AcquiredSuper Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 12,319 words- 0:00 – 2:43
Why Uber’s story is becoming prestige TV (and why Acquired is hosting it)
- BGBen Gilbert
I think you both know enough about Acquired that I don't need to go into the general shtick and spiel.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Right on.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I love it. I'm so honored that you guys have listened. It makes my day. Thank you. [chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
That's why we said yes. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
[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?
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
God, it feels like another lifetime ago, but it was only two and a half years ago.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And even more surreal that this is made by Brian Koppelman [chuckles] and Joe Gordon-Levitt.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
There is no world that I would've imagined we would find ourselves here.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Totally.
- 2:43 – 5:37
Sponsor spotlight: Solana + Phantom Wallet and the case for consumer-grade crypto UX
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
That's great. And are you desktop only, or... I saw something about launching mobile recently.
- SPSpeaker
We started off as a Chrome extension, but more recently released our iOS app at the end of January.
- 5:37 – 7:24
Meeting Joe Gordon-Levitt: Web3 fame jokes and why Acquired changed his mind
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Thank you.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Thrilled to be here, guys.
- BGBen Gilbert
Ah, we are super pumped for this. [laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
And now we have to leave. Joe, this isn't fun. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
I brought these guys to you, Brian, and they-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Oh.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
They let us down. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Ben loves these little quips. It's just great.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Yeah, by Web3 nerds. I'm huge in-
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Thanks, Joe. We, we are all early, though.
- BGBen Gilbert
We seek to inform, not to sway too much, but yeah, appreciate the thoughts.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
That's probably why I was swayed, 'cause the folks swaying, I'm like, "Get the... Get the fuck out of here." [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
"I don't believe you." Yeah. [laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
[laughing]
- 7:24 – 12:05
How Koppelman and Gordon-Levitt teamed up at lightning speed
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Well, Joe doesn't know this, but we actually met in a makeup trailer once.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
No, I don't know this. Were you sa- you been saving this story? [laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
Yeah. I had a day as an actor in a movie you starred in.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Right, okay.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Right.
- BKBrian Koppelman
I was there to be a day player, and I didn't want-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... to go into a whole, like, other thing.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
On the movie Premium Rush, and he's talking about Rian Johnson.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Mm
- BKBrian Koppelman
... partners going to make this show together. It was really incredible.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And how often does something like this happen? I'm intuiting not often.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
No. No, not often at all.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Very rarely. [laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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]
- BKBrian Koppelman
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Thank you
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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-
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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.
- 12:05 – 14:41
Why Joe said yes: the allure of ego, power, and ‘growth at all costs’
- BGBen Gilbert
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?"
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
My own investors are plotting my demise. [upbeat music]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
It's gone too far. I can't line up with you. I gotta stick with the company.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
I am the company!
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I don't think I've watched a show with that much, like, profanity per minute in a long time. [laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And that must just be fun. And it's so, like, well-written profanity, too, and so Uber. It's great.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- 14:41 – 18:37
Why Brian made it: disruption’s hidden ledger and revolutions becoming fascist
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah. Brian?
- BKBrian Koppelman
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?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Right. [chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing] You're the bridge. You're the bridge!
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Mm-hmm
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- 18:37 – 22:53
Sourcing, ethics, and walls: adapting Mike Isaac’s book without contaminating facts
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
Huh, fascinating.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Oh, man, on a daily basis, the director would say, "Cut," and I would, I would just instantly start apologizing. [laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- 22:53 – 27:21
Cautionary tale vs glorification: the Scarface/Wolf of Wall Street problem
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- 27:21 – 32:09
Art and business blur: Andreessen, Garrett Camp, and the ‘artist’ inside tech
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
Oh, yeah.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
An incredible business person, right? [chuckles] Yeah.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... 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]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
That was so good. [chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Totally not a business, but great.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
It would've been so great.
- BKBrian Koppelman
That's in the book. It's in Mike's book. That's in Mike's book.
- 32:09 – 34:35
Disrupting the storytelling form: apocryphal myths, memory, and TV innovation
- BGBen Gilbert
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]
- BKBrian Koppelman
[laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
So I just have to applaud you for that.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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-
- BGBen Gilbert
Yes
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
... 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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Perfectly said, yeah.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
The medium is the message, as they say.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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?
- 34:35 – 37:35
Sponsor break: Modern Treasury and turning payments ops into APIs
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... 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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- 37:35 – 39:26
From DM to writers’ room: Mike Isaac’s unusually deep involvement
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Before the book came out. Way before the book came out.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Oh, before? Oh, wow!
- BKBrian Koppelman
Mike DM'd me on Twitter, "Would, would you read my book? It's not coming out for five months."
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Did you have a relationship before then?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Just like a Twitter friendship.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Oh, my gosh, that's amazing! Twitter is so awesome.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Oh, I didn't know that. I knew he was, like, present, but I didn't know he was in the room every day.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Wow! Yeah, I didn't know that.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Wow
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
That's so fun. [chuckles]
- 39:26 – 43:35
Re-creating Silicon Valley: locations, accuracy, and casting real-world figures
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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?
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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."
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Koppelman
And we got a great Sergey. I mean, David Krumholtz-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... killed it, Joe.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Amazing.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
One of the only, uh, people who got an improvised line into the show, too, [chuckles] didn't he?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Maybe the only improvised line-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Yeah [chuckles]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... in the whole thing, and it's spectacular.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Because the exact thing we needed isn't online anymore.
- BGBen Gilbert
Oh, fascinating.
- BKBrian Koppelman
And then to have him do the laugh. He brought the laugh, and we were so happy that he did the laugh.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
The laugh. Oh, [chuckles] it's so good.
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles] The shotgun laugh.
- BKBrian Koppelman
'Cause, like, Joe's an incredible actor, so when Joe's playing that scene, he's not watching anything.... he's watching some clip-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Ah
- BKBrian Koppelman
- that you, of Bezos.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
I was watching a piece of tape taped to the laptop's [laughing] monitor, is what I was watching. [laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
[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-
- 43:35 – 47:08
Acting craft under constraints: green screens, tape marks, and brutal schedules
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
Wow! Plus, you have your own personal life, where there's very real emotions that you're experiencing when you're off camera, too.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
No, I don't have that. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
I, I gave that up.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
I'm a, I'm a vampire. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- 47:08 – 52:40
Knowing what’s good (or doomed): creative confidence, bombs, and the long arc
- BGBen Gilbert
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?
- BKBrian Koppelman
If you know it's bad, it's bad. [laughing] If you know it's bad, it's fucking bad.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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."
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing] There's no accounting for taste.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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-
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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?
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- BKBrian Koppelman
It's horrible. It's horrible.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
... 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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
It's a great show, yeah.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughs]
- BKBrian Koppelman
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."
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Oh, my gosh.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Yeah, that's true.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- 52:40 – 55:15
Intrinsic motivation and ‘go into yourself’: Rilke, Emerson, and why artists persist
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Yes.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
Thanks, man.
- 55:15 – 1:04:53
Sponsor + wrap-up: Mystery’s pivot story, carve-outs, and where to find them
- BGBen Gilbert
... 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-
- BKBrian Koppelman
Uber.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Everybody have fun. We're not leaving here until everybody's having fun.
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing] The beatings will continue until morale improves. [laughing] You ever seen those signs, David?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Oh, that's the best. That's one of my favorite lines.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
It's so, so much better.
- BGBen Gilbert
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]
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
... 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-
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
- 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.
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
[laughing] I'm flattered. Thank you, Ben. Those are fun.
- BGBen Gilbert
It was surprising and super fun to see. But let me kick it over to Brian. What would you recommend listeners check out?
- BKBrian Koppelman
Well, you brought up Liar's Poker before, and Michael Lewis has just released, for the first time, an audiobook-
- BGBen Gilbert
Oh, yeah
- BKBrian Koppelman
... 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.
- BGBen Gilbert
You had a great episode with him, didn't you?
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- BGBen Gilbert
Great. Joe?
- JGJoseph Gordon-Levitt
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-
- BGBen Gilbert
... 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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
Well, that's beautifully said. Perfectly said.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
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.
- BKBrian Koppelman
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.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Right. [laughs]
- BKBrian Koppelman
But yes, [chuckles] thank you, though.
Episode duration: 1:04:53
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