#345 George Lucas
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I don't think you have to listen to the quota o episode are the still spill berg episode before you listen to the episode and George luis. But if you haven't listen to them, I will listen to them after you listen to this episode because you're gonna see so much similarities and how they approach their work. I talked about last week how silver would watch, and we watch movies that he loved.

Decades later, entire scenes from those movies would appear in his own to do the exact same thing. George lucas talks about doing this. You're gona hear him being addicted to reading about fees, study history, reading science fiction, a lot of the stuff that he was learning as a Young person he would use a decade later, and the influences that he used to build star wars, which is obviously corner stone of multi billion empire, have been well documented.

And you see the exact same thing with company builder. This is just like Edwin land's ideas that show and Steve jobs companies and products. It's just like sam wiltons ideas showing up in jeff pays les, companies and products.

It's just like henri single idea is is showing up in how warn buffett and charlie monger built bircher hathaway charlie monger said Henry sington was the smartest st. Person he ever met. Warm buffer said he was a crime that business schools didn't study on.

And so I go back and art reading about every single thing you realize, oh wow. Of these ideas that I was attributing to mongo m buffet actually originated with single ton. And that is a main theme that reappear s over over again for anybody that gets top of profession, anybody who becomes a great, what they do is sept.

They are all sept in the history of the industry. They talk about these ideas over and over again. You don't just read a book one time.

They don't just watch a movie one time. They don't just have one conversation. They do IT over and over and over again. That is why, if you haven't done so already, a highly recommend that you describe to find their notes.

For six years, i've been catalysing all of my notes, all of my lights for every single book that i've read for the podcast. And he blew my mind because that's exactly what I ent continued. He would keep scrap books, make notes and actually kept files on index cards of every single movie.

And what he wants to remember about the movie for every single movie he's ever watched. And then because he catalog of those ideas, he was able to use them in future movies. And so now you're able to read now by signing off found notes.

When you get a description, you get access to all my notes on my highlights transcripts. Every single episode you can search by keyword, by person, by subject, is this giant database of the collective knowledge of his entrepreneurs. You can also read all of my notes and highlights by book.

You can have all of my notes and highlights presented you in a random order on the highlights feet. I've been searching by keyword, i've been rereading my highlights by book, and i've been rereading my highlights in random order on the highlight feet for years. I built this tool for, I had this for a half a decade before anybody else access to.

I literally could not make the podcast without this tool. And now that a news feature them super excited, that may made IT a thousand times more valuable, it's actually called stage IT is the founders notes AI. And the name actually came because as a bunch of existing fountain notes subscribers that were beta testing this feature for me, and one of them failed me because he heard some of the names.

So I this feature is incredible, but I can't forget what to name IT. And he said that none of the names were good enough because they don't actually describe what the future does. And he said, you should call this stage.

And he sent me the definition of sage, sage, a profoundness wise person that is often looked to for guidance and advice. And that's exactly what sage does. It's like search on steads.

You can ask you a question and it'll search every single note, every single highlight, every single transcript, meaning every single word have ever udea on this podcast. And i'll start making connections. It's been making connections that I ve ve missed. And so I mentioned last week after I will listen to the Steve scupper episode, I was asking, say, was, I give me one of the most important ideas to learn from Stephen burke, and within twenty thirty seconds, IT gives me this outline of the top nine. What he feels is the top nine most important lessons from Steven Stewart.

G, now the interesting parties, if you press on expand IT, actually tells you what IT search to come up with the answers, so you could just read the outline, or if you choose to go deeper and see what that actually fashioned, what IT searched to come up with the answer. And of course, it's onna search, the Stephen spell episode because I done the episode of few years ago. But what is fascine is also included ideas.

When I mentioned Stevens work on a Steve jobs epson de, when I mentioned spill berg on the Christopher and in the James Cameron episode, IT pulled an idea from spills that I mentioned an episode on pixar. Its memory far exceeds mine. And so I really do believe a suggestion of founders note is the perfect companion.

If you're going to invest tens of hours, dozens of hours, you, I have hundreds of these people have listened to, hundreds of hours listening to this podcast. Founders note, and sage in particular, is the tool that I hope you condense and clarify the collective knowledge of history of greatest founders. So then you can use their ideas in your work, just like basis.

Use wiltons ideas, just like jobs. Use land ideas, just like burberry and tentacle and luis use past filmmakers and everything they read, all that is they dry from that in their work. I highly recommend getting a description.

And you can do that by going to founders notes that com that is founders with an as just like the podcast, founders notes that com. I also leave a link down below and show notes. I appreciate the support, and I hope you enjoy this episode on George look.

George look is unapologetically invest in what he believed in the most himself. As a result, the film empire he created would empower not just him, but other file makers to produce movies exactly as they envision them without a studio imposing its own priorities, complaining about budgets or micro managing the process. George lucas, the small town son of the owner of a stationary store, had said no to the family business and then built a cinematic empire based on his own uncompromising vision of the film ministry, not as IT was, but as he thought I should be.

Much of that vision lay in the possibilities presented by new technology, technology that lucas developed with his own money. I can't help feeling that George lucas has never been fully appreciated by the industry for his remarkable innovations, the director Peter Jackson once said. George lucas is the Thomas Edison of the modern film industry, but George lucas knew what he had done.

He knew his place, and he seemed comfortable with IT. When asked by interviewer charlie rose what he thought the first line of his arbitrary might say. Lucas gave perhaps the best imation of his lengthy career in two single syllable words.

His answer I tried that was an excess from the book, and we talked about today, which is George lucas, a life. And he was writing by brian j. Jones.

Brian j. Jones, who raise excEllent biography. He wrote this one. I read his biography, doctor sues, which was excEllent. And he also wrote an incredible bike phy on gym anson.

So I originally read this book like seven years ago, episode thirty five, and there's some ideas in IT that i've never forgot that sentence. It's like he unapologetically invested in what he believed in most himself is my favorite sentence in the entire book. And I also think that concept, investing in yourself is the the concrete in the fountain of his empire, if you will.

So I want to go to the beginning, which is really faster, because the book is gna talk a lot about his childhood, but IT doesn't start there. IT opens up right in the middle of him shooting towers, and I think he's despair and depression and struggle that's going on. Uh, you see this a lot in not only with with fountain grapes, a uni talk about, but especially with the film ic biography.

H T. O talks about this. Christopher nolan talks about this, James Cameron talks about, Steven sPerry talks about, you will see this in georgis IT is very hard to understand at the time you're doing something.

How is actually gona turn out on how i'm pack for what he had? No idea. There is no possible way when George look is started working on star war, as that he could have predicted the impact of those movies would have on the world.

And then, of course, the influence and controlled had over the building of his business. And think about how difficult movie was to make is fascine. Think about but what i'm really interested is how this experiences influences this intense desire for control and independence.

That is the main theme of lucas's life in career. So he says the shoot was a disaster from the, I was very depressed about the whole thing. His misery was due partly to the fact that he felt he had already lost control of his film.

The executives at tonio century fox had nickel and dying him every step of the way they would deny them him the money that he needed to ensure that everything worked. The people at fox were also sceptical. Science fiction, they said, was a dead genre, and they actually read about that at this time in history.

Science fiction was in, in films, was a dead general. The difference words, you needed the rate people to show up. And those people happen to be George lucas and his lifelong friend, Stephen spiller g.

Stephen spiller g makes closing counters of third kind. And lucas, of course, made stars go back to look. IT was very, very difficult to get things to work.

Everything was a prototype. We had to build this, and we had to build with no money, but we had to make this work the promise. Nothing really worked as we wanted.

Look is vowed he would never see control over his film to executives at the studios again, and something he would repeat over, ever going to say, what do they actually know about filmmaking? We've never made a film, but they would come down and talk to him and till this to make the movie. And he says they decided they know more about making movies than directors.

And here's the problem, you can't fight them because they've got the money. And so look, is vote one thing, if star wars worked out one thing, he would have to change for sure. He would control the money.

Back to lucas, I was seriously, seriously depressed at this point because nothing had gone right. Everything was screwed up. I was desperately unhappy a little more than a year before we scheduled to hit theatres.

Star wars was a mess, and the movie was going to be terrible. Lucas was certain of IT. And I think that's a really important place to start. When you analyze the career of George lucas, the depth of his depression is going to influence all the decisions he's going to make. And in turn, the success of the decisions that he makes makes him a multi li billing.

So I want to touch on a few things in his childhood because I think I would give us a view and I A Better understanding of just really why he ran the business. Uh, the way he did. He was the sole shareholder, the only shareholder in lucas film, when he sent sells IT to disney for over four billion dollars.

And he's got this, I would say, juvenile delinquent streak in him since he was a very Young boy. A lot of this came out of this kind of budding heads are fighting that he would have with his father, because lucas is kind of like a hippy or rebel, and his dad the exact opposite of that. So his dad is actually George lucas senior.

And so George lucas junior describe his dad is a very old fashion kind of guy. He was a kind of classic small town businessman that you would see in a movie. He owned a stationary store.

And lucas said later in interviews that he was, he would remember being very, very angry at his father for most of his childhood. Anything the main reason of that is because his dad was intent on controlling him, is something else that look has never had that he looked for his entire life. He really talked about the importance of mentorship, but he never had an older brother.

And so I, throughout his entire career, you see him trying to attach self to a slightly older, almost like bigger brother figure. And he talks about why this is so important. He said, that's one of the ways that you learn.

You attach yourself to somebody older and wise with than you. You learn everything they have to teach, and then you move on to your own accomplishments. And so another way that George lucas was searching foreign mentorship was none only for like older brother, uh, figures, but also through books.

He was never very good in school, but he loved to read. Uh, I got to this section the book and reminding me of I saw this interview that's that's pretty incredible all way back in two thousand and twelve uh, it's with elon mosques being interviewed by the skinning Kevin rose. I will grab the link from youtube and put in the shower notes in case you want to watch IT highly recommend you do because this is the early IT IT takes place on like the tesla, the factory floor.

Tesla, back when I think they only had one model in production. IT was like the early model. S I was in production, but Kevin was asking you as, like trying to fear, like, how did you do all this? Like you emigrate from canada.

You didn't have a lot of money. You moved to california. You started your first company when you were just in your early chinese.

And he was like, what how did you learn how to start a company? Did you read the question from Kevin to elan? Was, did you read a lot of business books? And his answer actually had a huge influence on, you know, my desire and like my dedication to making this podcast.

And because elan said, no, I didn't read business books, I read biography and autobiography, I thought they were helpful. And then he went on to say that this was a way to develop mentors and historical context. And you see that with a very Young George look as he talks about, he didn't like school, but he loved reading, and he amassed this enormous collection of these things called landmark books, which is a series of biography written for Young readers and reflected on this time in his life.

Gets luck, says, I was addicted to those IT started me on a live long love of history. And kid, I spend a lot of time trying to relate the path to the presence. And just like everybody else, gets to the top of their profession, lucas reference, and uses that learning from history is a former leverage he'll talk about.

I watch the saw interview with him in Chris ferland that took place by a decade ago. And in that, lucas is just talking about the fact that all this reading and studying of history, who's doing is a kid, influences the story line for stowers. And then lucas continues to use the entire world in all of its experiences as, like this giant classroom.

So he actually is, this was a very, is, you know who going, what fictional character is, is going to rehumanize lucky way that look is built to empire and thinks of about building is a business smic doc, I am watching the school chemic dock and ducks tales when, like I was a kid, I didn't even know that I was around when lucas was a kid. And so listen to the the lessons he draws from watching, you know, scrouge mic duck, which is the the money hoarding, globe trotting uncle of Donald r right? And so he says lucas was fascinated not only by screw jous exploits, but also by his conniving capitalist ways.

Work smarter, not harder, was scruggs model. And yet his stories were for full of in of schemes that more often not made him richer and even more successful in screw this world. Hard work paid off, but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had ever thought of before things come on.

Think that that. Think about the life and career of George lucas desire to do something in a way that no one had ever thought of before. That is exactly lucas approach to the film making.

In the same movie making has been around for four, five decades. Before lucas came along, Peter of and I was thinking about going here, I I can talk about this later. I'm going to jump ahead because I think is one of the most important ideas in the book, and I might repeat this in the future.

But they talk about the fact that he was so dissatisfied with that he could not make the vision in his head real. right? There was not that the computer graphics weren't there, the special effects were there.

So what's the solution? I'm gonna start my own company. I have to create the technology that I wannsee in the world just so I can make the movies look how I want to look. And so he found his company called industrial lighting magic, which absolutely dominates in special facts for a couple decade.

Ron Howard has this excEllent quote later in the book, right? Talking about the fact that who the hell would do something like that? And he, I think he, somewhere Better than I ever could.

He goes, how many people think the solution to gain in quality control, improving fiscal responsibility and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special effects company? Ron Howard said admiringly. But that's what George did back to screw my duck in, screw this world.

Hard work paid off, but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had never thought that before. Sug ethics reflected honor, honesty and allowing other people to believe in their own ideas, not trying to force everyone into one form, which is, I think, exactly how you describe what he was dad was trying to do to him. His dad was trying to make another him and George like, but i'm not the same as you.

I want to live life on my terms. The lessons look is learned from uncle scrooge, which shaped the kind of businessmen he would become in the future, conservative and driven, believing strongly in his own vision and pursuing IT aggressively. Let's go back to more of his juvenile delinquent ways.

As his grade suffer. Lucas began to look more and more like the juvenile delinquent ID. His teachers were already convinced that he was one of my favorite lines ever describing founder mentality and and entrepreneurs comes from invention.

Or who is the founder? Cotoran ia. He says, if you want to understand the entrepreneur study, the juvenile, the liquid, the the inquit is saying, with his actions, this sucks.

I'm going to do my own thing. His grades was so bad, his dad was convinced that he was gonna a loser. Lucas thought his father, as lack of interest in him was typical, and he was probably understandable.

I was a hell raiser and I didn't do very well in school. My father wrote me off. And then IT doesn't help that.

He's not doing what school doesn't really have a direction in what he wants to do in life yet. And so he goes in briefly, works for his dad at the stationary store. This, he doesn't last long, he quits.

And then him and his dad get back into this argument. And so this is description I get really mad of. My father and I told him i'll never working a job where I have to do the same thing over over again every day.

His father responded. You'll be back in a few years. I'll never be back, lucas said. As a matter of fact, i'm going to be a million aire before i'm thirty. And that is one of the smartest insight that a Young George lucas ever had, the fact he realized that you need to make money not to buy bunch of users shit, but actually buy your own freedom. And that's exactly what he uses his money for.

So he is it's almost like a contrast in in embedded in one person because he will bet literally the house which he does multiple times on the success of one movie. But he's unbelievably physical conservative with the way he runs his business. And that fiscal conservative m actually breaks up.

He has like coffee break ups with Frances for copal was the essentially exact opposite gets. Lucas was always very, very concerned about protecting his downside because all he wanted to do is never jeopardize anything that that would cause to relinquish his freedom of what he worked on. You think of George luis constant, just a way, uh, another former control, and that control to make sure that no one else can ever, ever tell him what to do.

And so he gets the college. He's like, I have no idea what I want to do. So just goes so like a little junior college, a little a community college and then he realized he he knew is like, and i'm not stupid. Member, the ten episode, I don't know if I I should back up.

Why am I doing like lucas right now? Uh, I think if you listen to the listen to the silver epo de I just republished couple days ago and then tell tino, I think this line to what i'm doing right now, tino studied. They came about a ten and fifteen years before he did a trentino, studied solberg and lucas.

He all the movie brats which are going to like the rest. These guys are centrally like these filmmaking genius at all. Met in the early twice, and in many cases there seventy eighty years old today in our still friends.

But I find this fastest because carton, no study. And luis silver, luis studied disney. Disney next episode, reading the hundred page biography, me a time is a monster.

Uh, over five hundred pages. I have the hard cover version to me over thirty hours to read in research and really think about before I SAT down talk to today. So the connection to what is happening in lucas life is very summer to the tinos.

You know, not great in school, but clearly not dumb. He just doesn't like other people telling him what he should study trentino was the same way. So guess a junior college.

And now, you know, college the first time we you can actually pick his classes. And so once he is in control of his own curriculum, he becomes a phenomenal student. And so once it's time to be done with junior college, he's GTA figure out what I transfer, what i'm going to.

And this conversation with his dad actually changes the trajectory of his life forever. Because lucas is like, i'm going to go to art school. His dad, like this old school nineteen fifties super conservative american business man, is like, there's no way in hell that my son, like, i'm you you're going to go to our school.

We have i'm paying for IT and he told us a song like, there's no way you're going to make money. You can do that. And so one of lucas friends says, hey, why don't you, if you're not going to go to our school, take a look at U.

S. A university alive. Nia has this new cinematography. And keep in mind, this is the mid one thousand nine sixties.

There is not many film schools in the united states. And so this is why uh ter tino, last week in his book would talk about the movie breath. He said they love movies.

They dreamed of movies, and they even received degrees and movies back when that was a dubious major. And look, is talking about this like, I was embarrassing. Other people are like, you going to film school, go. They even call film school to all the photography school like what holds this? And he says, uh, I lost a lot of face.

The idea of going into film was a really goofy idea at the time, but what was facing as his dads, like there is no way in home playing for art school, then he was impressed that his son got accepted in the U. S. And he did understand, he said, in the school cinema cinematography he didn't understand that he was his way of getting to a form of art school and so is dead degrees to help milk pays tuition um and help him get housing.

And the reason I say that decision change ject ory of georgia because his life is because that when he meet such a just a collection of filmmakers who are obsessed with movies, Young and they want up helping each other for decades, it's almost like the island of misfit toys. Because before this, he says, for many of them, IT was the first time they had a click of their own and gathering place where they could talk about their interest movies without ee rolling from the other cool kids. For many, reality finally began when they entered film school.

Lucis knew that he had found his way before he wasn't sure he was in the cars. H interest. And is I, oh, wait, this is that I was sort of floundering for something.

And when I finally discovered film, I really felt mad love with that. I ate IT. I slept twenty four hours a day.

There was no going back after that that is a direct quote from George lucas was no going back after a human facing I just i'm going to put this book down, picking up the Stephen spoke a book that I republish this week, right? That book is twenty five years old. Maybe this book is twenty five years old.

Listen to how Stephen spielberg describes. He is the exact same language. This is what piller g said.

Making movies grows on you. You can't shake IT. I like directing above all.

All I know for sure is i've gone too far to back out now. There is no going back. They both discovered what you're gonna do.

Now this is the faster part because this turns into the U. S. Mafia spills.

Part of that even know he didn't go to U. S. C. You're talking about a group of super talented filmar ers.

And lot of come out to california, even they called the U. S. C mafia.

Um some of them like a march cc Oliver stone and they went. And where you bring a alm into colombia, Francis for couples at U. C, L, A spill bergs on the lot, getting his own curriculum.

M, I think universal, or yeah, is that universal look is to be one of one of a group of highly motivated in Young therm kers. They were all friends who would have a lasting impact on film, on culture. This is another example that relationships are run the world you see IT over over again.

And these books so important to develop relationships with other people that are just like you in even if you they don't look at themselves as competitors, they they tend to compete, but they also collaborate. They all need each other because they're trying to break into a system that is close up at this point in history unless you are part of a union, uh, unless you ready know somebody in the industry you're not breaking in even IT with a film degree. It's yet another illustration of one of my favorite ite concepts from game athrill es, where they said those on the margins often come to control the center time stubs 或 C C diploma， copa a.

lucas. They are on the margin. The center is controlled by these old school conservative studios that are locking all the Young people out. IT was very IT was unheard of to have a director in their choice.

And yet this networks they're building in the talent that they have for their craft like that, those in the margins often come to control the center. They become the center. Now this is really faster, because when I had dinner, a tally monger, this is the advice that he gave us.

I get there in one second. So IT talks about, they refer to themselves as the movie, right? That would end up being a more appropriate designation, as they were all regularly higher fire and conspire with one another accounts projects over the next five decades, putting together a kind of system of their own.

Monger talked about the importance he he didn't use the word relationships on the world. That's the maxim I put on IT. But he talked about as exactly with him in buffed.

I think he was thirty five when he met buffet. Buffer was what? eight? Twenty nine? Something like that? He talked over over again.

The importance of the vg was like, you have to develop relationships with with people is like they were still doing deals. He, something like Cameron, exactly put out to go back and read my notes or listen to the episode. I think it's episode five if you have listen to yet.

But he talked to about the fact that they would meet people, you know, the third, the thirties and forties, and they would do business and do those for the rest of their lives. Many of the people that he was that truly was referred to because charly was ninety nine when I meet were debt. But he said that's exactly what they did.

Okay, so let's go back to this idea where lucas is just he's unmanageable. He's a juvenile linkin and so now he's in film school and you know the the film professors like, okay, we're going to practice making films and they give you like this sheet of instructions and they must be you you must be, fill them black. And why must be this? You must, this story must look this way.

You must not over, you know, this length. And George looks like, I don't give a down about instructions. I'm going to do what I want.

Lucas made this intentions immediately clear with his first on screen credit. This was no student assignment. IT was a short film by George lucas that is in big letters that really put on this movie that he's making.

Lucas has chosen to set his film to music and open defiance of his professors instructions. And so the movie he made is called look at life. Even years later.

Look at life is an impressive debut, aggressive, political and utter ly confident. As soon as I made my first film, I thought, hey, i'm good at this. I know how to do this.

From then on, I never questioned IT, lucas said. And right from the rip, he is completely obsessed. He preferred shutting himself in his top floor bedroom, sitting at the drawing board, planning out his films and switching out ideas.

I would always try to get him to go out to parties and clubs and stuff. This is a roommate, and George were usually stay upstairs in his room drawing these things. He called them little star trippers.

This is like a decade before star wars. So he's drawing these things. He called little star opers.

But for lucas, that was Better than parting. I'd be working all day and all night, living on chocolate bars and coffee, said lucas. IT was a great life.

I had enthusiasm, enthusiasm. And I was too busy to get into drugs. Movies were his addiction. We were passionate about movies. We were always scrambling to get our next fix.

Listen to how they describing, this is how he knew, is what you doing with their life described working as your next fix to get a little film in the camera and shoot something. And then here's a glimpse of something that he's gna have problems with his entire life. He wasn't really a big fan of collaborators.

He wanted the ordinance. H again, he is a dictator. He wants a, prefers working alone.

In many cases, I almost feel like he was born at the wrong time, because he even says that he's really kind of a really bad on sap, didn't know how to deal with humans. He's super shy when talk, when giving instructions. And yet he said, like, he really made films in the editing room.

He just buy to self editing. And so I I almost think like he's born now, is going to with all these new technologies, basically you have one person like film kers because you're going to use of this technology. I think that's how George, uh, would have preferred.

And you see this from very early because is getting all these assignments to and and film school and you know they're gonna make you work on teams. And he did not like that. He was becoming increasingly crank about the idea of working with others and prefer doing everything himself.

He could be easily irritated if he was settle with crew members who could not keep up with. He's also super, super competitors. Later on, the book is said something like a Francis for copa response back because a few times, look, i'm retired, never making movies, he will be back.

And why do you think he be back? Like because George loves the winning too much. And so Young George says, I was, I was really into making IT a competition who can get IT done first and best.

If they couldn't cut the muster, they shouldn't have been there. And then he also has some talents obvious every day. So he was clear that he was one of usc s most dexterities editors.

Lucas work quickly and without complaint. He cover up any defects. Shortages are missing shots in the editing room.

And that's an exaggeration. IT is funny. I am going to talk about IT because this books gigging tic. And I covered IT on other like Steve jobs and ed cm started that higher at cat mall. He is the one to sold.

Picks are two to see jaws when George is going to a divorce, which also goes on a lot of detail. The book which won't cover this, a of being able to sit at a computer and make a movie, you know, I think if he could have done that, if he was alive now, that's what he would do. Because a typical movie that he would make, like his first movie he shot for three days, mean no on set for three days.

But then he edited for ten weeks, his favorite part about the movie making process. He hated writing what he will get into. He forced themselves to do, and he's got some ideas on how to do that.

He wasn't good on set, but he would not that all you want to do. He wanted to be alone in the editing room, but we're not there at resting film school. This is more juvenile.

The liquid behaving liza is breaking into this salary, so he says the rules were of no concern to him. I broke them all, he said, whenever I broke the rules, I made a good film. So there wasn't much of the fact about IT.

George lucas is very resourceful. He always would find a way to get what he needed in terms of equipment and bodies to put together a crew. Like sometimes when you film, like when a film star wars in london later on, they have these like really strict rules for the london like film union.

It's like you said, you have started eight thirty. There has to be A T M. I'm joking about, you have to start eight thirty, then you have to break for tea at ten P M or ten A M, and then you have to break for an arrow lunch at one o'clock. Then you need another tea break at c and you can work past six things like this. He didn't want any kind of restrictions, so they would break into the equipment room to get non the materials that they needed, like an expensive camera.

But they would also break into facility, says lucas didn't want to limit his use of the equipment to the building's regular hours either, which shame up the drain spell, cross over the roof, jump into the patio and break into the editing room so we could work all week. And this idea that you use a juvenile linux actions actually be more productive. When my favorite stories from history about this is Edwin land, he's trying to do all these experiments, doesn't have the money for, uh, for the equipment needs.

So him, in his future wife, they actually break into, I I think was N Y U might have been in colombia, but they break into university. And then all night, they just illegally using their science experiments, our scientific equipment, to make experience, experience rather. And this idea where lucas is like, what the hell you guys isn't work weekends, is absurd.

In the early days, way before IT turns into polaroid lands, first companies called land wheel rate, if I remember correctly, and land had want a bunch of wars. He was like, pretty well known, well known scientist by time is like nineteen. And so he is recruit to all these other he is running his company, uh, but he's getting recruit to all these other companies.

Maybe they could like bias company are vining to over. And remember there's a conversation that takes place with land in his cofounder ers. Cofounder ers concerned because cofounder is more like the money guy conference, concerned that he's gona leave and land goes.

They start work at the nine, the end of five, and they don't work weekends and says, coffee is like, yeah, I know you're gonna go are you gonna leave? Go work with them. And lands response sponsors, of course not.

How would I get anything done? Yes, you see, George, look is like when you you gave us this assignment to make this film, we don't have the right cameras, so i'll just breaks in and take that. And then I can't edit IT on the weekends or at night.

Are you, are you absurd? So this is a guy. Now, this is also causes severe health problems. When he's older, when he's doing star wars, he's working like twenty hours a day.

This caught IT like i'm chuckling because he's just like he had these tendencies from a very early age uh but you know once he wants up getting divorced because of this ones having health problems because of this, I think he burned out you know, a few years before he he might have directed more movies and had a longer career if if he worked on consistency over intensity. But he in terms of optimizing or considering intensity, he went full throw to on intensity. And so he's going to graduate film school again.

I said like those on the margins often control the center. Such an important uh, concept you see IT over because even if you when you graduate phone call this time there there's no there's no mainstream movie studio is hiring you. And so he starts working for the U.

S. Government, making this films for them during meetings, making his own little movies on the side. He's gonna wind up a being able to learn he wins. Like to this grant to spend some time on uh, an actual like big budget movie studios set, and that's really important because that's where he's going to meet reference for coupla.

But before I get to that, I just want to point out that this is kind of all areas and I feels exactly where that he does and really list to the party too. And at beginning he he's working on a like a movie and his idea was like, you know, he didn't think he wanted to be a director. I don't really think he liked people and he wanted he like to be a camera man or an editor and he gets a job working on that.

He's like, I these people are posting me around like he goes more than anything else. I didn't like being boss around. I didn't like being told which shots I could do and wooden and which shots I could. They are annoyed him, and he says, at this point, I was really wanted to be an editor and a camera man.

And in the course of doing, I asked, well, maybe I wanna be a director and you know how he figured out? And he wanted be a director because he figured out who was the person on the movie set that no one else can tell what to do. The answer to that is the director.

So is like, okay, I guess that's what i'll do. I'll be that. So he's making a good movie at the same time, is like two two jobs.

Again, he got is a worker lic tire life, something that his wife know causes the break up of their marriage. So he definitely pays a Price. But at this point he makes us a short movie.

He's eventually turned into a longer movie called T H X eleven thirty eight, but is the shorter version of IT. And is that I want to talk about this because he wants a winning a bunch of awards and and people go like people watching IT IT really think it's incredible. And one person in the audience was his dad, and I think this is a very important part in the relationship, says he could appreciate that his son had found his calling.

His son had earned respective his peers. Now, I had been against this thing of his going to the cinema school from day one, but we guessed he had finally found his niche. As we drove home, I said to his mom, I think we put our money on the right horse.

And so as a result of that little film doing well, he gets two things that happen. He gets a us us like a grant from colombia pictures where student filmmakers can come watch a real like film, like a big budget, uh, mainstream movie studio film take place, right? And the second part is he gets to shadow the director, which is going to Frances for copa.

Now this is really important because this is what I know is it's really hard to is almost like this contrast between this this innate fiscal conservatism, this hatred of dead, uh, this hatred of risk that George lucas has with being full risk on which he is forced do on his first move american, second move american graphite I and his third and fourth star wars and then return to the jet, turn the the uh empire shock back, I think is a second one. But this idea is I kill that everything he has, if he thinks that bad as successful, and to buy his creative freedom. And part of this, because he's on this big movie set for the first time, and he was disgusted by IT, he says IT was the first time he had a chance to see a major motion picture being made.

And lucas was not impressed. We had to bring around such options, billions of dollars being spent every five minutes on this huge unwieldly thing. Lucas said he was mine bombing because we were making films for three hundred dollars, and we saw this is an incredible waste that was the worst of hollywood.

So there's relentless resourcefulness that he's always going to have. Like i'm going to get into some of the numbers of his movies later. IT is remarkable.

Think of them again. Like I said last week, the intertangled piso's like these, are miniature businesses. And you do that. The financial performance of his miniature businesses is remarkable before we get there.

So now he's on the set of this movie and this is really important because Francis for couple is like five, six uh, other than all the other movie brats and he's the one you know how people like at the first time you can run. People thought, you know, real, to run a four minute. Humans can run mile.

And this one person does IT. And an immediately, all these other people are doing the same thing here. But their first interaction was hilarious.

So couple of notices this, like skinny Young man, beard, glasses sitting there with his arms folded, not saying a word until he walks up. They tell all that's a student observer from U. S.

So he walks up to. Lucas and he goes, hey, do you seen anything interesting? And lucas, suck a heads that, no, not yet.

And this is how I met George lucas, Frances, for copulate said. Now, human Frances are gonna to be very good friends right from the moment that they meet. Go back to this advice, a truly monger gry develop relationships, relationships from the world. Lucas is twenty three when he meets copa cocoa lish twenty eight.

They're going to be making movies, doing deals, starting companies, breaking up, fighting for decades, right? But it's really important because at the time there is no Young directors, there's no twenty eight year hold director in the in the doing a major movie city. You have to be an independent fmk or to do that.

And so copal inspiration, not just lucas, he inspire steam. I want to read this program. Pa actually succeeded in getting his hand on the door up and flying in the door. And suddenly there was a crack light.

And you could see that one of us, a film student without any connections, had put one foot in front of the other and actually made the transition from being a film student to being somebody who made a feature film sponsor by one of studios. Stephen spielberg. Copa was a shining star.

4 berg said Francis was the first inspiration to a lot of Young filmmakers because he broke through before many others。 So not only did coupla prove to spill, berg and lucas had, hey, this is possible, but the influence that coupla had on lucas, too, is like, listen, you have to learn the right at this time, and you will see, look, is make this mistake a few times. He tries to outsource the writing, and copa was saying, hey, what separates just a director to a filmmaker is like, you have to any director he would tell lucas, like any great director has to know how to put together screaming.

And so he would repeat to lucas again, I get no one's gona take you seriously unless you write. And I want to be excEllent advice because lucas forced himself to write stories, which obviously entire empire, the reason is able the the his company, you know, thirty forty years into the future to disney for many, many billions of dollars. And it's also one that that that copa was, you know, older, say the older, but also like really showing hay.

We can Young filmmakers can have a chance, like we can get in here and do this. But it's also, he's one of most charismatic people ever lived. I did an episode ple a long time ago.

Link IT down below, and everybody, the women in his life say this. The people that work from, say, this spill bergan lucis say this. In fact, listen to what how lucas describes coplas.

Just chism a, he says Francis could sell ice to the eco s. He has carma beyond logic. I can now see what kind of meant the great scissors of history where copa was magnetic. So I told you about lucas meeting coupla, right? I have not told you about this friendship.

This might even be more important argument that is more important to the his career, the friendship that he has with Steven spill berg, which is exactly why I published an episode week, and I think IT again, the currently know to spill berg to look this and an disney next week. I think we like, uh, these are all tied together but he goes, a Young twenty one year old Steven's spowart goes to just a screening and they don't tell you what you're onna watch before him. And he seize this student film.

And that student film was as T H X eleven thirty eight. And this is still very response, he says, I couldn't believe was a student file film. I was all struck.

My first impression was, I hate you. I hate that I am he so much Better than I am afterwards, spoiler headed back stage where he found luis with copa silbert. Remember the moment a warmly invited dly? George was really a friendly guy. We shook hands and became friends from that moment on.

And when the power, when he says they hate that guy, they both have extremely mature perspectives on this is like there's people going to see a new movie has like him being successful, not they can go see jaws and then next year, they go see the wars. And so there's obviously some kind of inherent competitiveness, but they they really thought of each other as more collaborators. And silver has said mutio times that George lucas inspired him.

He said at the time of his first encounter with lucas and early one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight silber's filmmaking was still more assuring than actual and we were talked with this like no longer ditty role models have to be these older, in any case, deceased filmmakers. They are actually someone in his own age, someone I could actually get to know, compete with and draw inspiration from. And then IT was around this time that lucas finds his inspiration and his blueprint has, can be blueprint for both him and copa as well.

And he's around the same page, slightly older, and it's a guy name, john cordy. So lucas is invited. He set on a panel. He goes to a conference, sits on a panel with other filmmakers who made books into movies.

And one of the guys sitting next time on this panel is a thirty one, so slightly older, and he was an independent filmmaker who also lived in northern california at this time. Lucas and I, he hates ali. He hates hollywood.

He hates the studio system. He's grew up in north n. california. He wants to go back, but he's not sure how to do IT. And so john is sitting on this panel and he starts going into the details of his filmmaking. And luis is like, oh, oh, this is, this is our blueprint.

And so he says john had been running his own film making facility out of a borne in a small ocean town just north of sync. Isco, he had privately raised one hundred thousand dollars for this movie that he was preparing by hitting up friends, colleagues and even his actors for money. He shot the movie locally and then edit IT on his own equipment.

At the films, premier IT received a lengthy standing ovation, and holly's wood executives fell over themselves, scrambling to distribute IT and recruit cordy. But cordy was having none a bit from what I saw a holleywood they can keep, IT said. I would rather work for myself in hollywood.

You have a producer breathing down your neck, I am happy. Or working with less money. The risk of failure is far less. We can complete a film and maybe a year getting the results we want.

At the end of john cordy describing how he does IT IT was a speech that either Frances, for I could, a Frances mouth, a George luis month, but he is the, they had this idea in my mind, but then they see some things like, oh, that's not just an idea. This guy is actually doing IT. And so look is, as I can, I come visit your set up and i'm going to bring Frances for copa with me.

And so what the shop to is quoted lives in the house on the property. He also a born that born services is like movie making studio is exactly, I mean, look, is going to do bigger scale. There are about lucas and couple about to found a company that tries to do this, and then that company is gna fail.

But lucas does is the skyWalker ranch, uh, where sectors know the movie studio there. But you can add, you can do everything else you need to do. And what they realize that, oh, this exactly like, this is our future.

This is what we're going to do. And so surely after this, they find another blue print. So copa actually flies to dead mark to visit another independent film company.

This is danish film kers named Morgan Scott hanson. And even mind, I don't need to back to up because is so important. Lucas is twenty four years old. He's twenty four years old in the second couple is twenty nine. okay.

So Scott hanson is in denmark, is not service go is in denmark, but he's working out of this old mansion that's on a hillside that overlooks a body of water, and it's filled with state of the art equipment. On this is skyWalker ranch, fifteen, sixteen years before lucas has the money to do exactly this. And so couple of tours. Morgan Scott hansen's facility love is like, I do the exact same thing.

And then on the way out, Morgan gives them a, uh, like a gift and it's this nineteen century optical toy and you essentially like spin IT and IT has like a series IT produces like a an illusion of movement and it's called a zoe trope and it's actually greek, meaning life movement and copa love the word in the description so much that's the that's what they're onna name cos the name the company he's about James lucas zi trope and so he tells lucas, like this is exactly what we need. Do we need to get a big old house like kind of fat house rate? And in that front house we're gonna make movies.

There's only one problem. They don't have any money, so they have to go to the studios to ask for money. And at the beginning, as they are trying to do a deal or fun raise for what we're gona call american zoetrope is actually the full name, the hollywood studios.

Like now you can make movies out there. You have to do IT here. But lucas is very stubbing. He's very persistent. He's also willing to take risk but is like, I love you to go.

I want to live in hollywood and so i'm just onna keep knocking on doors and if I find the money now they have something happens that know you. In some ways, they have perfect timing because you have to ride away, ve go back. The charly mongers surfing model is so important to analyze extreme success. And he always asked me something like they had to serve a way.

What wave are they surfing? And the studios actually figure out, at this exact time time, the copland lukas, they wouldn't never got the money, this thing happen, this one telling you the exactly time I realized, oh, like if you the studio figure out, like if we can just hire Young talent making independent films, can actually print money because they make, they make films almost nothing. And some of these these like power law outcomes.

And so what I mean, there is a one thousand nine sixty. And remember, they started one thousand sixty. Like we're gonna do this.

They banging on doors. Hollywood, like screw yourself, were not giving you any money. The next year the film easy writer comes out.

Okay, so IT is written by a thirty two written, directed by a thirty two year old or thirty three old Dennis hopper. IT was not made in hollywood. IT was made on a shoestring budget.

They raised three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Why is that important? Three hundred and fifty thousand hours to releasing data.

The film makes sixty million easy. Writer goes on to be one of the most profitable films ever made. And so the studio executives ves see that like, oh, shit.

And this is what they said. The studios smelled money. Why invest millions bank ruling production of an enormous film on a studio backlot.

But you could simply to distribute independently, produce films, suddenly indent films. And dependent filmmakers exactly want to be right. Made by Young directors were in demand.

The studio wanted Young talent. I just said that charly mother talks about the surfing, surfing the wave. Listen to the words that they used to describe.

This easy writer had created a tsunami of independent enthusiasm. Couple decided to ride the wave right into the offices of Warners brothers. Come on that fit together so perfectly there. So goes. More brothers.

And this is couple is like, yeah, sometimes I think you might need a guy this because not like I have to make one movie he said that doesn't you find a bunch of money we're going to bring your finish film just a easy rider did when I can do with this once we're we have seven films we wanted make, uh, with you guys now here's the problem. Couple are probably shot too big. And even if he didn't show too big, he definitely signed a bad deal because the executives gave the money, not as an investment.

They the scripts aren't being optioned. They gave him alone. And they said in the contract, this is, this is going to cause them to go bankrupt, almost go crupp.

The minute that Warner brothers did not like what they were doing, had lost faith in the project, whatever cases they could call in alone. And koba n. Luis would have to pay back everything.

And in true couple of fashion, he was like all that. He very confident. That was never going to happen. So now he's got a bunch of money, and he's saying, all is crazy things like my company, he is going to ten million dollars in a couple years and it's going to do all this stuff but here's the weird talk he took about your money and he just invest in things.

This is like the unlucky you know luis as tex partner, but definitely supported partner in this arranging ment and so coupla spends all this money in the reception area he said he buys an antic poll table on a really expensive, expensive maker and all the other stuff and one IT reminding me when um there's a great anecdo when charly monger and but that I think you're buying like the buffalo O O evening news I can member which one they are by a newspaper and y're touring IT and charlie mongers like disgusted at the opulence and he says, why does the newspaper need a palace to publishing and this point was like the readers of your newspaper, they only care what's in the newspaper. They don't care if you're investing in things that are not important. Your customer know the move equivalent.

That is all that matters. What you put up on the screen, you're antique pull table, your expensive super luxury architectural design doesn't do anything for your customers. Like, what are you doing? We saw this again.

I can now talk about this publicly, but my friend Jamie SONY is the author of this book, cob of founders. I think I covered IT back on two thirty four, and also over his by grave of close channel a long time ago, maybe absolute ninety four, something like that. And uh mean, you may become friends since I cover those books and he is next book, this is book called, uh I also covered a long time ago.

It's called Steve jobs in the next big thing. And it's on the thirteen years, what I called bizarre sti jobs, the time the thirteen years between he who has kicked up apple than he returns. And it's really about the founding of next and the reason called bizarre sea job because he's arguably the great thanks for the ever.

And yet, in this ten to thirteen year period, you see this incredibly gifted entrepreneurs make one bad decision after another. It's, what do I mean? H Jimmy, I can talk about this publicly.

Uh, now I asked them, uh, Jimmy is his next book. He's writing A A book on this time period and he is a ticket researcher. He's been sending me these archives.

incredible. What anyways reading that book, which is, you know, publish a long time ago. The next things by rental stals c jos.

And next big thing there is lying in that book that blow my mind that reminds me what gransiere cope is doing here. It's like, what are you doing? You're putting an emphasis on things that are not important.

And what I mean that Steve jobs, one of the the ninth employee, if if I remember correctly, nine or tenth employee at next was an interview designer for the office. That's absurd that that is not that is that is bizarre. I drop Steve, you have made phenomenal decisions.

That is a bad decision. Um this idea of putting a lot of money into things that don't don't affect what I would actually the customer experience makes no sense. And yet you see this h it's a mistake that people make over, over, over again.

No thing I do. They buy a bunch of explosive equipment, which maybe they need. Yes, okay, but then he said, hey, there is not just for us any filmmakers scope can come by and rent this very expensive equipment that we need to make our movies.

What you think think is going to happen. Most of that equipment wants being lost or stone. And then couple also has ideas like, you know we need we need our own airport, we need a fleet of helicopter.

He doesn't have the money to buy the shape, but that's where his eye is like that has nothing to do with what you're trying to do. Her just just make great films that people love so much that they pay money to see, and they tell their friends to go see that all you have to do. And so this fight right now, like coplin lucas, are fighting immediately because this, is this a bad cofounder match? Because, look, is this thing he describe lucas in very plane language you like.

He's very easy interface with because he tells you what's important to when he's in the seventies and is still important when he's in the seventies, right? And so he says, what we're striving for, a total freedom where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, released them, uh, where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. You have to have the money in order to have the power to be free.

That is why lucas wanted to make as much as possible. He wanted to buy his freedom. He never wanted, he wanted complete control, and he never wanted people to decide what he should be working on or to tell them what to do that.

That's all you need to know about lucas. And the reason I would recommend reading the spoke s because IT goes into the great detail of how we actually accomplish that. Now talk a little about that.

But I I do want what is fascinating that not all the ideas they were having, you know, their Young uh, entrepreneurs, never don't have experiences. I really know what you're doing though the movies are gonna make, are gonna lap, but what faster is like? They they still had an insight into the future.

And so he says that both copa and look is predicted a bold, high tech future member. This is nineteen, nineteen sixty nine, one thousand and seventy maybe. And they said movies will eventually sold like soup.

What does that mean? You'll be able to buy IT in cartage for three dollars and play IT as you would. A record, you know, music record at home is predicting, you know, V H S.

Tapes and dvds, then blue ray, and now streaming ing. And so the first movie that american zoetrope is going to make is this movie, T H X eleven thirty eight, really is a look. Look is making a film about himself.

Because the main a idea is like science fiction, kind of weird, so you can like, hides that, but essentially just, you should reject the sad core in your pursuit, freedom. We talking about the idea behind the movie in one sentence just stuck with me from the first time. I member this line from reading for the first time seven years ago.

So he says, this movie is the importance of self in being able to step out of whatever you're in and move forward, rather than being stuck in your little right. This is a stuck up to me. People would give anything to quit their jobs.

All they had to do is do IT their people in cages with open doors at its core. T H X eleven thirty day was about refusing to accept the seas. quote.

It's about a hero who lives in an ant hill and theirs to go outside this issue of leaving a safe environment and going out into the unknown would be an underlying premise of his first three films, T H X american gravity. And worse, he is really making a film about himself, reject the status quote and pursue freedom. And the problem is that T H hacks eleven thirty eight, uh, the studio hates IT.

They hate IT so much so bad. Now this is, I guess, is important. There's two things gonna happen. I want to talk to you about the godfather, and I want to talk to you about the fact that George lucas is first movie is so terrible that IT literally causes the collapse of his company in the cancellation of his deal.

And yet, as a direct result of this, that also leads to the next thing, and his desire for control, which is star wars, goes back to that. What titine o say, what biler said, you know a lot of tremendous say they are in the middle of that. You have no idea the impact that you're potentially having and a lot of people quit before they even get to realize that.

And so because the studio like this is for a terrible the deals off, give us a three hundred grand back, they're now in debt. The company's hammer urging cash. Copa has no money at all.

He's desperate for money. And so he gets an offer, right? He only want to do zone films. He gets offer in the summer of two hundred and seventy. So this happens really faster.

You take my year and a half and the company is gone um and it's an offer he couldn't refuse because IT comes from paramo pictures and they're saying, hey, we're gonna make a an action film based on one of the biggest books of one thousand nine and sixty nine which was written by this guy name mario puzo and that book is a sprawling gangster novel called godfather and so he goes to luke he's like they offer me the atta gangster movie does not want to do IT is like, should I do IT in lucas? Like his whole thing is like you have to stay in the black. Lucas has a montrer that he repeats over over again, and I think is really good.

Stay small, be the best. Don't lose any money. Stay small, be the best.

Don't lose any money. So he's talking to copy what to help you. I like you have you have no money. They're offering to pay your bunch of money to direct the film. You have to do IT.

I don't think you have any choice is the vice that he gave us friend couple la, we're in debt and you have to get a job. And so reluctantly, copa agrees to direct god father. He gets seventy five thousand dollars to direct any.

He is going to get six percent of any profits to philax and so on the way out the door the studio owns because they they lend on the money they own T H, X, eleven, thirty eight. They can do whatever they want with that. They didn't like the editing job that lucas did.

So they give a to their own in house editor. And lucas, are you this is always say here. So they went up cutting another four minutes from lucas final cut.

And this induces lucas into a state of rage. He says there is no pointing to do IT other than exercise some power. Their attitude was that we can screw around with your movies that were going to.

Lucas had no patients with the executives who argued that they only cut four minutes from a ninety minute film. They were cutting the fingers of my baby. He said.

Lucas wouldn't trust the studios again ever and again at the time. This sounds like the end of the world, this worthing never happen. They cut my film, our companies, over.

But one of being one of the best things ever happened to him, because this is the founding of lucas film, the exact company he's going to disney. And he talks about like why they had to have a cofounder break up, because he really was Sparked by the different manual styles and their attitudes towards money. Lucas says, i'm very cautious.

I don't borrow money. I'm very protective of the things that I build. Lucas is always tight with a dollar, and copa would continue to spend money reckless ly.

Lucas is made up his mind to break away from copa and to make IT on his own, determined to control on projects no studio he vote would ever form to compromise vision again. This let him to forming his own company in nineteen, nineteen seventy one, lucas officially opened lucas film. This independent production company will be run out of his little house, and its loan employees were him in martia.

Martia is his wife. So even though they broke up, his cofounder, ers of stuff, friends and coal actually gives him some good advice. T H X is just a weird abstract.

They called, uh, luis at the time, a cold, weird director. So it's not, this is, what are you doing that was like, strange, abstract stuff is like stopping. So weird. You need to do something human. You need to do something that makes money because if not you, you're going your careers over before IT begins.

And so the device, a cop, a game, was like, you should just write something that has to do with your own life and experiences, you know well, something that you more positive. And so lucas has this idea to make this movie that can be one of the most profitable, uh, best return on investment of every movie have ever made. And it's got american graffiti at the time.

He grows up at the california on friday, inside nights like little town, they would sup up these cars and they would just drive slowly down as one block, then turn around and do IT all over again, and they just creigh over again. And so he's like, world says, I spent my youth doing this. It's like a coming of age film about you know lashed high school transition oring in like you know everybody knows that experience like entire to change.

No idea. Here's a problem. No one wanted to give money and this was fast and didn't think about this because he's got no money.

He's considered damaged goods and he's struggling to get any kind of money for to write the script and then wanted to write the script and he's going to make the movie. And he talks about the predicament, he said. He says, this is the easy job you'll ever get you trying to make your first film.

That's the easy one to get because nobody knows what you can make a after you've done that. Then you have a heck of a difficult time getting to your second film of the ground. They look at your first film and they say, oh, no, no.

We don't want any more of that. And so lucas goes back to doing what? What he was doing is like knocking on doors, trying to figure somebody just give me a little bit of money so I can write, describe.

Now, this is he. Eventually he fails a few times, then he gets to the president of united artists. This guy has got the perfect name for his job. His name's picker, David picker. He's literally having to pick screen writers and filmmakers.

So what's going on here? And so he's like, he's telling about this, and he's like, I won a write, I need money and I won a write american graphite and picker says, yes, on may fourteenth, which is also lucas birthday, he had just turned twenty seven years old. He gives them like ten thousand dollars to write the script.

But luis can make mistake because he hates writing. IT gives all that money to a screen writer in the screen. Place sucks.

So got to themselves anyway. But what was about this is in this meeting with David picker, okay, is the birth of star wars. So he's okay. I'll take american grape. Let's do deal on that.

Do you have anything else? And lucas is like, actually, I do, members him sitting back in his room, meeting chocolate bars and drinking coffee and getting diabetes, which he definitely got diabetes at a Young age. He was drawn, little starship trip.

So pickers OK, what does he got? And lucas told picker about this idea for this unnamed space Opera fantasy film. Great, said picker will make a deal in this too.

And that, lucas said, was really the birth of star wars. IT was the only. This is fast thinking about how he says this, right? It's the birth star wars.

IT goes from a notion to an obligation. IT was only a notion up to them. At that point, he became an obligation.

Then I get to get to one of the most faster things, what I person to find most faster, about lucas, other than his, his desired innovate, his invention to be vertically integrated, to control everything via things percent identify with anything. A lot of entrepreneurs, but there's just party. Your job doesn't like we get to.

Were unbelievably lucky to be entrepreneurs. I think of what sam wolton said in his autobiography, ys, the great thing about entrepreneurship, and you get to spend your time building something you enjoy. Most people don't get to do this.

They're stuck in jobs they hate. I had the time of my life, but even with that, there has to be something that sam didn't like doing. And in look, is this version that's like, he hates writing.

And so he he blows all the money. He has no money. He is poor. He's got to know money. He's going to go to dead in a minute.

And so he he says, my intense desire to get a writer head backfire on me. And I ended up with an unusual usual script and no money. And so this is what he's going to do, cause the bleeding on the page.

He says, that line, I don't know, ten times in this book. And so if I okay, forget IT, i'm going to have to do this myself into over the next three, the next three week period. He writes from eight in the morning until eight and nine, seven days a week, he was bleeding on the page.

He also is humiliated because now he's got a money couple, has got a bunch of money godfather, so he goes to copa George lucas senior. He's gotta go to his dad, his dad that told him, don't do this. You'll never make any money.

You will be a bomb. And it's almost thirteen and it's like, I have I need money that you have to can you low me money so I can do this movie? And this is the insane thing.

It's so hard to comprehend. And I don't even know how many people would make this decision because he somehow maintains this focus on getting his own project done through the struggle. Okay, so he's got he's writing script is done now.

He needs money to to make the movie. He's going around. No one wants to give the money to make the movie, but they were interested as a director, just not directing his own screenplay.

Think about this. He's gone to money. He is dead to his dad and franzy copa a, they're offering him one hundred thousand dollars to direct a film.

He thinks the film is shit. He hates that is like, these are terrible projects. And he says, no and this is interesting why he's like if graf iti sells, I can't be in the middle another project for someone else.

So he had to turn down every offer. Listen to what he says about this. That was a very dark period for me.

We were in dire financial rates. You are ready, merry OK. As a very dark cleared for me. We were a dire financial states. I turned the movies down at my blithest point when I was a dead to my parents, in that france, for copa, in that to my agent. I was so far in debt, I thought i'd never get out.

IT took years to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance, writing, struggling with no money in the bank, getting little part time jobs, eking out a living trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted, a scrip that nobody wants going to give the persons find. Finally, finances film, one of the greatest return on investment in movie history. Think about that to this guide.

Universals get net ten finally gives them a shot. But tenant produces films that usually only budget. They are small scale films. You know, million dollars are less is usually what tending can do. And even though this is incredible, even though lucas doesn't have any other options, no one else is willing to finances.

You see that his desire, member, how he started George lucas on apologies, ally, invest in what he will use in most himself. He bets on himself, fear he could have been paid, you know, hundred. You could have asked for a big director fees.

I don't know. I want a less directly. Phy, I will cut my director y in half. I want fifty thousand dollars.

I will knowing, directed, I will write IT for that fee is not sure money for that. But I want forty percent of the profits if there are any profits. And at this time, he's doing that.

IT is a big if that american who feet could ever turn a profit draw ucs before. They never had a successful film. He just had a flight. And so through this entire book, there's a huge chunks of the book I think you should read because it's just problem after a problem, after problem, after problem. I'm going to read just a highlight of this from american graftons.

And then I want to tell you, one of my favorite ideas have ever come across says, despite the agreement he had negotiated with the town under which he could pay three hundred night to film on fourth street, local businesses worried, complaining about closing street. When lucas crew arrived, they learned that local council have withdrawn permission for him to film and would not permit to clear control traffic. Look is made the most of the evening anyway, rapidly shootings his way through nineteen steps and scrambling to find a new location.

Then we had a focus problem in the Cameron, insisting Cameron man was running over by a car. Then we had a five alarm fire that was a typical night. So tell tina in his book.

He says, the job of a director is to solve problems, right? Solve problems for your actors. And I read this book by dani mayer, the famous restaurant tour long time ago.

We now you try, eight years, go public, upsetting the table. excEllent. And he tells the story that i've never forgot one.

And so he's at dinner with, uh, standing markets, who is part of the new man, mark family. The family controls is a wiser, older man, probably, I would guess, forty years old than Daniel at this point. I think danny is like mid twice, maybe late twice this point.

And so he's the happiness conversation. He says opening this new restaurant might be the worst mistake i've ever made. Stanly set his Martini down, looked me the iron, said, so you made a mistake, you not understand something important, and listen to me carefully.

The route success is paved with mistakes well handled. His words remaining with me throughout the night. I repeated them over and over to myself and IT LED to a turning point in the way I approached my business.

Stanley lesson reminded me of something that my grandfather had always told me. He said, the definition of business is problems. His philosophy came down to a simple effect of business.

Success lies not in the elimination problems, but in the art, a creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. I tried to reduce that idea with first line right there.

The road success is pay with mistakes. Well, handle that. Just treat of wisdom from an older, well school old entrepreneur, but this idea that definition businesses, problems, right?

Success not lies not in the lumination of problems with the order create profitable problem solving. What I say is like the the way I contends that down to, I can remember myself, business is problems. Therefore, the best companies are just effective problem solving machines. The best directors are just effective problem solving machines. And so if this grueling schedule, he finally finishes the movie, and what he says here, this is what I means, like, if you could die.

The baLance of consistency and intensity, I think he's way to foreign tenable and maybe he does what he he wants to love his life of my business, right? But I think for a long career you have to have more baLance reaching, consistency and intensity. And so he says, lucas was glad that I was over.

You couldn't pay me enough money to go through what you have to go through to make a movie. He said, it's exciting, horrible. You get physically sick.

I get a very bad cough and cold whenever I direct, you feel terrible. There's an immense amount of pressure and emotional pain, but I do IT anyway, and I really love to do IT. It's like climbing amount.

And what is fascine is he starts to preview the movie. The audiences love IT and the studio exacts. Can this is so nuts to me? The study executives can be in theatre full of cheering potential fans and customers, right? And like this movie is good enough.

We're not going to release IT maybe will put on T, V. They're just like completely jerking around, screwing over. And he's obviously depressed and is like this is where he's like i'm going to be an independent ilm maker.

I'm going to control the money. He hates these people. And then they added this problem again, and they take out another four minutes, just like they did in T.

H. X. And this is the importance of which just having good relationships and good friends are truly care about you too, because they're a screening.

Lucas there, copal is there, the city executives there, and the crowd loves IT in the but after in like a lobby. The executives like bitching at George luis and copa. He comes to the fences like you, your mind, you will not hear them.

And he pulls out his chat book, is how much work for the movie. You don't want to put this out, sell to me, and I will invest my own money, and I will release this movie. You have a hit on your hands.

Couple is forcefulness kind of calls her bluff. They went up, were releasing the movie movies is smash hit. Listen to this though.

So he has a great review in new york times. They call the american graphite oc work of art. Now, this was very fascinating. This is the way I thought when you read about George. Look is the way I think of him as I think of families as a craft.

Turns out how he thinks of themselves because he does a lot of stuff himself, didn't really like the fact that people called on a work of art. I think about art is, I don't like the word art because that means pretention and pull shit. And I quit those two directly.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a classman. I don't make a work of art.

I make a movie. And you can also see he's not modest by any means. I know how good I am, he said.

American graffiti is successful because IT came entirely from my head. IT was my concept, and that's the only way I can work. And IT prints money.

Keep mind american graphite. I is released in one thousand and seventy three, so these are nineteen seventy three dollars. I'm about to tell you. American gravitt costs on million dollars, and they earned at the box office fifty five million, making IT one of cinema the most profitable returns on investment ever. Lucas are nearly four million dollars after taxes.

And as he had vowed to his father more than a decade before, lucas was a millionaire, before the age of thirty, he had done IT with two years to spare. And he's got to figure out, what am I going to work on next? And he has, at this point in his life, in the back and got a two page treatment on hand, written the book paper.

And the title, which is crawled in the center of the treatments cover page, is the star wars. Now, one of the smartest things that George luis does is learning from his own mistakes. So he's not going to hire some rerate, the star wars, and he's going to bleed on the page.

There's an entire chapter. How about this is called bleeding on the page? Because George says over over gan, like in the book, I I forgot, I lost track of how many times he says, like he does not believe that he had a natural talent for writing.

And so he calls the process awful. He hates IT, but he makes himself do this, listen to this. So it's going to taken three years to write like the first version of star wars.

But the way he does this is fascine so he's like, okay, i'm onna treat the writing of stars. It's going to be a full time job job OK. So he still working out of his home.

He's got upstairs like a office studio, library kind of thing. And he's like, i'm going to go upstairs at nine o'clock. I can only do one thing.

I can look at the wall or you can write, but I can't do anything else. And from nine to five, eight hours a day, listen to how he describes. I says, I would sit in my desk for eight hours a day no matter what happens, even if I didn't write anything.

It's a terrible way to live. But I do IT. I sit down and I do IT.

I can't get out of my check til five o'clock. It's like being in school, but it's the only way can force myself to write. Then over his desk he would hang this giant like, well counter to track his progress.

And he's like, okay, I have to write five pages every day and you mark a big ex like a big acts on the days when you write five pages. And here's the deal. He may be in myself.

If I can finish my five pages a day early that I can leave so some day he gets, you know, eat is chocolate bars, listen to music, but most days nowhere to written at all. And then he would just go downstairs, and he glare and anger at the TV. He did A T, V dinner, and he would just be pissed off staring, watching the news.

Another idea that is useful is he's having a problem, right, like thinking about the know the a lot of the scenes in stars, it's action. He's got an idea his head, but he's reading on the paper doesn't seem like not matching up. So I thought this is fast.

He makes kind of a demo of sorts if you read the book creative selection, it's episode de 2 ty one another book like four， five times. Anybody building a product, I think, should ad this programmer that worked at apple understand jobs in kano's, ana? And she's mean thing is like kate, uh, we need to make demos like that's how we're going to push these ideas forward, not presentations.

I won't actually see IT. And so George is like trying to explain his idea himself and to others so is like I needed demo and so this is this demo that he makes for star wars and so he says, one of the key visions I had of the film when I started was of a dog fight in space with spaceships, two space ships flying to space, shooting each other. That was my original idea, but trying to get the dog fight in my head on paper was difficult.

And so what he would do is he go to the television and he start tapping old war movies, and specifically footage of airplanes, like, you know, dog fights to airplanes. And he taped twenty hours of these like scenes from random movies, right? He then transferred IT to film, and then he would edit IT down to a real of about eight minutes long.

And the description of this real is fascinating. He didn't yet know. The real of dog fighting would be on the most important bits of film he would ever put together, the wet concrete that he would pour into the mold for the cornerstone of his film empire.

So now we have something that he can show. Now he needs to go to raise the money for the movie. Now, this is fascinating.

We knew I talk to the were already lucas is iris control above all else? And he still stuck to that idea, even though fox was the only studio who said yes. To start, think about this, you know, arguably the most successful movie franchise in history and only one, only one studio said.

And so even though he's negotiating with the only interested part party, only the certain things in contract that he demands, right? And so he wants as much control over the final edit of his film as possible and even says, like, i'm not willing to listen other people's ideas. I want everything to be my way that's an exact call from journey is.

And so I would argue this is his most important what's about sickly? Say, this is most important decision ever. So he starts to go on with fox, this is jar of fox, start going to come back in demand millions of dollars.

And all these grows points for all I said i'll do for the deal memo. But we haven't talked about things like merchandizing rights and seco rights. He would insist that those particular classes Normally considered under brush in a contract.

It's really weird they didn't understand at this point how important merchandise ts were because if remember, I don't a bunch of and they will be surprised they did this show called davy crock. They sound like three hundred million dollars in a year of like those davy crock, like hats. And I was, you know, two decades before what's going on here.

So for fox are just give them away. They're gonna make three to five times, he says three times the amount on toys look as make three times amount of toys as he does on the films and the films they make billion doors it's in so is like, okay, I want you know the merchandise and I want to see cal rights. I'm not gonna ge you more money.

What was not powerful? The course that this is, if you have a smash IT, then your directory, you know, should go from whatever thousand go, a million, go to two million. What are the case is he would also insist the star wars be produced by luis film, thereby ensuring that he could keep on an eye on the bottom line and that any expenses build against the film were really is.

I was very careful to say, I don't want more money, lucas said. I said I don't want anything financial, but I do want the rights to make the schools, and he wants to merchandise rights. Fox was willing to sign over the equal merchandizing rights, mainly because they've gotten the director of american graftons so cheaply.

And no one, not even lucas, appreciated that by securing equal and merchandizing rights, he had just negotiated himself a billion dollar clause. Decades later, fox executives would shake their heads and wonder at lucas instincts and audacity. So let's go back to this idea that businesses problems and that the best companies are just affect the problem solving machines.

He's got a problem. He's got an idea, is head, no one can make the special effects there. No technology in the time.

So what did you do? The solution sometimes to a problem to to find your own company to solve that problem. The solution to this problem is having now is the founding of industrial late in magic.

So he says lucas would not merely hand to produce the visual effects, he would have to developed the technology needed to shoot them in the first place. George was absolutely admitted that he wanted to set up his own shop with his own people. Industrial light and magic would then be an official subsidiary of lucas film, born of necessity, seated with his own money and feeding off lucas need to control every aspect of the production.

Industrial light magic would stand as one of the corner stones of lucas films, empire and investment that would set him well on the way to becoming a multibillion aire. And then this is the quote I shared earlier, which one of my fair quotes in the book. How many people think the solution is gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special company? Ron Howard said adoringly, but that's what he did.

And I ve already talked about the fact that this guy is staring, his persistence, his ball headed. And you have to be, why is that important? People thought he's like making this like little kids movie.

Is this is like he's kind of get the press but he's still pursuing ing because his friend's advice says lucas all stars as his response to a very world in need of new heroes and methodology. His friends said he was a juvenile exercise unworthy of his talent. They said George should be making more than an artistic statement, and that's a good way to go to business.

What talking about? He did that with T. H, X. Seven, thirty eight. How did that go? People were telling me that I should have made apocalypse now, George, I said that they said I should be doing movies like taxi driver.

His own wife was telling in that because he was one of the admin editors for Martins were saying he wanted her husband to make movies like Martins say did. But I think this idea is one of the the most important ideas I ve learned a less like year, year and a half. It's like you have to believe that your own opinion about what you're working on is greater than everybody else's opinion around you.

None of this works if you can't trust your own, just man. And to another important thing, this is really the power of deadlines because he's been working the scrip for three years and he he has to shoot the movie now. And he the important part about having a dead mine is like, if that didn't happen, he, the Price still be working on the scribe now.

I didn't really know where to go with that, and I never fully resolved IT. It's very hard stuff across the desert picking up rocks and not knowing what i'm looking for and knowing the rock i've god is not the rock i'm looking for. I kept simplifying, and I kept having people read IT, and I kept trying to get more of a coherent story, but i'm still not very happy with the script.

I never have been, I have never arrived degree satisfaction when I thought the screen play was perfect if I hadn't been forced to shoot the film, I would debt this still be rewriting IT now the power of deadlines. And again, there's an entire book I might cover. So I I I figured you know this, but when I read all these by graphs, um when i'm done, I go through the biology phy and I find a bunch of new sources to to read more books on in the future journal to more episodes I found one, two, three, four new books from this bible og phy and one of them is just about how got ranching in difficult making star wars was.

Think maybe reading that book and and doing entire episode on IT would be fascine. But I give a brief sanna s here from day one, star wars would be problem playing production that would blow through its budget, mentally and physically exhaust lus and try the patients of executives at fox that that so much so that the studio is very nearly pulled the plug on the film altogether. I forgot how impossible making movies really is.

Look, is wrote, I get so depressed, but I guess i'll get through IT somehow. And another example of this idea, really hard to tell what you have when you're the middle of IT, he goes and visits store s is nearly killing them. This is what I mentioned, is working twenty hours a day on IT.

And he's so deep into IT he goes, decides to fly down the obama to visit his friends steam silbert, who's working on the movie closing counters, that the kind and he brings with him, like this booklet t of all these, like black and White pictures, that from the set and spiller's going through this. And he thought I was amazing. But the reason I bring up to cause spelling g tells us what George are thinking in the time he says George was so depressed, he didn't like anything.

He didn't like the lighting. He didn't like what the camera man was doing. He was very, very upset.

He was saying, i've got myself and to a mess that will never really get myself out of. He was in a state of near despondency so much that he's rushed to the hospital. He feels sharp pains in his chest.

He afraid that we ve having a heart attack. So he gets checked into a hospital, they diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion. So after that is I am never doing the skin.

But he had no intention of really increase ing control over the film. Even if he killed him, he's got to get this done first. And he wasn't IT tii read that section.

I went back and look, I thought he directed all the stories, movies. This is the last movie he directs for twenty two years. Until you start episode one.

The fan is fan minutes. So stores comes out in one thousand nine hundred seventy seven. He's director, and then he stops doing that.

Just he becomes an executive producer, he bankrolls said. He writes the stories, picks up the, the, the directors. But but he really meant IT, like, he hated directing.

And so he finally finishes the filmer. But is IT almost one? And this is fascinating because this happens too.

I mentioned that I was gona do another opposite de on teti at the other ten, tino o. Osso de. But I really listened to tell tino, and I thought IT was really, really good so much.

And I kind of tell, because you get our responses and like the text messages I was getting from, like hit a note, like people really, really like dinner. I'm not. And I looked at the outline for the second time, two episodes making.

And I may be will do in the future, but like men, if I do this right now, it's like it's going to pay on comparison to the opposite. I shelf there for now. But in that source, material some of the researcher was doing can come across this conversation where trentino, you know, reserved dogs, was a hit, but IT wasn't like a smashed commercial hit.

And so he nothing like what poll fixtures can be. And so he actually screens, ten tino, screens poll fiction before the release to bunch of director friends. And everybody hates IT, except one person of the director friends, one of his director friends, he tells funny story, was like, okay, uh, I got to have a real serious conversation.

My friend went like this. He's got to change that. This is good enough. He, like all he gets back from can can film festival. Or con, I do not say that, but he are my way to, you know gets back and then pull fishing wins, all the words there. So okay, guess not, same thing.

But is what at this idea where even you're really gifted friends may not understand the value of your idea, where, you know, you had let's six director friends of the tino, five of them say the socks, think about how do how you k pop fishing and think IT socks. And one was like, super supportive. The same thing happens here.

He goes, and he screens star was and his wife, who had seen the film. That is the first cut. SHE was off, I think a editing for scary SHE burned the tears, he said, as a disaster ban, diploma is just lighting into him.

He goes, what is all this four shit like, you know, the force be with you screaming. And they go to dinner, still running at IT. And yet there was one person in the room who was impressed.

I loved IT because I love the story in the character, says silver. I was probably the only one who liked, and I told George how much I loved IT. That evening, an executive from fox called spiller.

T we all need friends like called filbert to ask what he thought about what he'd seen. Silver told the executive that he thought he had a hit on his hands, one that would eventually make fifty, sixty million dollars. While were we wrong, silbert said, why? Psych onic, fifty, sixty million.

The budget for the original al star wars was eleven million dollars. At the box office alone, IT brought in seven hundred and seventy five million. Think about funding a business.

All you took to build that business was eleven million, and yet that business makes seven hundred and seventy five million just at the box office to take about all the money made since five, four times, five times that amount alone, just in that one movie between merchandise and ride everything else. That reaction from a movie where all these other talented people, all the people in room beside the people, said, this is trash. So much so that some people were crying and how bad I was.

And so before I move on to his biggest bet, which is, hey, i'm going to control the funding for the empire strikes back, this is he going to make a hundred million dollars on this bet that is to make on himself. But I did think on a socket for these really interesting marketing distribution ideas. So something they did before the original star wars came out is they they correctly identify that who is the natural audience for star wars, right? And there is a huge subculture of science fiction and comic book fans, even if they weren't making a bunch of science fiction and comic book movies at the time.

So go like k, we should target these people. Let's do a novi zone and a comic book adaption series before the movie comes out. So they publish like a novelization of lucas is script. They publish in november one thousand and seventy six. V that's before there was even a trailer by february nineteen seventy seven.

So talking about three months, four months later, they had already sold out of its initial print run of one hundred and twenty five thousand copies, and the movie wasn't available to see for another three months. In addition to this, they also had articles written in several of the largest size I magazines, again, several months before there's a kind of like planting the seeds several months before the movies actually available. So says, by the spring of one thousand and seventy seven, enthusiasm for star wars was like a pot roiling to a slow boil, and the lead was about to blow off.

Okay, so now we get to where I would say why the crazy, the most important time in the entire back in his entire life because it's going to set up the future success, uh, for everything that comes after. So he's like, I want to control as much. He was disgusted that star wars is making us money, like at eleven million or budget, hundred and five at the box office.

Fox, the studio all the day was financed film, and they get sixty percent of the profits. And he said they're getting sixty. The way look at, looked at is like they're getting sixty percent for doing absolutely nothing like, well, what he mean, doing things.

And he would compare, contrast what he did for the rest of, like his share, right? He like, I know what i'm doing for my percent. I put my heart and solness my whole career at stake. I have to actually got and make the movie.

And so when the time these conversations with other people are fox, even people he likes like an executive, their alan lad is like, what the how are you doing? And less responses, like what I provided the money, and George settle very fast, sing where his brain works. Because because you didn't provide the money, you go to bank with a lot of credit, and they supply the money, and then you get fifty percent of movie.

This is such an important decision he makes her. George looked at like a businessman saying, wait minute. The studios barred money. Then they take a thirty five percent distribution fee off the top. This is crazy.

Why don't we just go borrow the money ourselves? And he said some of the bravest and our most reckless acts were not esthetic, but financial for the equal look is matter facing form the studio that he would be financing the film himself, using his profits from star wars as collateral for a bank. So this time around, the last time around, the studios got sixty percent money.

This time is A K. I'm getting seventy seven point five percent, and you can get twenty two point five percent. And they take the deal because, of course, you you want to be involved.

Think about like, even if you own less of star ars new, the fox fox is bunching of the movies. So there is been millions of people going to watch star wars too. And at the very beginning is a huge logo.

The fox logo is like advertising for them. And then I loved the way silbert you know he's saw this coming. He's like, uh, spill wasn't at all surprised by the way lucas is in hardball.

He says if you're an executive and you're going into business with George lucas, you are no longer in the twenty of century fox business. You're in the George lucas business and George is gona call every shot. And then another mindless ing fact.

Do you know that silver made over forty million dollars off the original star wars? They are actually, they had a bet. So they again, they don't know what going to be successful before what happens.

So George, look, is working on sipi. I, that star wars one spiller's is working on sipi. I.

That's close encounters of the third, a close encounters of the third time. And so they're okay. Let's bet, who's going to be more successful and much as trade points.

And so spilman gave lucas two point five percent of close encounters of third kind. Lucas s is over two point five percent of star wars. And he says this two five point five percent would earn spill burg more than forty million dollars over the next four decades.

And so this idea about using his assets as caduto bank loan, exactly what fox was doing with there are just a bike company. So he's going to use the money he made from stars. And then he member, he owns all merchandise, zing rates.

This is not just in nineteen seventy eight alone, George lucas cells, forty million star wars figures, that's in a year. And so what he did, he says, look, as with finance, single one action figure at a time. He used the substance tio profits on the film themselves, but also tapped into the revenues from an almost endless stream of star wars merchandise.

At the same time, he's looking for a place where he can actually house all of his studios and build this vision. He had know he's working on winters in the really twenties with Frances for couple. And so this is the idea for skyWalker ranch.

And he has the ideas like, I want to live in a ranches or work in a ranch's. Rather, I, I did. I had forgotten that lucas never live the sky, walk around just where he worked out of.

And so is like, I want a lot of property. I wanted to be a house. I wanted to be in the middle, where, and I want to fill IT with the most advanced technology, where we could sit, see the trees and make movies.

So he buys the first seventeen hundred ages right now. He's building making the equal that eventually, uh, he buys a bunch of surrounding properties and and built five thousand, owns five thousand acres. And so the way to think about what he's doing, he's literally betting the skyWalker ranch on the sequel, he's they're going for a complete freedom or bankrupcy is putting everything he has into this and everybody around him saying, hey, don't do this.

Give up more plants, take more money like this is nuts and so he says even those who knew lucas were gas that his ball headed determination to financing entire film himself. Independence was one thing, bankrupcy was another. But those people were missing the point.

Lucas wasn't paying for a movie. He was buying his own creative freedom. He realized this was an opportunity. He had palon. He says, the perfect opportunity, become independent of the hollywood system.

There will be no studio executives staring over my shoulder in the editing room, no executives forcing him to make arbitrary changes. That is the part that I wanted to avoid. He said, everything I own, everything i've ever earned, is wrapped up in the empire, strikes back.

He said, if this is a flap, I will lose everything he continues. All the money I made from star wars was committed to this film plus more, but I didn't want to go to fox and give them the, give them the movie, because i'd have to give them all the rate backs. Meaning of, uh, he had get money from them.

I had to keep the picture going somehow get people to work without pay, hope to hold up whatever they ask for didn't involve me having to go back and renegotiate with fox. As always with lucis, IT was always a question of control. I wanted my independent so badly, he said.

But at the same time, he has this loan from bank of america, and they see his weekly expenses and his cost are ballooning. For the equal, his weekly payroll alone was a million dollars a week, and they're threatened to pull the loan and call alone and shot down the Operation, which is not considering how big stars won't up becoming. So IT comes up with a unique solution to this problem, and he goes to foxes.

I just I don't want to need more money from you, but I will give you a couple more percentage points than you were getting earlier. I just need you to do one thing. So he says eventually he agreed to give a few points to fox in order to have the studio guarantee a new loan.

From the first national bank of boston. But even with disagreement, lucas film remained the main guarantee of the loan. And if this movie in turn profit, highly likely that his business was going to go honer.

And so the good news was the bank didn't have to wait very long for the outcome. Listen to, this is an entire story in two sentences. The empire strikes back opened in may of thousand nine hundred and eighty and one hundred and twenty six status, and broke attendance records in one hundred and twenty five of them.

No other studio open a single movie against IT. The movie is going to have to make fifty seven million just for lucas to break given and to build skyWalker ranch into the kind of complex I visit. The movie was gonna have to do much more than great.

Even he didn't have worried. IT became the third most successful movie of all time, and George lucas, with pocket more than one hundred million dollars in profits. Lucas had literally but the ranch, skyWalker ranch and one.

And that is where I leave IT for the full story. Highly recommend reading the book. The books is exelon that there's so much more in IT. Like I said, this thing is massive.

The hard cover is over five hundred pages if you want to full, sorry, how they are going reading the book, if you buy the book using the link that in the channel in your market player, you will be supporting the park at the same time. That is three hundred and forty five books down one thousand ago. And I talking again soon.

okay. So what you're about to hear is this question was asked a few months ago, actually recorded a few months ago. They asked, how did histories grates? Think about hiring at all the answers.

People think I have a Better memory than I then actually do. You know, if people say you, David, of a great memory, my wife would laugh at that. I forget things all the time.

It's not to have a good memories. I reread things over and over over again. Every single answer, every single reference about to hear in this train minute media episode came from me searching all of my notes and highlights.

That option is now available to you if you like what you hear, if you think it's valuable, if you're already running a successful company and you want an easy way to reference the ideas of histories grade entrepreneurs, a search able database that you can go through at your convenience anytime you want. Do you go to founders notes dot com and sign up? I want to start out first with why this is so important.

There's actually this book that came out in like one thousand nine hundred ninety seven. It's called in the company giants. I think it's up to two or eight of founders, two stand for NBA a students remember correctly, and they are interviewing a bunch of technology company founders and in the sea jobs, one of them this is, you know, right?

I think even before he came back to apple and they were talking about, well, yeah, we know, important, higher. But in a typical start up, a manager or founder may not always have time to spend recruiting other people. And I first read this, this tea answer to this, no, I don't know, two years ago, and I never forgot IT.

I think it's, I think IT sets up why uh, this question so important and you should really be spending existing the early days based on IT all your time doing this in a typical sort of matter may not always have the time to spend recruiting other people then Steve jumping, I disagree totally, I think is the most important job, assume you by yourself and to start up and you want a partner, you take a lot time finding a partner, right? He would be half of your company. I'm going to pose there this idea of looking at each new higher as a percentage of the company is genius.

Why should you take any less time finding a third or fourth of your company or a fifth of your company? When your N A start up the first tent, people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is ten percent of the company.

So why would would you take as much time as necessary to find all a players? If three, three other ten, we're not so great, why would you start a company where thirty percent of your people, or not so great a small company, depends on great people much more than a big company does. okay.

So to answer this question, the advantage that um that I have making founders and that you have a big part of listen to founders is not only that I you know three hundred ds of biography of punchiness now, but I have all of my notes and highlights stored in my read wise APP and that means I can search for any topic, I can look at the past highlights of books. I can search for keywords so what I did is first of all, like what I sorted do with these may um questions as I read them, decide which one i'm going to do next and then think about IT for a few days. I don't put me that just literally that that I know that the next question just let my brain work on IT in the background for a few days and then i'll go through and searching all minutes.

And so that's what I did here. And so there's a bunch of unit on. I may have like ten or fifteen different founders talking about hiring. The first idea is the most obvious, but I think probably works best when you're already established.

So Steve jobs talking about, hey, you know, great weight to higher is just find great work and find the people that did that and then try to hire them when you're Steve jobs, that's a lot easier right then if you're just somebody does have reputation, maybe you have resources because your companies rather new. Or notice well known David ogly, I just did confessions of an advertising man couple episodes of three o six or like that three and he did the same thing but he's David og vy at that point. So he would find he'd go to magazines, find great advertising, great copyright, and he write a personal letter and then set up a phone call.

And he says he went, he was so well known, and you know, is one of the best in his field that he couldn't even have to offer a job. Just the conversation then the person would the the he would want to hire the person never mention IT and the person would apply to him. Um and so again, I think if you can do that, then of course the state ford who find for somebody is great work.

Usually you can do this. I actually have a friend. I can't say who he is. He's doing this right now actually um every friend that's really good at doing this, he's finding people that do great stuff on unit and they just called called the eating them and then getting convinced to welcome things and that usually work success people like Younger people earlier in the korea.

There's a bunch of different ways to think about this in a bunch of different ways to prioritize. So the first thing that they can, that came to mind, but I found surprising, is you read any biography on, and he had a couple ideas where he felt the optimization, no tables stakes at your intelligent, your driver and in your hardworking, don't like living to this. You are ready to know that.

But he prioritized hiring people with social skills. And so this is what he said. The ability to deal with people is as purchaseable a commodity as sugar or coffee.

And I pay for I pay more for that ability than any other under the sun. There's the two. The second part of this, though, and this is also worth, worth, you have access to more resources.

He, he rockfall would hire people as he found, as he found out to people, not as he needed them. It's not like, okay, standard oil has six open spots. Let's go find six canada, right? He had come across what he considered a counter person.

He didn't even matter if he didn't know what they were going to do. He like, i'm just going to stack his team. And if you really think about the his partner's standard oil, he essentially built a company, an executive team of founders, of course, because he was buying up all our company.

That is very rare. But um there's a line from tight. I want to read you taking for granted the growth of his empire.

He hired county people as found, not as needed. And then I found another idea in the hiring, like the actual interview process. So there's this kind of any verb sh I did two episodes.

I think it's two seventy and two seventy one. He is the most important american ever ah in history in in terms of connecting the scientific field, private rise in the government. The most important person keep a live for the american war effort was F D R.

The second one was vanna bush van robust h is like the force gump of this historical period. He is involved everything from the manhandling ject to discovering like a Young clock shanon, to building a mechanical computer like this guy literally has done. Just he pops up in these works over over again.

If you were reading about american business history during world war two and post world war two, you are going to come across the van ver bush over and over again. Ah I read his fantastic autobiographical LED pieces of the action, and I came across this weird highlight. And so this is his brilliant and unusual job interview process.

And so he talked about orange ation he's running called ammad at ammirati hire a Young physicist from texas named cg smith. The way I hire him is interesting. An interview of that sort is always likely to be on on an artificial basis in somewhat embarrassing.

So I discussed with him a technical point on which I was then genuinely puzzled. The next day he came in with a they need solution, and I hired him at once. Here's another idea.

This is from no emotional, no emotional. The founder of a tari founder, trucker, she's and Steve jobs mentor. He hired Steve jobs. When Steve jobs, like nineteen at a, he would ask people, they're reading habits in interviews. This is why one of the best ways his whole thing was he wanted to build all of his companies, laid on the foundation of creative people. So that's what he's looking for.

He's like, I knew, created people one of the best ways to find creative people, to ask a simple question, what books do you like? I ve never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits. Actually, which books people read is not as important as a simple fact that they read at all.

I have known many talented engineers who hated scientifically but loved, say, books on bird watching, a blatant but often accurate generalization. People who are curious and passionate read, people who are apathetic in a different don't. I remember that such a great line, and I have agreement bit.

I remember one i'm going to read again, a blind, but often accurate generalization. People who are curious impassionate read, people who are apathetic and indifferent. Don't I remember one particular woman who, during an interview, told me that he had read every book that I had read? So I started watching books I hadn't read, and SHE had read those two.

I didn't know how someone in her late when I found that this much time to read so much, but I was impressed. I was so impressed that I hire her right there and assigned her to international marketing, which is having problems. This is why, this is why i'm reading so section to you.

A job with a lot of moving parts benefits from a brain that has a lot of moving parts. IT wouldn't be possible to have read that many books without such a brain. So do you see what I mean? Like we start with? See jobs.

Ying, this is the most important thing that your roles, that leader, the company, the founder to do, right? And you are in it's so important to study this one. Glad this this question exists and why i'm glad that i've I took the time and I had like the four side OK. I should really organized my thoughts and notes because there's no way I would have remembred all this without being being able search and read wise right? But you have rocket closing this is was important to me.

You have bush saying this is how I have now I have known bushel saying, well, here's another weird thing that I learned um let me go through, uh, what warm buffet ts s about this so this is about the quality one thing that is consistent when the jobs buffer bazoo Peter tel is just possible in american. They talk about the importance of trying to find people that that are Better than you. The the hiring bar constantly has to increase and obviously, the large of the company gets that impossible.

Uh, Steve jobs has great quote, where is like pixar was the first time I see I saw an entire team, entire company of a players. But they had four hundred players. They had four hundred team members.

He's like at the time, apple three thousand and six is impossible to have three thousand a players. So there is some number that your company may grow to or just you're just not you you're not going to have thousands of a players in my argument. I am know if you get a four hundred of issue.

I mean, i'll take Steve word for IT on there. And picks are definitely produce great products, but it's probably a lot lower matter as well. So warm buffett would tell you to use David ogle is hiring philosopher and so warn, said charlie, I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good again.

That is why it's the most important function of the founder. Maybe directly next to the product, right about the product, actually those of people building your product, we suspect to the philosophy of organiser's founding genius, deid ogly. This would all would be said, if each of us higher people who are smaller than we are, we should become a company of jars.

But if each of us higher people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants. David a. Jeff bases rather use the variation of organ's idea, too. Jeff used to say in amazon, every time we hire someone, he or SHE should raise the bar for the next higher, so that the overall talent pool is always improving.

They talk about this idea, amazon, where the the, the future higher that we do should be so good that if you had applied for the job, you to have an amazon you won, get in. That's a very interesting idea. Take your time with recruiting.

Take your time with hiring. This is a great book on the history of paypal to actually I recently become friends with the author s name jy SONY um and this is in his book the the most fascinating thing that I found was that paypal prioritize speed. So from the time they they're founded to the time they sell to ebay, like four years, Jimmy spent more time researching the book than for he spent six years researching book.

And I was teasing because like you took a long on a book and they took to start. And the company IT just speaks like the quality he's trying to do, but that as a by product of that, like obviously move fast. But they prior to a speed where everything else except in one area accruing max ledge, kept the bar for talent exceeding the high even if that came at the expensive speedy staffing max cap repeating a higher A B S, higher C S.

So the first b you hire takes the whole company down. Let's read that again, a players hire a players, b players, higher c players. So the first b player you hire takes the whole company down.

Uh, additionally, the team, the company leaders Mandated that all prospects is another idea. You all prospects must meet every single number of the team. Now the next one is the most bizarre.

Makes sense if you study. I did the three part in realism, three part series in reality. And actually to read those books again, because the park is like fifty times bigger than then when I uh, publish his episodes and he's just it's crazy.

So he would hire, based on the coin, the self confidence level of the canada. Listen to this. I have two mines I don't like lawing, okay, this is just okay because this is you read about every ellison and he's one of these people like a really easy interface with because you just know exactly who you, what's important.

That's why I think it's so funny. Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cautious new college graduates. When they were recruiting from universities, they asked people, are you the smart st.

Person, you know? And if they said yes, they would prepare them. If they said no, they would say, who is and they would go higher.

That guy and said, I don't know if you've got to smart these people that way, but you definitely got the most arrogant, elegant. And this is why what the personality the founder is, largely the culture of the company. Apple is Steve jobs. Apple just see jobs in ten thousand lives, right? I just texting founder friend of mine, he listed the podcast actually made to the podcast and he's going to dislike uh, processor discovery like he's already start a bunch of for companies are really cessile.

But he like I think i'm more of this type of founder than the other type of founder, and that's good that he's doing that because he he's hopefully his next mission is like his life mission, you know, and you can get to your emission, you to figure out who you are. Ellison knew who he was. eleven.

Swinging combat of style became a part of the company's identity. This arrogant culture had a lot to do with oracle success. Here's another odd idea for you. Is he sharp, the founder four seasons, actually could figure out that in his business, which was hotels, right, that hiring could hiring the person could actually be a form of distribution for his hotel.

He gave me the idea because of what? What do we know? What do you? I know in our bones that history's greatest founders, all red by grapes, they all read by graphs of people that came before them and took ideas from them.

Is he sharp, are trying to build for a season. What do you think he did? He picked up biography, if seizure ritz, the guy that is risk his named after the great, arguably the greatest year of all time.

And when he realized, oh, shit, rich, he he says, remembering that these are ritz made his who's world famous by hiring some of the former chefs, we decided, do something similar. So what is he start? These are rich went out important with August a scoff e what cez or rich was to to building hotels, August scofield to french cooking.

And so what happens is your partner with world famous ships, people come into your restaurant that's in the hotel because the whole famous shift, and now they know about your hotel, that leads to more get that, that leads to more activating your restaurant that your own, but also leads to more brand recognition of your hotel and then the park that more people staying at total. So hiring as a form of distribution. This is fascinating as a fascinating idea.

Okay, here's a problem. You can identify great people, right? Maybe they even want to come work like if you identify them, you've sold them hey um this is what this is our mission.

This is what we we're doing. And yet humans have complicated lives. They have spouses, they have kids.

They have a reason. Maybe they can move across the country to work for you. You know, they want to.

So there is a problem solving element that you seen these books on. You have to solve like you've Better identify the person. You've recruit them.

They can go for some other reason. okay? Well, the great founders are not going to take no for an answer. I read in in this book called lift off, which is about the first six years of spaces. This is what elon musard they had anticipated.

Ted, his friend's issue, having convinced, must they need to bring this? Bringing Young engineer from turkey on board, IT became a matter of solving the problem. His wife had a job in san for cisco.

SHE would need one in los Angeles, right? Because as for space sexes, at the time there, these are solvable problems. And island's Better to solving problems.

And almost anyone else must therefore came into his job interview prepared about halfway through, muss told the guy that he wants to hire. So I heard you don't want to move to L. A.

And one of the reasons is that your wife works for google. Well, I just talk to Larry and they're going to transfer your wife down to L. A.

So what are you going to do now to solve this problem? Must could called his family Larry page, the cofounder of google. The engineer sats stunned silence for a mama.

But then he replied, given all that, he would come to work at space sex. That's really smart. There is another idea when you're promoting or you're gona promote when with inner, from without, you know that's dependent on you depending on what what's going on.

I do think this is interesting though. This is gaining lesh wab, who built this, this really a valuable chain of a like higher companies in pacific northwest, actually found out about because charlie mongers OK. You should read the biography.

He said IT in. He didn't say to me personally. He said that to in like one of the bircher meetings that to study lesh, rob had one of the one of the dest financial incentive structures on any company.

Try mugger come across. So this is what lesh wab dead. He did not want to hire from. He did want to hire other people from other companies because they might come with bad habits. He liked to train his own executives.

And so he says, in our thirty four years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside. Every single one of our more than two hundred and fifty managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management job by working up.

And in another thing, if you're going to hire the best of the best in a players there, a players don't like to be recommended. Ed, and so this came in Larry Miller automotive phy called driven. He owns like, he owned like ninety three companies.

Although you tak cordiale ships movie, there's all kinds of crazy. He also owned the the A B T. nuta.

And what was fascinating, he's trying to recruit Jerry sloan as the coach at at the point. And Jerry sloan had only take the job on one condition. And I really like IT.

I really like this idea. If you hire me, let me run the team and business, right? That's what you're hiring for.

One of the best things we had ever done was higher Jerry song as coach at the time. He said, i'm only going to ask you for one thing. If I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions.

If you hire me, let me run the team slash business. Here's another idea from Thomas Edison that I think is faster really. I the way I think about the founders, like you're developing skills that you can't hired for you, you're going to hire for everything else, but you shouldn't be herself.

And Edison wasn't Edison expressing his views on the preliminary role of applied scientists, which, what he considered himself, coin the expression, I can hire mathematicians, but they can't hire me. And so when I read that paragraph at the first time, I know I left myself was developed skills that you can hire for capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. S A laughter will give you advice that you need to hire people online with your thinking and values.

Hire the best people. This is vital. Hire people who think as you do and treat them well in our business, they are top priority.

So this ideas that seems kind of weird like hire people who think like you, there's obvious ly not one right way to build a business. I think that your business should be an expression your personal in who are as a person at the core. And so I think there is an art to the building of your business.

And the reason to use the word art, I don't meaning you like a holy to know, pretentious manner. That's me at all I don't give me care about no are at all really. I mean that you're making decisions not just based on economics, like there are non economic important decisions based on how you're building your business.

Like you could probably make more money doing a decision a, but decision a goes against who you are as a person are you just don't like IT or it's just not as elegant or beautiful and so therefore you don't do IT. So that's what I mean about, you know hire people who think you you do and would have for whatever reason. When I read S A lot to say that I was like OK that there's like this art to what she's doing.

One thing that can be helps recruiting, uh, this computer. T O, I think this is the book. Zero to one, understand that most companies don't even differentiate their pitches to potential recruits and to hiring.

So therefore, like they're just gonna buy as a by product that you're gna wind up with a lower overall. And so he says, what's wrong with valuable stocks? Smart people are pressing problems. Nothing but every company makes us these claims so they won't help you stand out general and undifferentiated pitches to join your company. Don't see anything about why your recruits to join your company instead of money of instead of many others.

So that idea like your pitch, you're actual, he will tell you you you shouldn't building on difference in commodity business, but even above and beyond like your the the mission that you're trying to engage everybody to join you in that pitch, that say sail you're trying to make to potential recruit should be differentiated, should not if that person's playing to five real jobs, there should not be like like, they may not like your mission, they may not like your peach, but there shouldn't be able to compare anything else. Another quote from no one bush higher for passion and intensity. That's what he would do, or that's what he did when he found Steve jobs.

If there was a single characteristic to separate Steve jobs from the massive employees, IT was his passionate enthusiasm. Steve had one for one speed full blast. This was the primary reason we hire him.

And one thing all these things have a common, is that you know how important hiring is, and when something important, you do IT yourself. This is, again, elon moston hiring. He interviewed the first three thousand employees of spaces that import was one of music's most valuable skills.

With the ability determined whether someone would fit his mold, his people had to be brain, they had to be hard working, and there could be no nonsense. There are a ton of phones out there and not money. Who are the real deal? Must set of his approach to interviewing engineers? I can use tell within fifteen minutes, and I can sure, I can for sure, tell within a few days of working with them.

Must made hiring a party. He personally met with every single person the company hired through the first three thousand employees. He required late nights and weekends, but he felt he was important to get the right people for his company.

And then the close on this, we started with Steve jobs telling us why IT was so important and why should be a large part of how you find time. And now we will close with what you do after what you do after you hire the person. This what he says, it's not just recruiting after recruiting, its building environment that makes people feel they're surrounded by equally talented people and their work is bigger than they are.

The feeling that their work will have a tremendous influence and is part of a strong clear vision. So that is the end to that twenty minute many episode. I just relist n to the holding and IT IT really does.

I think it's a perfect explanation and illustration of why I think founders notice so valuable because some of those books have read in five, six years and just the ability to have a heritable database of all these. These ideas like this, collected knowledge of some of these is greatest entrepreneurs to reference and then contextually apply our own businesses. It's nothing short of like it's magic.

It's a really the way think about IT. I think it's a massive superpower, gives me a massive superpower. I couldn't make the pocket without. I also think if you have access to IT to make your business Better. And so if you already running a successful business, I highly recommended you invest in description, and you can do that by going to founder notes dot com.