Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Ben Gilbert 0:00 I think you both know enough about Acquired that I don't need to go into the general shtick and spiel.

Brian Koppelman 0:06 Right on.

David Rosenthal 0:07 I love it. I'm so honored that you guys have listened. It makes my day. Thank you. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 0:11 [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 0:11 That's why we said yes. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 0:15 [laughing]

Speaker 0:15 [upbeat music] Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Hmm. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down. Say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?

Ben Gilbert 0:32 Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs, and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

David Rosenthal 0:46 And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco.

Ben Gilbert 0:52 And we are your hosts. David, I feel like today is the natural culmination of a journey we started in May of 2019, when we did our Uber episode on the day of their IPO.

David Rosenthal 1:03 God, it feels like another lifetime ago, but it was only two and a half years ago.

Ben Gilbert 1:06 Well, for listeners who don't know, the events of, you know, Uber leading all the way up through their IPO, and the implosion around that, and the just insane story that all of that was, is coming out as a Showtime series on February 27th called Super Pumped. I have to say, it's a little bit surreal, the world that we live in, of venture and startups, as we will talk about on this episode, becoming part of entertainment and pop culture like that.

David Rosenthal 1:36 And even more surreal that this is made by Brian Koppelman [chuckles] and Joe Gordon-Levitt.

Ben Gilbert 1:42 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:42 There is no world that I would've imagined we would find ourselves here.

Ben Gilbert 1:46 No, and on top of that, there is no world that I would've thought we would've found ourselves in where they're our guests on Acquired to talk about it, and so we're ludicrously fortunate today for that to be the case. And for those who don't know, Brian is one of the three executive producers, writers, and showrunners for Super Pumped. You probably also know his work from Billions and from Rounders, which is my all-time favorite poker movie that I watched about 100 times in high school and college when I was playing a lot of Texas Hold'em. Brian's work over the decades is just awesome. We're just lucky to have him making stuff out in the world. Joe, as many of you already know, stars in Super Pumped, playing Travis Kalanick, or TK. Of course, you know his previous work, too: Inception, Looper, recently Mr. Corman, many other great movies. Uh, Joe is actually a founder himself of the company HitRecord, that we discussed a few months back on the LP Show, and just a delightful human being.

David Rosenthal 2:42 Totally.

Ben Gilbert 2:43 And, uh, one note for listeners: we wanna wave our, our arms around and say we're normally a pretty family-friendly podcast, but this episode does have some strong language, as does the show itself, obviously. And before we dive in on our interview, for those of you who listened to our episode with Brendan Eich, you know that we are very excited that these special episodes are brought to you by the Solana Foundation. Many of you know this, many of you have talked with us on LP calls about this. Frequently, we're talking in the Slack about it, but what is Solana? Solana is a global state machine and the world's most performant blockchain. Now, what does that mean? It means that developers can build applications with super low transaction fees and low latency without compromising composability, since it's all on a single chain with a global state. They're capable of processing tens of thousands of smart contracts at once, but instead of actually talking to the folks at Solana Labs or the Solana Foundation, we wanna use this time to talk to some of the folks building the protocols and decentralized applications on top. Today, we want to feature a big pillar of the Solana ecosystem, the Phantom Wallet. Here's Brandon Millman, the CEO of Phantom, to tell us all about it himself. So Brandon, what is Phantom?

Speaker 3:59 Phantom is the fastest-growing crypto wallet that helps users do more with the world of DeFi and NFT apps. Not only does Phantom help users securely store their crypto, it also helps them do stuff with their crypto, like trading tokens and collecting NFTs. From our launch in April 2021, we've quickly grown from zero to 2.4 million users. If you wanna start using crypto or Web3 applications, Phantom is the easiest, more s- consumer-friendly option out there.

Ben Gilbert 4:25 Well, growing to 2.4 million people, I know we're in early 2022, so it has to be in a year or less. Definitely, the proof is in the pudding there on people being attracted to its ease of use. I know it's built on Solana. How did you make the call to build in that ecosystem?

Speaker 4:41 Actually, from 2017 to 2021, before we started Phantom, the co-founders and myself all worked at this previous crypto startup called 0x, which was focusing on building DeFi technology on Ethereum, and so we actually have a very deep Ethereum background and worked in that space for a while. And while we were working there, we, we noticed that wallets were, in general, pretty hard to use and are mostly geared towards developers. We realized that in order to really bring crypto to the mainstream, we needed to develop an experience that was much more user-friendly. At the same time, the underlying Ethereum platform was becoming more and more expensive and less usable and approachable to the average consumer, so we decided we needed a faster and cheaper platform, and that platform ended up being Solana.

Ben Gilbert 5:26 That's great. And are you desktop only, or... I saw something about launching mobile recently.

Speaker 5:30 We started off as a Chrome extension, but more recently released our iOS app at the end of January.

Ben Gilbert 5:37 Our thanks to Solana and Phantom. If you are considering developing on Solana, head on over to solana.com/developers, or click the link in the show notes. All right, listeners, join us in the Slack, talk about this episode, acquired.fm/slack. Hear Joe's interview on the LP Show, just search Acquired LP Show in any podcast player, or click the link in the show notes. And without further ado, on to the interview.... Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brian Koppelman, welcome to Acquired.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:05 Thank you.

Brian Koppelman 6:06 Thrilled to be here, guys.

Ben Gilbert 6:07 Ah, we are super pumped for this. [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:11 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 6:12 And now we have to leave. Joe, this isn't fun. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 6:16 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:16 I brought these guys to you, Brian, and they-

David Rosenthal 6:18 Oh.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:18 They let us down. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 6:19 Ben loves these little quips. It's just great.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:21 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 6:22 It's a little much. Joe, the first question we have that our audience has been asking is: how has your life changed since being on Acquired? Are you, like, getting recognized in, [laughing] in cafes now?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:32 Yeah, by Web3 nerds. I'm huge in-

Ben Gilbert 6:35 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6:35 I was at, what is it, EthCon or something, and, and everyone was super stoked. I was joking just there, but it's true, and I'll earn some instant credibility perhaps by saying, when I listened to your Ethereum episode, it really did change my mind about what Web3 is, and I really wasn't aware of any of its merits. I was kind of only aware of the hype and the scams, and I'm coming quite strongly around to seeing how important it is for the future, and I'm, I'm still really just early in learning about it, but you really inspired me, and it makes me excited for, for what it's gonna become.

David Rosenthal 7:11 Thanks, Joe. We, we are all early, though.

Ben Gilbert 7:13 We seek to inform, not to sway too much, but yeah, appreciate the thoughts.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 7:17 That's probably why I was swayed, 'cause the folks swaying, I'm like, "Get the... Get the fuck out of here." [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 7:22 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 7:22 "I don't believe you." Yeah. [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 7:24 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 7:24 Let's start right in with Super Pumped, and I have a ton of other stuff I wanna talk with you guys about, previous projects. You know, Brian, I'm a huge Billions fan. I wanna talk about the art of storytelling a little bit and bringing these things to life, but let's start right in with Super Pumped. How did you two meet? Had you known you wanted to work together before, or was it just the serendipity of this project?

Brian Koppelman 7:46 Well, Joe doesn't know this, but we actually met in a makeup trailer once.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 7:50 No, I don't know this. Were you sa- you been saving this story? [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 7:54 Yeah. I had a day as an actor in a movie you starred in.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 7:59 Right, okay.

Brian Koppelman 7:59 And we were in the makeup trailer, and I was like, "Ryan's a friend of mine," and you were very nice about it, but I di- I did not ID myself as a filmmaker.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 8:07 Right.

Brian Koppelman 8:08 I was there to be a day player, and I didn't want-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 8:09 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 8:09 ... to go into a whole, like, other thing.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 8:11 On the movie Premium Rush, and he's talking about Rian Johnson.

Brian Koppelman 8:14 Premium Rush, and yes, Rian Johnson, who Joe's worked with a number of times. David Levine's my creative partner, lifelong best friend. We do everything together, and on this project, Beth Schachter was showrunner with us and really ran the writers' room with us and has made the show with us. But it's been rare over the course of my career that I can tangibly point to things that agents have done that were really incredibly, just clearly positive.

Ben Gilbert 8:37 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 8:37 But this is one of those cases, where Dave and I wrote the pilot, sent it to our agents. They gave it to an agent... W- and one of our agents works with Joe, has been Joe's agent for a long time, a great guy named Warren Zavala. Warren read the script, and we had said, "Joe Gordon-Levitt's our first choice for this. He's the person we think could do this in the world." Warren read the script on a Friday, sent it to Joe on Saturday in New Zealand. Joe read the script. On Sunday, David Levine, Joe, and I got on a phone call, at the end of which we shook hands virtually, and that was it, and we were-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 9:14 Mm

Brian Koppelman 9:14 ... partners going to make this show together. It was really incredible.

David Rosenthal 9:17 And how often does something like this happen? I'm intuiting not often.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 9:21 No. No, not often at all.

Brian Koppelman 9:23 Very rarely. [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 9:25 So I've known Warren since I was 19 years old or something. I'm, I'm 40 now. I was his first client, actually. He was an assistant to another agent of mine, and I had quit acting and was going to college when he got his desk, so to speak, and he called me, and he was like, "I'm an agent now," and I was like, "I'm not acting." He was like, "You should act," and it went from there. [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 9:48 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 9:48 And he's been a fantastic confidant and collaborator ever since. He's truly a, an ideal agent. He doesn't bring me that much stuff with the level of enthusiasm with which he brought me Super Pumped, 'cause he knows that I hate almost everything. [laughing] And he said, "I think you're really gonna like this. I think this is something you should probably do," and, uh, he very rarely uses words that strong, so I read it right away, and he was right.

Brian Koppelman 10:14 Well, you, you ask how rare that is, I mean, it is incredibly rare, and Warren is one of these people who... where so many agents, the cliches are true, but Warren's not full of shit, and he's, in the past, said, "This isn't gonna work." He's very quick to say why it's not gonna work or think- and he was like, "I think Joe's gonna dig this. I'm sending it." And from our perspective, look, uh, not to embarrass you, Joe, but it's really challenging to find actors who can project the kind of intelligence that Joe can project because Joe is such a thoughtful and smart person, and-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 10:42 Thank you

Brian Koppelman 10:43 ... he does the work. No, you do, dude. You do the work. You do the reading. You know, you do the homework, you do the reading, you do the research. You're prepared. You're ready to talk about all of it. You're somebody who comes to set having mastered the scene and is then willing to play, and so there were all these things that we needed Travis to be, because we also needed Travis to be somebody who you believed could enlist all these people in his world-changing vision, and we needed an actor who wouldn't try to protect himself at every turn, an actor who wouldn't be worried about doing things that were unsavory or wrong, morally questionable, an actor who would be willing to, you know, look somebody in the eye and yell at them 'cause they weren't super pumped. And-

Ben Gilbert 11:28 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 11:28 ... it's not easy to find that combination of things in an actor, and so it was a very short list for us, and this happened throughout this whole project, and it is rare, as rare as in Silicon Valley, to get exactly the investors you want as your angels or in your Series A. And Joe knows 'cause he was part of the conversation. I mean, Joe was our first choice, Kyle Chandler was our first choice, and Uma Thurman. Kerry Bishé is the only person we gave the role of Austin to. Like, we just got our first choices throughout this whole thing, and partially because once Joe was on, it made other actors want to be on it, partially 'cause-... this is a really important story to tell about America at this time.

Ben Gilbert 12:05 So I'll ask this in reverse chronological order, but I'll ask you both the same question. Joe, what was it about this project that made you say yes? Why was your agent right in telling you, "I think you're really gonna like this?"

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 12:18 Within a first few pages of reading the script, the dialogue in this show is fireworks. It's just fun. [upbeat music] We are kings, gods.

Brian Koppelman 12:32 Travis's ego is getting in the way and needs to be checked. No one who wills an entire sector into being is in a balanced place.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 12:40 My own investors are plotting my demise. [upbeat music]

David Rosenthal 12:44 It's gone too far. I can't line up with you. I gotta stick with the company.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 12:48 I am the company!

David Rosenthal 12:51 I don't think I've watched a show with that much, like, profanity per minute in a long time. [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 12:56 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 12:56 And that must just be fun. And it's so, like, well-written profanity, too, and so Uber. It's great.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 13:02 Well, that's another reason I think we all have inside of ourselves, I think, a certain, ah, beast or animal that just wants to take what you want and fuck everybody else, and win at all costs. It is part of human nature. It's our, you know, hunter-gatherer ancestry or something. But most of us don't indulge that urge because there are consequences to pay if you do. And you get to see the consequences that Travis suffered because he did, 'cause... But Travis does. He just goes as hard as he can into that, that just animal instinct. And who doesn't want to indulge that side of themselves? So seeing the opportunity to step into an arena and just be that guy sounded like a lot of fun. To me, Uber serves as a excellent example of a larger trend that I think needs to be talked about, which is, what happens when the modus operandi is profits above all, shareholder value up before everything? Who cares who we impact? Who cares how anybody feels? None of that matters. The only thing that matters is growth, growth, growth. And it's not just Silicon Valley that's guilty of this mentality, but Silicon Valley's doing it better than anybody else right now. And this felt like just such a great story to tell to exemplify that kind of trend in our culture. It's not necessarily new, but it's as acute as ever right now, and it's about to drive the human race off a cliff [chuckles] and I think it's something we as a generation need to change, and so it's worth telling stories about.

Ben Gilbert 14:41 Yeah. Brian?

Brian Koppelman 14:43 Joe's exactly right, and I think we were really compelled by a couple of questions. And for us, as for, like, the best investors when I've talked to them, curiosity is something that makes you genuinely really curious, where you just can't look away from the question until you start to understand what's behind it. It, as an artist, is a really great and rare thing. And this question of disruption and the cost, the price, what gets disrupted is the benefit of having this new utility, of changing this infrastructure. Is the convenience worth what's on the other side of the ledger? And then I think twinned with that is the question of, what happens sometimes when revolutionaries unseat fascists? Are they able to avoid becoming fascists?

David Rosenthal 15:49 Right. [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 15:50 And is it inevitable that, like Hannah Arendt talks about, that there's gonna be lost treasure in the revolution, and that lost treasure is the whole reason for the revolution [chuckles] in the first place? And so, uh, to us, Uber... Yeah, there are many Silicon Valley stories, but to us, the Uber story, in the way that Mike takes you into it, the Uber story is one that raises those questions, and we hope the series raises those questions, and maybe the series posits some theories. So those are, like, sort of the thematic, resonant reasons, but also all the stuff Joe says applies, too, which is these people are fascinating fucking people, man. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 16:35 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 16:35 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 16:35 And they're so much fun to listen to, and watch, and think about, and they just fire you up. And then lastly, and to this audience, I'll say this, which won't mean that much to that many people, but I know Bill Gurley, and I know Bill Gurley separate from this, and I like Bill Gurley. This is gonna sound odd, but I'm very friendly with Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley. There can't- there's, like, five of us, I think, in the world.

Ben Gilbert 17:01 [laughing] You're the bridge. You're the bridge!

David Rosenthal 17:03 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 17:04 And the book talks about this, but it seems to me there's really a cost that Bill Gurley paid, or a question for Bill Gurley, which is, which is the worst cost? Leaving this thing in place that might imperil the whole endeavor, but protecting the way that I'm thought of by a c- group of founders-

David Rosenthal 17:21 Mm-hmm

Brian Koppelman 17:21 ... or engineering the removal of this person, forever changing or cementing my reputation in a certain area in a way that's gonna harm this thing that I've really spent a lot of time trying to answer? So there's all these amazing moral questions and life questions for TK, many for Arianna, and then Gurley has this, his own really challenging question, and so that seemed, uh, just amazing to, like, dive into.

David Rosenthal 17:50 Bill Gurley is a giant, literally a giant among venture capitalists. But that, like, a venture capitalist would be a primary character on a show, the likes of which you all would create, like, I never in a million years would have imagined that 10 years ago. [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 18:05 I, I'm gonna challenge that just a little bit because, like, Christian Bale plays Michael Burry.... in a movie. Why would a quant investor hedge guy be worthy of- because the-- and I'll tell you why. Because we're fascinated by people who put it all on the line, man. Our culture is fascinated by people who step up to the craps table and say, "I'm gonna put it all on hard eight," or, "I have a reason why I can count card..." We are fascinated by people who make these decisions and are either right or wrong, I think.

Ben Gilbert 18:37 So knowing Bill personally, but working from source material in Mike's book, as a producer, showrunner, writer, how do you weigh working both from source material, but also when you have your own, you know, primary source information from getting to know these people in real life, too?

Brian Koppelman 19:00 Well, we didn't talk to the people in the show for the show, meaning I told Bill, because I'm responsible person in that way, I said to Bill, "Mike Isaac sent me his book. We're gonna go tell this story. Anything I may have heard from any conversation that I had with you socially is not in the show. We're starting from Mike's book. It's all gonna be sourced by him, and we're going that way." And then a wall went up on both sides, and that's that.

Ben Gilbert 19:29 Huh, fascinating.

Brian Koppelman 19:31 I mean, you gotta serve the story you're telling. That's what I... You know what I mean? Uh, you gotta serve the story you're telling.

Ben Gilbert 19:36 Yeah.

Brian Koppelman 19:36 I mean, Bill Gurley and I mostly talk about Jason Isbell, so the... I mean, we mostly talk about rock and roll with each other.

Ben Gilbert 19:42 And, Joe, how does that manifest for you as the sort of lead actor? Do you also interface with Mike, or does Mike sort of work through, you know, David and Brian, and how, how does that work?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 19:55 I had a, a couple conversations with Mike, but, no, mostly I just read his book, and beyond that, I wanted to talk to a bunch of people that worked closely with Travis, uh, because I wanted to know not just what happened, but how it felt to have a conversation with him or be in the room with him, or what was it actually like personally? 'Cause that's my job. I'm not a journalist. I'm the actor, so it's my job to, like, make it feel human. So I talked with quite a number of people that worked closely with him and did learn a lot of different things that were different from what you might read in the press about him personally, about his personality. Uh, 'cause a lot of what you read is, and justifiably so, is questionable decisions he made, arguably unethical behavior, and I think this show does not at all shy away from showing those things. But I also wanted to show not just those things. I don't- can't reduce this person to these headlines. I want to show a whole human. That's what makes, I think, a gripping performance. And hearing from people about a, a lot of [chuckles] positive things, actually. A lot of people said how much they liked, how inspiring he was, how compelling he was, how much energy he would bring to a room, and that was really fascinating 'cause that's not always evident when you read articles about him or even when you read Mike's book. And so finding that balance of like, I wanna actually make the audience love this guy, but also then be confronted with, "Oh, no, this person who I was sort of falling in love with is doing some really seemingly terrible things," how do we rectify that? 'Cause to me, that complexity is what makes for a great story.

Ben Gilbert 21:39 Yeah, and Brian talked about how impressive it is that you, as an actor, are willing to portray someone who's doing bad things, where it sort of looks like Joe, so does Joe do bad things? You know, the humans are subconscious in that way.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 21:51 Oh, man, on a daily basis, the director would say, "Cut," and I would, I would just instantly start apologizing. [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 21:57 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 21:58 I'd say, "I'm sorry. It's not me. Everyone knows it's not me, right?" The people that I've now known, been working with every day for months and months, I'm still having to reassure them, like, "You know I'm not really like, like this, right?" Yeah, all the time. All the time.

Ben Gilbert 22:10 I've seen a lot of your movies. You usually play someone pretty likable. Did you feel uncomfortable playing someone that, at least in my opinion, on balance, is less likable than the character you usually tend to play?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 22:23 It's funny. I mean, it, it depends on what you mean by likable. I, I bet, actually, that this character will be more well-liked than... Well, for example, I just did a show called Mr. Corman, where, you know, it's a guy who's trying his best to do the right thing at every turn and just stepping in it, and second-guessing himself, and lacking confidence, and, like, this is the other side of me, maybe. [chuckles] And I think Travis will be more instantly winning because if you're on camera, people respond to confidence, and Travis Kalanick is nothing if not confident.

David Rosenthal 22:53 You know, we have these business moments in our culture that we're sort of are like Rorschach tests. Like, you know, there's Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker, there's The Social Network, which we've talked about, were maybe written or created intending one thing and then get received... Joe, you know, the responding to confidence in your thought that, like, people will like Travis more than you might think. How much was that in your minds making this?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 23:18 Brian, you can speak to this, but it was one of the, one of the first things I think I brought up with you guys, is, like, how can we make sure that we don't inspire a new generation of young entrepreneurs to be assholes? And I do think it is a concern, and, you know, does Scarface inspire people to be criminals? Does The Wolf of Wall Street inspire people in the financial sector to be crooks? You know, maybe some. Like, when you're talking about large audiences, all sorts of people are gonna take any given movie or show all different ways. But I think because this show is so unflinching in shining light on the protagonist's shortcomings and dark moments, I would hope at least that the majority of the audience will come away u- understanding this is a cautionary tale as opposed to a glorification of [chuckles] bad behavior.

Brian Koppelman 24:05 Hundred percent. When you watch the last three episodes of the season, it's not impossible that you'll have some empathy for Travis or sympathy for moments, or think he, in some micro moments, was treated wrongly by people who aren't really his equal in the field of war or whatever, but there are moments-... in, like, the fifth, sixth, and seventh episodes that the lens changes, who we're seeing the story through changes, and the point of view shifts in a way that makes certain things clear. But also, I would say this: there's a waveform to this, which you all know a lot more about than I do, about how things like waveforms work. I just know what they kinda look like. But over time, you're gonna understand that Wolf of Wall Street's not glorifying Jordan Belfort, like, you just are. In the moment, people might be taken with Leonardo DiCaprio, right? In the moment, people might think that this guy is a master of the universe. But even now, if we watch that movie and we see the end when he's pathetically selling the pens, you know, telling the people, "Sell me a pen," when it's the real guy, and you apprehend that, you understand the emptiness, you understand the cost. And yeah, in the moment, there's a lot of glitter, but if you actually look at it, it's really clear what they're talking about. And I have a lot of confidence in people over the long term, understanding these things that we make. As, as artists, we can only be attracted to the things that call us, that ask these questions, and we have to tell those stories as rigorously and with as much truth as we can, and we have to raise the questions that we find compelling, and we have to imbue it with our most personal thoughts on the matter. And then we have to trust that eventually, that if we do our jobs well, that thing will be received. We can't do anything other than that and think that we're engaging in art. So that's the only way I can answer it. I can't be concerned about the small group of people who are gonna be like, "I wanna be just like that fucking guy!" And there will be those people.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 26:27 [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 26:28 But I think we're trying to shine a light on what it means to be that kind of fucking guy, and what we're saying as a society when we prop up people who have incredible verbal acuity and great math skills, and the ability to galvanize in a way that serves us because we all take Ubers, but in a way that serves that individual more and that does a disservice to huge swaths of people that we're not thinking about as we get into the back of the Uber. So if you get in the back of the Uber and you're like, "That guy's cool," but for one moment, you think about the person in the office who maybe wasn't treated right, or the driver who thought he was gonna have a fleet of cars because there were deals that encouraged him to buy those cars, and then suddenly those cars are being towed away, which we sh- show. It's in the book, and we show it. Maybe you'll just have a moment of empathy for your Uber driver that you wouldn't have before. Maybe you won't, but maybe you will.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 27:21 Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I think it's sort of an important difference between art and other professions, you know, like being investors or being entrepreneurs. I think an artist's job is more, like Brian said, make people feel something and ask questions, whereas it's not really our job to provide the answers to those questions. That's not art. I'm actually curious, I said a minute ago, what happens when companies are only incentivized by profit? Where does that leave us with the world? It seems like it's maybe leading us towards disaster. What are your thoughts on that? And, like, do you see a need to try to change that, and how could that change, or what would that do to, to your jobs as investors? I'm curious to hear your, your thoughts on that.

Ben Gilbert 28:09 I really like your framework of artists' jobs are to make you, you feel and to ask the important questions, but not provide the answers. And if you're working in an operating company, or you're an entrepreneur, or you are an investor, your job is the answers. And to be more concrete about that, your job is to create value for your shareholders. The vast majority of the time, the way you do that is put something out in the world that creates value for customers, and then capture some percentage of that value that you create. And that thing that you're creating, that product you're creating, that value you're creating out in the world for people, is necessarily an answer to something, presumably some problem that they had. And so, you know, s- some business can be conducted in a more artful way, but it is kind of antithetical. Y- your job is to give something to someone that solves a problem for them and then collect value from that. And for art, this is why you can't put a price on making someone feel a certain way. It's lightning in a bottle. When you have it, and you're able to make someone who rarely cries, cry, that's sort of that magical, priceless thing.

Brian Koppelman 29:17 There is a continuum, though, isn't there? Because, like, if I think about your episodes, about a16z and Mosaic to, uh, Netscape. Like, in Mosaic, Mark Andreessen's an artist.

Ben Gilbert 29:30 Oh, yeah.

Brian Koppelman 29:30 He's changing the world as, as an artist, I would assert, and he's looking at something that doesn't exist and seeing a way that he wants to see the world. And he- no one even knew who owned the underlying code. No one knew who owned the thing. Did the school own it? Did the institute own it? But then partners come into it, things change, and it becomes a business, and priorities shift. And what-- that's fascinating to me, always, like, what happens to an artist like that? You know, maybe Mark's the smartest person in, in the world. You could make that argument, but he's also, like, this great visionary, artistic thinker who then becomes a business person.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 30:07 An incredible business person, right? [chuckles] Yeah.

Brian Koppelman 30:09 And what happens when that ordering switches around, of priorities? And that's part of all this... I think all these people had it in them to do art in some way.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 30:18 The show shows this so well, like, so, so well. Like, 'cause, yeah, Travis, you know, like, a lot of what you're describing about an artist was him. Like, he willed this thing into existence. All the cards were stacked against him, and it is unquestionably a better experience, and there were things totally wrong with the way the world was before.

David Rosenthal 30:39 ... And then you had that great scene with Gurley, where he's talking with his wife. Or no, he's with his partners, right? And he's like, "You know, I used to think that half of founders were angels, and half of them were David Koresh, and then I realized they're all David Koresh." [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 30:53 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 30:53 That was so good. [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 30:56 Well, thank you. And, yeah, that seemed really significant. And it, it's fascinating to me that nobody here is bringing up a guy who's, like, the closest thing to an artist in this, which is Garrett Camp. I mean, if you think about Garrett and how much he wanted to just be doing his other company because it was fun and art, and if you think about that company, that was like an art project. I loved it. StumbleUpon was the greatest... Not a business, right?

David Rosenthal 31:20 Totally not a business, but great.

Brian Koppelman 31:21 I used it all the time. It was the best. It would just take you on a total adventure on the internet, and I loved it. And Garrett, to me, is an artist within this whole thing, you know, and who figured out, "I need a Medici. I need a couple Medicis. I need a worker, I need an investor, I need someone who's gonna get our Medici." Like, and was able to sort of put that st- stuff... I don't- I've never met Garrett or spoken to him, but I, in my head, I, I view him that way.

David Rosenthal 31:48 Supposedly, according to what we found, part of his original inspiration for Uber was watching, uh, Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig James Bond film. There's a scene where he summons his car with his phone. [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 31:59 We couldn't get the rights to Casino Royale. It's, like, the only time I've ever not got the rights to anything. We tried, and we couldn't get the rights.

David Rosenthal 32:05 It would've been so great.

Brian Koppelman 32:06 That's in the book. It's in Mike's book. That's in Mike's book.

Ben Gilbert 32:09 I'm trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but you do have a means of storytelling in the show, where you're showing the way that Travis sort of remembers something happening. But it's, of course, a very apocryphal story, and then the background falls away, and then you get to see, actually, here's how it really happened. And, you know, so we did this big two-and-a-half-hour researched episode on, on Uber, and so David and I did 100 hours of research. And so we found, like, the, quote-unquote, "founding story of Uber," where they're looking over from the Eiffel Tower, and David and I both then found, like, "Oh, that's the apocryphal story, and the real story is..." And, like, once it starts playing on screen on the Eiffel Tower, I was like, "No way! These guys got duped? These guys can't get duped. They're, like, the most well-researched..." And then when it fades away and shows that, indeed, that was the apocryphal story, I was like, " [lip trills] Masterminds." [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 33:01 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 33:01 So I just have to applaud you for that.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 33:02 That was one of the things that made me really l- wanna get involved with this, too, was reading even in that first script, that, "Oh, they're, they're gonna play with this." 'Cause-

Ben Gilbert 33:12 Yes

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 33:12 ... especially on TV, like, playing with form and kind of fucking with storytelling conventions is not normal. That's the kinda thing I like to do and, and the kinda movies I like to watch. But I was really excited that they were taking what could otherwise be compartmentalized as sort of a mainstream story idea and using non-mainstream filmmaking techniques and taking bold risks to fuck with the audience's perception like that, like what you're talking about, Ben.

Ben Gilbert 33:41 And necessarily, you have to get clever because reading a book is a completely different experience than watching it on screen. And so you need to innovate off the book when you're adapting from a book because there are things like internal dialogue that are kinda hard to show on screen. But you also have so much more opportunity 'cause you have such a richer canvas to do the types of, of things like that fadeaway.

Brian Koppelman 34:04 Perfectly said, yeah.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 34:06 The medium is the message, as they say.

Brian Koppelman 34:07 And I think, Joe, we've talked about this, but because so much of what your culture, David and Ben talks about, is disruption, it allowed us to disrupt form and what we were doing. Because we're taking advantage of the fact that the story we're telling is about disruption, so we're not under an obligation to tell you a story that's presented like proscenium, and like it's back here, and it's just with the normal rules of cinematography or the normal rules of what can happen inside that box, you know?

David Rosenthal 34:35 All right. For our second sponsor of the episode, we have one of our very, very, very favorite companies here at Acquired: Modern Treasury. They are by far the best way to manage your company's payment operations. Their platform allows you to move money right in your product using code. They literally turn banking operations into code with APIs. It is incredible. They have direct integrations with almost all major commercial banks. You can move money directly without involving finance, without doing it manually, or dealing with the complexity of all the banking systems' rails that we talked about on our Bitcoin and other episodes. It has been incredible to watch this company over the past two years, and we've had this relationship with them at Acquired. Two years ago, they were moving $10 million a month in their product via their APIs. Last fall, that grew to $100 million a month. Now they are moving $2 billion a month. They are trusted by fast-growing companies in the economy's most important sectors, companies like Gusto, Marqeta, TripActions, ClassPass, BlockFi. You can use Modern Treasury for anything that you would wanna move money for in your product, like automatic payments, direct debits, incoming payment reconciliation, digital wallet onboarding. They're a great Web3 crypto onboarding tool. Whether you're building a fintech app or a Web3 app or looking to add payments to your software product of any type, Modern Treasury's APIs make it super easy and simple to initiate, monitor, and reconcile payments, track balances, and do everything way faster than you could by integrating traditional banking rails yourself.

Ben Gilbert 36:28 Typically, the way this is gonna work is that finance is doing stuff using tools for finance people, and engineers are doing stuff using tools for engineers, and someone's written some custom internal dashboard for the operations team to, you know, keep an eye on the other stuff. Modern Treasury just unifies all that.

David Rosenthal 36:44 ... And because Modern Treasury doesn't sit in the flow of funds, payments settle in your account two X faster than if you were doing all of this manually. Truly, this is, like, such a classic example of how integrating payment rails directly does not make your beer taste better, your proverbial startup's beer, your product taste better. You should focus on your product. Let Modern Treasury handle your payment operations. They are wonderful. You can learn more at moderntreasury.com/acquired, and just tell them when you get in touch that Ben and David sent you.

Ben Gilbert 37:16 It's almost like we have product market fit for Acquired sponsors with people who take things that don't make your beer taste better off your plate. It kind of feels like that's the theme here. And if I'm a startup founder, that is exactly what I'm looking for. [chuckles] So anyway, our thanks to Modern Treasury.

David Rosenthal 37:35 Jeff Bezos was even more prescient than he ever realized or than we ever realized when we started doing this show. So wonderful. Thank you, Modern Treasury. What was the process and timeline like from Mike writes the book, book comes out, to then you and Showtime are working on the project?

Brian Koppelman 37:53 Before the book came out. Way before the book came out.

David Rosenthal 37:55 Oh, before? Oh, wow!

Brian Koppelman 37:57 Mike DM'd me on Twitter, "Would, would you read my book? It's not coming out for five months."

David Rosenthal 38:01 Did you have a relationship before then?

Brian Koppelman 38:03 Just like a Twitter friendship.

David Rosenthal 38:04 Oh, my gosh, that's amazing! Twitter is so awesome.

Brian Koppelman 38:08 It's awesome. He-- So he DMs me, and then I s- read twenty-five pages or fifty pages, and I love it, and I say to my partner, Dave, like: "Dude, you gotta fucking read this book. I think it's our next thing," and he agrees. And then, and then we go to Mike and say: "Hey, we wanna do this thing. We might not be able to write it for a year, but we will do this." And then the whole town wanted it, but Mike stayed true to us and our word, and because we committed right away to him, we didn't play any games, he didn't play any games with us, and we just held firm with each other. We were like: "We're gonna make this show, and we're gonna make it very high level." And Mike was in the writers' room every day. Mike was in the writers' room with us every single day.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 38:44 Oh, I didn't know that. I knew he was, like, present, but I didn't know he was in the room every day.

Brian Koppelman 38:49 As a co-executive producer, he didn't write any episodes, but yet, Joe, he was in the room... I would say if we did a hundred days in the room, Mike was there for ninety-four of the hundred days.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 38:57 Wow! Yeah, I didn't know that.

Brian Koppelman 38:58 And then he was reading every script and giving us notes, and what was great in the room is, we'd be in the room, and we'd go: "What do we really think happened in that room? What's your sourcing?" And he would go, and he wouldn't reveal his sources, but he would go get his notes, and then sometimes he'd be like: "Let me come back in a half hour." And sometimes he would come back with the person, you know, and suddenly, like, the person would be in the Zoom with us, 'cause it's all Zoom rooms now. So suddenly the person's-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 39:18 Wow

Brian Koppelman 39:18 ... in the Zoom, and they're off the record going like: "Oh, here's what fucking happened." So we're just living it. It was crazy.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 39:24 That's so fun. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 39:26 The series, and obviously most of the action is based in San Francisco, how much was on location in San Francisco versus, I assume, mostly filmed in L.A. in studios?

Ben Gilbert 39:35 It was, uh, really just a few days of exteriors in San Francisco, and the rest is, uh, yeah, in L.A. and mostly on, you know, the Paramount lot in sound stages. Don't tell anybody.

David Rosenthal 39:47 I do. Obviously, you didn't film it in San Francisco, but if you were, then, like, that's what it's like. You could just, "Oh, like, I'm gonna run down the street. Let me go get Gurley, bring him in here, [chuckles] and, like, let's talk about what really happened."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 39:55 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 39:56 Brian, can you talk about how the process for this, which is recent factual events that happened in a super high-drama, sort of pseudo-finance environment, compares to the research that you do for Billions, which is also present day, also finance high drama, but you get to kind of be, like, current historical fiction on Billions, whereas you're trying to be, like, faithful to source material on Super Pumped?

Brian Koppelman 40:25 Obviously, the dialogue is gonna be... You have to figure out what was said in the room, and, as you guys said, make it colorful and entertaining. But the incidents, I mean, this was crucial, that you're gonna dramatize things to make them interesting and exciting and compelling, but you are not gonna tell parts of the story that affect people in a way that they're bullshit. You just can't. So you're really trying to... What, 'cause, like, the Waverley dinner is the fifth episode. Like, we had to know what really happened and then make a gut call, right, because certain people are... But we read everything written about it and talked to as many people as we could talk to, to try to understand what happened at that dinner because you just kind of need to know in a way. And also, this story offers you things. Like, you know, when you read Mike's book, the thing that happened with Sergey Brin and Gabby and TK, how are you gonna make something up with the third richest guy in the world doing that-

David Rosenthal 41:20 [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 41:20 ... and then this other guy who's a billionaire? And, like, you can't make that up. You could just try to cast it incredibly well and set the environment up so that Joe can feel that these events are really happening now.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 41:33 Mm-hmm.

Brian Koppelman 41:34 And we got a great Sergey. I mean, David Krumholtz-

David Rosenthal 41:36 [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 41:36 ... killed it, Joe.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 41:38 Such inspired casting, and by the way, one of several old dear friends of mine that got to kind of make these awesome supporting appearances in the show. Krumholtz as Sergey Brin, definitely a highlight.

David Rosenthal 41:49 Amazing.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 41:50 One of the only, uh, people who got an improvised line into the show, too, [chuckles] didn't he?

Brian Koppelman 41:55 Maybe the only improvised line-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 41:56 Yeah [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 41:56 ... in the whole thing, and it's spectacular.

David Rosenthal 41:58 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 41:59 Well, while we're on the topic of actors playing real-life people, one person that I noticed... So sometimes someone will be watching a YouTube video, and that YouTube video is the real YouTube video of, like, something that actually happened in the past. There's a scene where Travis is watching a YouTube video of Jeff Bezos, and a very familiar actor is playing Jeff Bezos, and I couldn't help but laugh, and I'm like: No way! Like, how do you make the call on whether to use actual source material for something like that versus cast it?

Brian Koppelman 42:29 Because the exact thing we needed isn't online anymore.

Ben Gilbert 42:33 Oh, fascinating.

Brian Koppelman 42:36 And then to have him do the laugh. He brought the laugh, and we were so happy that he did the laugh.

David Rosenthal 42:40 The laugh. Oh, [chuckles] it's so good.

Ben Gilbert 42:41 [chuckles] The shotgun laugh.

Brian Koppelman 42:42 'Cause, like, Joe's an incredible actor, so when Joe's playing that scene, he's not watching anything.... he's watching some clip-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 42:48 Ah

Brian Koppelman 42:48 - that you, of Bezos.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 42:49 I was watching a piece of tape taped to the laptop's [laughing] monitor, is what I was watching. [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 42:54 [laughing] I do sometimes wish people understood how challenging a job it is that Joe Gordon-Levitt has to do. And, you know, obviously, it affords lots of amazing things in life, and it's incredible when you have the cathartic, transcendent moments, but the work required to do what Joe does is, is incredible. And actors are loathe to talk about it because they seem- 'cause everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, it's really hard," you know, show up and thing. But-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 43:19 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 43:19 ... to have to do that 10 times and play that and be in that mental state and be just pretending. You're watching it like, yeah, you guys see this incredible footage of a guy doing Bezos. Joe is just imagining that and making that happen.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 43:33 Thank you, Dave. Thanks, man.

Ben Gilbert 43:35 We rarely get to talk with folks of your talent and doing what you do on this show, and I think listeners don't live in your world. So this is probably the first time that someone would get to hear, like, what is it like to act in a green-screened, you know, white-tape laptop? Like, how do you invoke the level of imagination that you need to? Do you have any tactics?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 43:59 You know, I never studied acting in an academic setting. I don't have names for all the things that I [chuckles] probably do do. But when you're in a green-screen setting and you don't have any reality to play against, it's just like playing pretend. You know, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old. They're somewhere else half the day just, you know, playing pretend, just imagining what's going on. And, and, uh, I remember doing that when I was their age, and now I still do that. I do it on command at 5:00 in the morning when I have to. And the challenge of acting isn't... for me, is not making things up or playing pretend. It's actually having to do that while straddling a hornet's nest of logistical nightmares all day long. Because a movie set is just a mess. Even the most well-run sets, and this was a well-run set, but even the most well-run, by nature, there's a million things all going on all at once. It's noisy. It's cluttered. There's someone close to you. The hard part is kind of keeping your focus and your concentration and maintaining that more childlike spirit of imagination while having to contend with all this morass of logistical crap. That's the hard part.

Ben Gilbert 45:21 Wow! Plus, you have your own personal life, where there's very real emotions that you're experiencing when you're off camera, too.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 45:28 No, I don't have that. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 45:30 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 45:30 I, I gave that up.

Ben Gilbert 45:31 [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 45:31 I'm a, I'm a vampire. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 45:34 I don't think folks realize this, but when you and I had a couple of phone calls back when you were shooting this, you were like: "Can I call you at..." I don't know what it was, like, "8:00 PM? I'm on my lunch break." So like, what, what is the daily schedule like, and why are you shooting so late into the night?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 45:50 So there's a thing called a 12-hour turnaround. You know, standard days on a movie set, uh, or a show set is, is 12 hours, and we could talk about whether or not that's civilised or right. And, you know, the union almost went on strike, the union of stage workers, and I think with good reason. It's not exactly the best lifestyle. But be that as it may, you work a minimum 12 hours, and then you need to have a 12-hour turnaround, but 12 hours is really the minimum. So oftentimes, you're working 13 hours, 14 hours, 15 hours, and if you started work at, say, 8:00 in the morning, and y- you finished at 8:00 in the evening, well, then maybe you could start again at 8:00 in the morning. But mostly, if you start at 8:00 in the morning, then you finish at 10:00 in the evening, then you have to start the next day at 10:00 in the morning. And so over the course of the week, that keeps happening. So you start the week at 5:00 in the morning, and by the end of the week, you're coming in at noon or 1:00 PM, and you're having, quote, unquote, "lunch" at 9:00 at night.

Brian Koppelman 46:46 I mean, everything Joe said is exactly right. The other things that sometimes happen is, if you're shooting a night scene, you might stage your week so that on Friday we're shooting night or on Thursday, and then you're gonna intentionally do that. And we just like our lingo, like, so we like to call it lunch. Nobody calls it dinner. I remember l- learning that in the beginning, and the thing, like, it's just lunch no matter what time of day it is.

Ben Gilbert 47:08 So Brian, I've listened to a lot of episodes of The Moment, and Joe, th- this is a topic that you and I talked about on our LP episode here a little bit. Can you walk me through the process, both of you, of when you create something and you know it's great versus you create something, it's on its way to being released, and you're like, "Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, this is not good. This is not good"? Are your spidey senses about that right, or can you not trust yourself at all about how the audience will receive something?

Brian Koppelman 47:37 If you know it's bad, it's bad. [laughing] If you know it's bad, it's fucking bad.

Ben Gilbert 47:42 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 47:43 Joe, that has to be your experience, too, right? When you know that it's sh- you're like, "Oh, fuck," it... That doesn't turn around suddenly, like, "Oh, what a great surprise. It was great."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 47:52 Yes, that's true, but I've also been in those things, and then they've been hits, so [chuckles] I don't know. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 47:58 [laughing] There's no accounting for taste.

Brian Koppelman 48:00 He's asking about the feeling of the, of knowing the work is good or not, and, like, when it's bad, you know it's bad, and you miss. Like, everyone misses sometimes. But then, yeah, you're- I mean, Ben, you're being nice, like, asking me about Runner Runner, and, and that experience was-

Ben Gilbert 48:14 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 48:15 ... I knew. I mean, I knew it was a horrible movie e- every day that I was working on it, and we couldn't get it better, and Ben and us tried our best, and Justin tried his best, and it was just one of those things. There were a variety of reasons, and it was very difficult to manage, knowing six months from now, a movie's gonna come out that's gonna bomb and get a, a nine on Rotten Tomatoes, and they're right. Yeah, I like... 'Cause I don't care if I get bad... When I know the work's good, I, I don't- I'm completely divorced from any of the ramifications. But if you know it's coming, and you know they're right, you're just like, "Fuck!" You know?

Ben Gilbert 48:47 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 48:47 It's horrible. It's horrible.

Ben Gilbert 48:49 Have you ever thought something was, like, awesome? You're like, "This is just pure aces," and then it comes out, and people are like... like, they just don't get it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 48:56 ... Well, look, I just did a show, Mr. Corman, that didn't get picked up for a second season, and I personally really like it.

Brian Koppelman 49:01 It's a great show, yeah.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 49:02 Thank you. So I, and I, I made something that's very much to my taste, um, and truth is, is, like, I don't like a lot of stuff that's on TV. [laughs] And I've gotta hand it to Apple that they let me make something that was very particular, and I said, like: "Hey, I have the ability to do this. How often do artists get to do this?" Something on a relatively grand scale that's, like, just really not trying to pander to any particular commercial bucket, but just making what I would like to see. And I did that, and, and, like, and again, I'm, I'm proud of it, and some people really like the show, and then not enough people did, though, and so it didn't get picked up. So the- yeah, that does happen, and it's humbling and a learning experience, and that's, I guess, the balance to try to strike, is making stuff that is, on the one hand, like, truly, genuinely something that I love, but can simultaneously be something that large audiences like as well. And, you know, I think Brian and David are great at that. They're making something that's clearly very true to themselves, um, but- and they've really found a way to make that resonate with a large audience, and it's admirable.

Brian Koppelman 50:07 Thanks, but it doesn't always happen. And I mean, I, yeah, I've had the experience. Like, our first movie, I, I loved it. I, I knew that the cast was incredible. I knew the script was so solid. John Dahl's a genius director. You know, the movie was a bomb in the theaters, but now it's, you know, obviously a movie that people not only like, but are obsessed with. And, you know, it did hundreds of millions on DVD later, and it's a movie I get asked to do a sequel to every day of my life. I mean, 10 times a day. And 25 years later, that movie's a classic, but at the time, it was a bomb.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 50:38 [laughs]

Brian Koppelman 50:38 So I learned right then because we got two horrible reviews in, in the two magazines that mattered. Like, on the same day, Time and Newsweek came out, and they both hated it, and it was a week before it released, and at the time, those things mattered. And I remember going into, like, a fetal position, like, "Am I gonna have a career? It's my first movie."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 50:54 Oh, my gosh.

Brian Koppelman 50:55 But then the next day, I woke up, and I, I remember a clear thought: I can still write. They can't take away from me the ability to make stuff. And once I realized that, I was like, "God, none of that matters." What matters is, can I look at Joe, and can Joe look at me and Dave and be like, "We showed up here every fucking day, and we gave it everything we had, and we worked with rigor and our full hearts to make the thing great. And we worked and made the thing that we said we were gonna make," 'cause that's also it. Can you go and as- can your craft good enough that you can achieve the thing you set out to do? And it- we've all been at this a really long time, so now, like, it's likely that we can get something that's a pretty close approximation to what we say we're gonna do. So if you do that, and it evokes the feeling you were trying to get it to evoke for your group of collaborators, that's the thing. Like, I was so happy I got to show j- early on in the process, but we'd had the first six minutes or something finished of the first episode, and, like, I got to show it to him, and know, like, well, we kept our promise to you. You kept your promise to us. That's really all you can do. We said it was gonna feel like this thing, and he was gonna deliver this thing, and we did that for each other, and that's a bond. And I'll tell you, the, the, the main thing that's amazing is we've become real friends over this. But let's say Joe went off to do a thing in Zimbabwe, and I went off to do a thing in South America. If we met up seven years later, we would hug and be like brothers because we've gone through this thing together and worked in the way that we did.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 52:21 Yeah, that's true.

Brian Koppelman 52:21 And that's an incredible gift of this thing that we get to do with our lives, especially when you show up fully to do this work together. It's a really beautiful, magical thing, and that's where my focus is. It's never on that other part of it. I can't. You'd go crazy if you let yourself focus on that other part of it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 52:40 One way to put it is intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation that I really, really believe in. And we mentioned Rian Johnson at the beginning of the show. I'll tell a little anecdote about him. I m- I made a short film that I submitted to a film festival, and it got rejected, and Rian had helped me make it, and I was really proud of it. I had worked on it. I had done everything for it. I had shot it. I had edited it. I had made the music. I had like... I'd done this whole thing. I'm, like, 23 or something, and, uh, submitted it to a festival. It had gotten rejected. I was low about that. Rian sent me a copy of, uh, the book, Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, which is a wonderful book that I highly recommend, and one of the things it talks about in the, in- right towards the beginning of the book, it's sort of a mentor poet speaking to writing a letter to a young poet and saying, "You're asking me whether I think your poetry is good, and here's my answer to you: Forget about all that. Forget what anybody says. Go into yourself." All you can really do if you wanna be an artist, and maybe this applies beyond art, but I feel quite confident it does apply to being an artist, all you can do is just go as deep as you possibly can into yourself and see if you can dig down deep enough where you can honestly say, "I'm not paying attention to anybody else or anybody's perspective or opinion. I'm just here with myself," 'cause that's where your unique voice is, and if you can get there, that's the thing. And, yeah, then you can ignore the rest. And, and, you know, that's not necessarily gonna make you money or make you popular, but being an artist isn't about money and popularity.

Brian Koppelman 54:21 You know, Ralph Waldo Emerson applies, too, right? Self-reli- which is the idea that if you do give voice to what's m- innermost, and that's not self-indulgence, that's just tossing it off. It's like doing the work of getting to the thing you really care about. It's likely that that's gonna strike off of other people, too, because you have the courage to put it forth.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 54:40 Yes.

Brian Koppelman 54:41 What someone like Joe could do is go deep enough to express with his face and his body and his voice something that's so particular and personal and private to him. But because he does it with such openness and truth, we see it, and we're moved by it because he's reflecting back to us parts of ourselves that either we don't have the courage to experience or loss that we've experienced, and that is the thing that the most, the actors, uh, who are on Joe's level are able to do, and it, it's a very beautiful and sacred kind of a thing for that reason, I think.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 55:13 Thanks, man.

Ben Gilbert 55:15 ... All right, for our final sponsor, we have a very special company to tell you about that's near and dear to the Acquired community's heart, Mystery. And to tell you how near and dear it is, we had two requests last week in the Acquired Slack, maybe two weeks ago, to say, like, "Hey, can we get an update on that company that you had on the LP Show way back when? It seems like they've really grown and turned into something really cool." Well, yes, that is true, and they have some fun recent news that we will share with you here. So when we last left these plucky heroes, they had come on the LP Show to talk about pivoting from facilitating magical nights out for consumers before COVID to magical virtual experiences in-home while everyone else was stuck in their lockdowns. And, uh, for folks who need even more of a memory jog, this is when David and I had our little two-person Christmas party a few years back. We went on a little fencing match. It was quite fun, but that's not at all what Mystery is now, because this is about the scrappiest company in the world. So the final twist, it turns out a whole bunch of consumers who did these virtual in-home experiences in April of 2020 also worked at places like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, McKinsey-

Brian Koppelman 56:25 Uber.

Ben Gilbert 56:25 Uber, [chuckles] Twitter, Autodesk, et cetera. And while the virtual experiences with their friends, those were fine, what you really wanted was upgrading those virtual experiences for your team. You know, these happy hours everyone's going on on Zoom, where you have 17 Zooms, and now you log on for one more, and you're supposed to, like, have fun.

Brian Koppelman 56:44 Everybody have fun. We're not leaving here until everybody's having fun.

Ben Gilbert 56:48 [laughing] The beatings will continue until morale improves. [laughing] You ever seen those signs, David?

Brian Koppelman 56:54 Oh, that's the best. That's one of my favorite lines.

Ben Gilbert 56:57 So enter Mystery. They take over every aspect of those terrible team happy hours, from scheduling to planning to executing them. They even track engagement and employee retention afterwards. Makes them not suck. So flash forward, since April 2020, they've executed tens of thousands of events, and for not just huge companies, but startups like Modern Treasury and Convoy and others. They just raised a giant Series A from Greylock to really blow this thing out. We're so pumped for our friends there.

Brian Koppelman 57:27 These guys are so scrappy. This story is amazing. They have built this huge business now on the third pivot. Like, talk about pulling an E brake.

Ben Gilbert 57:39 Oh, yeah, and, like, not to share the numbers or anything, but, like, it's a big business. A lot of people are doing this, and this is something that teams are very excited to be taking off their plates. It's, it's just great.

Brian Koppelman 57:49 It's so, so much better.

Ben Gilbert 57:51 If your company could use someone to take all the headache out of those events, get them off your plate, turn them from something employees dread to something awesome and magical, head on over to trymystery.com/acquired. Well, the way that we tend to wind down episodes here is a section we call Carve-outs, and this is where we ask the guests to make recommendations of something they've seen or read or, or anything they would recommend to listeners. And I'm gonna start real quick. For people who don't realize how insanely multi-talented Joe is, open up YouTube and search for The Cure, Katy Perry- [laughing]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 58:29 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 58:29 ... uh, Jimmy Fallon, [laughing] and you will see a clip of... This is the most unbelievable thing, Joe, you singing The Cure song in the style of Katy Perry on Jimmy Fallon's new show. And then I think there's a second one, too-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 58:41 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 58:41 - of you playing a variety of instruments. So if you thought Joe was a talented actor, you got the depth part right, but you're missing the breadth.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 58:50 [laughing] I'm flattered. Thank you, Ben. Those are fun.

Ben Gilbert 58:54 It was surprising and super fun to see. But let me kick it over to Brian. What would you recommend listeners check out?

Brian Koppelman 59:00 Well, you brought up Liar's Poker before, and Michael Lewis has just released, for the first time, an audiobook-

Ben Gilbert 59:07 Oh, yeah

Brian Koppelman 59:07 ... an unabridged audiobook of Liar's Poker. But he also put out a companion podcast, and the companion podcast is spectacular. And second, for this conversation we're having, there's a book I just read called Unrequited Infatuations by Little Steven Van Zandt, who you know as either Bruce Springsteen's right hand or as James Gandolfini's right hand in The Sopranos.

Ben Gilbert 59:30 You had a great episode with him, didn't you?

Brian Koppelman 59:33 Yeah, we just did one now that his book came out, and it's an amazing book about art and commerce and about, uh, all these questions. Unrequited Infatuations, I highly recommend it.

Ben Gilbert 59:44 Great. Joe?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 59:46 I've been listening to a podcast called Your Undivided Attention. That's the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, and there's an episode called "A Problem Well Stated is Half Solved," and his guest is this, um, scholar named Daniel Schmachtenberger, I think. And it's relevant to what we're talking about, I think, because when he's saying the problem well stated is half solved, I've never really heard a conversation that, to me, so sharply and comprehensively observed what's going wrong with the world and what it might take to fix it. Not that they're offering comprehensive solutions, but, you know, we all hear all the time, like, "Well, there's climate change," and, "Oh, uh, Facebook's also breaking democracy," and, uh, "There's a rise in authoritarianism and also incredible inequality," and all these different things, but they feel like... It feels like Whac-A-Mole. It feels like w- there's no way, uh- Uh, how could we ever possibly address all of these things? And one of the things that he was getting at was part of what is interesting to me about the Uber story that I was touching on earlier also, which is a lot of it does come down to what's the incentive? How does the whole big system work? And when you've got a system that mandates exponential economic growth, but you've got a finite planet-

Ben Gilbert 1:01:19 ... it's by definition unsustainable, so we're definitely heading for a catastrophe unless we change the way the system works and no longer require it to be grow or die, grow or die, grow or die. And by the way, that's, that was a phrase. That's the name of episode one, Grow or Die. I came away from that podcast pretty thoroughly convinced that all the other things are dominoes to that one, and that if we can't change that, we're not gonna get any of the other ones. But if we can change that, we maybe have a shot of solving the rest.

Brian Koppelman 1:01:53 Well, that's beautifully said. Perfectly said.

David Rosenthal 1:01:56 I'll go real quick, my last one. Brian, your episode with Jakob Dylan I thought was so good. It was so fun, having been a kid growing up listening to his music. I honestly don't know that anybody else could have asked him about his, like, father the way that you did.

Brian Koppelman 1:02:09 As he says on there, Jakob and I have been friends since we were in our very early 20s, so I mean, yeah, I can ask him 'cause I've known him for 30 years.

David Rosenthal 1:02:15 Right. [laughs]

Brian Koppelman 1:02:15 But yes, [chuckles] thank you, though.

David Rosenthal 1:02:17 Like, I'm not gonna ask Jakob Dylan about his dad, you know? But, like, I'm really glad you did. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:02:23 Awesome. Well, Joe, Brian, we thank you so much for coming on. Anything you wanna call out for listeners to find you somewhere on the internet or do something?

Brian Koppelman 1:02:33 I wanna call out that everyone should go watch the movie Joe wrote and directed, Don Jon.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1:02:37 Ah, thanks.

Brian Koppelman 1:02:37 It is a spectacular film-

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1:02:40 [chuckles]

Brian Koppelman 1:02:40 ... and, like, that's the other thing I wanted to recommend. I don't know if people have seen it, but, like, it shows the breadth of your work, man, because it's so different from the television series that you directed, you know? So that, and then, yeah, if you wanna find me, I'm on Twitter @briankoppelman, but ask before you send me your manuscript. Mike Isaac asked me first.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:56 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 1:02:56 Don't just send shit.

David Rosenthal 1:02:57 [laughing]

Brian Koppelman 1:02:58 Ask. Ask me.

David Rosenthal 1:03:01 Oh, I love it.

Brian Koppelman 1:03:03 Thanks, guys. Thanks for having us on here.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1:03:05 Thank you.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:05 Yeah.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1:03:06 Thanks, everybody. Oh, yeah, and check out HitRecord.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:08 HitRecord.org? Is it .com now?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1:03:11 We own them all. It was originally HitRecord.org.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:15 Sweet. HitRecord dot anything. Thanks, guys. All right, listeners, with that, be sure to tune in this upcoming Sunday, I believe. The 27th is when Super Pumped will air. I'm excited to see what everyone thinks. Many of you were very, very close to this story, and so it'll be fascinating to experience it as a series when so many of you experienced it either through a friend or family member, or you personally being at Uber as a lot of these events unfolded. Well, with that, listeners, join us in the Slack. I'm sure we'll be talking about not only this interview, but, uh, the show itself, acquired.fm/slack. Go check out the LP Show. View our previous interview with Joe. Just search Acquired LP Show in any podcast player. If you want to become an LP and get those episodes two weeks earlier, that's at acquired.fm/lp. Join our Zoom calls, all kinds of cool stuff, and, uh, if you're looking for that next new thing in your career, acquired.fm/jobs. Those are handpicked, curated jobs from your friends at Acquired. And, uh, with that, feel free to share this episode with your friends. We love tweets. We love one-on-one stuff even more, so if there's somebody where you think they'd really enjoy this, pass it along. And our thank you to the Solana Foundation, Modern Treasury, and Mystery, and we will see you next time.

David Rosenthal 1:04:32 We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:04:33 [singing] Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Uh. [singing]