MCA Inc.

Yeah

... and we're making this movie." And then the other, uh, I, I would say, and there's another time when we had just bought, uh, MCA.

We were renaming it Universal.

The music company was still called the Music Cemetery of America.

And one of the best, this is 1995, one of the best music executives in the world at that time, in my view, was a guy named Doug Morris, and he was running all of Warner Music in the US.

And he was, I thought, about to be named head of, of music globally.

And, um, the guy running MCA I didn't think was really very good.

I had just gotten there, but I didn't think was really good.

So I was, I, I, I think I was not unique in that regard.

Well, when music wasn't paying the bills, you pivoted into business, and you started as a financial analyst at Universal, and your career progressed quite quickly.

Did you always aspire to move up into leadership, or did leadership ultimately find you?

It was more the latter.

I started as an accountant, and then, then made my way to Universal somehow.

[laughs] And that is, you're right, that's, Universal is where my business career actually started.

I d- I haven't, I've never planned my path.

I just either got promoted or opportunities presented themselves, and I just went with my instinct if there was a pos- potential to change.

And I see Corey on campus.

And I said, Corey, what are you doing on campus? And he said, well, you know, I just got signed by Universal in what they call the New Talent Program because Graduate had just come out and Easy Rider had just come out.

Right.

And Lou Wasserman decided that there was something in youth films.

And I pitched him the story.

He said, this is great.

We're going right now across the hill to Universal to see Ned Tannen, who was the vice president I pitched it to Ned Tan and he said, how old are you? I said, I'm 20 years old.

He said, call your mother.

I didn't write that one either, but again, viewers, had some problems with that.

The books were owned by MCA Universal.

So they had the right to take anything from my 15-month novels and use them in episodes.

So there were times when, I don't know whether it was intentionally or unintentionally, jokes or scenes from my books would show up in episodes of the show.

He toughed it out.

Now, when I talked about the studio's mishandling of Legend, there, there's another film from 1985 where the MCA Universal head, who was a really brilliant guy, who I had the opportunity to meet at a movie premiere once, named Sid Sheinberg.

Uh, Sid Sheinberg was...

He just-- He made a lot of mistakes that you would say to yourself, "Well, this should've been easily avoidable." He took Brazil away from Terry Gilliam.