Eulenspiegel
22.06.2019, 07:32
Mit Herbie Hancock
https://www.instagram.com/p/By_KW56HWeU/
in seiner Firma
https://kenhertz.me/
http://membrainllc.com/
@earplane vielleicht ganz interessant, passte auch in den Plattenfirmen Thread
Zum Teil ziemlich ernüchternd
„Ken Hertz is an entertainment lawyer and prominent Hollywood dealmaker. A senior partner in Hertz, Lichtenstein and Young, he counts Will Smith, will.i.am, Gwen Stefani and Celine Dion among his clients. He also founded brand agency MemBrain, which advises the world’s most recognised brands, including McDonald’s, Hasbro and Intel. In this in-depth interview, he describes the brutal truth of the “fame lottery”, reveals what it really takes to make it in Hollywood – and argues that now is the time “where anyone can truly be anything”.“
Erfolg ist eine statistische Anomalie
Audio: https://www.mediamasters.fm/ken-hertz/
https://www.mediamasters.fm/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Media-Masters_Ken-Hertz-Podcast-Transcript.pdf
(...)
„And the thing also is, is that we all look at the success stories. In other words, for every Beyoncé, for every U2, for every Chris Martin, every Ariana Grande, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who aspire to be that person. You know, Ariana Grande has just an extraordinary instrument. She’s got a six or seven octave range, and she can do anything with her voice. And she also happens to be remarkably beautiful. And she also comes from an upbringing that allowed her to pursue this career, because her family was well-off, and so she had the freedom to pursue this career, relocate from Florida to Los Angeles, do all of the things that made it possible for her to succeed in the way that someone from a lesser financial background, or with less freedom and less passion and less whatever might not have been able to. There’s no shortage of extraordinarily talented people in the world, believe it or not. And there’s no shortage of extraordinarily beautiful people in the world. And all of the other things that seem to be associated with success. But we tend to look at the ones that succeed and see them as a road map. In other words, people interview successful stars and say, “How did you do it? Tell me your story!” And then people think that, if they replicate that path, that they’ll succeed too. When the truth is, the odds of success in the abstract are very low. I mean, look at American Idol, for example. Millions of contestants, reduced to thousands of auditions, reduced to hundreds of candidates, reduced to dozens of finalists, reduced to handfuls of winners... result in how many careers? Almost none.
Well, even in 10 series of American Idol, you’re only going to get three stars, aren’t you? Even the winners might not necessarily be guaranteed a career.
A career. Right. I mean, going from there to a career. So in other words, we tend to look at the lottery winners, right? That’s really what they are. I mean, if you think about it, what starts with a pool of millions of people that are willing to wait in line for hours to audition. And then, the ones that get to audition are largely the most talented of that crowd. And then the ones that get through the audition process and get in front of the judges is even fewer. And the ones that survive the judges and go to Hollywood is even fewer than that. And the ones that go beyond that, and end up with an awareness in the popular culture, and a following and a success... I mean, Daughtry got thrown off the show, and Jennifer Hudson got thrown off the show. And Kelly Clarkson won the first season. And still appears to be the one with the biggest career – in fact, I think she’s now a judge. But in any event, if you look at them, on some level, success in the entertainment business is like winning the lottery. You have to get everything right, and then you have to get lucky.“
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„Bill Gross, who started Idealab, a few years ago he did a TED talk. And not a formal TED talk, but an audio TED talk, because he goes to TED every year. So, he got up and gave a five minute TED talk, about a five minute TED talk, where he explained an analysis that he had done, where he had compared the 400 or so companies that he invested in over the last 20 years to the 400 most successful start-ups in the start-up world, over the same period of time. And, he said, “Look, I started 400 companies at Idealab, approximately. And only a few of them succeeded, so I was curious to see what was the thing that made them succeed.” Was it the team, was it the idea? Was it the defendable nature of the idea? Was it the size of the market? Was it the ease with which the idea could be explained to others? Was it the initial traction that it had garnered, or was it the ability to scale? Was it the financing that they had, or that they needed? Was it the time to exit? What was it? What were the, those are nine or 10 factors that all contributed to the success, or at least, were correlated to the success of the ventures. And he compared his 400 to the 400 most successful. And came up with the following conclusion, which is that the number one reason why they succeeded... do you want to guess?
I’ve got a drum roll going in here... absolutely fascinating.
I was going to say, you’ve got an expression on your face like you want to guess.
You tell a really strong tale. Sorry. Just tell me!
Okay, so 57%, I think of the time, timing was the reason they succeeded.“
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„So is it ultimately random, then, that Ariana Grande’s a global megastar, but might have been waiting tables at the Hollywood Bowl, if it had gone wrong? I mean, is there a kind of formula to a star, though? When you meet someone, a client or a potential client, is it like the X factor? Either they’ve got it or they haven’t?
Well, no, I mean, I think the obvious thing is that she absolutely has it. And she’s absolutely remarkable in so many different ways, and she has a family that is extraordinarily supportive, and has helped her kick in doors when they needed to be kicked in. And she’s worked with people who have helped her kick in doors when they needed to be kicked in. And she never took no for an answer, and she was relentless in her pursuit of success. And she has worked with a manager who is extraordinarily resourceful. And she has associated with and collaborated with people that are extraordinarily talented. And she’s been able to get to those people, and she’s not been willing to compromise along the way. And, on top of that, she has dealt deftly with every obstacle that has come her way, and she’s very adept at social media. And she has also worked with very talented people in that arena as well. I think the answer is, as I was saying earlier, she got everything right, and let’s face it, every audition that she did as a youngster that paid off, was not only because she was super talented, but because she went to those auditions. If she hadn’t gone, she wouldn’t have gotten it. If she hadn’t gotten the right agent, if she hadn’t gotten the right call back, if she hadn’t been by the phone when it mattered. I can’t point to any specific thing, but the answer to your question is, there is no shortage in the world of people, certainly, as talented in some way as an Ariana Grande. But maybe they live in a town that’s got no resources. Maybe they can’t even afford a cell phone, right?
Or you’re from a family that doesn’t encourage them.
Right. Exactly.
And says, “You will work at Walmart for the rest of your life, mate.”
Right. Or, you’ll sing in choir at the church for the rest of your life. I mean, the truth is, as we all know, there are hundreds if not thousands of super, uber-talented singers in the business who haven’t had nearly the success of a Lady Gaga, or Ariana Grande or Beyoncé or what have you. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work with many of these people, and I can tell you that they pinch themselves every day. But at the same time, the danger is, for both the fans and the talent, is to think that it was easy. Or to think that their success was inevitable. We tend to do that. We don’t teach children statistics, but we should, because...
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„
But even more heartbreakingly in a sense is, you’ve got to have that momentum, because Lady Gaga, artistes like that, have hit after hit after hit. You look at a star like Robert Redford, for example, who has been around for decades. And then you compare that to someone, for example, I like Hootie and the Blowfish. They had a couple of great albums that were very successful. Now, they’re a bit laughed at. They’re still going, but they’re nowhere near as successful as they once were. You know, there’s not only the challenge and the heartbreak of having to get into the industry and get known, but then there’s also the separate challenge of maintenance, of keeping that platform going. Because it is quite tragic, when you see formerly big stars that have been laid low.
Agreed. And I would argue that once again, we tend to think that because someone has had success, after success, after success... or at least we perceive it to be
7
success, after success, after success... we tend to think that they know something we don’t know. And it could actually be that they do. Or, it could actually be that it’s an anomaly. In other words, when you play roulette, just because the number nine comes up three times in a row, doesn’t mean the wheel’s leaning toward the nine. It just means the number nine came up three times in a row. When you flip a coin, those are independent events.
But you’re where the brutality of talent meets maths, meets statistics, really. That for every Lady Gaga that’s there, there’s going to be another 20 people that have aspired to that, and that might have had a one in 20 chance of getting to that success, but their odds weren’t in their favour.
There was a great article in the New York Times Magazine from a few years ago about a city, I think in Sweden. And I’m going to mess this story up, but I’ll give you the essence of it. There was a town in Sweden that had had an unusual number of murders. Or rather, not murders, but abnormal deaths. And scientists flocked to this town to study it and understand what had caused all of these unusual deaths.
Something in the water, a serial killer on the loose, etc?
Correct. And what they concluded was that it was just a statistical anomaly.
An outlier.
It was just simply an outlier.“
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„This is a great conversation by the way, I’m really enjoying it.
Well, yes, me too! But you know, that great Groucho Marx joke.
There were so many, which one are you going to quote?
Well, it’s so timely. Groucho Marx said that sincerity is everything, because if you can fake that, the rest is easy. I mean, that’s the world that we now live in. Which is, when you listen to that... I’ve been to many of these panels at these various conferences, where they’ll put three popular influencers on. And one after another, you know – they’ve got hundreds of thousands of followers, if not millions of followers – and one after the other, they’ll say, “Well, I’m popular because I’m so authentic.”
They’re not, though.
Well, you’re saying that. I’m saying, “What is authenticity anymore?” It is what you, it is the persona that you are successful at creating. And if it is truly who you are, great, and if it’s not truly who you are, okay. But to the point that we were making earlier about singers versus actors, you are either able to convince people that if they knew you, they could be your friend, and therefore, they want to... I mean, look, it’s only been the last 20 years that we’ve even had this concept of a virtual friend, right? You friend someone on Facebook. That’s not, that was never what becoming a friend was all about. Friendship is truly selflessness. Now friendship is just a click. It’s just a click away.
This is almost like a ‘philosophy of Hollywood and existential angst of being’ podcast now, and I’m hugely enjoying it.
Well, you know, I think that we are in, that we’ve sort of crossed the Rubicon of media, in that everything is media.
Every individual person thinks of themselves as a brand now.
Well, a media company.
I mean, I have an Instagram following.
Yes. A media company. I mean, everyone is a media company. You know, when it used to be, if you wanted to get a job, you’d make a resume and you would submit it for the job. Now, you create a CV, and you post it on all these different sites. That is your content. So everything is media. You know, getting a job is you putting out your content, hoping to find a fan, who will hire you. And so, the same is true of your Instagram page. People aspire to have followers. People aspire to get likes. People aspire to look better, you know, you have this Facetune. People can’t simply post a self-portrait. They have to manipulate it, like giving themselves a virtual face lift or a virtual makeover.“
(...)
oder z.B. 10:00ff
https://youtu.be/lt1eRe8Aw54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt1eRe8Aw54
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