Did you know back then that was a very special project? And how much does it mean to you now, years later, that you've even said in this book that people come up to you and tell you what a great film that is?

Yeah, when we decided to do the movie, it was mainly because Mario wanted to do the next Adrian Line movie.

And he was also ready to do it at a very modest price.

And I don't think Mario really understood the Tibetan Book of the Dead and what this guy, Bruce O'Cohen, was trying to do.

But I did.

My wife actually comes from an area up in the Woodstock area where Bruce O'Cohen worked at a restaurant and went to the great Buddhist center there, a Tibetan Buddhist center.

And so this was a lot of stuff that she and I talked about in our own meditations.

But just your overall recollections.

Hmm

... you know, and then later we had something where they wanted to take a book that, um, uh, of, uh, you know, a guy that Albert had been involved in.

And so I had all these contacts through Albert with them.

But, um, you know, after, uh, you know, my, uh, situation at Carolco ended, they reached out to me right away, wanted me to come in and, you know, I wasn't ready for that again, so I decided to be a consultant.

And one of the things in my consultant was to figure out how to get rid of the 45% of the company owned by third parties and, um, deal with the fact that they had not only a line of credit drawn, overdrawn, but they had another 26 million in payables.

And, and, uh, at the same time, buy out these guys so that they could flip the company.

And, um, immodestly, the work I did in that year with them is some of the biggest successes I've had because we bought out the guys at 45% of the company for $2.5 million, right? Three months later, we sold the company for $90 million, right? Just to give you a sense of it.

So did you have one film that transformed you, or was it a series of steps that took, that you cons-

Can you take us through the events of that, what that was like, that experience? And, you know, once it was obviously over as well, if you could, Peter.

Sure.

You know, throughout the whole process, we took it very seriously because, you know, it frankly was a set game down there.

You know, it was with federal court.

They're all in the same office.

You know, prosecutors come in and, you know, it all is kind of a setup.

Hey, if the government says you're guilty, you're guilty.

I feel like there's a massive chunk of the pie missing because

I want, uh, to get your perspective on what was it like to get a film financed and made when you first started in the industry? What were, what were some of the things that you had to do to get that done?

Well, when I started in the business, um, I was a lawyer, and we were representing what I call these international independents, all the, basically the children of the Dino De Laurentiis.

And, uh, we were making movies outside the studio system.

In the studio system, you know, the movies got funded because the companies had the money to do it.

They had lines of credit.

They had equity investments.

They were all public companies, and they would, if they decided to make a movie, they wrote the check and did it.

Um, you went there to build a post-production studio, um, and, uh, there was some back and forth about, you know, oh, you know, are these credits good? The state clears it, and then all of a sudden the feds come in and charge you with, uh, uh, essentially, uh, wire fraud.