0:15

Pushkin. Many

0:23

years ago, I wrote a book called Blink.

0:26

It was about snap judgments and first

0:28

impressions. It was my second book.

0:31

My interactions with Hollywood word at that point

0:33

limited. I think someone wants

0:35

options something I'd written for The New Yorker, and

0:37

I'd taken the meeting or two, but nothing came

0:40

of it. But then one day

0:42

I got a call from Steve Gagan. If

0:47

you're a movie buff, you've heard the name. He'd

0:49

just won the Oscar for writing Traffic, which

0:51

was an amazing movie about the drug trade directed

0:54

by Steven Soderberg, starring

0:56

Michael Douglas and Benicio del Toro

0:58

and Don Cheedle and a million other stars.

1:01

And he had just rapped Syriana, another

1:03

fantastic movie with Jeffrey Wright and

1:05

George Clooney and Matt Damon. Anyway,

1:08

I had never met him. He says, I'm

1:10

coming to New York and I want to meet

1:13

with you about your book Blink.

1:17

Every writer dreams of getting

1:19

a call like this, I promise you. I

1:21

was thrilled to bits, and Steve flies

1:23

in from Los Angeles and we meet in a

1:25

cafe somewhere downtown and just so

1:27

you get the visual I'm short and skinny.

1:30

Steve is I dun'no six ' four. He's

1:33

an athlete, absurdly handsome,

1:35

maybe the most charming person I've ever met. And

1:37

he tells me he's obsessed with the chapter

1:39

in Blink about reading emotions

1:42

and how there are people in the world who are really,

1:44

really good at knowing what other people are thinking

1:46

and feeling, human lie

1:48

detectors. So over

1:51

the next few years, I am basically

1:53

Steve's assistant in cooking up

1:55

a story about a human lie detector.

1:58

It is, I believe to this day, an absolutely

2:00

brilliant script. But have

2:03

you ever seen a movie called Blink?

2:06

No, you haven't, And what I'm about

2:08

to do is to tell you the real

2:10

story of why the movie never got

2:12

made. In

2:16

fact, I'm going to do much more than that. In

2:18

the next episode, I'm going to tell you another

2:21

story about an amazing movie that never got made,

2:23

and then after that, another story,

2:26

and then another story. Half a dozen

2:28

episodes all told, maybe even more

2:30

if we get into it. Because the thing I

2:32

realized in talking to Steve about

2:34

what happened with our long and hilarious

2:37

and ultimately heartbreaking experience

2:40

in trying to turn blink into a

2:42

movie. Is that the best Hollywood

2:44

stories are the stories that never got

2:46

made. We're calling this series

2:49

development. Hell I

2:51

promise you there will be more name dropping

2:54

and celebrity dry buys and hilarious

2:56

digressions than you can shake a stick

2:58

at. We're going to call up the

3:01

biggest names we can find and just

3:03

have them pitch us the ideas that

3:05

broke their heart. I

3:07

mean, come on, how are you not along

3:10

for the ride? But

3:12

today my very own journey

3:14

into development. Hell well,

3:22

thank you for doing this, Steve. What

3:25

I really want to do is for you and I to

3:27

recreate, just for a moment, the

3:29

magic of that day

3:32

when we were jetting around

3:34

LA in your What

3:36

car did you have then? Was it your Mercedes

3:39

Wagon?

3:40

I think it was an old station wagon.

3:42

Exactly, it's an old station wagon. And we

3:44

went from one mogul

3:47

to the next pitching this story.

3:49

It was just like, it's one of the one of my greatest memories

3:51

ever. But to start at the beginning.

3:54

I never met you, correct, and

3:57

you called me out of the blue.

3:59

We have to even start before this, Okay,

4:02

ok, Actually I think we should go back

4:04

to the dawn of time. So

4:06

there was the Big Bang, and that molic Jules

4:09

carently came along anyway,

4:12

so it's actually it's

4:14

actually an incredible story. So I had finished

4:17

my film Syriana, which

4:19

took a lot, was like a four four and a half

4:21

year effort, and I was and it was

4:24

intense, and then I was like, what am I going to do next?

4:26

So I'm sitting in Cavigtan

4:28

and I I

4:31

had this idea, this crazy idea,

4:34

this is way before Twilight. I wanted to do

4:36

a vampire love story.

4:39

And actually what I wanted to do was a love

4:41

store, a tragic love story with a happy

4:43

ending. And I was like, kept thinking about, thinking

4:45

about thinking about it, and then I was like, oh my god,

4:48

the guy is a vampire. The

4:52

love stories are as good as the things that keep the

4:54

lovers apart. So picture picture

4:57

a horse farm in Kentucky. It's

4:59

winter that the you know, suddenly

5:02

the smoke starts coming out of a chimney. You know,

5:04

these big farms are all owned by Europeans

5:06

who are mysterious. This guy comes to town

5:09

and he meets like a veterinarian

5:11

on the farm, and the sparks

5:13

fly. They obviously are really into each other, but

5:15

then there's also all these weird deaths that start

5:18

happening around some animals, some people.

5:21

Her brothers, her family decide this guy

5:23

as the one who's doing it, and

5:25

so they decide, you know, enough's

5:27

enough, they're gonna kill him. So they

5:29

poison him. Now she's

5:32

in love with him. She discovers him

5:34

right the sun is setting. He's been poisoned,

5:37

you know, they think he's dead, they've gone.

5:40

She finds him. She thinks he's committed suicide

5:42

by drinking the poison. Romeo and Juliet. She's

5:44

so distraught all she could do is drink the

5:46

poison herself. As she's

5:49

dying. The sun is setting.

5:51

The vampire's waking up, and

5:53

he sees her there and realizes what's happened,

5:55

and he has to do the one thing that he swore

5:57

he would never do, which is reveal his true self

6:00

and bite her, and so she dies.

6:02

But they then wakes up to internal

6:05

happiness, being in love with the guys. And I was

6:07

like, too much gepticism

6:09

from every representative in my life. They're

6:12

like, you cannot write a vampire movie.

6:14

It is impossible, like you've done

6:16

you know, know any whatever. So I'm sitting

6:18

in cave Gittan trying

6:21

to write my vampire love story. I never got

6:23

past page ten or twelve. And so I'm

6:25

reading I'm reading your book, Blink,

6:28

Blink. And I'm sitting in there reading Blink

6:30

quite happily. Every day, drinking

6:32

my coffee, failing at writing my vampire love

6:34

story, and in

6:37

and out, every once

6:39

in a while comes a

6:41

plucky young actor that I'm pretty sure is going

6:43

places, by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio,

6:46

And so Leo sees

6:48

me there, and Leo,

6:51

Leo had been interested

6:53

in playing the role in Sirianna that Matt Damon

6:56

ultimately played. And in fact, if

6:58

you know Leo at all, like he never really

7:00

says yes, but he never says no, so he never

7:02

passes, Like I honestly think he still thinks he

7:05

can be in Syriana, Like it's just like still available.

7:07

And so anyway, now

7:09

I see him in Jitan and

7:13

he's like, Hey, we gotta

7:15

what are you doing? We got to cook something up? What

7:17

do you what are you? What are you interested in? Let's

7:20

come up with something. And I'm like, I

7:22

think this could be a movie, like

7:24

a really you know, I think there's

7:26

a movie in here. Now, if you're knowing

7:28

your book as you do, you realize

7:31

that's a very challenging adaptation, right.

7:34

Right, Blink is nothing like a vampire

7:36

love story.

7:37

Right like you and I. You know, cut to a year from

7:39

this point, you and I will cook up a totally different

7:41

story. But he's looking

7:43

at me and he goes, I'll do it. Let's

7:45

do it. That's a great idea. So that's

7:48

then that precipitated me. I

7:51

think maybe calling you

7:53

out of the blue, just say.

7:56

Hi, and this is what it's

7:59

like two thousand and five.

8:03

Maybe two thousand and six

8:05

or seven.

8:06

When do we go at some point

8:09

the story? So we we

8:11

decided we would do something which makes no practical

8:13

sense, which is turned

8:17

Blink into a movie. You

8:19

were from the very beginning, as ever, call attracted

8:21

to a very very specific thing

8:23

in Blink, the notion.

8:25

Of what

8:28

I liked, the idea that somebody could

8:31

have a

8:34

like almost a truth a

8:36

truth detector, you know, that a

8:38

person could have this really heightened

8:41

sense of when

8:43

people were being honest

8:45

or not, and that they could you know, they had like incredible

8:48

empathy or or who

8:50

knows what it is, you know, but it's just it's

8:52

like a fact of life. And for this

8:54

for someone it's also it's

8:57

a little heavy in some ways. But it's quite interesting

9:00

in the world we live in because I just at

9:02

that time and I don't think it's changed a lot. I

9:04

felt like, you know, a lot of people are

9:06

saying one thing and doing another. Yeah,

9:09

this person would always feel a little bit ahead of that

9:11

curve.

9:12

This is because I had in Blink

9:14

a chapter where I talked about

9:16

the idea that a very small number of people

9:19

may have the gift of telling

9:22

when someone's lying, and

9:24

I taught it's all about the research of a guy named

9:26

Paul Eckman in San Francisco,

9:29

is a legendary figure in light detection

9:31

world. And this predates

9:33

there's subsequently where all these TV shows about

9:36

people who knew when someone was lying.

9:38

This predates all of that.

9:41

Yeah, but way before

9:43

that, you know, So you and I, you

9:45

know, we get together, we

9:47

start talking about it, and I think very quickly we

9:49

realize we have nothing,

9:53

like what are we going to do exactly?

9:55

But we come up with an idea.

9:59

I have no idea how this

10:01

comes up, But give me your

10:03

memory of the story

10:05

that we that emerged out of our collaboration.

10:08

So something you and I were both

10:10

interested in was the looming

10:12

you know, it was how giant so

10:15

how corporations treated their retired

10:17

employees because they had these pension funds,

10:19

right that were like these giant boxes

10:21

of money, and suddenly out there in the world,

10:24

these like leverage buyout people and hedge fund

10:26

people were going, oh my gosh, look at that. There's this

10:28

giant box of money. That's one

10:30

thing, but then there are all these obligations that

10:32

are unfunded to these workers. Now,

10:35

if you could somehow buy that company and

10:37

get rid of all of those unfunded

10:39

obligations that are weighing down the

10:41

company, you could have a really

10:43

profitable company. You go from having a bankrupt

10:45

company to actually a company that works really well. You

10:48

know. The only bad part of that story is that the people

10:50

that actually put in the forty years or thirty years

10:52

of work, you know, are left actually without

10:54

their pensions or without healthcare with that very

10:56

reduced pension support. And

10:59

I think we were sensing that not only was

11:01

this starting to happen, but it was going to happen in a really

11:03

really big way. And I think very quickly

11:06

we kind of got interested in and we were

11:08

thinking about motors, you know, and

11:10

we saw this kind of general motors bankruptcy

11:12

coming and that the pension stuff

11:14

would be like at the dead center of it, and

11:17

we ended up making up our own fictional like

11:19

steel company, American Steel,

11:21

and American Steel was basically being

11:24

put in play, you

11:26

know, by a kind of hedge fund operator who

11:28

unbeknownst to him has a son, a kind

11:30

of wayward son. So it's a father son's story,

11:32

and his wayward son has this truth detection,

11:36

the ability yeah he that

11:38

he becomes aware of over the course

11:40

of the film.

11:41

So you see, you're you've the genius

11:43

thing about your idea? Was

11:46

you when you were telling it? Initially you

11:48

started with we

11:50

have one of these prototypical

11:53

ruthless Wall Street predators

11:57

who's like got the fancy apartment on Fifth

11:59

Avenue, the huge house out and go in, you

12:02

know, in in the Hampton's and he's

12:04

everything you And he has

12:06

this a son from whom

12:08

he is estranged,

12:12

right, a son who shares none of his father's

12:15

values, but who desperately wants and

12:17

cannot get his father's approval. You started

12:19

with this really powerful family dynamic

12:22

which was going to be the engine of the movie. What

12:24

does a son do

12:27

if he wants to win his father's love and

12:29

yet he is incapable of

12:31

competing on any of the terms

12:33

of his father's world. Right, the

12:35

son was a school teacher, wasn't he a school teacher

12:38

or like teaching in Harlem?

12:40

He was. He had taken a

12:42

very long time to graduate from college,

12:44

like over a decade, and

12:47

you know, is generally considered a lay about

12:49

and kind of a loser

12:52

and definitely in his

12:54

own mind. And now he's

12:56

graduating maybe, and

12:58

he doesn't know what to do, and the dad

13:01

is sort of loosely

13:04

amenable to perhaps providing him

13:06

a cubicle his headge found

13:08

upingtechut or whatever, and

13:10

he goes to work in this kind of shark shark

13:13

environment that he's not at all suited for.

13:15

His dad doesn't know that

13:18

the son has this gift,

13:21

this magical gift of knowing whether someone's

13:23

lying or not. He's no clue that his son

13:25

has this. He's he perceives his son

13:28

as a loser without any kind of you

13:31

know, without any kind of special gifts or abilities.

13:34

And he's doing his he's tossing his son a bone

13:36

is not the son is still on the

13:39

outside of disappointment in his father's eyes.

13:41

I think it's important to place this film like in the right

13:43

tone. It has like a hal

13:45

ash f vibe to it, you know, it feels

13:47

like a little bit like it's in the it's in the tone of

13:49

Harold and Maud or in the tone of the maybe

13:52

the graduate even like that's I know, that was like

13:54

something I was really really thinking about, like what

13:56

are the what are the pressures on young

13:58

people right now when they like are

14:00

looking at what's my future? It allows you

14:02

to have a little bit of a shaggy dog story, but

14:05

there's like, you know, like you're pointing out really

14:08

heartfelt, motional and kind of dynamic

14:11

you know, of wanting a father's love.

14:13

And then yes, it's

14:15

moving.

14:16

And so the core little,

14:19

the core little plot

14:21

point is this weird

14:23

quirk of bankruptcy law that

14:26

if you to go back to your your,

14:28

your, your, what you began with that

14:30

they're with these companies that seemed

14:33

to bankrupt but had this large pool of cash

14:35

tied up in a retirement account

14:37

for their employees. If a company is in

14:39

bankruptcy, it is at the mercy of a bankruptcy

14:42

judge, and bankruptcy law is

14:44

unique in all law, and that it grants

14:47

enormous discretion to the judge. So

14:50

there are judges out there if they want to, they

14:53

could waive a magic wand and say you

14:55

can take this company out of

14:57

bankruptcy and all the money in the

15:00

retirement account is yours. Or another

15:02

judge might say you can have the company,

15:05

but you must honor every single

15:07

obligation you have towards the retirement

15:09

your employees. It's up to the judge.

15:12

So if you're a robber

15:14

baron, you're a predator, you're

15:16

some hedge fun guy Connecticut, and you're eyeing

15:18

a bankrupt company and trying to figure out whether

15:20

you can make it work. Everything depends

15:23

on which judge oversees

15:26

this particular case in bankruptcy

15:28

court.

15:29

It's incredibly it's incredibly fun

15:31

as a plot mechanism because now

15:33

you're just you know, billions

15:36

and billions ride on, essentially

15:39

gaming the system, which which

15:42

of these potential judges, if you could

15:44

somehow manipulate it is

15:47

most likely to be friendly to

15:49

your particular robber baron.

15:51

Cause yeah, yeah, So the

15:53

Sun realizes this and goes to

15:56

the dad. The dad is totally

15:58

unsure what to do. His

16:00

options are just what to do, just to roll the

16:02

dice? Does he does he buy this

16:04

thing, take it to bank, and take the risk that he could

16:06

be completely screwed by some kind of

16:08

pro worker judge. But the son

16:10

comes to the dad and says, Dad, you

16:13

I need to tell you something about myself. I

16:16

have this gift I can I

16:18

can see into someone's heart. And

16:20

the dad of course rolls his eyes and says, you're

16:23

bullshitting me. So the son sets

16:25

out to prove to his dad he

16:29

knows that he can see into someone's soul.

16:32

And then Disney have a series of tests. There's the other

16:34

three tests that he he undergoes

16:37

to prove to his dad he has this this magical

16:40

ability.

16:41

So part of the thing with the with the movie that

16:43

I think worked really well is that

16:46

the son finds out

16:48

about the gift during the during the movie

16:50

as well, so he wasn't he

16:52

wasn't like swaning around saying I have a

16:54

superpower. He actually runs

16:57

across the professor who's doing

16:59

this kind of research, and the professor is a character

17:01

like he's a gambling addict. He realizes

17:04

that you know, they run this test where they're like it's

17:06

something some some ridiculous thing. It's like people

17:08

say the line I had a ham sandwich

17:11

for lunch. Oh, like hundreds of people

17:13

I had a ham sandwich for lunch. And he drags

17:15

this kid in there and he's like who's lying and who's telling

17:17

the truth. And he watches like one hundred and fifty

17:19

people saying I had a ham sandwich for lunch, and

17:21

he gets one hundred and fifty of them right,

17:24

and the guy is like

17:27

immediately takes him to the race track like

17:29

out to Belmont, puts his binoculars

17:31

to his eyes and starts having him look at horses.

17:34

Which horse is going to win this race? And

17:36

he's like looking at the horse and he's like this is absurd, and

17:38

the horse he's like, no, no horses have in her lives, Like what's

17:40

going on? And he starts like telling him

17:43

about the emotional lives of these horses

17:45

that you know who are getting ready to go into

17:47

the into the starting gate, and

17:49

like one is like thinking about dinner

17:51

and one has like had a bad sexual

17:54

experience recently and feeling

17:56

really shameful, and like they're all just

17:58

and he's started by process of

18:00

elimination. He's like, it's going to be this one. It's gonna

18:03

be the Philly. The Philly's gonna win. Yeah, And so this

18:06

professor, who's like literally a gambly, he ends

18:08

up betting like to like fifteen

18:11

grand like at the track and then money through

18:13

bookies. And the kid is watching him and he's like,

18:16

this guy's a psychopath, you know. And then photo

18:18

finished, and then of course the Philly wins, and you

18:21

know, and our character doesn't believe

18:23

it, you know, he just thinks this is complete nonsense,

18:26

and he sort of proves it to him over and over and over.

18:28

The Professor, by the way, is based

18:30

on a man named Sylvan

18:33

Tompkins, one of the true

18:35

legends of early

18:37

twentieth century mid century psychology,

18:40

who had convinced himself that he could read

18:43

people's in ourselves.

18:46

And also the thing about going to the horses.

18:48

That's Tompkins. He would frequent the

18:51

horse racing and horse races. He was

18:53

a pen He would go to to the horse races

18:55

in Philadelphia and he would try and use all

18:58

of his theories about human

19:00

emotion to pick winners. So

19:02

that was all straight from this he

19:05

was this autodidact guy, and

19:09

he wrote a book detailing

19:11

his theories. And the book was The

19:13

line about the book was the book was

19:15

so long no one read it, even Sylvan

19:20

I always loved it.

19:20

And eventually he, you know, at this

19:23

inflection point with his father where

19:25

that where they're not you know, the opportunities

19:27

inside the family business or or

19:29

not. You know, they're they're they're not going to work out for him.

19:32

He like, as he realizes he has like a hail

19:34

Mary pitch, which is, I

19:37

can actually make sure you

19:39

get the result you want right right with the bankruptcy

19:41

judge and the data of course is a skeptic. He

19:44

doesn't believe it either, and like, you

19:47

know, you

19:49

know, like I hadn't. I hadn't you know, look,

19:51

I hadn't thought about the scripture and looked at it. And

19:54

I mean a long time, probably fifteen

19:56

years, fifteen years. Yeah, and I am

19:59

I didn't even I couldn't even find the blink folder.

20:01

And I was like, and then I just searched for Blink

20:03

and then up came a bunch

20:05

of stuff and like and and and

20:08

the draft. And it's so funny because you get to know that

20:10

you know, you put so much effort,

20:13

you know, into trying to make these movies, and like it's

20:16

so much love. It's love, and like it feels

20:18

like life or death. And I just I

20:20

just clicked on it and like page

20:22

sixty five and up comes and this is

20:24

this is dialogue. I completely forgotten

20:27

this. This is dialogue between the

20:29

kid and his dad and

20:32

they're trying to like and they're they're at like a local,

20:36

really cheesy drinking place in Greenwich

20:38

where his half brother plays in

20:41

a band called The Margin Calls. And he's

20:43

there with his family and his step mom and

20:45

they're all nodding along while this bro band

20:47

does cover cover cover songs,

20:49

you know, and they're eating like, you know, French

20:52

dips or whatever, and his

20:54

dad's a little tipsy and he's

20:57

like and he's like, you

20:59

know, this is all coming to a head. He's like, am I sorry?

21:01

I never carpooled or sliced oranges

21:04

for T ball? I don't know. I used

21:06

to say that they asked Napoleon to do

21:08

reading circle and Teddy's

21:11

like, the kid is like, we did some stuff.

21:14

We looked at pictures.

21:15

Yeah, yeah, Redmond. The dad

21:17

is Redmond. The son is ted Teddy.

21:20

Exactly who went to the Met together.

21:22

I remember going to the Met. I think I do, and

21:24

he does his dad, you know, his dad imitates

21:27

his dad and he's like, American tycoons have to

21:29

appear culture. So what's the first thing they buy?

21:31

And then together they say bronzes. And

21:33

now the dad's like JP Morgan Frick.

21:36

Teddy's like they had books, but they wanted to be renaissance

21:38

men, like the Duke of Urbino,

21:41

and Redmond says, yeah, if you're a real snob,

21:43

you know that Castello and Rabino like

21:45

the back of your hand, but you don't.

21:47

Talk about it. And

21:49

then.

21:51

Teddy says, and I think I remember

21:53

a bedtime rhyme about how

21:55

much sleep a person needs, and

21:58

he says nature needs five, custom

22:01

takes seven, laziness takes

22:03

nine, and wickedness eleven.

22:07

A his dad looks

22:09

at him and says his dad looks at him for a long

22:11

moment and goes, I'd forgotten

22:14

it's Scottish, which

22:18

is I mean, it's really

22:21

funny, Malcolm.

22:21

I mean it's like it's all coming back. There's

22:24

a beautiful scene I remember, I

22:26

mean, one of the genius things about the idea

22:28

was exploiting the

22:30

idea of how genuinely conflicted

22:33

the sun is about this discovery

22:36

of his gift, because isn't

22:38

there a scene? Am I making this up? He's on a

22:40

date with a girl and

22:44

the date goes awry because he

22:46

can tell every time she says something

22:48

that she doesn't believe, and you realize

22:51

that dating under those circumstances

22:53

is impossible.

22:54

It's you realize that, like this thing

22:57

that started out as a joke is

23:00

actually the thing that's defined his

23:02

entire life.

23:03

And he derailed his entire life.

23:04

It derailed it. It's it's

23:07

made it impossible to trust

23:09

people in the normal flow of human interaction,

23:12

you know, because the dissembling

23:15

is all laid bare. He's five

23:17

steps ahead of all of it, and he's

23:20

just cut himself off from it.

23:22

And so he is one chance at

23:24

redemption, and that is to finally

23:26

use his gift to win back

23:28

the love of the person who he most

23:31

wants to love him, his dad. Right, So

23:35

the dad tests Teddy's

23:38

abilities, Teddy wins each time, and

23:40

Teddy is then given

23:42

the job of picking between

23:45

Is it three different judges?

23:47

I think it must be.

23:50

There are three Canada judges, because

23:52

you can. You can jurisdiction shop

23:54

in bankruptcy, so that there's

23:57

three bankruptcy courts the father can potentially

23:59

file in, and the question

24:02

is which one should he file in, And the

24:04

son's job is to put it in

24:06

retrospect. I have no idea whether this is actually how

24:08

bankruptcy all works, but this was the version that

24:10

we were that we were. But

24:13

so he's given the The son has given the job

24:15

of figuring out who is the judge most

24:17

likely to rule in

24:20

his father's favor, and he goes

24:22

and contrives a reason right to to

24:25

meet up with each one of these judges and assess

24:27

their fundamental character.

24:29

Yeah, I remember. I don't remember them

24:31

all, but I do remember. One was like he

24:33

pretended to be an s a T tutor

24:36

from one of the judges judges

24:38

wayward sons, and he gets into their house

24:41

and so getting

24:43

into like a kind of k conflict with this

24:45

guy.

24:46

Doesn't he play golf with another guy?

24:48

I think so he does. He goes

24:50

to play golf. Yeah, I'm

24:53

usually longer after the turn who

25:02

says that Teddy or the judge

25:05

Teddy says it like he's terrible at golf,

25:09

and the guy's like, yeah. The

25:11

guy says, try and chip the ball back to the smooth

25:14

stuff. The

25:19

guy, I just I've totally forgotten all

25:21

this. He's like, let's cut the craft. I know who

25:23

you are, I know who your father is. Human

25:26

college. Oh, we're at an

25:28

eating club together at the pork Ar. Motto feed

25:30

your friends first.

25:36

Wait, so that judge is ruled out the judge,

25:38

so what are the judges sees through Teddy, It's

25:40

like, get out of here. I know what I know

25:42

what game you're playing.

25:44

Let's cut the crumb. There's no way I'm ruling against labor,

25:47

not in this climate, not in not in

25:50

Pennsylvania. Impartiality, my ass.

25:52

They'll burn my house down and kill my family. Tell him

25:54

that. Toddy

25:58

says, you're signing a death certificate for American steel.

26:01

And he says, yeah, Well, maybe we'll get universal

26:03

health care. Maybe Indian will have a social revolution,

26:06

pay their workers twenty seven to fifty an hour

26:08

plus benefits. Maybe Woodland gnomes

26:10

will make auto parts for free, and we'll all sit

26:12

sherry in the park. And

26:15

he says, and he says, never ever pick up a golf club

26:17

again. That

26:20

he says, I'm a tennis player. Golf is for assholes,

26:24

the.

26:25

Whole whiff of class warfare. And this the

26:27

script is just ten years too soon.

26:30

When I was looking, I just was glancing at it, Malcolm,

26:33

like for fift like ten minutes before what we got

26:35

on here, and I was like, God, it's like.

26:37

It's for right now, It's for right now. It's

26:39

so, it's so for right now. All

26:43

right, let's take a little break. When we come

26:45

back, Steve and I take our script

26:48

out on the town. Okay,

27:08

so we're back. Agents are

27:10

now heavily involved, where it is leaked

27:12

that Stephen Gagan has a secret new project.

27:15

There's a frantic week where we find time on

27:17

every movie executive's calendar. The

27:19

plan is to hit every studio over

27:21

the course of two days, which requires driving

27:24

from the Valley to Hollywood, Santa

27:26

Monica to Culver City. We map our

27:28

root like it's the Invasion of Normandy. I

27:31

fly out to La because I am now

27:33

fully in the fantasy. A book,

27:36

a bungalow at the bel Air Hotel. Steve

27:39

Leo and yes I'm calling him Leo

27:41

at this point, meet for drinks at the bell Air,

27:44

but Steve is late, so for a while it's

27:46

just me and Leo in a booth at the bar, and

27:49

for the first time in my life, I'm like where

27:52

the paparazzi And

27:54

the next morning, off we go, all

27:57

three of us.

27:59

Look we you know, we were really lucky,

28:01

like we had we had you know,

28:03

from my perspective, it's like we had Matt we had you you

28:06

know, with this amazing book that was like a huge

28:08

you know, it was really a best seller

28:10

and everyone had read it, right, so everyone

28:13

knew the book, which is wonderful.

28:14

Everyone knew Tipping Point, and then we

28:17

won the lottery in that. Leonardo

28:20

DiCaprio attached himself to the movie.

28:22

So when we were going around pitching it,

28:24

you know, we're meeting all these moguls, you know, on

28:27

our day of driving around in the old station wagon,

28:30

we have Leonardo DiCaprio with us.

28:33

It was hilarious.

28:34

So we're like we're like in there, like the

28:36

three of us, like the three Musketeers,

28:38

like sitting on like these couches and these big

28:40

offices, you know, and we're pitching

28:43

our hearts out. And at the end

28:45

of the day, I think probably they're just like

28:47

would kind of look down the couch

28:49

and there would be Leo kind of you know, chuckling along.

28:52

We would just nod, and I think

28:54

I think more or less people at that moment we're

28:56

like, we're in Yeah. Truly, we

28:58

probably could have just like moved our mouths and made no

29:00

sound come out, and we probably would have been Okay.

29:02

The amount of here, I must say, the entire time we

29:05

were with Leo, I was like,

29:07

so so hopelessly starstrucks.

29:10

He's amazed.

29:11

He later may have become more famous

29:13

later, but he was on the cusp of his He

29:16

was just genuine heart

29:19

throb moment.

29:21

I mean, he had everything a heart throb.

29:23

But he's also a really good actor, so

29:26

he's like he has all these things

29:29

going on at the same time, and you're when you're around

29:31

him, you just you know, it's

29:34

hard not to be to be aware of it.

29:36

Yeah, now anything. So we

29:38

took this out over the course I believe of two

29:40

days. Am I right? That everyone

29:43

we met with, with one exception, bid

29:45

on it. Everybody bit on it, yeah,

29:48

everyone, and we were I just remember being

29:50

in your car driving down

29:52

like whatever Santa Monica

29:55

Boulevard and just getting calls from

29:58

your agent with the new someone

30:00

else's signed on wants to Bid.

30:02

It was just the most absurdly thrilling

30:06

to this thing was really exciting,

30:08

and and it was just us just driving around

30:11

in an old station wagon.

30:14

To this day, my favorite pitch

30:16

story was we went to Warner Brothers,

30:18

and the way we membe, we divided

30:20

up the pitch and so you did the

30:22

story. I did the science. So it's like roughly

30:25

fifty to fifty, or sometimes we

30:27

mixed it up. Sometimes you would do almost all of it and

30:29

I would do almost all of it. For some reason, the Warner

30:32

Brothers one, I did the most of the pitch, and

30:34

there were I knew no one in Hollywood my

30:37

first time aver pitching movie. Go into

30:39

this gorgeous executive

30:42

room and there are two men in the room.

30:45

One was very very tall and very

30:47

very handsome and charismatic and

30:49

warm. One was short

30:51

and sort of angry and whatever.

30:55

I'm not knowing any better, assumed the tall,

30:58

handsome one was the chairman of

31:00

the studio and that this short

31:02

guy was some kind of underling,

31:04

flunky, assistant, whatever. So

31:07

I pitched the entire script to

31:09

the tall guy, and then only

31:12

to discover the short guy,

31:15

who I've been ignoring the entire

31:17

time as a chairman of the studio, and the tall

31:19

guy is just some dude

31:21

who was just in the office that day. It was hilarious,

31:24

And of course they did, which made me

31:27

think that maybe the mistake we make. Maybe you know,

31:29

maybe their reasons for bidding were that if

31:31

they're gonna come in here and ignore me, I'm going to

31:33

show them.

31:34

Oh yeah, I

31:38

remember, I remember that, but he

31:40

never got made. Yeah,

31:45

there's I mean,

31:49

I I think I probably

31:51

have information about that that you actually

31:53

don't have, that you may not even know, which

32:00

you know, I can explain.

32:03

When we come back the bidding war. And

32:05

then Steve tells me a story

32:08

I'd never heard four, the story

32:11

of why things fell apart. So

32:20

we get a real life bidding war. The

32:23

town went nuts. We were in Steve's

32:25

battered station wagon driving around LA

32:27

and every half an hour, Steve's agent would call Sony

32:30

in Universal in Warner

32:33

Brothers in. We have the sun roof,

32:35

open, the windows down. I'm warning sunglasses.

32:37

They never wear sunglasses. We don't even

32:39

need Leo anymore. He gets into his Prius

32:42

and drives home. We pick a studio,

32:44

We huddle with our agents we pick

32:46

a winner, checks are cashed, some

32:48

brilliant producer is assigned to our case,

32:51

and off we go. Only

32:55

it never happens. A year

32:57

passes, then two years, then

33:00

three years. And

33:02

this is why we're doing development. Hell,

33:05

an entire series devoted to scripts that

33:07

never happen, because this is always

33:10

the most devastating part of the story, the

33:12

plot twists that happened off

33:15

the page.

33:18

So you know, Leo's company,

33:21

they were producers on the movie, and Leo

33:24

was really into it, you know, really involved,

33:26

and at a certain point in time, we had

33:29

essentially green light at Universal, you know,

33:31

and we had a budget, a schedule and everything.

33:34

A lot of things worked out. How were we going to do it? And I

33:38

was talking, I said, you know, I wanted I'm going to do like

33:41

a week more on the script. There were just some things

33:43

I wanted to fix, and I got

33:45

into it and I ended up working on

33:47

it for like months and months,

33:50

and I changed a lot of stuff.

33:53

But the main thing I did, you

33:55

know, as I the character, and a lot of this is

33:58

just intuitive. I don't even know why I'm doing it, but the character

34:00

got like ten years younger, and

34:06

Leo, you know,

34:08

when he it. He was really funny.

34:11

He was like, he goes, buddy,

34:13

buddy, if you if you didn't want me in the movie, all

34:16

you had to do was say, so, it's no big deal.

34:18

And and it wasn't.

34:20

It wasn't that I didn't want him in the movie. But but

34:23

this other thing had happened kind of off off

34:25

camera, which was that I'd I

34:28

met Heath Ledger and

34:31

I'd gotten to be very very close with him, like

34:33

instantly, like I just I just had a real

34:35

connection with him that was

34:38

kind of unusual and really

34:40

special to me. And I got really excited

34:43

and I started seeing him as the

34:45

main character. And and

34:48

once I started seeing that, I couldn't unsee

34:50

it, you know. And and obviously it was

34:52

very delicate in a way. And and Lee's totally

34:54

cool, Like I mean, obviously he has a thousand choices,

34:57

but I in my mind it was a big deal. I was

34:59

just like, I really, if I just said to Leo,

35:01

hey, I would like to do this with Heath, he would be like, I'm a huge

35:03

fan of as, I love him, Let's do it. You know, it wouldn't have been a

35:05

problem. But in my mind it was really a thing,

35:08

definitely a thing at the studio

35:10

because like at first it was like, we don't want to we we're

35:13

not that interesting, you know, because it's like you can have the biggest,

35:15

really big star of like someone, you know, why would

35:17

you do that, the.

35:18

Really big start being Leo because

35:20

Heath wasn't so big at the time.

35:21

Yeah, and then it changed, you know, because

35:24

his I believe it was right

35:26

around the time The Joker was coming out, because he then

35:28

popped is this massive And then suddenly it was okay,

35:32

you know, all this was kind of happening, and in

35:36

a good way. I thought, in a way that was really right

35:38

for a movie. But I

35:40

also just had this feeling that I was gonna

35:42

just you know, I love this guy and I was gonna make a bunch of movies

35:44

with them, Heath and everything. And then I

35:46

got a phone call. They

35:49

were on speakerphone, and it was Heath's

35:51

Heath Ledger's father, who I'd

35:53

never met. So he

35:57

died in a really tragic you know, like

36:00

you have like a beer and like a Benadrill

36:03

and like another you know, and just absolute

36:06

fluke. Any other day you're fine,

36:09

but just breathing

36:12

stops and the

36:15

dad and a guy who was really close with him,

36:17

like the guy was closest to him in his professional life.

36:19

They were they were there and

36:23

they you know, with the body, and our

36:27

script was embedded with

36:30

him, and your book was on the bedside

36:32

table, and I think my

36:35

number was on the script

36:37

like written like and

36:40

these guys are in as you can imagine,

36:42

they are in shock, and

36:45

they dialed that number and I don't know why. And

36:48

I'm in an airport with my wife, just

36:51

going from one place to another, and I literally

36:53

just I just like collide. It never happened

36:55

to me before since like my feet went out from under

36:58

me. I just literally sat down,

37:01

like because I was in I was like what what

37:05

and and and and the emotion like

37:07

what you know, what they were going through. I

37:13

should not have been a party to in

37:16

any way really, And and yet you know, as

37:18

a human or is of you know, somebody who just cares,

37:20

you know. I just was there and I was listening,

37:22

and my wife was looking and I remember her face and I was just

37:24

like I could. I was speechless, and I just listened and listened

37:27

and listened, and you

37:29

know it's just really really sad, you know,

37:31

and and uh and and it's still

37:34

sad, and you

37:36

know, and I think that I

37:39

think that for me, I just I

37:42

just had to put a put a pin in it, you know,

37:44

like I just I didn't. I just I don't

37:46

know. It just it's something Steve.

37:49

It's I did not know that

37:51

story.

37:52

Yeah, no, I haven't. I hadn't really told

37:54

anyone for a long time. And I and I debated actually

37:57

when we were going to talk about it. I was like, should I talk

37:59

about it? And I actually asked my wife and I thought,

38:03

no, it's it's I think it's really good to

38:05

talk about it because it's

38:08

just say it was sad, and you

38:10

know, and yet you

38:13

know, and yet here we are and we're talking about

38:15

something that we really put a lot of you know, we put a lot

38:17

of hard and soul, a lot of effort into and a

38:20

lot of care. So I don't, I don't. I don't really

38:22

have a clear answer of why we never

38:24

made it, but I feel like maybe I

38:27

feel like that bit played a big role in it. But

38:30

then you know, again, I hadn't looked at it in a very long

38:32

time. And then I when I when I got it out, like

38:34

right before we got on and like I was reading and I was just like,

38:37

I ran to find my wife. You

38:39

know that we're still married, thank goodness. And I

38:41

was like, I

38:44

was like, I could be

38:46

crazy, but I think this script is really

38:48

good. Like I think we

38:51

really had something like really special,

38:53

and we might have we might have been ahead of our time

38:55

or something. I'm just glancing it seen by scene by

38:57

scene and it's just their movie scenes,

39:00

you know, and they're big and

39:02

it's such a good title.

39:04

Yeah what wait, did you what was the title of? Do

39:06

we call it? Blink? Yeah? Blink?

39:08

And like and the way the movie opens,

39:11

you don't remember this. It's I gotta

39:13

you're gonna die. Okay, you're gonna die because this is gonna

39:15

come back. This is the first scene I read right I opened it. But

39:17

here's the movie opens. Close up a baby's

39:20

blue eye, huge and blue, like

39:22

Earth from space, staring at us. Blank

39:26

begin credits. Close up a baby looking into

39:28

lens, A happy, curious baby doing what

39:30

babies do. It makes us happy. Now

39:33

you hear a woman's voice off screen. He's so

39:35

sweet, so sweet, so

39:37

happy, happy, happy baby. Yes you are.

39:40

The baby begins to scream. Close up happy

39:42

baby again, utterly adorable. But now

39:44

unobserved and close up, the baby's expression seems to give

39:47

clues to complex thinking. And now

39:49

you hear the father. He's trying to tell us something.

39:52

Father's tie drapes into the crib, wide seventies

39:55

tie, heary thick risk with expensive

39:57

watch. Mother, of course he is,

39:59

I love mommy and Daddy, Yes, I do. And

40:02

you hear the dad say, little desperado. The

40:04

mother's hands, white painted nails, gold

40:06

jewelry, deep tan, appear to tuck the baby's sky

40:09

lou blanket. Mother os

40:11

tell him you love him, Daddy loves you, Yes

40:13

he does. He needs reassurance from his father.

40:17

And there's a pause, and that you hear the father say

40:19

sometimes it's not about me, and

40:22

the mother says it's pretty much always about

40:24

you. The room was

40:26

totally silent, and you're just pushing up

40:28

on the baby's eyes, and the baby blinks

40:31

and you cut to the title blink.

40:35

Oh, that's great, it's so awesome. That's

40:38

so awesome. I forgotten the only

40:40

is genius. All right, we are resolved,

40:42

Stephen, bring this thing

40:45

back to life.

40:46

But we have to we have to figure it out.

40:50

I'd never heard the full story of why Steve had to walk

40:52

away from Blink. But the more

40:54

I caught up with Steve, the more I felt

40:56

that maybe we were onto something

40:58

back then. Maybe it's time to

41:01

bring Blink back to life. I mean,

41:04

there's a script. As a screenwriter, there's

41:06

a wonderful idea, and if there's someone listening

41:08

and some big office somewhere in Hollywood,

41:11

I will get on a plane tomorrow

41:14

if that's what it takes. And

41:17

here's the thing, Hollywood is full

41:19

of these stories. We're gonna touch on a

41:21

whole series of them in the upcoming episodes.

41:24

Next up in the feed is the story of a sci

41:26

fi filler that had just a little too much

41:29

five and not quite enough sigh,

41:32

with a twist that the studios just

41:34

couldn't handle. You can hear about a biopic

41:37

told through the eyes of an exotic

41:40

animal. You're gonna hear the Oscar

41:42

winner Charles Randolph get a little emotional

41:45

about a project he did with Tom Cruise that

41:47

fell apart. The mines behind

41:49

some of Hollywood's biggest hits, talking

41:52

about the biggest failures. Join

41:55

us as we take the temperature of

41:58

development Hell. This

42:01

episode was produced by Nina Bird Lawrence

42:04

with Taly Emlin and Ben Adapph Hafrey.

42:06

Editing by Sarah Nick's original scoring

42:09

be Luisquira, Engineering by Ecco Mountain.

42:11

Our executive producer is Jacob

42:14

Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.