died, yeah.

He just died.

And it's tragic.

We could talk a half hour about Frank.

He came to MGM to rebuild it.

It was after Peretti had...

And that one, I believe, grossed very low grossing, maybe $30 million.

And I mean, nothing sells itself, but is Bond, is there an appetite already there, a pent-up demand?

It was about curiosity.

That was the lead-in, but that wouldn't work unless we literally set up a phone bank.

And between Cynthia, myself, Harvey, we came up with a war room and literally called every critic, regional, national critic, saying, please, please, please don't give away the secret of the crying game.

Don't give away the twist.

We even went to your old friend, Joe Farrell, and I said...

My old boss.

Your old boss.

Do

Does that mean, Jerry, is it more K-shaped then? Like, is there going to be more big blockbusters like The Odyssey and then a lot of like churn and burn movies made for streaming and not a lot in the middle? Is that sort of how you see this all? Well, I think

the problem is the movies in the middle are the ones that, for the example of Skydance, they'll have 30 movies on the release date for the next couple of years, 30, 32 movies.

And you can't give them all the attention they need.

In my opinion, there's going to be the haves and the have-nots.

They're going to have the big filmmakers with the loudest voices and the biggest budgets and the highest profile films that make or break a company, certainly in press perception.

And then you're going to have a lot of other films jockeying for position.

So you're fighting over release dates.

First and foremost, what gave you the conviction and time and energy to write the book? And what do you hope the readers will get out of it?

[laughs]

I came in with Sherry Lansing, and the first question she asked me was, "Why do you do what you do?" And I said, "Because I love movies, and I found a way to be in the movie business with something that I enjoy doing, which is marketing." And she said, "I love movies, too." And from then it was just a complete love fest, and she did love movies.

So it was very difficult having a, a, a studio head who not on- She'd fill the room with anybody I wanted to bring in the room for a meeting, and she'd have frozen yogurts, you know, given out, and she loved it, and she was effusive.

She was passionate.

She was excited.

And she was really smart.

And then that room, which I would fill, which was the little conference room adjacent to her main office, which is the famed office that all the other chairmen have occupied.

[laughs] And they had actually put some assistants higher than their, the executives they [laughs] worked for.

Sure.

Well, there was no roadmap for me to read.

There was no game plan.

And I hope that this book, at least in some ways, part of it anyway, can really help inspire people in that same situation, regardless of age, to start mapping out their game plan and I took a parallel path.

I did two different things.

One is I took as many advertising internships as I could while I was in San Diego in order to get that hands on experience and start, you know, rather than relying on textbooks or in school curriculum to give me that experience.

you know, that knowledge.

Where do you feel like you really like cut your teeth and proved yourself?

Yeah.

So for me it was about finding the right kind of personalities that wanted to come in and not be so set in their ways that...

I wanted people who were experienced, but I wanted people who were also curious and adventurous and, and be, and be able to say, "This is the way we always done it, but we, this could be really cool if we tried it this way." And, and it was the blend of people who also didn't feel like they'd be as territorial.

And the one thing I was very adamant against was a kind of a, a cookie cutter approach, which I found at the studios prior to that were very rote.

It was in the media department, we'd go out three and a half weeks in advance, and we would buy spot TV in 12 markets, not 13, not 14, not 8.

It was a certain, a certain kind of rigidity in the approach to a marketing plan, and my belief was that no two movies are alike, therefore, no two marketing plans, no two media plans should, should be alike.

And I also, what I didn't want is people who kind of live in the land of, "I'm gonna deliver what you expect," rather than additive innovation.

Oh.