Author: Brian

Latino Producers Meet, Pitch Projects and Lament

Brian

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-latinos24-2009apr24,0,6502064.story

At the National Assn. of Latino Independent Producers’ conference, participants say more Latino faces are needed in film and TV.
By Alicia Lozano
April 24, 2009
advertisement
On a breezy afternoon in Newport Beach, hundreds of Latino filmmakers descended upon the swanky Island Hotel to celebrate “A Decade of Influence” at the National Assn. of Latino Independent Producers’ 10th annual conference.
For three days last weekend, the screenwriters, producers and directors attended panel discussions, pitched projects and mingled with like-minded professionals. Conversations varied, but participants agreed on one thing: Despite a noticeable improvement in Latino films and roles, there is much work left to do.
“There are a lot of victories, a lot of solid successes,” said Kathryn Galan, executive director of the association. She pointed to television shows such as “Ugly Betty,” “The George Lopez Show” and “Resurrection Blvd.” as triumphs in the industry but lamented that many other segments of the film and television industry don’t represent the 15% of the population that calls itself Latino.
“The inside thinks ‘Three Amigos’ is a diversity effort,” Galan said. “Nothing reflects the voice of U.S.-born, English-speaking American Latinos.”
Munching on sliced prosciutto and pieces of cheese at the opening reception, screenwriter Anita Palacios Collins expressed frustration at the attitudes of some non-Latino members of the industry.

Michelle Obama to Enter Campaign Fray

Brian

http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/aug/17/nation/la-na-michelle-obama-20100817

The White House may risk tarnishing the first lady’s nonpartisan image by sending her to campaign for Democratic candidates this fall.
August 17, 2010|By Peter Nicholas, Tribune Washington Bureau
Reporting from Washington —
First Lady Michelle Obama will soon take her first real plunge into partisan politics since her husband won the presidency 21 months ago, making select appearances for Democratic candidates hoping that her popularity will excite crowds and donors in a bleak election season.
Her campaign schedule won’t be a heavy one, the White House said Monday. She makes public appearances about three days a week, and any campaigning she does for the midterm election will be within that time frame, a White House official said in an interview.
The first lady’s itinerary won’t be set until Labor Day, when the White House political team determines travel plans for the president and vice president, the official said. The idea is to deploy all three in ways that avoid overlap.
Michelle Obama will deliver a campaign speech that is largely upbeat. She won’t castigate individual Republicans, said the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The first lady has enlisted Republicans in her anti-obesity campaign, so she would risk antagonizing hard-won allies were she to deliver a fiercely partisan message.
Instead, she’ll keep the focus on her husband’s legislative successes.
“This won’t be a red-meat partisan speech,” the official said. “That’s not her nature, and it wouldn’t necessarily be effective. Things like her Let’s Move campaign have been entirely bipartisan.”
Rather, the first lady will tell voters, “We have a lot on the agenda, and the person I’m standing next to here is an ally in that effort,” the official said.

The White House may risk tarnishing the first lady’s nonpartisan image by sending her to campaign for Democratic candidates this fall.August 17, 2010|By Peter Nicholas, Tribune Washington BureauReporting from Washington —
First Lady Michelle Obama will soon take her first real plunge into partisan politics since her husband won the presidency 21 months ago, making select appearances for Democratic candidates hoping that her popularity will excite crowds and donors in a bleak election season.

Her campaign schedule won’t be a heavy one, the White House said Monday. She makes public appearances about three days a week, and any campaigning she does for the midterm election will be within that time frame, a White House official said in an interview.
The first lady’s itinerary won’t be set until Labor Day, when the White House political team determines travel plans for the president and vice president, the official said. The idea is to deploy all three in ways that avoid overlap.
Michelle Obama will deliver a campaign speech that is largely upbeat. She won’t castigate individual Republicans, said the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The first lady has enlisted Republicans in her anti-obesity campaign, so she would risk antagonizing hard-won allies were she to deliver a fiercely partisan message.
Instead, she’ll keep the focus on her husband’s legislative successes.
“This won’t be a red-meat partisan speech,” the official said. “That’s not her nature, and it wouldn’t necessarily be effective. Things like her Let’s Move campaign have been entirely bipartisan.”
Rather, the first lady will tell voters, “We have a lot on the agenda, and the person I’m standing next to here is an ally in that effort,” the official said.

Wind on Capitol Hill: Bloomberg, 2012

Brian

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/11/15/101115ta_talk_mcgrath

November 15, 2010

John B. Anderson, the former Republican congressman from Illinois and 1980 Presidential candidate, said that his mind was “in a whirl,” late last week. Anderson, who now lives in Florida, was a Charlie Crist supporter, and, despite his long-standing disaffection toward the two-party system, he feels no affection for the ascendant Tea Party movement. “I break out in a cold sweat at the thought that any of those people might prevail,” he said. Nationally speaking, Anderson remains an Obama man—for now. “But I’m still fiercely independent, and believe that only an independent might take us to a higher plane,” he said.

On November 4th, Joe Trippi, the Democratic consultant and former campaign manager for Howard Dean, was “cruising down the beach,” as he put it, in Mexico, recuperating. “I would put the odds of an independent candidacy for President in 2012 or 2016 at probably sixty to seventy per cent,” he said. “People make the mistake of saying that this was a big Republican victory. They were the only other option. The question is: Who? It’s not going to be like Ross Perot coming from out of nowhere.” He added, “The White House seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time with Bloomberg, keeping him close.”

So, that again: the maddeningly perennial game of speculating about the next move of New York’s mayor. Last month, the CNBC host Larry Kudlow announced on his show that, according to a “serious insider,” Michael Bloomberg would be the next Treasury Secretary. “The deal has been done,” Kudlow reported, perhaps prematurely. Then, the week before the election, Bloomberg’s grander ambitions were publicly revived by New York’s John Heilemann, in a cover story titled “2012: How Sarah Barracuda Becomes President.” The scenario, in short: Amid ongoing polarization and a stalled economic recovery, Bloomberg declares his candidacy, wins a handful of coastal states, thereby denying Obama the requisite electoral votes, and the Republican House awards the office to Palin.

Speaking at Harvard, the day before the election, Bloomberg said, “I think, actually, a third-party candidate could run the government easier than a partisan political President,” and then he went on, as he always does, to deny that he intends to pursue the position. He is, as he is fond of saying, Jewish, unmarried, pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-immigrant, and pro-gay-marriage. Add to that a strong allegiance to Wall Street, a weekend house in Bermuda, and his vehemence, last summer, in defense of the mosque near Ground Zero, and it’s hard to see how he plays to the populist moment. A recent Marist poll indicates that only twenty-six per cent of New Yorkers favor the prospect of his running.

Yet the dream persists. “I think it’s a strong possibility,” Clay Mulford, the chief operating officer of the National Math and Science Initiative, and, as it happens, Perot’s son-in-law, said the other day. “The mood of the country is not ideological but more practical. The timing is unusually right.” Mulford mentioned that a Google search of his name and Bloomberg’s would reveal that the two of them met, a couple of years ago, to discuss ballot logistics. “His people put the story out,” Mulford said.

“He would probably get my support,” the former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura said of Bloomberg, or “Blomberg,” as he pronounced it, explaining that he refuses to vote for either Democrats or Republicans, on principle. Ventura then brought up the recent losses of “Linda McMahon and that lady in California,” Meg Whitman, who spent roughly fifty million dollars and a hundred and sixty million dollars, respectively, as a way of suggesting that wealth is not enough. (This has surely been a concern, at times, of Perot and even of Silvio Berlusconi, two of Bloomberg’s weekend neighbors, who, with the Mayor, make up a kind of Bermuda Triangle of rich politicos.) “If Bloomberg could finance me for the Presidency, I would win it,” Ventura said. “So, if he doesn’t want it, he could hire me to do it for him.” Ventura now hosts a show on truTV called “Conspiracy Theory.” He promised that in an upcoming episode he would be revealing the real murderer of J.F.K.—“and it’s not Lee Harvey Oswald.”

In 2006, when Heilemann first floated the Bloomberg-for-President trial balloon, in another New York cover story, his sources told him that the Mayor would be willing to spend between two hundred and fifty and five hundred million dollars for the cause. Now, apparently, the range is one to three billion. There’s a moral there: the longer you wait, the more expensive the solution. In some circles, this is called throwing money at the problem. Democrats and Republicans have already tried it.

As Studios Cut Back, Investors See Opening

Brian

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: November 14, 2010

LOS ANGELES — When Timmy Thompson, who made a lot of his money in oil field services, took a close look at the movie business a couple of years ago, he saw companies folding, credit collapsing and talent knocked down a peg in the aftermath of a labor war.

JoJo Whilden/Margin Call Productions

Paul Bettany in “Margin Call” from Benaroya Pictures.

In all, it looked like a pretty good place to invest.

“We’ve always made our living by buying when things are down,” said Mr. Thompson, who spoke by telephone from Louisiana.

How down?

A few hours earlier, George Clooney had appeared in Santa Monica, Calif., at the American Film Market, where he joined operatives from Mr. Thompson’s newly established Cross Creek Pictures and others in selling rights to “The Ides of March.” It is a political morality tale that will be directed by Mr. Clooney, and will feature him in a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood.

All worked for union scale, with the expectation of a future payday if the picture hits when Sony Pictures Entertainment releases it. (The minimum payment on a feature film under the Screen Actors Guild contract in the last few years has been about $65,000 plus food and overtime.)

With studios financing fewer movies, a wave of equity investors stepped up their presence in a Hollywood that suddenly made sense to hard-headed business types who were more accustomed to bottom-fishing in the real estate market or drilling for oil.

Snagging an added bonus from states like Louisiana and Michigan, which offer generous subsidies for local film production, the new players — who mind the old saw “cash is king” — are typically risking just a few million dollars to get a substantial ownership position in films that are cheap enough to yield a profit even in an era of diminished home-video revenues.

“If you have capital, you’re positioned well,” said Brian Oliver, a producer who joined Mr. Thompson and others in starting Cross Creek. Among its first ventures, the company provided backing for “Black Swan,” which is directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Natalie Portman. It will be released by Fox Searchlight Pictures on Dec. 3.

Hollywood has played host to a succession of outside investors, some of whom fared better than others. Marvin Davis, the oil entrepreneur, made a tidy profit buying and then selling 20th Century Fox, while Crédit Lyonnais, the French bank, became mired in failed loans to a string of film companies. Waves of investment came from doctors and lawyers who were dabbling with film partnerships, Japanese conglomerates, the German stock market, Internet entrepreneurs and cash-laden hedge funds.

Even a few years ago, the industry took a toll on investors as savvy as the garment magnate Sidney Kimmel, whose long-established film company was burned by disappointments like “Charlie Bartlett” and “Synecdoche, New York.”

But only lately have falling salaries, rising subsidies and a thinning of competition turned the financial equation in favor of the investor.

The current crop of equity investors includes Joe Ricketts, the Chicago Cubs co-owner whose American Film Company recently backed “The Conspirator,” directed by Robert Redford; Steven M. Rales, who is chairman of the Danaher Corporation, and whose Indian Paintbrush company was a co-financier of “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” directed by Wes Anderson; and Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, the Colorado investors whose Smokewood Entertainment Group backed “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” which had six Oscar nominations, winning two, this year.

Among those who seek to build a large-scale enterprise is Tim Headington, the oil entrepreneur based in Dallas who recently joined the producer Graham King in starting FilmDistrict, a company that plans to distribute as many as eight films a year, in an alliance with Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“We’re taking advantage of the extra capacity at Sony, to bring them theatrical product,” Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s chief executive, said of a situation in which Sony has the ability to put more films in theaters and into home entertainment outlets than it currently chooses to finance.

More often, however, Hollywood’s newer investors resemble Michael Benaroya, a 29-year-old whose family built a real estate fortune in Seattle. “So far, we’ve been doing very well,” said Mr. Benaroya, who spoke by telephone last week from the American Film Market, where he, like many of his peers, were courting foreign buyers.

Benaroya Pictures is currently offering rights to “Margin Call,” a film about 24 hours among a group of investment bank employees during the 2008 financial crisis, with performances by Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons, among others.

The budget, said Mr. Benaroya, was less than $4 million, only about a quarter of which was paid to the cast. The film was shot in New York, where government incentives help cover the cost — so even modest sales in video, foreign or theatrical markets assure a profit.

Alcon Entertainment, which has been in the business since 1997, had a major hit in “The Blind Side,” which took in about $256 million at the domestic box office and had a budget of only about $35 million. The State of Georgia covered $5.5 million of that cost, and Sandra Bullock, the film’s star, in keeping with the new economics, worked for a sharply reduced upfront salary.

“It has been great,” said Andrew Kosove, who joined Broderick Johnson in starting Alcon with backing from the FedEx founder, Frederick W. Smith. “But if you had asked me that question not long ago, the response would have been more measured,” he added.

A flood of new investors, cautions Mr. Kosove, might easily expand the number of films being made, once again pushing up costs and making it difficult to find distributors. For the moment, however, “it’s a great time” for those with ready capital, said Rick Schwartz, a producer who has been aligned with Alan Bernon, a Texas dairy executive and investor.

Among their projects is “Machete,” an over-the-top action caper that was directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis, and took in about $26.6 million at the domestic box office after 20th Century Fox released it in September.

Mr. Schwartz reckons that the film cost $10.5 million, after some help from a Texas subsidy program. Domestic rights went to Fox for about $9 million, and foreign rights, he said, brought nearly $12 million — so the film’s revenue to the producer and partners was roughly double its cost.

And that, he said, “is a pretty good model.”

Disney Employees Face Firing Over Texting

Brian

http://www.deadline.com/2010/11/disney-employees-face-termination-over-texting-and-emailing-while-driving/

EXCLUSIVE: In many states, including California, texting or emailing while driving could get you a fine. If you’re a Disney employee, it may also get you fired. That’s according to a companywide memo that went out yesterday. The so-called “distracted driving,” which involves mostly people using their mobile devices while behind the wheel, is a serious problem that caused 5,474 deaths last year. But a private company enforcing the ban on the use of such devices is a little odd even for Disney, considered to be the most buttoned-down and regulated entertainment conglom. According to the memo, Disney “is enhancing its vehicle safety policy effective immediately.” That includes prohibiting Disney employees from sending or reading texts or emails while driving company cars or their private cars while performing duties related to their Disney jobs. “Failure to comply will lead to disciplinary actions up to and including termination,” the memo said. While the intention is noble, the bureaucratic way it was handled has raised eyebrows, evoked Big Brother references and has mostly puzzled Disney employees as to how exactly would Disney enforce its new rules. Nevertheless, the new policy may affect business as most people working in the entertainment industry in LA do a lot of work on their blackberrys while driving. With its ban, Disney joins the Obama administration which has prohibited federal employees from texting while driving on government business and banned commercial truck and bus drivers from texting behind the wheel. Thirty states and the District of Columbia prohibit drivers from texting behind the wheel; at least eight states have passed laws barring drivers from using hand-held cell phones.

Inside With: Filmmaker Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Part II)

Brian

http://www.theapiary.org/the-apiary/2009/12/18/inside-with-filmmaker-jordan-vogt-roberts-part-ii.html

Jordan Vogt-Roberts is putting a very nice wrap on 2009. Directly on the heels of his cheeky-as-hell “Yogi Bear Audition Reel” (which scored his business partner TJ Miller a lead part in the upcoming live-action/animated Yogi Bear movie), Vogt-Roberts learned that his short, Successful Alcoholics, had been accepted to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and that a greenlit Comedy Central special is on the docket and will be keeping him busy for the early part of 2010. We sat down recently to chat with our old pal and caught up on the latest and greatest.

Apiary: First of all, CONGRATS AGAIN on Sundance! This is extremely exciting, for lots of reasons! What was the process you had to go through to get your short seen in the first place?

JVR: Sundance just has a pretty basic submission system. We submitted back in September. 6,098 or some crazy amount of shorts got submitted this year. For U.S. Dramatic they picked 18.

Apiary: Holy fuck. That’s ridiculous. Are you familiar with the others that were chosen?

JVR: No, not yet. I met a few of the directors last night at a gala. Spike Jonze is in my category for a short. So that’s pretty ridiculous.

Apiary: WOW. Are you pretty nervous? I mean, just in general, for the whole event and EVERYTHING? Or are you pretty cool Hollywood by now?

JVR: I’m not nervous necessarily. I’m going to Park City with the intention of having a good time and hanging out. Our short is 25 minutes and it’s a really dark comedy so it’s always interesting to see how it plays. We shot it so long ago (Feb 2008), and post-production took so long because we had no money, so we were working with editors during nights and weekends. It’s really nice to have the short get out there and have a good reaction. I guess Sundance is the final test though, eh?

Apiary: For sure. Do you know any details on your screening as of yet? And, who are dreaming of meeting or who are you gonna stalk out? Are there any films you yourself are excited to view? Do you get an all access pass?

JVR: Yeah, they sent me the dates of the screenings today. I’m in the shorts program II. Basically as a filmmaker my understanding is that I can eat and drink for free the entire week. Considering our short is called Successful Alcoholics…you better believe I’ll be pretty drunk. I have a badge that will get me a lot of places but I’m just going to play the whole thing by ear. Last night at a Directors Guild Gala for Sundance filmmakers, I met Jason Reitman, the Duplass Brothers, and a whole bunch of great artists. It was incredible how there’s a very real sense of camaraderie with everyone saying, ‘FUCK YEAH…SUNDANCE”. I’d like to use that kinship to get drunk with Philip Seymour Hoffman or someone like that.

It’s just validating considering we slaved over that short for so long it really kinda became this white whale for a while.

Lizzy Caplan and TJ Miller, Successful Alcoholics

Apiary: Let’s talk about Blerds for a bit. We talked about it a couple years ago, but now I’m wondering: How do you see that experience in retrospect? What did it mean to you then, and what has its return been?

JVR: Blerds is crazy in retrospect. I was lucky to be a part of it. You have these comedians who are absolutely destroying both coasts right now — TJ [Miller], Kumail [Nanjiani], [Kyle] Kinane, [Matt] Braunger, etc — and we couldn’t get our shit together enough not to self-destruct as a group.

Blerds was when I discovered for myself that comedy was what I wanted to do with film. So that was a pretty big deal.

I also think that for a lot of the comics, once they saw the amount of attention the videos were getting — which basically means the amount of attention their material was getting — it kind of told a lot of them it was time to leave Chicago and take the next step.

Apiary: You also got a TJ Miller out of it. 🙂 What is your working partnership with him, exactly?

JVR: Sometimes we want to kill each other, we work together so often. We have a pretty similar work ethic in the sense that we’ll both kill ourselves to get something done, or do something ridiculous for the sake of comedy. The bear video is a good example of that.

Apiary: Ha, for sure! Admit it, you were scared of the bear.

JVR: The bear weighed 600 pounds and could tear us apart. It was an insane Wednesday afternoon. I joke that when I show my L.A. friends their reaction is something like, “wow, this is amazing,” and then I show my friends in the Midwest or my family and they say something like, “oh my god…were you safe?”, “what were you thinking?’ or just, “you’re in idiot.”

Jordan Vogt-Roberts (right) with Bam-Bam the Bear

But TJ and I own a damn company together at this point for our Comedy Central special, so somehow we’ve legally been linked together.

Apiary: Essentially, you are married. I’m sorry, I didn’t get a gift (yet). So, come again now? Comedy Central special? Do discuss.

JVR: So, this is one of those frustrating Hollywood things where TJ and I sold an hour special / backdoor pilot to Comedy Central almost a year and a half ago. Contracts took a seemingly endless amount of time, but we’re finally close to shooting it. We actually would be shooting now if I didn’t make that damn bear video, causing TJ to get cast and go off to New Zealand to shoot Yogi.

It’s actually somewhat based around the Blerds shorts and a bunch of other content TJ and I were making.We’re hoping to use a lot of Chicago people in it. Kumail, Braunger, Hannibal [Buress], and others.

We have the money from Comedy Central now. So nothing is going to stop it from getting made. Which is pretty incredible. It’s draining because it has taken so long to get to this point. But we basically have creative license for 42 minutes on Comedy Central to showcase our brand of humor. So um…thanks Comedy Central. It will also be nice because I feel like it’s going to act as the swan song for the Blerds format.

We’re hoping to start filming in March now. I mean, it has already taken a year and a half of my life and we haven’t even shot a frame of it yet. I’d love to deliver a final tape to Comedy Central a few months after we shoot. I’d like to think it will air by the end of the summer, but I have no control over such things.

Apiary: Besides the Comedy Central and Sundance news, what else is coming down the pipeline for you? Because those two things aren’t enough, you know.

JVR: I’m developing something with Al Madrigal that I’m pretty excited about. I just wrapped season 2 of a Web series for FOX with a comedy duo Pete and Brian. Thomas Middleditch and I just finished a trilogy of shorts that we’re going to try and pitch something based on. I just try and stay busy. TJ and I have some script ideas that we’re hoping Successful Alcoholics will get people excited about. Or perhaps just making a feature of that. Ultimately I just want to pay my rent as a director.

Apiary: Another admirable goal, indeed! I have a feeling on 2010…Do you?

JVR: I mean, I currently can pay my rent as a director…but sometimes you look at your bank account, and you wonder if your ‘artistic integrity’ would be better served by the sanity of getting a steady paycheck from Starbucks.

I hope 2010 is good. L.A. is fickle though.

Apiary: Speaking of the which, do you have any “only in Hollywood!” stories to share, either good or bad? You’ve been there, two years now?

JVR: I was once pitching something at MTV and was standing outside with my manager. For some reason, my manager knows Warren G (because that’s what people in Hollywood do) and Warren came up to us and started to smoke a blunt. My manager walked away and thus I was stuck smoking a blunt with Warren G. So that was…interesting. Dumb stuff like that happens all the time here; people lose perspective on everything.

I was at a party the other week and Terrence Howard showed up. He interrupted my conversation to ask me something facetiously, which turned into him and I discussing the merits of the movie House Party. It’s a weird place.

Honestly, I think about it a lot. There’s something wrong with everyone here. We’ve all chosen to work in a place where people are straight up known to be bad people, mean people, man children, misogynists, whatever. Keeping perspective here is a job in itself.

There are no seasons here, so you go to bed in October and wake up in August saying, ‘where the hell did those months go’?

Interview: Sundance, Midwest Independent Film Festival Headliner Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Brian

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/10820/interview-sundance-midwest-indie-film-fest-headliner-jordan-vogt-roberts

CHICAGO – “Successful Alcoholics,” a new short comedy film by Chicagoan Jordan Vogt-Roberts, has been making the major film festival rounds, including the Sundance Film Festival, and will be the featured film at the Midwest Independent Film Festival in Chicago on their Comedic Shorts Night, Tuesday, June 1st.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts hails from Detroit, and molded his comedy chops in Chicago. His Comedy Collective there was named “Blerds,” and through that he started doing video shorts. “Successful Alcoholics” premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and has went on to play various fests, including Los Angeles, South X Southwest and the Rícon International Film Festival in Puerto Rico, where it won Best Comedy Short.

Vogt-Roberts, now living in Los Angeles, is returning to Chicago next Tuesday, June 1st, for the Midwest Independent Film Festival. “Successful Alcoholics” will be the featured film in the festival’s annual Comedic Shorts Night.

HollywoodChicago interviewed Vogt-Roberts recently, and he dished on the differences in drinking styles in Los Angeles vs. Chicago and his style of comedy film.

HollywoodChicago.com: You are the official selection to headline next Tuesday’s Midwest Independent Film Festival Comedic Shorts Night. What other honors have been bestowed on “Successful Alcoholics?”

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: We premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and then we’ve done a whirlwind of festivals. At the South X Southwest festival, they created a program just for us, so it was Successful Alcoholics, Spike Jonez new short and one other. We won a festival in Puerto Rico and been to many others. One of the more interesting ‘honors’ that was bestowed upon us was I got contacted by a rehabilitation and training center in Southern Arizona, which deals with alcoholics and training team members who deal with them. They wanted to get a copy of the film to show the people they were training and the people in the program as a launching point for discussion. That was really bizarre. [laughs]

HC: What inspired this story? Was it outside observation or personal experience?

JVR: [Laughs] It’s both. Everyone in the film met in Chicago and bars are open until 4am there. I hang out with a lot of comedians and they are heavy drinkers. [laughs] We all move to Los Angeles, and the drinking culture is different out there, it’s crazy in different ways. In this drinking realm, we’ve seen great things come of it and we’ve seen terrible things come of it.

HC: Did you think at any point it would be a risk to take on the subject of heavy, anti-social drinking in a comedy short?

JVR: Yes, absolutely, I think there is naturally a point about halfway through the short where people get uncomfortable and wonder if this what they signed up for or ‘is this too heavy’ or ‘will it get saccharine and cheesy.’ I’m really interested in balancing tone with comedy and sort of going back and forth between the concepts, by intertwining them it becomes more poignant. That is what we set out to do with Successful Alcoholics.

HC: What was your reaction after you started to get recognition for the short. Were you confident about the material to understand why it was getting recognition?

JVR: T.J [Miller, the co-writer] and I, when we first started working on this, it was so long ago. It was a long post-production period, and waiting for Sundance drags it out further. It’s not that we had lost touch with it at all, but here in L.A. sometimes people don’t respond to darker material like that. It makes them uncomfortable. I’ve actually been shocked that people have been responding so well. In retrospect, it makes sense, because at the end of the day Lizzy Caplan and T.J.[the lead actors] performances are great. They sell it, you get invested in the story and the way that it’s structure you get in, you start having fun. You’re in a world for ten minutes where it’s fun, exciting and funny. And then it gets dark and kind of disturbing but by that point you’re engaged.

Lizzy said awhile ago ‘it’s like watching a video of a kid, and you’re laughing at the kid because he’s so stupid, look at how stupid this little kid is. And then 10 minutes into it, someone leans over and says, you know that kid’s mentally challenged.’ [laughs]
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts of ‘Successful Alcoholics’
Photo Credit: © Successful Alcoholics

HC: Is this film an instance of the thing that makes you great also has the power to destroy you?

JVR: Sure. In the film, T.J. and Lizzy, in my mind, are in a romantic style movie. Watching two people just stumble together, but they’re with each other stumbling and it’s exciting when you watch them succeed and heartbreaking when you watch them fail.

HC: What has made you laugh in your life? What sitcom? What film? What stand-up comedian?

JVR: Humor is just how I relate to everyone. I’ve made friends and lost friends because of my sense of humor. I’m pretty eclectic in my tastes. There is a sitcom from Canada called ‘Trailer Park Boys’ that I find pretty incredible, obviously ‘Seinfeld’ is great. I like comedy films that are infused with genre material, films like ‘Ghostbusters.’ Even the comedic elements of ‘Three Kings’ and ‘Boogie Nights’ I think are amazing, because they are used to balance the reality of things. As far as stand-up comedians, that is a world I got thrust into and I don’t think my life’s path ever intended for me to know so much about stand-up comedy, through the Chicago scene. [laughs]

HC: What was magical to you about making movies when you were a kid?

JVR: Honestly, humor is how I always related to people, and comedy was always big to me when I was a kid. I would play with my action figures, and there were home movies of me setting up these villages and hiding dog treats, then narrating as I had my dog walk through the town, smashing the buildings. It wasn’t much later until I decided I wanted to get into film, but I remember thinking cinematically, like slow motion. I remember thinking I wish life were like that.

HC: Who, is your opinion, is the greatest living film director and why?

JVR: I’ll tell you who I think is the most interesting now. I’m most interested in what Christopher Nolan is doing. He has found this way to take incredibly mainstream movies, yet keep character, theme and story intact. He has a big budget, risky sci-fi movie [’Inception’] coming out this summer, that’s he wrote himself, and after the ‘The Dark Knight’ the studio just said they’d make it. It is getting to the point where you can make an ultra-personal movie, but on a scale that a mass audience can enjoy. I think that’s really interesting.

HC: Which film comedian would you like to work with today, and what type of range would you like to get out of him or her? Or how would you like to use that individual in a way people wouldn’t expect?

JVR: The people who I’m dying to work with are not necessarily comedians, just actors who can handle comedy really well. I would like to work with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has shown that he has the range for whatever you want. There are character actors that blend into things, and that’s who I want to see in a more comedic role.

“Successful Alcoholics,” directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and featuring T.J. Miller and Lizzy Caplan, headlines the Comedic Shorts Night at the Midwest Independent Film Festival, Tuesday, June 1st, at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema

Ford Returns as White Collar Sponsor

Brian

Aug 16, 2010

– Anthony Crupi, Mediaweek

USA Network has reupped Ford as the exclusive automobile sponsor of its original drama series White Collar, crafting a multiplatform partnership that includes significant brand integration and a number of customized interactive features.

Beginning Tuesday, August 17, USA’s dedicated White Collar site will host a series of exclusive videos featuring actress Marsha Thomason behind the wheel of a Ford Fusion Hybrid. (Thomason’s role as special agent Diana Barrigan was expanded for season two of White Collar; she is perhaps best known for playing Naomi on ABC’s Lost from 2007-10.)

The online vignettes offer White Collar fans a virtual tour of some of the iconic New York locations that serve as the backdrop of the crime drama. Thomason will motor her way from the FBI’s Park Avenue digs to the wilds of Brooklyn, where she’ll make a pit stop at the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower in Fort Greene.

“New York is as much of a character in the show as are Neal and Peter and Diana,” said Alexandra Shapiro, USA’s svp, brand marketing and digital. “These guys are filming on-location in the city almost 50 percent of the time and so New York is a constant presence. It lends a certain kind of intrigue to the series, which is what we wanted to draw on in the vignettes.”

Last season, the 2010 Ford Taurus was integrated within the narrative of the series. The car was also featured in an online game, “Chasing the Shadow.” “We’re excited to be back for another season,” said Ford experiential marketing manager Jeff Eggen. “The Fusion Hybrid is a perfect fit for this ‘behind the scenes’ tour of the city.”

Each vignette will be baked into an interactive map of the city loaded with images and detailed information about each location. The network will promote the video clips and guide via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. At present, USA’s White Collar Facebook page has 267,906 fans, while the show’s Twitter feed is followed by 12,835 devotees.

The digital execution will lead to a linear integration in the series’ Sept. 7 summer-season finale. In addition to garnering screen time as Thomason’s vehicle of choice, the Fusion Hybrid will also be featured in a 90-second scripted vignette that will borrow certain visual elements from the online clips.

Thomason’s journey around New York will play out in an exclusive 120-second “powerpod” takeover. Immediately following the customized clip, USA will air a standard 30-second Fusion commercial that will lead viewers right back into the episode.

The collaboration is designed to create an organic association with the Diana Barrigan character and the Ford Fusion, Shapiro said. “She adds a strong female presence to the show, along with Tiffani Thiessen,” Shapiro said. “And Diana’s a good match for the Fusion, which is designed with the environmentally conscious consumer in mind. It’s green, but still sleek, sexy and modern.”

Mindshare’s Detroit office handles all national media planning and buying for Ford.

After the first half of season two wraps in September, White Collar will be on hiatus until winter 2011. USA has not announced a precise date for the premiere of season 2.5.

Through the first five episodes of season two, White Collar is averaging 4.01 million viewers in its Tuesday 9 p.m. time slot. As of August 3, the sophomore run is drawing 1.68 million adults 25-54 and 1.57 million viewers 18-49.

The Turf War for Tots

Brian

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590231467452448.html

In TV’s battle for the hearts and minds of preschoolers, it’s Mandarin and math vs. stories and sparkle

By AMY CHOZICK

They’re just learning how to tie their shoes and use the bathroom, and yet they represent one of the most important demographics in television. Preschoolers aged 2 to 5 spend an average of more than 32 hours in front of a TV screen each week, according to Nielsen.

The big media companies chasing this audience, armed with studies and statistics, are gearing up for the next major battle. As they jockey for competitive position, two starkly different points of view about toddlers and television are emerging.

Executives at Walt Disney Co., preparing their latest push for this audience, say that some TV for tots favors curriculum over storytelling. They argue that it’s sometimes too much work, not enough play.

They’re offering themselves as an alternative to Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. channel, which emphasizes learning. Disney says that today’s parents are ready for a change. In an age of video games and iPads, kids can learn their ABCs anywhere. What’s missing are good, old-fashioned stories that kids can repeat to others, pretend to be the characters, and watch again and again.

At stake is much more than the more than $276 million marketers spent last year to advertise during children’s TV shows. Fast food and movie studios topped the list of biggest spenders, according to Kantar Media. The sale of toys, books and DVDs for Nick Jr.’s “Dora the Explorer” has generated more than $11 billion in sales globally since 2002, Nickelodeon says. The value of future brand loyalty is incalculable.

Nickelodeon, a unit of Viacom that took older children by storm in the early 1990s, began winning preschoolers a few years later. In the monthly period ending Oct. 17, nine of the top 10 most-watched cable shows among viewers aged 2 to 5 were on Nickelodeon or Nick Jr., available in 77 million homes. “Dora” and spinoff “Go Diego, Go” teach kids Spanish. “Team Umizoomi” follows doe-eyed Milli, Geo and Bot as they solve math problems.

View Full Image

One of the top-rated shows among preschoolers on Nick Jr. is “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan,” in which a cartoon Kai-lan Chow, a 6-year-old with big round eyes and black pigtails, teaches kids Mandarin Chinese. The series draws about 828,000 viewers aged 2 to 5, compared with 753,000 for “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” Disney’s top-rated preschool series.

Disney, which of course was built on telling stories to kids and is playing to its strengths, needs to do something. To support its decision to focus on feel-good stories rather than core curricula, the company proffers a six-month study of 2,200 parents of preschoolers the company commissioned and conducted last year. These Disney researchers found that when parents were asked what they most want for their children, the most popular reply was for them to be happy.

That’s a big shift from five or 10 years ago when academic and cognitive skills topped parents’ list, says Nancy Kanter, senior vice president of Disney Junior Worldwide. “It wasn’t ‘I want them to count to 100’ or ‘I want them to spell their name,’ or ‘I wish she could speak Chinese,’ ” she says.
Journal Community
Vote: What type of TV shows are best for young children?

Many people, of course, think small children shouldn’t be watching TV at all, much less be subjected to commercials. The venerable “Sesame Street,” which has corporate sponsorships but no ads, has been education-based from the beginning, with Cookie Monster, Big Bird and friends teaching numbers, letters and social behavior.

“Sesame Street” was designed in 1969 as a nonprofit tool for underprivileged kids. “We had a very specific goal of trying to get these kids ready for kindergarten,” says creator Joan Ganz Cooney. Up until now, neither Disney or Nickelodeon had strayed very far from the PBS icon’s playbook.

Disney’s new initiative for kids starts in February, when it will launch Disney Junior, a new 10-hour block of daytime programming on the Disney Channel targeted at preschoolers. Disney Junior will replace its existing “Playhouse Disney,” and in early 2012 will become a 24-hour cable channel of its own.

View Full Image

Nick Jr.

‘Vitamin-fortified programming:’ Nick Jr.’s ‘Ni Hao, Kai-Lan’, a top-rated show for preschoolers, teaches kids Mandarin Chinese.

Nickelodeon declined to comment on Disney’s plans, but says it believes that the best way to engage preschoolers is through educational programs that provide opportunities to learn core academic skills, largely through interactive game play. “We make kids feel important and smart—it’s our secret sauce that no one else has figured out,” says Brown Johnson, president of animation, Nickelodeon/MTV Networks Kids and Family Group. “Moms expect their kids to have vitamin-fortified programming,” she adds.

Disney says its researchers talked to preschool and kindergarten teachers and found that kids had easy access to basic facts, but lagged in social skills like sharing or being a good listener. “Jake and the Never Land Pirates,” a new series launching in February, follows a group of kids who get into adventures with Captain Hook. Even though Hook is a bad guy, Jake still invites him to play at the end of the episodes, an important social lesson, Disney says.

Just as Nick Jr. has shows like “The Backyardigans” that emphasize storytelling, Disney doesn’t shy away from academics entirely. In “Jake and the Never Land Pirates,” the kids receive gold doubloons as rewards in each episode, a story device that helps kids learn to count. In an upcoming country-western-themed episode of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” Mickey and the gang do a square dance, followed by a triangle and circle dance to teach shapes. Other new series like “Mickey Mousekersize” and “Special Agent Oso: Three Healthy Steps” give tips for healthy living.

But some parents say they’re tired of being made to feel guilty about their child-rearing. They’ve become leery of experts who say, “No, no, this way is wrong,” or, scarily, “It’s all over when your kids are 3,” says Ellen Galinsky, author of “Mind in the Making” and president and co-founder of Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research center. “They don’t want to just raise smart kids—they want kids who are happy, who have social skills, and can get along with other kids and adults.”

View Full Image

Disney

Disney’s ‘Jake and the Never Land Pirates’

Following the death of the broadcast networks’ Saturday morning cartoon tradition, preschoolers have been watching at all hours. Forty percent more of them now watch Nick Jr. from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. than during the rest of the day, according to the network.

Turn on the Sprout network’s on-demand channel at night and Big Bird, Ernie, Star and others appear in a kind of modern test pattern, fast asleep in bed ’til morning—it’s called “Snooze-a-Thon.” Kids are supposed to get the hint. Sprout is owned by cable giant Comcast Corp., Hit Entertainment, PBS and Sesame Workshop.

Disney executives say they trail Nick Jr. because they aren’t able to air preschool shows in prime time, when the Disney Channel must cater to older kids. The Disney Junior channel, which will reach 75 million homes and replace Disney’s low-rated SOAPnet channel, would remedy that.

More than 70% of parents told Disney they want preschool programs in the afternoon and evenings, especially 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. A record 2.9 million viewers watched a prime-time special of Disney’s “Handy Manny,” a preschool series about a bilingual Hispanic handyman and his anthropomorphic talking tools.

“Little Princess,” in development for Disney Junior, follows the fantastical world of the classic Disney princess. In the upcoming Disney Junior series “Doc McStuffins,” about a repairer of damaged toys, hints are offered on taking care of your body (a toy fire truck, for example, can’t run on a hot day if he doesn’t have enough water). But mostly it’s designed to deliver what Disney calls a “sense of sparkle,” which sounds like the classic Disney, with fireworks splashing over Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“Disney has done a good job of building channels to the I-just-want-my-kids-to-be-happy group, and Nick and a few others have certainly been going after the I-want-the-smartest-child set,” says Langbourne Rust, a consumer psychologist and researcher who has conducted large-scale studies for “Sesame Street” and other children’s programs. “The sector that wants to make their children smarter and work on that all the time is a small but a heavily involved group.” A mass-market company like Disney needs to be broader.

From the episode “Minnie’s Bow-tique.”

For Disney, preschool is an entry point to the entire brand—from DVDs, theme parks and plush toys to Pixar movies and older-skewing Disney Channel series like “The Wizards of Waverly Place.” Disney Junior will target Playhouse Disney’s 2 to 5 demographic and also try to attract 6- and 7-year-olds.

Disney says it will adjust “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” which teaches kids math, to make it less academic and more whimsical. “We’re trying to capture the essence of what a family feels like when they go to visit a Disney theme park for the first time,” says Gary Marsh, president of entertainment and chief creative officer at Disney Channels Worldwide.

In 1990 Nickelodeon executives gathered child-care experts, developmental psychiatrists, preschool teachers, toy designers and other experts to discuss how children learn. One of the conclusions was that children must play in order to absorb information. Back then, Nickelodeon was becoming one of the top-rated channels on cable. Its image as a wall-to-wall funhouse run by kids, not parents or teachers who talked down to them, captured older children. Nickelodeon emphasized that it was okay to be goofy, even a little naughty.

Nickelodeon tacked in a different direction when it approached preschoolers. In 1996, it launched “Blue’s Clues,” considered the first interactive kids show. In addition to the facts it dispensed, the action in each episode unfolded from left to right, as sentences do, to prepare children to read. Then came, “Dora the Explorer” which thrilled parents who saw their preschoolers dance around the living room saying “Hola” and “¿Cómo estás?”

The Disney Channel has now won tween audiences with stars like Mikey Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. But as it was luring these deep-pocketed pre-teens, Disney was losing ground as a go-to for preschoolers. Its most popular cartoons, “Fish Hooks” and “Phineas & Ferb,” attract an older audience and do not tie into the classic Disney characters that populate theme parks and gift shops.

Disney says it sees an opportunity to fill a void in preschool entertainment with programming that emphasizes layered narratives that help kids develop emotionally. The approach requires breaking with the industry rule that children’s shows should not have villains, believed to upset young children. Most Nick Jr. shows do not have bad guys. Disney historically has been pretty good at wicked witches, mean stepsisters, vicious hyenas and the hunters who shot Bambi’s mom.

View Full Image

Nick Jr.

Nick Jr.’s ‘Max & Ruby.’

“Well, if you can’t have bad guys, then you can’t have conflict and then it’s difficult to have a real story,” says Ms. Kanter from her corner office at Disney’s Burbank headquarters.

Some Nick Jr. shows, like “Max & Ruby,” a preschool hit about a 3-year-old bunny and his big sister who resolve conflicts, emphasize storytelling and social skills. But the most popular series have a specific curriculum, Ms. Johnson says. Whether a show has a villain is determined on a case by case basis, she says.

PBS Kids emphasizes cognitive development with a particular focus on math and science in shows like “Sid the Science Kid,” but the network doesn’t aim to drill kids with facts. “Recitation of hard knowledge might not be right for 2- and 3-year-olds,” says Linda Simensky, vice president of children’s programming at PBS. The channel’s science-oriented “The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!” is currently the top-rated show on TV among viewers aged 2 to 5.

With all the multitude of studies and statistics these companies marshall, analyzing this particular audience is an inexact science. On a recent afternoon right after nap time, a group of preschoolers at the Tutor Time child-care center in Castaic, Calif., gathered around a TV set to watch early sketches (or “storymatics”) of an upcoming episode of “Jake and the Never Land Pirates.”

Four-year-old Ali played with his shoelace. Five-year-old Devin giggled coyly after she passed gas. Jacob had a hard time obeying the “don’t touch your friends” rule. Disney executives and researchers watched their every move, taking careful notes. An executive producer thought Devin clearly “felt comfortable with the program.”

At the request of several very young participants, the writers also scurried to add another element to the story—more tickling.

Follow Amy Chozick on Twitter @amychozick.

Write to Amy Chozick at amy.chozick@wsj.com

Facebook’s Initial Crew Moving On

Brian

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, the most successful start-up of the last decade, is only six years old, and an initial public offering is still a way off.

But a number of Facebook’s early employees are giving up their stable jobs, free food and laundry service to build their own businesses. Many of them are leaving as wealthy, either on paper or after cashing in their ownership stakes to do what they say they like best: start companies.

Dustin Moskovitz, 26, who co-founded Facebook with his Harvard roommate Mark Zuckerberg, left his job on Facebook’s technical staff to create Asana, which makes software that helps workers collaborate.

Another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, also 26, has started Jumo, a social network for “people who want to change the world.”

Dave Morin, formerly the senior platform manager, is building Path, a still-secretive venture, while Adam D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s chief technology officer, and Charlie Cheever, another senior manager, set off in 2008 and 2009 respectively to start Quora, a question-and-answer site. More than half a dozen start-ups can trace their origins to Facebook alumni.

The departures follow a familiar pattern among other Silicon Valley successes like Yahoo, eBay and Google. After amassing fortunes, early employees start walking out the door.

PayPal’s have gone off to start YouTube, Slide and Yelp, and staked Facebook. They are known as the PayPal Mafia. Google’s former employees are called Xooglers. Mr. Morin, who left Facebook this year, offered this suggestion: Facebook Society. “We’re social,” he explained.

But the Facebook Society is slightly different from the earlier alumni associations. The other serial entrepreneurs usually cashed out before resigning.

These ex-Facebookers are leaving before any I.P.O. of the company’s shares. They can do that because Facebook shares are surprisingly liquid. The rise of exchanges like Second Market and SharesPost over the last couple of years have allowed shareholders in private companies to sell their stakes more easily than before. These markets function much like a stock exchanges for publicly traded companies, although the pool of buyers and sellers is much smaller. Facebook’s overall value is around $30 billion on the exchanges.

Last year, Facebook helped current and former employees to cash out some of their shares to a Russian Internet company. Digital Sky Technologies, now known as Mail.ru, agreed to buy up to $100 million in stock to increase its existing stake in Facebook.

Many of Facebook’s alumni are wealthy from stock options they earned while working there. The Facebook expatriates are not saying who among them is rich on paper only and who has actually cashed in some holdings. But Mr. Moskovitz owns around 6 percent of Facebook, according to the book “The Facebook Effect,” and would therefore be worth about $1.8 billion.

By no means is Mr. Zuckerberg watching a mass exodus. The number of people leaving has been relatively small. Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesman, said that the company’s early employees tended to be entrepreneurs at heart, and it was therefore not surprising that they had left to start their own companies. “We don’t view attrition as a particularly prominent issue for us at this time,” he said.

Former Facebookers describe the company as a fabulous training ground. Mr. Zuckerberg hammered home the lesson of focusing on the long term by declining to accept ads on the site during its infancy or to be acquired by other companies.

Fellow colleagues expounded on entrepreneurship. Netanel Jacobsson, who was Facebook’s director for international business development before leaving last year, said the company’s start-up culture inevitably changed as a few hundred employees grew to around 1,700 today. “Eventually, I felt it became too big and too corporate, and that’s when I decided to leave,” Mr. Jacobsson said.

After taking time off to decide what to do, he began advising a social gaming company. He liked the industry so much that he created a social gaming company of his own, PlayHopper, which is to introduce its first product this year.

The company, which is financed from Mr. Jacobsson’s pocket, has a dozen or so employees scattered across the globe. “I’m back to what I really like and what I’m really passionate about — the growth stage of a company, and watching it take off,” Mr. Jacobsson said.

Getting the business off the ground at his age — 40 — is more complex than for other of Facebook’s spawn, who tend to be much younger, he said. For one thing, he has a wife and three children. “It’s almost a suicide mission,” Mr. Jacobsson said.

Mr. Morin, 30, said that he had always harbored entrepreneurial ambitions, even before joining Facebook in 2006. “My dream was always to start a company,” Mr. Morin said. After helping to build two central pieces of Facebook’s service, Connect and Platform, he saw an opportunity in the growing use of smartphones and decided to capitalize on the trend before it was too late.

In February, Mr. Morin left Facebook and began working on Path, which is to introduce its service before the end of the year. He has assembled a team of a dozen employees who work in a high-rise apartment building in San Francisco.

Early on, Path’s team tested a service that enabled users to create and share lists online. Mr. Morin said the company had since changed direction, but he declined to offer details.

Facebook’s former employees say that their tenure provided them a fantastic network of contacts to tap into. Although the former Facebook workers do not meet formally, they often ask one another for advice.

Arranging meetings with venture capitalists or angel investors is also easier when you have Facebook on your résumé. Former colleagues turn out to be some of the most eager investors, much like the PayPal Mafia, whose members have a reputation for supporting one another’s companies.

Matt Cohler, a former Facebook vice president who is now a venture capitalist with Benchmark Capital, epitomizes Facebook’s clubby extended family. He has invested some of his own money and Benchmark’s in several companies founded by former colleagues, including Quora and Asana.

As with many families, Facebook’s relationship with its start-up offspring includes some tension. Facebook is a tough competitor when it sees an opportunity, even if that opportunity is already the focus of some of its former employees. Quora publicly introduced its question-and-answer service in June. Facebook followed with a similar service a month later.

Facebook has tried to minimize conflict by having exiting employees agree to no-poaching agreements.

Many former Facebook employees acknowledge the extra pressure to succeed because of their pedigree. If their companies flop, they know that they will be in the headlines, whereas other start-ups that fall short may go unnoticed.

“There’s a lot of expectations, so the stakes are higher if you fail,” Mr. Jacobsson said.