speaker 2: cut the craft. I know who you are, I know
Speaker 2: who your father is. Human college. Oh, we're at an
Speaker 2: eating club together at the pork Ar. Motto feed your
Speaker 2: friends first.
Speaker 1: Wait, so that judge is ruled out the judge, so
Speaker 1: what are the judges sees through Teddy, It's like, get
Speaker 1: out of here. I know what I know what game
Speaker 1: you're playing.
Speaker 2: Let's cut the crumb. There's no way I'm ruling against labor,
Speaker 2: not in this climate, not in not in Pennsylvania. Impartiality,
Speaker 2: my ass. They'll burn my house down and kill my family.
Speaker 2: Tell him that. Toddy says, you're signing a death certificate
Speaker 2: for American steel. And he says, yeah, Well, maybe we'll
Speaker 2: get universal health care. Maybe Indian will have a social revolution,
Speaker 2: pay their workers twenty seven to fifty an hour plus benefits.
Speaker 2: Maybe Woodland gnomes will make auto parts for free, and
Speaker 2: we'll all sit sherry in the park. And he says,
Speaker 2: and he says, never ever pick up a golf club again.
Speaker 2: That he says, I'm a tennis player. Golf is for assholes, the.
Speaker 1: Whole whiff of class warfare. And this the script is
Speaker 1: just ten years too soon.
Speaker 2: When I was looking, I just was glancing at it, Malcolm,
Speaker 2: like for fift like ten minutes before what we got
Speaker 2: on here, and I was like, God, it's like.
Speaker 1: It's for right now, It's for right now. It's so,
Speaker 1: it's so for right now. All right, let's take a
Speaker 1: little break. When we come back, Steve and I take
Speaker 1: our script out on the town. Okay, so we're back.
Speaker 1: Agents are now heavily involved, where it is leaked that
Speaker 1: Stephen Gagan has a secret new project. There's a frantic
Speaker 1: week where we find time on every movie executive's calendar.
Speaker 1: The plan is to hit every studio over the course
Speaker 1: of two days, which requires driving from the Valley to Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Santa Monica to Culver City. We map our root like
Speaker 1: it's the Invasion of Normandy. I fly out to La
Speaker 1: because I am now fully in the fantasy. A book,
Speaker 1: a bungalow at the bel Air Hotel. Steve Leo and
Speaker 1: yes I'm calling him Leo at this point, meet for
Speaker 1: drinks at the bell Air, but Steve is late, so
Speaker 1: for a while it's just me and Leo in a
Speaker 1: booth at the bar, and for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I'm like where the paparazzi And the next morning,
Speaker 1: off we go, all three of us.
Speaker 3: Look we you know, we were really lucky, like we
Speaker 3: had we had you know, from my perspective, it's like
Speaker 3: we had Matt we had you you know, with this
Speaker 3: amazing book that was like a huge you know, it
Speaker 3: was really a best seller and everyone had read it, right,
Speaker 3: so everyone knew the book, which is wonderful.
Speaker 2: Everyone knew Tipping Point, and then we won the lottery
Speaker 2: in that. Leonardo DiCaprio attached himself to the movie. So
Speaker 2: when we were going around pitching it, you know, we're
Speaker 2: meeting all these moguls, you know, on our day of
Speaker 2: driving around in the old station wagon, we have Leonardo
Speaker 2: DiCaprio with us.
Speaker 1: It was hilarious.
Speaker 2: So we're like we're like in there, like the three
Speaker 2: of us, like the three Musketeers, like sitting on like
Speaker 2: these couches and these big offices, you know, and we're
Speaker 2: pitching our hearts out. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I think probably they're just like would kind of look
Speaker 2: down the couch and there would be Leo kind of
Speaker 2: you know, chuckling along. We would just nod, and I
Speaker 2: think I think more or less people at that moment
Speaker 2: we're like, we're in Yeah. Truly, we probably could have
Speaker 2: just like moved our mouths and made no sound come out,
Speaker 2: and we probably would have been Okay.
Speaker 1: The amount of here, I must say, the entire time
Speaker 1: we were with Leo, I was like, so so hopelessly starstrucks.
Speaker 2: He's amazed.
Speaker 1: He later may have become more famous later, but he
Speaker 1: was on the cusp of his He was just genuine
Speaker 1: heart throb moment.
Speaker 2: I mean, he had everything a heart throb. But he's
Speaker 2: also a really good actor, so he's like he has
Speaker 2: all these things going on at the same time, and
Speaker 2: you're when you're around him, you just you know, it's
Speaker 2: hard not to be to be aware of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now anything. So we took this out over the
Speaker 1: course I believe of two days. Am I right? That
Speaker 1: everyone we met with, with one exception, bid on it.
Speaker 1: Everybody bit on it, yeah, everyone, and we were I
Speaker 1: just remember being in your car driving down like whatever
Speaker 1: Santa Monica Boulevard and just getting calls from your agent
Speaker 1: with the new someone else's signed on wants to Bid.
Speaker 2: It was just the most absurdly thrilling to this thing
Speaker 2: was really exciting, and and it was just us just
Speaker 2: driving around in an old station wagon.
Speaker 1: To this day, my favorite pitch story was we went
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers, and the way we membe, we divided
Speaker 1: up the pitch and so you did the story. I
Speaker 1: did the science. So it's like roughly fifty to fifty,
Speaker 1: or sometimes we mixed it up. Sometimes you would do
Speaker 1: almost all of it and I would do almost all
Speaker 1: of it. For some reason, the Warner Brothers one, I
Speaker 1: did the most of the pitch, and there were I
Speaker 1: knew no one in Hollywood my first time aver pitching movie.
Speaker 1: Go into this gorgeous executive room and there are two
Speaker 1: men in the room. One was very very tall and
Speaker 1: very very handsome and charismatic and warm. One was short
Speaker 1: and sort of angry and whatever. I'm not knowing any better,
Speaker 1: assumed the tall, handsome one was the chairman of the
Speaker 1: studio and that this short guy was some kind of underling, flunky, assistant, whatever.
Speaker 1: So I pitched the entire script to the tall guy,
Speaker 1: and then only to discover the short guy, who I've
Speaker 1: been ignoring the entire time as a chairman of the studio,
Speaker 1: and the tall guy is just some dude who was
Speaker 1: just in the office that day. It was hilarious, And
Speaker 1: of course they did, which made me think that maybe
Speaker 1: the mistake we make. Maybe you know, maybe their reasons
Speaker 1: for bidding were that if they're gonna come in here
Speaker 1: and ignore me, I'm going to show them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I remember, I remember that, but he never
Speaker 2: got made. Yeah, there's I mean, I I think I
Speaker 2: probably have information about that that you actually don't have,
Speaker 2: that you may not even know, which you know, I
Speaker 2: can explain.
Speaker 1: When we come back the bidding war. And then Steve
Speaker 1: tells me a story I'd never heard four, the story
Speaker 1: of why things fell apart. So we get a real
Speaker 1: life bidding war. The town went nuts. We were in
Speaker 1: Steve's battered station wagon driving around LA and every half
Speaker 1: an hour, Steve's agent would call Sony in Universal in
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers in. We have the sun roof, open, the
Speaker 1: windows down. I'm warning sunglasses. They never wear sunglasses. We
Speaker 1: don't even need Leo anymore. He gets into his Prius
Speaker 1: and drives home. We pick a studio, We huddle with
Speaker 1: our agents we pick a winner, checks are cashed, some
Speaker 1: brilliant producer is assigned to our case, and off we go.
Speaker 1: Only it never happens. A year passes, then two years,
Speaker 1: then three years. And this is why we're doing development. Hell,
Speaker 1: an entire series devoted to scripts that never happen, because
Speaker 1: this is always the most devastating part of the story,
Speaker 1: the plot twists that happened off the page.
Speaker 2: So you know, Leo's company, they were producers on the movie,
Speaker 2: and Leo was really into it, you know, really involved,
Speaker 2: and at a certain point in time, we had essentially
Speaker 2: green light at Universal, you know, and we had a budget,
Speaker 2: a schedule and everything. A lot of things worked out.
Speaker 2: How were we going to do it? And I was talking,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I wanted I'm going to do
Speaker 2: like a week more on the script. There were just
Speaker 2: some things I wanted to fix, and I got into
Speaker 2: it and I ended up working on it for like
Speaker 2: months and months, and I changed a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: But the main thing I did, you know, as I
Speaker 2: the character, and a lot of this is just intuitive.
Speaker 2: I don't even know why I'm doing it, but the
Speaker 2: character got like ten years younger, and Leo, you know,
Speaker 2: when he it. He was really funny. He was like,
Speaker 2: he goes, buddy, buddy, if you if you didn't want
Speaker 2: me in the movie, all you had to do was say, so,
Speaker 2: it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And and it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that I didn't want him in the movie.
Speaker 2: But but this other thing had happened kind of off
Speaker 2: off camera, which was that I'd I met Heath Ledger
Speaker 2: and I'd gotten to be very very close with him,
Speaker 2: like instantly, like I just I just had a real
Speaker 2: connection with him that was kind of unusual and really
Speaker 2: special to me. And I got really excited and I
Speaker 2: started seeing him as the main character. And and once
Speaker 2: I started seeing that, I couldn't unsee it, you know.
Speaker 2: And and obviously it was very delicate in a way.
Speaker 2: And and Lee's totally cool, Like I mean, obviously he
Speaker 2: has a thousand choices, but I in my mind it
Speaker 2: was a big deal. I was just like, I really,
Speaker 2: if I just said to Leo, hey, I would like
Speaker 2: to do this with Heath, he would be like, I'm
Speaker 2: a huge fan of as, I love him, Let's do it.
Speaker 2: You know, it wouldn't have been a problem. But in
Speaker 2: my mind it was really a thing, definitely a thing
Speaker 2: at the studio because like at first it was like,
Speaker 2: we don't want to we we're not that interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's like you can have the biggest, really big
Speaker 2: star of like someone, you know, why would you do that, the.
Speaker 1: Really big start being Leo because Heath wasn't so big
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it changed, you know, because his I
Speaker 2: believe it was right around the time The Joker was
Speaker 2: coming out, because he then popped is this massive And
Speaker 2: then suddenly it was okay, you know, all this was
Speaker 2: kind of happening, and in a good way. I thought,
Speaker 2: in a way that was really right for a movie.
Speaker 2: But I also just had this feeling that I was
Speaker 2: gonna just you know, I love this guy and I
Speaker 2: was gonna make a bunch of movies with them, Heath
Speaker 2: and everything. And then I got a phone call. They
Speaker 2: were on speakerphone, and it was Heath's Heath Ledger's father,
Speaker 2: who I'd never met. So he died in a really
Speaker 2: tragic you know, like you have like a beer and
Speaker 2: like a Benadrill and like another you know, and just
Speaker 2: absolute fluke. Any other day you're fine, but just breathing
Speaker 2: stops and the dad and a guy who was really
Speaker 2: close with him, like the guy was closest to him
Speaker 2: in his professional life. They were they were there and
Speaker 2: they you know, with the body, and our script was
Speaker 2: embedded with him, and your book was on the bedside table,
Speaker 2: and I think my number was on the script like
Speaker 2: written like and these guys are in as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: they are in shock, and they dialed that number and
Speaker 2: I don't know why. And I'm in an airport with
Speaker 2: my wife, just going from one place to another, and
Speaker 2: I literally just I just like collide. It never happened
Speaker 2: to me before since like my feet went out from
Speaker 2: under me. I just literally sat down, like because I
Speaker 2: was in I was like what what and and and
Speaker 2: and the emotion like what you know, what they were
Speaker 2: going through. I should not have been a party to
Speaker 2: in any way really, And and yet you know, as
Speaker 2: a human or is of you know, somebody who just cares,
Speaker 2: you know. I just was there and I was listening,
Speaker 2: and my wife was looking and I remember her face
Speaker 2: and I was just like I could. I was speechless,
Speaker 2: and I just listened and listened and listened, and you
Speaker 2: know it's just really really sad, you know, and and
Speaker 2: uh and and it's still sad, and you know, and
Speaker 2: I think that I think that for me, I just
Speaker 2: I just had to put a put a pin in it,
Speaker 2: you know, like I just I didn't. I just I
Speaker 2: don't know. It just it's something Steve.
Speaker 1: It's I did not know that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I haven't. I hadn't really told anyone for
Speaker 2: a long time. And I and I debated actually when
Speaker 2: we were going to talk about it. I was like,
Speaker 2: should I talk about it? And I actually asked my
Speaker 2: wife and I thought, no, it's it's I think it's
Speaker 2: really good to talk about it because it's just say
Speaker 2: it was sad, and you know, and yet you know,
Speaker 2: and yet here we are and we're talking about something
Speaker 2: that we really put a lot of you know, we
Speaker 2: put a lot of hard and soul, a lot of
Speaker 2: effort into and a lot of care. So I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't really have a clear answer of
Speaker 2: why we never made it, but I feel like maybe
Speaker 2: I feel like that bit played a big role in it.
Speaker 2: But then you know, again, I hadn't looked at it
Speaker 2: in a very long time. And then I when I
Speaker 2: when I got it out, like right before we got
Speaker 2: on and like I was reading and I was just like,
Speaker 2: I ran to find my wife. You know that we're
Speaker 2: still married, thank goodness. And I was like, I was like,
Speaker 2: I could be crazy, but I think this script is
Speaker 2: really good. Like I think we really had something like
Speaker 2: really special, and we might have we might have been
Speaker 2: ahead of our time or something. I'm just glancing it
Speaker 2: seen by scene by scene and it's just their movie scenes,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're big and it's such a good title.
Speaker 1: Yeah what wait, did you what was the title of?
Speaker 1: Do we call it? Blink? Yeah? Blink?
Speaker 2: And like and the way the movie opens, you don't
Speaker 2: remember this. It's I gotta you're gonna die. Okay, you're
Speaker 2: gonna die because this is gonna come back. This is
Speaker 2: the first scene I read right I opened it. But
Speaker 2: here's the movie opens. Close up a baby's blue eye,
Speaker 2: huge and blue, like Earth from space, staring at us.
Speaker 2: Blank begin credits. Close up a baby looking into lens,
Speaker 2: A happy, curious baby doing what babies do. It makes
Speaker 2: us happy. Now you hear a woman's voice off screen.
Speaker 2: He's so sweet, so sweet, so happy, happy, happy baby.
Speaker 2: Yes you are. The baby begins to scream. Close up
Speaker 2: happy baby again, utterly adorable. But now unobserved and close up,
Speaker 2: the baby's expression seems to give clues to complex thinking.
Speaker 2: And now you hear the father. He's trying to tell
Speaker 2: us something. Father's tie drapes into the crib, wide seventies tie,
Speaker 2: heary thick risk with expensive watch. Mother, of course he is,
Speaker 2: I love mommy and Daddy, Yes, I do. And you
Speaker 2: hear the dad say, little desperado. The mother's hands, white
Speaker 2: painted nails, gold jewelry, deep tan, appear to tuck the
Speaker 2: baby's sky lou blanket. Mother os tell him you love him,
Speaker 2: Daddy loves you, Yes he does. He needs reassurance from
Speaker 2: his father. And there's a pause, and that you hear
Speaker 2: the father say sometimes it's not about me, and the
Speaker 2: mother says it's pretty much always about you. The room
Speaker 2: was totally silent, and you're just pushing up on the
Speaker 2: baby's eyes, and the baby blinks and you cut to
Speaker 2: the title blink.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's great, it's so awesome. That's so awesome. I
Speaker 1: forgotten the only is genius. All right, we are resolved, Stephen,
Speaker 1: bring this thing back to life.
Speaker 2: But we have to we have to figure it out.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard the full story of why Steve had
Speaker 1: to walk away from Blink. But the more I caught
Speaker 1: up with Steve, the more I felt that maybe we
Speaker 1: were onto something back then. Maybe it's time to bring
Speaker 1: Blink back to life. I mean, there's a script. As
Speaker 1: a screenwriter, there's a wonderful idea, and if there's someone
Speaker 1: listening and some big office somewhere in Hollywood, I will
Speaker 1: get on a plane tomorrow if that's what it takes.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, Hollywood is full of these stories.
Speaker 1: We're gonna touch on a whole series of them in
Speaker 1: the upcoming episodes. Next up in the feed is the
Speaker 1: story of a sci fi filler that had just a
Speaker 1: little too much five and not quite enough sigh, with
Speaker 1: a twist that the studios just couldn't handle. You can
Speaker 1: hear about a biopic told through the eyes of an
Speaker 1: exotic animal. You're gonna hear the Oscar winner Charles Randolph
Speaker 1: get a little emotional about a project he did with
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise that fell apart. The mines behind some of
Speaker 1: Hollywood's biggest hits, talking about the biggest failures. Join us
Speaker 1: as we take the temperature of development Hell. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Nina Bird Lawrence with Taly Emlin and
Speaker 1: Ben Adapph Hafrey. Editing by Sarah Nick's original scoring be Luisquira,
Speaker 1: Engineering by Ecco Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell.