September 12, 2019 • 39 mins
Bob sits down with UTA co-founder and CEO Jeremy Zimmer to discuss how fixing a chair got him his first real gig in Hollywood; why the best storytelling is rooted in empathy, and why UTA's podcasting division got such a jump on the rest of the industry (spoiler: it all comes down to company culture.)
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Math and Magic production of I Heart Radio.
I was out of college. I was working in a
parking lot. I was living in the Howard Johnson's in
Kenmore Square, and most of the things I owned were
in my car. And I got stabbed and I went
to hospital and I needed to recover. Here I am,
I'm nineteen years old. I flunked out of college. I've
(00:24):
been stabbed. I have no vision, notion, or anything of
a future. You know, this is not the script for
a nice Jewish boy from a good family. My grandfather
called me and he said, well, you've really done a
fine job of screwing up your life. I'd like to
help you. Are you ready to get serious? I'm Bob Pittman.
(00:53):
Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing,
where we explore stories about the analytics and the creative
and how they come together to create marketing and business legends.
Today we're chatting with a man who's been at the
center of the major entertainment industry transformations of the last
thirty five years. He grew up actually at the intersections
(01:19):
of math and magic, stockbroker, father, writer, mother, and a
grandfather who satisfied the business and creative as a famous writer,
producer and president of MGM, and his grandmother was even
a visual artist. He's one of the co founders and
now CEO of United Talent Agency UTA, one of the
bedrock Hollywood agencies. Welcome Jeremy Zimmer. Thanks so much. Lots
(01:42):
to talk about, but first let's break the ice with
you in sixty seconds. Do you prefer New York City
or Los Angeles? Los Angeles? Instagram or Twitter? Neither Early
Riser or night Owl very early Riser, The Beatles or
the Stones, The Stones, jay Z or Beyonce, jay Z,
Coachella Lallapaloosa, Coachella, Golf or Tennis golf. It's about to
(02:07):
get harder. Smartest person you know, Irving as Off, childhood hero,
franklindelin Or Roosevelt. First job working at gas station, first
job you liked working in a gas station. Hardest working
artist Kevin Hart. Last vacation fourth of July in Israel.
Secret talent. I don't keep any of my talents a secret.
(02:30):
First piece of art you bought photographed by Sally Man.
First concert Jethro tull Aqualung, Great Great tour, proudest career achievement.
U t a proudest personal achievement, raising four daughters thus
far successfully. Who would play you in a movie? Either
James Gandalfeni or Brad Pitt depends on the day and
(02:52):
the way I feel about myself. Movie you think should
be required viewing dead poets Society. If you can have
a super power, what would it be? Time travel? Okay,
let's go back in time. Speaking of time travel, I
think of the first time we met. I was running
in TV. You were William Morris in New York. This
is the early nineteen eighties, a time when most agents
(03:14):
thought there were only three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. Yet
here you are delving into new cable networks. I think
you were the only agent that ever paid any attention
of TV and came by What led you to be
there so far ahead of others in your business at
that time. First of all, I was a movie agent
in New York City, which was, you know, like being
(03:34):
a down Parker agent in the Sahara. No one cared
what I was doing, said anybody who had, you know,
a checkbook with five d dollars in it. I was
going to go visit and see what business we could
possibly do. And I've always been curious, and I thought
what you guys were doing at MTV seems so smart
and so ahead of its time and so interesting that
(03:56):
I was excited to hear more about. What did you
think of the future networks at that time? And was
this about the future of networks or was it just
plain curiosity? I think it was plain curiosity. But you know,
I'd love to tell you, oh, I was thinking and
examining the future of networks and wondering about but I wasn't.
I was really thinking, like you know, I was making
a five dollars a week, how can I make a
(04:16):
hundred and fifty dollars a week? And how can I
get into studio fifty four? And how can I pay
for a drink on my salary? That was We're basically
the things I was really consumed with at the time.
So let me give you a contrast. Now, over thirty
years later, you showed up at podcast early. Is this locker?
Is this a unique skill you have? I think the
skill I've had is create an environment where I have
(04:39):
these great young people and I kind of say, hey,
you want to build something, you want to start something,
and go figure out a new area and see what's happening,
and if there's enough happening there, we'll put some resources
behind it. So we had this great guy, Orn Rosamund
and started talking about podcasting, and I thought, oh, come on,
who's gonna sit there and listen? No, no, no no, it's
really big. I said, Okay, go figure out. And so
(05:01):
I'd love to take credit for figuring out that podcast
was a big business. I didn't, but I took credit
for thinking Aren Rosenbaum is a really smart guy, and
I'm going to give him a little bit of runway
to figure it out. How early did Uren start talking
about it? Five years ago? Six years ago? So he
was very early, very early, and he had a lot
of support from my co founder Peter Bennedet, who you
know every day would walk in and say, I just
(05:22):
listen to this great podcast. And all I was thinking was,
how do you enough time to do that? But he
really fell in love with podcasting and it was very
supportive of our And during this process, when you were
looking at it early, what did you think the opportunity
might be. Well, I just thought, okay, here's a new
form of storytelling. And you know, if at a certain point,
if you don't want to listen to music, you want
(05:43):
to have something a little more immersive. You're going for
a long walk, you're going for a long drive. You
don't want to just listen to music, you want to
have immersive storytelling. Audio books were certainly uh big thing,
but the immediacy of a podcast, the ability to delve
into a new story and a new way, it seemed
like it could be something really compelling. So here podcasts
(06:03):
that surpassed against the year or so ago satellite radio
in terms of reach. Now there's big as the big
streaming music services. Where do you think all that's going?
You know, I wish I knew where it's all going.
I just think we have a universe of people who
just want to consume ideas, endlessly, consume content endlessly. I
don't think it's all going one place. I think it's
going in multiple areas. It seems to be an infinite
(06:26):
capacity for storytelling. And this storytelling is your ears, not
your eyes. And you've guys have done a great job
of taking and saying okay, we'll put them for the
eyes too. Yeah, how do you think about that opportunity?
Many of our artists, writers, directors, actors are looking for
compelling I P. And I think we're constantly looking for
(06:46):
new places to mind great I P. And if you
have I P that also has a built in audience
where people have already heard it and gone, wow, that's
a great story. If you can then translate that into
the video medium and do its successfully, you'll have it
built in audience. So this is a podcast about marketing
and ideas. What advice do you have for other leaders
(07:09):
about seeing the future higher good, strong people and then
listen to them about what they are excited about. We
haven't allowed an aggressive group of young men and women
to go out and find great stories for us. So
let's explore where your insight comes from. You have all
the evidence of both nurture and nature. You have the genetics,
(07:31):
and you clearly had the environment. Can you spend a
little time talking about your child and the family and
what you took from all that. My mom is a writer.
She's written eight or nine novels, a published authors, She's written,
you know, hundreds of magazine articles, and she lives in
the world of story and the power of story. And
my grandfather was an author, a writer, a producer and
(07:54):
a studio head, and that was very rare at the time.
It's still rare to this day. Storytelling and the love
of storytelling, the love of reading was always really important
in our house, and I still love fiction and I
read a lot of fiction. I think reading fiction is
critical both in my business and in my life. I'm
a big believer that you read fiction because it helps
(08:15):
you develop the skill of empathy or the feeling of empathy.
But I didn't grow up in Hollywood at all. Dennis
Hopper was a family friend. I knew him, but really
my mom was a very erratic human being as a mom.
My parents were divorced early, and my grandfather, the year
I was born, moved to New York, so he wasn't
as available to me. You know, I really grew up
(08:37):
with this weird combination of loving stories and ideas and
hating school and any sort of organized program. So I
learned a lot just living by my wits as well.
This environment of being able to be thoughtful and somewhat
free wheeling and innovative against a backdrop of loving storytelling
and art makes a lot of sense for me. So
(08:57):
let me take you a little tangent here if the
stories are true, you worked at the gas station at fourteen.
Started working at a gas station in Malibu at fourteen
on Pacific Coast Highway and Coral Canyon. It's still there.
And I loved working at the gas station because I
love the interaction of people and the ability to sort
of manage the business and the people in and out
and take care of things and learn things on the
(09:18):
job and how do you change a tire, patch of tire,
change the oil. All these things where things I actually
learned how to do. It was pretty interesting. I was
halfway through my senior year in Santa Monica and moved
to Westport, Connecticut, where I ended up being halfway through
my junior year. I got a job working at a
gas station there, and I ended up managing that and
(09:39):
closing the gas station. You know, I would go to
school and then go to the gas station, close the
gas station. This had to be a tough time to
move senior year going back to junior year. I mean,
I was a straight F student in my senior year
at Santa Monica High School, So it's not like, oh
my god, you're ripping me away from my valedictorian candidacy.
I mean it was like, you gotta get out of here,
You're a disaster, and they were right. You know, I
(10:01):
have the great luxury of having these four daughters who
you know. I mean, the most rebellious thing that they've
ever done was my oldest daughter went and got a
tattoo on the back of her neck underneath her hair,
which we didn't even discover for like two years. So
I'm lucky. But if I had a kid like me,
I don't know what I would have done. Lots of
folks who've been on math and Magic are college shropouts,
(10:22):
so were you? And I have to disclose? So am
I Why did you drop out of college? I ended
up graduating high school miraculously, and I had very high
test scores and I got into Boston University. I only
chose Boston University because my girlfriend at the time was
going to toughs, so I sort of looked at school's
proximate to toughts that I could get into and be
you was one of them. I really didn't like school.
(10:44):
I'm sure today I would be diagnosed with a d
D or a d h D or something like that.
Although I loved reading and I could do that, the
basic day to day of showing up, remembering what I
was told, doing the test. I just didn't like it,
and I was never good at it was always hard
for me. How many years did you do? I dropped
out of Be You or Be You and I mutually
(11:06):
terminated our relationship after about a year and a half,
three semesters. All these years later, do you see an
early indication of your talents ambitions dropping out of college
or do you think it was just more of a
personal experience with you. I'd love to draw some line
where I was just two entrepreneurial and two dot gard
smart for college. I don't know that it was that
(11:28):
I was struggling with complicated You know, I lived back
and forth with my mom and my dad. I'd had
a deep relationship with drugs and alcohol. You know, I
was trying to find myself in all the wrong places.
So is there any lesson you take from that that
you've passed on to your kids and saying, let me
tell you, I've learned something here. My kids have shown
(11:50):
me and I'm so proud to see it in them.
The capacity for hard work that's there if you're willing
to really give it a war all. I never thought
I could do hard work because I couldn't do schoolwork,
so early on in my career I was afraid of
the hard work. Like I could show up and do
the hustle and do the party and do that, this
(12:11):
and that, but really sitting down and thinking things through
and following through on plans and ideas. It's still a
little challenging, but back then it was really frightening for me.
So before we get into stories of you in the
agency world, when you dropped out of college, you were running,
as I understand the VALI a parking station in Boston
(12:31):
and you actually got stabbed during an astupted robbery. Must
be incredibly traumatic. How did that change your outlook and
or your trajectory on life. I was out of college,
I was working in a parking lot. I was living
in the Howard Johnson's in Kenmore Square. I was sneaking
my dog in and out of the hotel, and most
of the things I owned were in my car. And
(12:52):
I got stabbed, and I went to hospital and I
needed to recover, so I had to go back home
to Connecticut with my mom. And I went back home,
and you know, I was just there and here I am.
I'm nineteen years old, I flunked out of college. I've
been stabbed. I have no vision, notion or anything of
a future. I don't know what it's going to be,
and I don't know what can become of me. And
I was pretty you know, this is not the script
(13:14):
for a nice Jewish boy from a good family. But
what happened is my grandfather called me and he said, well,
you've really done a fine job of screwing up your life.
I'd like to help you. Are you ready to get serious?
And I said, I don't know, I think I am.
I want to try, and he arranged for me to
have an interview at the William Morris Agency. So I
(13:37):
interviewed at the William Morris Agency. I talked around my
lack of a college degree, which was required at the time,
and I got into the mail room and something happened there.
It was an immediate feeling. I can still feel it today,
this feeling of comfort, and I understand how this works.
(13:57):
I'm going to be good at this. So tell us
a little bit about this. This is one of the
more famous clubs in the entertainment industry is the William
Moore's mail room, and there was some really famous alum
beside you in the mail room. Yeah. One of the
other famous alums who didn't have a college degree is
David Geffen. But you're thrown in a mail room and
it's really simple. It's like, just do all these tasks.
(14:18):
And back then there was mail, so it's a whole
other thing. And the way that the inner office communication
was done was through memos that were sent down to
the mail room and copied, So you make a hundred
copies of a memo and then you distributed around the
office by hand in these mail carts. So you were
literally at the center point of all the information. Everything
(14:39):
flowed through you through these memos, so you you really
knew what was going on. It was like imagine if
you had all the email of everyone in your company
flowing through your office all the time and could read it.
And it was this very rich environment with a very
rich tradition. And the agents there knew that they were
supposed to try to provide idea with some mentoring and
(15:02):
some guidance and some opportunity. If I could just pay
attention and focus on a couple of things that I
liked something good could happen. How did you get out
of the mail room. I really wanted to be in
the publishing area, and so that was my first thing.
I wanted to be like a book agent, and I
had this ridiculous vision of myself like reading thousand page
manuscripts with like a pencil and editing and do all
(15:25):
this stuff, which was, you know, for a guy who
probably had a d D. Would have been a disaster.
And the good news is they didn't want me. There
was a young agent named Fred Milstein who was in
the Way Morris movie department, which again was this tiny Basically,
he was the movie department and they were giving him
his first assistant. So he and this guy George Lane,
who was in the theater department, we're going to share
their first assistant. But I'd only been in the mailroom
(15:47):
for like six months. And I went to interview with Fred,
and I could see his chair was broken. The ball
bearings were loose, and that share was sort of awkwardly
swiveling around. And I had my interview with him, and
then at lunch, I went into the storage thing and
I took a part of chair, took the ball bearings out,
of that chair, went to his chair, fixed his chair,
(16:08):
and left him a little note saying, hey, I noticed
your chair. I think I fixed it that Thanks for
the interview, and I got that job so that the
bearings began your career. Exactly why did you leave Willie
Morris and had the I c M in the mid eighties.
My mentor there at the time had moved out to
Los Angeles, so I was in New York and I
was feeling somewhat without a mentor, and the department didn't
(16:31):
have a lot of focus or strength because again it's
the movie business in New York, which was not a
thriving environment. I really wanted to move to l A,
and the way moorese agency didn't feel they really wanted
me to move to l A. At the same time
I c M, Jeff Burgh was running I c M,
and he knew me, and he thought I was a
very well read and intelligent young man, and he kept
(16:52):
pursuing me for a job, so ultimately he offered me
a job to go out to I c M and
be the book guy, meaning the guy who sold the
underlying movie and television rights for the books that I
seem represented. Describe Hollywood at that moment, the power brokers.
What did you step into? What was that world like?
It was an amazing environment because you know, it was
(17:13):
still the lions of Hollywood. It was the Dan Melnicks
and the Race Starks. You know, we're sort of still
ruling the land. And you know, the guys who ran
the studios were these larger than life lions, and they
still could sort of make decisions based on their gut feel.
You know, they could look in the eye of a
young filmmaker and see something special and say, sure, here, kid,
(17:35):
here's thirty million dollars or forty million dollars, go make
this movie. There was a lot of thirst for ideas
and new ideas and books and scripts, and there was
a lot going on, and the business was changing so much.
You had the emergence of the cable networks at HBO,
pay TV, you had home video. How was that changing?
I mean I had to disrupt the system first. It
(17:56):
fueled the system because there were millions and millions of
new money flowing in unabated for home video and pay TV.
So HBO made this crazy pay TV deal with Columbia
at the time, where they would just pay tens of
millions of dollars for their movies. At the same time,
you had all these movies being made based on video sales,
(18:19):
so they would do an estimate of what the home
video market would be worth, and that could be the
entire cost of the movie. So there was a lot
of action going on fueling this seemingly endless growth in
home video. There's a parallel almost today with the Netflix
and the New production. Did it feel like the world
was expanding at that moment as it does. Well, it's
(18:40):
interesting because today it feels the consumption is expanding, but
the amount of players is contracting. So that's the difference
is back then, the amount of players were expanding, so
you had so many different players coming into the market
trying to take advantage of all this home video consumption.
And now really what you have is you have this
consolidation or around these few giant players where they're really
(19:02):
trying to control the entire streaming universe. So while their
appetite is very big, their power is a little intimate.
It will use the analogy of the retail business when
Walmart showed up or Target and exactly war Target, Amazon,
where they sort of constrict the trade into these few
giant pillars. You were featured in a PBS frontline piece,
(19:24):
Hollywood Dreams. Did that help your career or did it
the jealousy? I mean, give me the complexion of how
that felt. It was nuts. I mean I looked back
on that, I go, oh my god, what what could
I have been thinking? You know, I'll never forget the
night that aired. I was so afraid. And I got
this call from Jeff Berg who ran I c M.
(19:45):
And I was like, oh boy, this is gonna be bad.
And he said, I just want to tie something. I
love it. He said, you are so raw and so
connected to your client, and you are so connected to
the pain of the artist. I think it's amazing. And
that was a really good wow feeling because I was
(20:06):
in the middle of a battle on behalf of a client,
trying to help him keep his job and at the
same time trying to manage him through the process of
losing the job. It was all out there. I left
it all on the field, and it was very clear
how real that responsibility is of representing an artist. Just
hold on a second, because we've got so much more
(20:27):
to talk about. We'll be back after a quick break.
Welcome back to math and magic. We're here with Jeremy Zimmer.
Let me talk just a second about your craft. You've
been talking about story. What makes a great story? To me,
what ultimately makes a great story is can we join
this character and care about what this character is going
(20:49):
through and feel compassion and empathy for the characters. And
that's to me why great stories are so important, because
it allows us to unlock empathy without obligation. With stories,
you can just feel empathy. Does it differ my medium?
I mean it differs a little bit by genre. I
don't know that we're accessing the character's heart. In a
(21:12):
Marvel movie, we got some connection to who they are,
but after a while, I'm not sure that's what the
audience is going there for. You take a great story,
you understand the story, how do you market that great story? Well,
that's one of the biggest challenges today in the environment
we're in where there's so much noise and such a
sort of cacophony of horseshit, it's really hard. You start
so many stories down the path to tournament to something
(21:35):
that the consumer access is how much influence do you
have on how it's marketed? In that process. Over time
in the movie business, agents developed more and more influence
because we first of all represent our filmmakers. Filmmakers become
more powerful, but it depends on the project. Really, it
depends on the project. A small, tough movie are the
(21:55):
kind of things we can have a lot of influence
for how they're sold, how they're marketed, who distributes it.
The fight to get a beautiful small movie made is
a very noble fight. Not necessarily a very rewarding fight,
but a very noble fight. And then once you get
a distribute, you got to make sure it's distributed well.
You got to do your best. And it's a world
right now. We're spending a lot of money to market
(22:16):
a small movie. Doesn't make sense, and that's provided an
opportunity for Netflix and Amazon and others to come in
and turn the streaming of these smaller movies into a
real business. UTA was formed when leading artist agencies and
Bauer Benedet merged. You were a co founder with Jim Burkas,
Rob Rothman, Robert Stein, Marty Bauer, Peter Benedet that you
(22:38):
mentioned already what was the vision? Then, I mean, why
put it together? You must have said, we're gonna come
together and we're gonna do this what was it? This
we wanted to be well at the time, would be
the fourth major agency. We thought there was room for
another large agency. We thought there was room for an
agency where younger directors or writers who wanted to be
directors could really get the kind of representation and that
(23:00):
the big agencies were providing for the big directors, but
we would provide it for that next generation. That we
were going to bet our future on finding and developing
great young filmmakers and build the agency around that core
idea writers and directors were the core principle of a
large agency. Who were some of these young talent that
(23:21):
you really gave a shot to well? When we formed
U t A. Some of the young emerging artists that
we represented at the time were the Collen Brothers, Wes Anderson,
Noah Bomback who we discovered at Sundance and all of
those are still clients today. But we really recognize that,
(23:44):
first of all, they're incredible artists. I won't say we
were pressing it, but I think we did believe that
the studio system would want to start looking for emerging
talent and emerging directors and would be willing to take
different kinds of chances on different kinds of material. Two
thousand and twelve, you took over CEO and UTA has
(24:04):
had trumenous success, three d and thirty employees, going to
a thousand with offices in New York, l A, Miami, Nashville, London.
You've both built and you've acquired. Why do you need
to do both and how do you think about both
of those? In terms of building the organization, we wanted
to get really good in a few areas that we
thought if we tried to build ourselves it would take
(24:26):
too long and we're not sure we would get there.
Sometimes buying that kind of competence and expertise is really
impactful way to do it. So the explosion of news
and news broadcasting was something we were excited to be
involved with, and we thought that we could offer opportunities
to those kinds of broadcasters. So we acquired n S
(24:48):
Being Stock, which was the largest agency representing newscasters and broadcasters.
And then we really wanted to have a speakers agency
because we thought we had so many clients who could
be valuable as speakers and thought leaders, and to have
a speaker's agency really understood that business. Don Epstein and
his firm Greater Talent were, you know, one of the
(25:09):
real market leaders there. So we acquired Don. So there's
some areas like that where you can get you know,
God to get a guy who's been doing it for
thirty years, has a built in network. It makes a
lot of sense. Then there are other businesses that are
like podcasting. If we wanted to go out and buy
the leading podcast agency, well it didn't exist, so let's
build that ourselves. What about running a company came easy
(25:33):
to you? And what it was the hard part that
you had to learn? I mean what came easy to me,
I think was having an intuitive sense of where we
need to go and what are the things that are
going to work, and having an intuitive sense of the
people and the movement that we need to find to
get where we want to go. I think the harder
part for me as we get bigger is creating a
(25:55):
more structured organization and understanding the need for a more
structured organization. Should founder CEOs tend to like to keep
things kind of the way they are, and I'm not
gonna let go of a lot of stuff, and I
don't need a bunch of being counters running around. I
find myself sounding like that guy. I don't want to
bunch of being counters telling me how to run my business,
but I need sophisticated accounting and sophisticated executives to help
(26:17):
me run my business. Well, it's toggling between those two
mindsets that I find to be somewhat challenging. If the
twenty five year old Jeremy could see you now, what
would he be most surprised about. Well, he'd be really
happy that I'm doing as well as I am. And
he'd be really happy and surprised that I have found
(26:39):
a woman in my life who's my real partner, that
I've been able to raise four daughters, and that I've
been able to, you know, succeed and thrive the way
I have in this organization. I think he'd be shocked.
The twenty five year old Jeremy Zimmer was scared to
death just hoping to become the twenty six year old
Jeremy Simmer. Talk a second about spotting talent and talent
(27:01):
both in terms of clients and talent in terms of
people you're putting in the organization. How do you do that?
What do you think is your skill set in terms
of finding that you know. I have always thought I
was a great talent spotter, and I still believe I
have very good instincts around there, although I've had to
learn that my instincts are not always right for me.
The key is to not be scared to make mistakes
(27:22):
around talent, trying to overthink that. If I find a
director or an artist or a musician, if I connect
to something that person is doing, let's believe in it.
I do the same thing with my own personal art collection.
You know, I'm not looking to be wildly strategic about
each piece of art I by. I'm looking to see
something that moves me or hear something that moves me,
(27:45):
and then if I can see the path of how
I can add value, I want to get involved. Is
there institutional structure or process that goes with spotting talent
that allows it to scale more for a business like this.
In order to be successful, an actor or a writer,
or a director or a digital arts needs many different
elements of their career to be paid attention to and nurtured.
(28:09):
Part of being a great agent is being able to
sell your colleagues If you believe in someone. The first
challenges to get your colleagues really believe in them also,
and if you can do that, you're gonna be well
on your way. You bring strong values to this job,
and we go through a couple of the project impact.
In two thousand eleven, it was a week long effort
were employees go out into the community. Two thousand and seventeen,
(28:31):
you famously canceled your OSCAR party and held a United
Voices rally to express the creative communities growing concerned about
anti immigrant sentiment in the US. When the Harvey Weinstein
accusations were first reported, you wrote an internal memo to
the company expressing support for the accusers and reinforcing the
company's no tolerance policy on workplace harassment. You are very
(28:54):
vocal and demanding more opportunities for your female and diverse artist.
What kind of im active you've seen in and out
of your company for these strong stands as a leader
in the organization, If you give voice to the values
and beliefs of your colleagues, they feel comfortable being part
of the organization. That this is an organization that stands
for the things I stand for. I think that's really
(29:16):
really important and I've seen people feel comfortable here, They
feel comfortable being who they are, They feel comfortable expressing
whatever their culture is, whatever their preferences. This is a
place where people can be themselves and be excellent as colleagues.
And how does it affect you in terms of clients
taking that kind of strong impact. I think clients are
(29:39):
encouraged and excited by the stance as we take, and
they want to feel like they're with people who represent
the right values in the world and are trying to
make money and make the world a better place. How
do you mobilize the company and the clients for these actions,
because it's not just you declaring it, it's an organization
and a client base getting behind it. Who have an
(30:00):
credible team internally that runs all of our philanthropic, charitable
and sort of social initiatives. And if I'm not thinking
about something, they make sure I am. And if I'm
not listening to what's important to the organization, they make
sure I hear it. I'm really lucky to have a
group of people who just make sure we're doing the
right thing and looking in the right places. Now, I mean,
(30:21):
the canceling the Oscar party came to me one morning,
I was reading the New York Times, reading a story
about our client Oscar for Hati and the immigrant ban,
and it just came to me and I was able
to say, you know what, we're not having a party,
Let's have a rally. But then what happened is fifty
people made it happen in an incredible way. You run
a company where your agents and colleagues are also big
(30:43):
stars and power brokers themselves. What's it like to manage
that kind of organization. It's a really exciting and really challenging.
The great thing is, there's no chance I'm the smartest
person in the room most of the time, and I
have very very skilled people who are ex one of
what they do, and my job is to really make
sure they have the tools and the colleagues and the
(31:05):
services and support to do the best job for their clients.
You talk about U t A as a culture of entrepreneurship.
How does that manifest itself? In two thousand and six,
we kind of looked around and said, Wow, there's a
lot of content on the Internet. Maybe some of our
clients want to make content for the Internet. And young
guy who had been my assistant, Brent Weinstein, I said, well,
(31:27):
why don't we figure that out. Let's build a business
and do that, and he put a whole business plan together.
We went out and raised some money. We made him
the CEO. He was an assistant, he began the CEO.
The business didn't work. Two thousand eight happened. We ran
out of money. That was that. But we learned so
much about how content is going to live and proliferate
on the Internet and what the levers of success will
(31:49):
be that Brent came back and has been running our
digital group ever since, and it's been an incredible valuable experience.
This is a podcast about marketing. You're not only the
st what of your company brand, but also very involved
in the brands of your clients. How do you think
about those brands and how do you think about the
dangers to the brand? What are you watching out for?
Is you help manage these brands Today there's so many
(32:11):
things that can happen in a blink of an eye
that can really damage a brand. So you know, look,
our clients are humans, and they're going to have good
days and bad days, and good relationships and bad relationships.
And what we try to really do is help create
the right environment so that when they're putting themselves out there,
(32:32):
they have an understanding of what their audience thinks of
them and wants to see, and we'll connect with Do
you track what those essential points are for each person's brand? Yeah,
we have a deep n Q department of twelve colleagues.
We have a couple of doctors of statistics and research,
and we do a lot of deep work into people's
(32:55):
social profiles. We have the first social media agent here
at u t A do spot stuff on social that
are early warning signs for problems with the brand or issues.
We try to I won't say we've been great at it,
but you know, I don't think anybody has. I think
too many things pop up that you just don't remember.
You discovered audio and podcast early on. How do you
(33:17):
use podcast to extend and even monetize these celebrity brands,
these stars, this talent. Well, I think right now, when
we look at a talent, a celebrity or an artist,
we go what are the different buckets of opportunity that
exist for the artist, and some of them there's a
very clear opportunity for podcast. And you see, this is
(33:43):
somebody who's got great storyteller. This is somebody who lives
in a world that could be very interesting compelling. This
is somebody who attracts other people in an interesting way.
We try to figure out what's the right slice and
the right world for you. So with Will Ferrell, as
you well know, it was Ron Burgundy and then it
was Chelsea Handler, it's a different slice. So it's trying
(34:03):
to figure out where can you live and what can
you talk about and what's going to make sense for
you that your audience is going to be excited to
hear about social, digital, mobile, five G streaming, subscriptions, podcasts.
The world has gotten a lot more crowded and also
a lot more connected. How has it changed how you
do business? You have to be fluent in so many
(34:25):
different areas and how they all inter relate and impact
each other. You have to be able to have some
understanding about how this piece effects this spieci effects this piece,
how it's all coming together, where it's breaking apart, so
that you can predict with some degree of accuracy where
things are going and where your clients should be. We
talked a little bit about the consolidation of the buyers
(34:47):
for content. Do you think the major foundational entertainment companies
are changing, and by the way the mix of who
those are changing are we at the beginning of a
moment that we'll look back on and say this is
when it flipped. I think I've been around long enough
to see that there's not a permanence. We're in a
moment of rapid change. And I think there is going
to be a few big, big guys, but then there
(35:11):
will continue to be more challengers coming into the ecosystem.
New ideas, the old ways of doing it will weaken.
Everything won't work, Some of the big guys will get
in trouble, little guys will come in and snatch market share.
They'll become big guys, and the constant will be that
talent and great storytelling is going to be important. So
(35:34):
how do companies lose their way in times like this?
You've seen it, I've seen it. Companies are in a
great trajectory and then suddenly something goes wrong and they
either disappear or they lose their dominance. What is it
the causes that to happen? Well, I think they get
overdependent on one idea and one way of doing things,
or they really believe that the way They've designed their
(35:56):
business is the only way it can be and they're
not going to change age. And I think when you
hold on too long to one business model, you can,
you know, get broken. I mean, Blockbuster had every opportunity
in the world to buy Netflix. But now we're gonna
be this business. We're gonna be a retail business where
(36:16):
people are gonna come in. And I don't know, why
would we give up this great business where we buy
somebody and rent it over and over and over again
for four all is that be crazy? And you know,
you hold on too long and you get destroyed. Right now,
the newest smartest kids on the block or Netflix, they're
just so much smarter than everybody else, and they know
(36:36):
data and they have this and they have that, and
you know, I think they have to look today at
where they are and think, well, what are the changes
we could never imagine and start imagining them. If they
were willing to do that, they'll stay as powerful and
dominant as they are. If they don't, they'll come up
against some of the challenges that Warner Brothers and Fox
(37:00):
and all these other guys are. On a final note,
how do you think about work life balance and how
much is your family touched by or involved in your work?
My life feels incredibly balanced because I'm passionate about the
things I do. I love my family, I love spending
time with them. I love my work. I love doing it.
And I think if you're passionate about where you are
(37:21):
and passionate about what you're doing, your life's in balance.
Is there ever a time when you can disconnect from
your work? Or is there every time you want to
disconnect from your work? This is my art, you know.
I don't believe that Bob Dylan is ever not thinking
about the next song, or that a great novelist isn't
writing while he's sitting there having dinner with you. Not
(37:44):
that I compare myself to Bob Dylan or a great novelist.
But this is my art. It lives with me all
the time. I love it. We end each episode of
Math and Magic giving a shout out to the great
talent math and in magic, the analytical folks, and the
wildly creative. Who is the greatest analytical person you know
or know of? The mathematician? I can't answer that question, Okay,
(38:08):
who is the greatest creative? The magician? They just come
up with ideas, and I consistently um blown away by
different artists at different times. Jeremy Zimmer, thank you, You're welcome.
Here are three things I've picked up from my conversation
(38:29):
with Jeremy Zimmer. One, speak up for the police of
your organization. Jeremy has written sharp memos and even fired
clients of a behavior he doesn't endorse because he wants
his colleagues to know U t A backs their values.
To embrace empathy. Not only has empathy helped Jeremy and
his work as an agent, but in his opinion, it's
(38:50):
also the essence of great storytelling. Three. Give your employees
to space to build. Jeremy encourages his employees to investigate
new areas, and he's happy me to put resources behind
their instincts. Is how U t A got into podcasts
so early in the game. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
(39:19):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques,
and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
(39:41):
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic production of I Heart Radio.
I was out of college. I was working in a
parking lot. I was living in the Howard Johnson's in
Kenmore Square, and most of the things I owned were
in my car. And I got stabbed and I went
to hospital and I needed to recover. Here I am,
I'm nineteen years old. I flunked out of college. I've
(00:24):
been stabbed. I have no vision, notion, or anything of
a future. You know, this is not the script for
a nice Jewish boy from a good family. My grandfather
called me and he said, well, you've really done a
fine job of screwing up your life. I'd like to
help you. Are you ready to get serious? I'm Bob Pittman.
(00:53):
Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing,
where we explore stories about the analytics and the creative
and how they come together to create marketing and business legends.
Today we're chatting with a man who's been at the
center of the major entertainment industry transformations of the last
thirty five years. He grew up actually at the intersections
(01:19):
of math and magic, stockbroker, father, writer, mother, and a
grandfather who satisfied the business and creative as a famous writer,
producer and president of MGM, and his grandmother was even
a visual artist. He's one of the co founders and
now CEO of United Talent Agency UTA, one of the
bedrock Hollywood agencies. Welcome Jeremy Zimmer. Thanks so much. Lots
(01:42):
to talk about, but first let's break the ice with
you in sixty seconds. Do you prefer New York City
or Los Angeles? Los Angeles? Instagram or Twitter? Neither Early
Riser or night Owl very early Riser, The Beatles or
the Stones, The Stones, jay Z or Beyonce, jay Z,
Coachella Lallapaloosa, Coachella, Golf or Tennis golf. It's about to
(02:07):
get harder. Smartest person you know, Irving as Off, childhood hero,
franklindelin Or Roosevelt. First job working at gas station, first
job you liked working in a gas station. Hardest working
artist Kevin Hart. Last vacation fourth of July in Israel.
Secret talent. I don't keep any of my talents a secret.
(02:30):
First piece of art you bought photographed by Sally Man.
First concert Jethro tull Aqualung, Great Great tour, proudest career achievement.
U t a proudest personal achievement, raising four daughters thus
far successfully. Who would play you in a movie? Either
James Gandalfeni or Brad Pitt depends on the day and
(02:52):
the way I feel about myself. Movie you think should
be required viewing dead poets Society. If you can have
a super power, what would it be? Time travel? Okay,
let's go back in time. Speaking of time travel, I
think of the first time we met. I was running
in TV. You were William Morris in New York. This
is the early nineteen eighties, a time when most agents
(03:14):
thought there were only three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. Yet
here you are delving into new cable networks. I think
you were the only agent that ever paid any attention
of TV and came by What led you to be
there so far ahead of others in your business at
that time. First of all, I was a movie agent
in New York City, which was, you know, like being
(03:34):
a down Parker agent in the Sahara. No one cared
what I was doing, said anybody who had, you know,
a checkbook with five d dollars in it. I was
going to go visit and see what business we could
possibly do. And I've always been curious, and I thought
what you guys were doing at MTV seems so smart
and so ahead of its time and so interesting that
(03:56):
I was excited to hear more about. What did you
think of the future networks at that time? And was
this about the future of networks or was it just
plain curiosity? I think it was plain curiosity. But you know,
I'd love to tell you, oh, I was thinking and
examining the future of networks and wondering about but I wasn't.
I was really thinking, like you know, I was making
a five dollars a week, how can I make a
(04:16):
hundred and fifty dollars a week? And how can I
get into studio fifty four? And how can I pay
for a drink on my salary? That was We're basically
the things I was really consumed with at the time.
So let me give you a contrast. Now, over thirty
years later, you showed up at podcast early. Is this locker?
Is this a unique skill you have? I think the
skill I've had is create an environment where I have
(04:39):
these great young people and I kind of say, hey,
you want to build something, you want to start something,
and go figure out a new area and see what's happening,
and if there's enough happening there, we'll put some resources
behind it. So we had this great guy, Orn Rosamund
and started talking about podcasting, and I thought, oh, come on,
who's gonna sit there and listen? No, no, no no, it's
really big. I said, Okay, go figure out. And so
(05:01):
I'd love to take credit for figuring out that podcast
was a big business. I didn't, but I took credit
for thinking Aren Rosenbaum is a really smart guy, and
I'm going to give him a little bit of runway
to figure it out. How early did Uren start talking
about it? Five years ago? Six years ago? So he
was very early, very early, and he had a lot
of support from my co founder Peter Bennedet, who you
know every day would walk in and say, I just
(05:22):
listen to this great podcast. And all I was thinking was,
how do you enough time to do that? But he
really fell in love with podcasting and it was very
supportive of our And during this process, when you were
looking at it early, what did you think the opportunity
might be. Well, I just thought, okay, here's a new
form of storytelling. And you know, if at a certain point,
if you don't want to listen to music, you want
(05:43):
to have something a little more immersive. You're going for
a long walk, you're going for a long drive. You
don't want to just listen to music, you want to
have immersive storytelling. Audio books were certainly uh big thing,
but the immediacy of a podcast, the ability to delve
into a new story and a new way, it seemed
like it could be something really compelling. So here podcasts
(06:03):
that surpassed against the year or so ago satellite radio
in terms of reach. Now there's big as the big
streaming music services. Where do you think all that's going?
You know, I wish I knew where it's all going.
I just think we have a universe of people who
just want to consume ideas, endlessly, consume content endlessly. I
don't think it's all going one place. I think it's
going in multiple areas. It seems to be an infinite
(06:26):
capacity for storytelling. And this storytelling is your ears, not
your eyes. And you've guys have done a great job
of taking and saying okay, we'll put them for the
eyes too. Yeah, how do you think about that opportunity?
Many of our artists, writers, directors, actors are looking for
compelling I P. And I think we're constantly looking for
(06:46):
new places to mind great I P. And if you
have I P that also has a built in audience
where people have already heard it and gone, wow, that's
a great story. If you can then translate that into
the video medium and do its successfully, you'll have it
built in audience. So this is a podcast about marketing
and ideas. What advice do you have for other leaders
(07:09):
about seeing the future higher good, strong people and then
listen to them about what they are excited about. We
haven't allowed an aggressive group of young men and women
to go out and find great stories for us. So
let's explore where your insight comes from. You have all
the evidence of both nurture and nature. You have the genetics,
(07:31):
and you clearly had the environment. Can you spend a
little time talking about your child and the family and
what you took from all that. My mom is a writer.
She's written eight or nine novels, a published authors, She's written,
you know, hundreds of magazine articles, and she lives in
the world of story and the power of story. And
my grandfather was an author, a writer, a producer and
(07:54):
a studio head, and that was very rare at the time.
It's still rare to this day. Storytelling and the love
of storytelling, the love of reading was always really important
in our house, and I still love fiction and I
read a lot of fiction. I think reading fiction is
critical both in my business and in my life. I'm
a big believer that you read fiction because it helps
(08:15):
you develop the skill of empathy or the feeling of empathy.
But I didn't grow up in Hollywood at all. Dennis
Hopper was a family friend. I knew him, but really
my mom was a very erratic human being as a mom.
My parents were divorced early, and my grandfather, the year
I was born, moved to New York, so he wasn't
as available to me. You know, I really grew up
(08:37):
with this weird combination of loving stories and ideas and
hating school and any sort of organized program. So I
learned a lot just living by my wits as well.
This environment of being able to be thoughtful and somewhat
free wheeling and innovative against a backdrop of loving storytelling
and art makes a lot of sense for me. So
(08:57):
let me take you a little tangent here if the
stories are true, you worked at the gas station at fourteen.
Started working at a gas station in Malibu at fourteen
on Pacific Coast Highway and Coral Canyon. It's still there.
And I loved working at the gas station because I
love the interaction of people and the ability to sort
of manage the business and the people in and out
and take care of things and learn things on the
(09:18):
job and how do you change a tire, patch of tire,
change the oil. All these things where things I actually
learned how to do. It was pretty interesting. I was
halfway through my senior year in Santa Monica and moved
to Westport, Connecticut, where I ended up being halfway through
my junior year. I got a job working at a
gas station there, and I ended up managing that and
(09:39):
closing the gas station. You know, I would go to
school and then go to the gas station, close the
gas station. This had to be a tough time to
move senior year going back to junior year. I mean,
I was a straight F student in my senior year
at Santa Monica High School, So it's not like, oh
my god, you're ripping me away from my valedictorian candidacy.
I mean it was like, you gotta get out of here,
You're a disaster, and they were right. You know, I
(10:01):
have the great luxury of having these four daughters who
you know. I mean, the most rebellious thing that they've
ever done was my oldest daughter went and got a
tattoo on the back of her neck underneath her hair,
which we didn't even discover for like two years. So
I'm lucky. But if I had a kid like me,
I don't know what I would have done. Lots of
folks who've been on math and Magic are college shropouts,
(10:22):
so were you? And I have to disclose? So am
I Why did you drop out of college? I ended
up graduating high school miraculously, and I had very high
test scores and I got into Boston University. I only
chose Boston University because my girlfriend at the time was
going to toughs, so I sort of looked at school's
proximate to toughts that I could get into and be
you was one of them. I really didn't like school.
(10:44):
I'm sure today I would be diagnosed with a d
D or a d h D or something like that.
Although I loved reading and I could do that, the
basic day to day of showing up, remembering what I
was told, doing the test. I just didn't like it,
and I was never good at it was always hard
for me. How many years did you do? I dropped
out of Be You or Be You and I mutually
(11:06):
terminated our relationship after about a year and a half,
three semesters. All these years later, do you see an
early indication of your talents ambitions dropping out of college
or do you think it was just more of a
personal experience with you. I'd love to draw some line
where I was just two entrepreneurial and two dot gard
smart for college. I don't know that it was that
(11:28):
I was struggling with complicated You know, I lived back
and forth with my mom and my dad. I'd had
a deep relationship with drugs and alcohol. You know, I
was trying to find myself in all the wrong places.
So is there any lesson you take from that that
you've passed on to your kids and saying, let me
tell you, I've learned something here. My kids have shown
(11:50):
me and I'm so proud to see it in them.
The capacity for hard work that's there if you're willing
to really give it a war all. I never thought
I could do hard work because I couldn't do schoolwork,
so early on in my career I was afraid of
the hard work. Like I could show up and do
the hustle and do the party and do that, this
(12:11):
and that, but really sitting down and thinking things through
and following through on plans and ideas. It's still a
little challenging, but back then it was really frightening for me.
So before we get into stories of you in the
agency world, when you dropped out of college, you were running,
as I understand the VALI a parking station in Boston
(12:31):
and you actually got stabbed during an astupted robbery. Must
be incredibly traumatic. How did that change your outlook and
or your trajectory on life. I was out of college,
I was working in a parking lot. I was living
in the Howard Johnson's in Kenmore Square. I was sneaking
my dog in and out of the hotel, and most
of the things I owned were in my car. And
(12:52):
I got stabbed, and I went to hospital and I
needed to recover, so I had to go back home
to Connecticut with my mom. And I went back home,
and you know, I was just there and here I am.
I'm nineteen years old, I flunked out of college. I've
been stabbed. I have no vision, notion or anything of
a future. I don't know what it's going to be,
and I don't know what can become of me. And
I was pretty you know, this is not the script
(13:14):
for a nice Jewish boy from a good family. But
what happened is my grandfather called me and he said, well,
you've really done a fine job of screwing up your life.
I'd like to help you. Are you ready to get serious?
And I said, I don't know, I think I am.
I want to try, and he arranged for me to
have an interview at the William Morris Agency. So I
(13:37):
interviewed at the William Morris Agency. I talked around my
lack of a college degree, which was required at the time,
and I got into the mail room and something happened there.
It was an immediate feeling. I can still feel it today,
this feeling of comfort, and I understand how this works.
(13:57):
I'm going to be good at this. So tell us
a little bit about this. This is one of the
more famous clubs in the entertainment industry is the William
Moore's mail room, and there was some really famous alum
beside you in the mail room. Yeah. One of the
other famous alums who didn't have a college degree is
David Geffen. But you're thrown in a mail room and
it's really simple. It's like, just do all these tasks.
(14:18):
And back then there was mail, so it's a whole
other thing. And the way that the inner office communication
was done was through memos that were sent down to
the mail room and copied, So you make a hundred
copies of a memo and then you distributed around the
office by hand in these mail carts. So you were
literally at the center point of all the information. Everything
(14:39):
flowed through you through these memos, so you you really
knew what was going on. It was like imagine if
you had all the email of everyone in your company
flowing through your office all the time and could read it.
And it was this very rich environment with a very
rich tradition. And the agents there knew that they were
supposed to try to provide idea with some mentoring and
(15:02):
some guidance and some opportunity. If I could just pay
attention and focus on a couple of things that I
liked something good could happen. How did you get out
of the mail room. I really wanted to be in
the publishing area, and so that was my first thing.
I wanted to be like a book agent, and I
had this ridiculous vision of myself like reading thousand page
manuscripts with like a pencil and editing and do all
(15:25):
this stuff, which was, you know, for a guy who
probably had a d D. Would have been a disaster.
And the good news is they didn't want me. There
was a young agent named Fred Milstein who was in
the Way Morris movie department, which again was this tiny Basically,
he was the movie department and they were giving him
his first assistant. So he and this guy George Lane,
who was in the theater department, we're going to share
their first assistant. But I'd only been in the mailroom
(15:47):
for like six months. And I went to interview with Fred,
and I could see his chair was broken. The ball
bearings were loose, and that share was sort of awkwardly
swiveling around. And I had my interview with him, and
then at lunch, I went into the storage thing and
I took a part of chair, took the ball bearings out,
of that chair, went to his chair, fixed his chair,
(16:08):
and left him a little note saying, hey, I noticed
your chair. I think I fixed it that Thanks for
the interview, and I got that job so that the
bearings began your career. Exactly why did you leave Willie
Morris and had the I c M in the mid eighties.
My mentor there at the time had moved out to
Los Angeles, so I was in New York and I
was feeling somewhat without a mentor, and the department didn't
(16:31):
have a lot of focus or strength because again it's
the movie business in New York, which was not a
thriving environment. I really wanted to move to l A,
and the way moorese agency didn't feel they really wanted
me to move to l A. At the same time
I c M, Jeff Burgh was running I c M,
and he knew me, and he thought I was a
very well read and intelligent young man, and he kept
(16:52):
pursuing me for a job, so ultimately he offered me
a job to go out to I c M and
be the book guy, meaning the guy who sold the
underlying movie and television rights for the books that I
seem represented. Describe Hollywood at that moment, the power brokers.
What did you step into? What was that world like?
It was an amazing environment because you know, it was
(17:13):
still the lions of Hollywood. It was the Dan Melnicks
and the Race Starks. You know, we're sort of still
ruling the land. And you know, the guys who ran
the studios were these larger than life lions, and they
still could sort of make decisions based on their gut feel.
You know, they could look in the eye of a
young filmmaker and see something special and say, sure, here, kid,
(17:35):
here's thirty million dollars or forty million dollars, go make
this movie. There was a lot of thirst for ideas
and new ideas and books and scripts, and there was
a lot going on, and the business was changing so much.
You had the emergence of the cable networks at HBO,
pay TV, you had home video. How was that changing?
I mean I had to disrupt the system first. It
(17:56):
fueled the system because there were millions and millions of
new money flowing in unabated for home video and pay TV.
So HBO made this crazy pay TV deal with Columbia
at the time, where they would just pay tens of
millions of dollars for their movies. At the same time,
you had all these movies being made based on video sales,
(18:19):
so they would do an estimate of what the home
video market would be worth, and that could be the
entire cost of the movie. So there was a lot
of action going on fueling this seemingly endless growth in
home video. There's a parallel almost today with the Netflix
and the New production. Did it feel like the world
was expanding at that moment as it does. Well, it's
(18:40):
interesting because today it feels the consumption is expanding, but
the amount of players is contracting. So that's the difference
is back then, the amount of players were expanding, so
you had so many different players coming into the market
trying to take advantage of all this home video consumption.
And now really what you have is you have this
consolidation or around these few giant players where they're really
(19:02):
trying to control the entire streaming universe. So while their
appetite is very big, their power is a little intimate.
It will use the analogy of the retail business when
Walmart showed up or Target and exactly war Target, Amazon,
where they sort of constrict the trade into these few
giant pillars. You were featured in a PBS frontline piece,
(19:24):
Hollywood Dreams. Did that help your career or did it
the jealousy? I mean, give me the complexion of how
that felt. It was nuts. I mean I looked back
on that, I go, oh my god, what what could
I have been thinking? You know, I'll never forget the
night that aired. I was so afraid. And I got
this call from Jeff Berg who ran I c M.
(19:45):
And I was like, oh boy, this is gonna be bad.
And he said, I just want to tie something. I
love it. He said, you are so raw and so
connected to your client, and you are so connected to
the pain of the artist. I think it's amazing. And
that was a really good wow feeling because I was
(20:06):
in the middle of a battle on behalf of a client,
trying to help him keep his job and at the
same time trying to manage him through the process of
losing the job. It was all out there. I left
it all on the field, and it was very clear
how real that responsibility is of representing an artist. Just
hold on a second, because we've got so much more
(20:27):
to talk about. We'll be back after a quick break.
Welcome back to math and magic. We're here with Jeremy Zimmer.
Let me talk just a second about your craft. You've
been talking about story. What makes a great story? To me,
what ultimately makes a great story is can we join
this character and care about what this character is going
(20:49):
through and feel compassion and empathy for the characters. And
that's to me why great stories are so important, because
it allows us to unlock empathy without obligation. With stories,
you can just feel empathy. Does it differ my medium?
I mean it differs a little bit by genre. I
don't know that we're accessing the character's heart. In a
(21:12):
Marvel movie, we got some connection to who they are,
but after a while, I'm not sure that's what the
audience is going there for. You take a great story,
you understand the story, how do you market that great story? Well,
that's one of the biggest challenges today in the environment
we're in where there's so much noise and such a
sort of cacophony of horseshit, it's really hard. You start
so many stories down the path to tournament to something
(21:35):
that the consumer access is how much influence do you
have on how it's marketed? In that process. Over time
in the movie business, agents developed more and more influence
because we first of all represent our filmmakers. Filmmakers become
more powerful, but it depends on the project. Really, it
depends on the project. A small, tough movie are the
(21:55):
kind of things we can have a lot of influence
for how they're sold, how they're marketed, who distributes it.
The fight to get a beautiful small movie made is
a very noble fight. Not necessarily a very rewarding fight,
but a very noble fight. And then once you get
a distribute, you got to make sure it's distributed well.
You got to do your best. And it's a world
right now. We're spending a lot of money to market
(22:16):
a small movie. Doesn't make sense, and that's provided an
opportunity for Netflix and Amazon and others to come in
and turn the streaming of these smaller movies into a
real business. UTA was formed when leading artist agencies and
Bauer Benedet merged. You were a co founder with Jim Burkas,
Rob Rothman, Robert Stein, Marty Bauer, Peter Benedet that you
(22:38):
mentioned already what was the vision? Then, I mean, why
put it together? You must have said, we're gonna come
together and we're gonna do this what was it? This
we wanted to be well at the time, would be
the fourth major agency. We thought there was room for
another large agency. We thought there was room for an
agency where younger directors or writers who wanted to be
directors could really get the kind of representation and that
(23:00):
the big agencies were providing for the big directors, but
we would provide it for that next generation. That we
were going to bet our future on finding and developing
great young filmmakers and build the agency around that core
idea writers and directors were the core principle of a
large agency. Who were some of these young talent that
(23:21):
you really gave a shot to well? When we formed
U t A. Some of the young emerging artists that
we represented at the time were the Collen Brothers, Wes Anderson,
Noah Bomback who we discovered at Sundance and all of
those are still clients today. But we really recognize that,
(23:44):
first of all, they're incredible artists. I won't say we
were pressing it, but I think we did believe that
the studio system would want to start looking for emerging
talent and emerging directors and would be willing to take
different kinds of chances on different kinds of material. Two
thousand and twelve, you took over CEO and UTA has
(24:04):
had trumenous success, three d and thirty employees, going to
a thousand with offices in New York, l A, Miami, Nashville, London.
You've both built and you've acquired. Why do you need
to do both and how do you think about both
of those? In terms of building the organization, we wanted
to get really good in a few areas that we
thought if we tried to build ourselves it would take
(24:26):
too long and we're not sure we would get there.
Sometimes buying that kind of competence and expertise is really
impactful way to do it. So the explosion of news
and news broadcasting was something we were excited to be
involved with, and we thought that we could offer opportunities
to those kinds of broadcasters. So we acquired n S
(24:48):
Being Stock, which was the largest agency representing newscasters and broadcasters.
And then we really wanted to have a speakers agency
because we thought we had so many clients who could
be valuable as speakers and thought leaders, and to have
a speaker's agency really understood that business. Don Epstein and
his firm Greater Talent were, you know, one of the
(25:09):
real market leaders there. So we acquired Don. So there's
some areas like that where you can get you know,
God to get a guy who's been doing it for
thirty years, has a built in network. It makes a
lot of sense. Then there are other businesses that are
like podcasting. If we wanted to go out and buy
the leading podcast agency, well it didn't exist, so let's
build that ourselves. What about running a company came easy
(25:33):
to you? And what it was the hard part that
you had to learn? I mean what came easy to me,
I think was having an intuitive sense of where we
need to go and what are the things that are
going to work, and having an intuitive sense of the
people and the movement that we need to find to
get where we want to go. I think the harder
part for me as we get bigger is creating a
(25:55):
more structured organization and understanding the need for a more
structured organization. Should founder CEOs tend to like to keep
things kind of the way they are, and I'm not
gonna let go of a lot of stuff, and I
don't need a bunch of being counters running around. I
find myself sounding like that guy. I don't want to
bunch of being counters telling me how to run my business,
but I need sophisticated accounting and sophisticated executives to help
(26:17):
me run my business. Well, it's toggling between those two
mindsets that I find to be somewhat challenging. If the
twenty five year old Jeremy could see you now, what
would he be most surprised about. Well, he'd be really
happy that I'm doing as well as I am. And
he'd be really happy and surprised that I have found
(26:39):
a woman in my life who's my real partner, that
I've been able to raise four daughters, and that I've
been able to, you know, succeed and thrive the way
I have in this organization. I think he'd be shocked.
The twenty five year old Jeremy Zimmer was scared to
death just hoping to become the twenty six year old
Jeremy Simmer. Talk a second about spotting talent and talent
(27:01):
both in terms of clients and talent in terms of
people you're putting in the organization. How do you do that?
What do you think is your skill set in terms
of finding that you know. I have always thought I
was a great talent spotter, and I still believe I
have very good instincts around there, although I've had to
learn that my instincts are not always right for me.
The key is to not be scared to make mistakes
(27:22):
around talent, trying to overthink that. If I find a
director or an artist or a musician, if I connect
to something that person is doing, let's believe in it.
I do the same thing with my own personal art collection.
You know, I'm not looking to be wildly strategic about
each piece of art I by. I'm looking to see
something that moves me or hear something that moves me,
(27:45):
and then if I can see the path of how
I can add value, I want to get involved. Is
there institutional structure or process that goes with spotting talent
that allows it to scale more for a business like this.
In order to be successful, an actor or a writer,
or a director or a digital arts needs many different
elements of their career to be paid attention to and nurtured.
(28:09):
Part of being a great agent is being able to
sell your colleagues If you believe in someone. The first
challenges to get your colleagues really believe in them also,
and if you can do that, you're gonna be well
on your way. You bring strong values to this job,
and we go through a couple of the project impact.
In two thousand eleven, it was a week long effort
were employees go out into the community. Two thousand and seventeen,
(28:31):
you famously canceled your OSCAR party and held a United
Voices rally to express the creative communities growing concerned about
anti immigrant sentiment in the US. When the Harvey Weinstein
accusations were first reported, you wrote an internal memo to
the company expressing support for the accusers and reinforcing the
company's no tolerance policy on workplace harassment. You are very
(28:54):
vocal and demanding more opportunities for your female and diverse artist.
What kind of im active you've seen in and out
of your company for these strong stands as a leader
in the organization, If you give voice to the values
and beliefs of your colleagues, they feel comfortable being part
of the organization. That this is an organization that stands
for the things I stand for. I think that's really
(29:16):
really important and I've seen people feel comfortable here, They
feel comfortable being who they are, They feel comfortable expressing
whatever their culture is, whatever their preferences. This is a
place where people can be themselves and be excellent as colleagues.
And how does it affect you in terms of clients
taking that kind of strong impact. I think clients are
(29:39):
encouraged and excited by the stance as we take, and
they want to feel like they're with people who represent
the right values in the world and are trying to
make money and make the world a better place. How
do you mobilize the company and the clients for these actions,
because it's not just you declaring it, it's an organization
and a client base getting behind it. Who have an
(30:00):
credible team internally that runs all of our philanthropic, charitable
and sort of social initiatives. And if I'm not thinking
about something, they make sure I am. And if I'm
not listening to what's important to the organization, they make
sure I hear it. I'm really lucky to have a
group of people who just make sure we're doing the
right thing and looking in the right places. Now, I mean,
(30:21):
the canceling the Oscar party came to me one morning,
I was reading the New York Times, reading a story
about our client Oscar for Hati and the immigrant ban,
and it just came to me and I was able
to say, you know what, we're not having a party,
Let's have a rally. But then what happened is fifty
people made it happen in an incredible way. You run
a company where your agents and colleagues are also big
(30:43):
stars and power brokers themselves. What's it like to manage
that kind of organization. It's a really exciting and really challenging.
The great thing is, there's no chance I'm the smartest
person in the room most of the time, and I
have very very skilled people who are ex one of
what they do, and my job is to really make
sure they have the tools and the colleagues and the
(31:05):
services and support to do the best job for their clients.
You talk about U t A as a culture of entrepreneurship.
How does that manifest itself? In two thousand and six,
we kind of looked around and said, Wow, there's a
lot of content on the Internet. Maybe some of our
clients want to make content for the Internet. And young
guy who had been my assistant, Brent Weinstein, I said, well,
(31:27):
why don't we figure that out. Let's build a business
and do that, and he put a whole business plan together.
We went out and raised some money. We made him
the CEO. He was an assistant, he began the CEO.
The business didn't work. Two thousand eight happened. We ran
out of money. That was that. But we learned so
much about how content is going to live and proliferate
on the Internet and what the levers of success will
(31:49):
be that Brent came back and has been running our
digital group ever since, and it's been an incredible valuable experience.
This is a podcast about marketing. You're not only the
st what of your company brand, but also very involved
in the brands of your clients. How do you think
about those brands and how do you think about the
dangers to the brand? What are you watching out for?
Is you help manage these brands Today there's so many
(32:11):
things that can happen in a blink of an eye
that can really damage a brand. So you know, look,
our clients are humans, and they're going to have good
days and bad days, and good relationships and bad relationships.
And what we try to really do is help create
the right environment so that when they're putting themselves out there,
(32:32):
they have an understanding of what their audience thinks of
them and wants to see, and we'll connect with Do
you track what those essential points are for each person's brand? Yeah,
we have a deep n Q department of twelve colleagues.
We have a couple of doctors of statistics and research,
and we do a lot of deep work into people's
(32:55):
social profiles. We have the first social media agent here
at u t A do spot stuff on social that
are early warning signs for problems with the brand or issues.
We try to I won't say we've been great at it,
but you know, I don't think anybody has. I think
too many things pop up that you just don't remember.
You discovered audio and podcast early on. How do you
(33:17):
use podcast to extend and even monetize these celebrity brands,
these stars, this talent. Well, I think right now, when
we look at a talent, a celebrity or an artist,
we go what are the different buckets of opportunity that
exist for the artist, and some of them there's a
very clear opportunity for podcast. And you see, this is
(33:43):
somebody who's got great storyteller. This is somebody who lives
in a world that could be very interesting compelling. This
is somebody who attracts other people in an interesting way.
We try to figure out what's the right slice and
the right world for you. So with Will Ferrell, as
you well know, it was Ron Burgundy and then it
was Chelsea Handler, it's a different slice. So it's trying
(34:03):
to figure out where can you live and what can
you talk about and what's going to make sense for
you that your audience is going to be excited to
hear about social, digital, mobile, five G streaming, subscriptions, podcasts.
The world has gotten a lot more crowded and also
a lot more connected. How has it changed how you
do business? You have to be fluent in so many
(34:25):
different areas and how they all inter relate and impact
each other. You have to be able to have some
understanding about how this piece effects this spieci effects this piece,
how it's all coming together, where it's breaking apart, so
that you can predict with some degree of accuracy where
things are going and where your clients should be. We
talked a little bit about the consolidation of the buyers
(34:47):
for content. Do you think the major foundational entertainment companies
are changing, and by the way the mix of who
those are changing are we at the beginning of a
moment that we'll look back on and say this is
when it flipped. I think I've been around long enough
to see that there's not a permanence. We're in a
moment of rapid change. And I think there is going
to be a few big, big guys, but then there
(35:11):
will continue to be more challengers coming into the ecosystem.
New ideas, the old ways of doing it will weaken.
Everything won't work, Some of the big guys will get
in trouble, little guys will come in and snatch market share.
They'll become big guys, and the constant will be that
talent and great storytelling is going to be important. So
(35:34):
how do companies lose their way in times like this?
You've seen it, I've seen it. Companies are in a
great trajectory and then suddenly something goes wrong and they
either disappear or they lose their dominance. What is it
the causes that to happen? Well, I think they get
overdependent on one idea and one way of doing things,
or they really believe that the way They've designed their
(35:56):
business is the only way it can be and they're
not going to change age. And I think when you
hold on too long to one business model, you can,
you know, get broken. I mean, Blockbuster had every opportunity
in the world to buy Netflix. But now we're gonna
be this business. We're gonna be a retail business where
(36:16):
people are gonna come in. And I don't know, why
would we give up this great business where we buy
somebody and rent it over and over and over again
for four all is that be crazy? And you know,
you hold on too long and you get destroyed. Right now,
the newest smartest kids on the block or Netflix, they're
just so much smarter than everybody else, and they know
(36:36):
data and they have this and they have that, and
you know, I think they have to look today at
where they are and think, well, what are the changes
we could never imagine and start imagining them. If they
were willing to do that, they'll stay as powerful and
dominant as they are. If they don't, they'll come up
against some of the challenges that Warner Brothers and Fox
(37:00):
and all these other guys are. On a final note,
how do you think about work life balance and how
much is your family touched by or involved in your work?
My life feels incredibly balanced because I'm passionate about the
things I do. I love my family, I love spending
time with them. I love my work. I love doing it.
And I think if you're passionate about where you are
(37:21):
and passionate about what you're doing, your life's in balance.
Is there ever a time when you can disconnect from
your work? Or is there every time you want to
disconnect from your work? This is my art, you know.
I don't believe that Bob Dylan is ever not thinking
about the next song, or that a great novelist isn't
writing while he's sitting there having dinner with you. Not
(37:44):
that I compare myself to Bob Dylan or a great novelist.
But this is my art. It lives with me all
the time. I love it. We end each episode of
Math and Magic giving a shout out to the great
talent math and in magic, the analytical folks, and the
wildly creative. Who is the greatest analytical person you know
or know of? The mathematician? I can't answer that question, Okay,
(38:08):
who is the greatest creative? The magician? They just come
up with ideas, and I consistently um blown away by
different artists at different times. Jeremy Zimmer, thank you, You're welcome.
Here are three things I've picked up from my conversation
(38:29):
with Jeremy Zimmer. One, speak up for the police of
your organization. Jeremy has written sharp memos and even fired
clients of a behavior he doesn't endorse because he wants
his colleagues to know U t A backs their values.
To embrace empathy. Not only has empathy helped Jeremy and
his work as an agent, but in his opinion, it's
(38:50):
also the essence of great storytelling. Three. Give your employees
to space to build. Jeremy encourages his employees to investigate
new areas, and he's happy me to put resources behind
their instincts. Is how U t A got into podcasts
so early in the game. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
(39:19):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which
is no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques,
and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
(39:41):
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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