YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas Tull

lines on the record: 135
first: 2022-01-26
most recent: 2022-01-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's difficult to say, you know what, everybody, for the next two years, I wouldn't count on our financial projections at all because we're going to reinvent what we're doing. It's going to work in the long run. And you're going to see that this was a really smart investment five to seven years from now. That's not the way capitalism is currently wired generally, right? And a lot of, so again, if you reward managers with yearly bonuses and stock options based and tied to stock price and all these other things, and then ask them to go break stuff. That's hard, I think.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you have to look at the nexus of two things there. One is just plain old human behavior. If I am uncomfortable and this isn't a comfort zone for me and it's not something I have as a field of expertise, I'm going to shy away from that. Especially if I'm successful and I feel good about myself and it's a big successful company or person or whatever it might be. And the second thing is that especially if you're a public company and you're being weighed and measured every quarter, you are rewarding the managers of that company to hit metrics and to be reliable and to say, hey, I'm counting quarter to quarter that you're going to deliver what you say.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thesis was to look for industries that were large enough that hadn't traditionally had access to that type of technology or innovation and to try to look for companies. Not only Look that part, but had management teams that embraced this and wanted to take that kind of journey.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So instead of being a fund that has money flowing in and out of it and there's what's called a vintage year, I raise capital and I agree to invest that capital for so long and then I give it back to you, which sometimes creates artificial time pressures and things like that. A holding company is more permanent capital. So the idea was behind telco was to buy almost always whole companies or majority stakes with great management teams in spaces that did not traditionally have a lot of innovation. And to have our labs group, who were data scientists, AI practitioners, engineers, machine learning, et cetera, and to be able to bring that wherewithal to that company. So to provide them with the right capital and to provide them with access to technology that would be hard to individually recruit for that company. So I would say that.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, on the business side of that, so I have a holding company called Telco, very imaginatively named. And part of that is literally every name ever is now taken. Registered and all that stuff. So we're a holding company.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, the whole thing is about either the moving image or even sometimes a picture. Will bring out an emotion, a reaction, something so. Short form is harder because you have less time to set things up and all that. But I'm sure there will be short videos and creators that come up with things. And if a moving image can get a reaction out of you and make you feel a certain way and stay with you or inspire you, well, that to me is just the next evolution of whatever it's going to be between humans and cameras, et cetera.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look, to me. Going in a darkened theater with a bunch of strangers and the lights go down and you go on this journey. There is something special and magical about that. And I think movies have been a part of our cultural fabric forever. And for some reason, Hollywood and America was uniquely positioned to do a great job with it, right? And not that there aren't great foreign movies, but far and away American movies are dominate not only the world market, but so whatever it is that we do well or Hollywood does well, there's something in the water apparently. But I agree that I love movies and I will, you know, for the rest of my days, it's interesting how creators can move back and forth now as well. That used to be a complete no-no. You're either a movie guy or a person or a”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That format is a fundamentally different experience. And I think you're going to find movies, my old shop legendary, just put out Dune, which I thought was phenomenal. When we secured the rights to Dune years ago, I was over the moon because I love the book. I love the entire world that is Dune. And that's a movie that I think you see on the big screen. I think when Avatar 2 comes out, I want to see that on a big screen. But I think you're going to see a ton of content is obviously being produced and it's not all going to go to a theater going experience. So you're going to see, I think different versions of this over the next five to ten years.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think a lot of times, you know, companies are a letterhead, but it boils down to the people. And I think I've known Ted Sarandos a long time who ran the studio at Netflix and now took over for Reed running the company. But Ted, very smart, talented guy and understood early how to cultivate talent and relationships with talent, which is important. When you're dealing with creative people, their motivations and their goals are not always the same, right? They're not always capitalistic. And so in terms of being able to communicate with creative people that are not always A to B to C is a talent. And so I think they did a great job. Ted did a great job with that early. But I think that you're going to see different formats. I don't think, I mean, going to a theater to see a massive movie on that screen.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're an independent, that's bringing a knife to a gunfight, to be sure. And so I thought that was interesting. The other thing that it used to be that movies were where the big things happened and television was sort of small screen, different experience. And you had something like Game of Thrones come out. Which was not only on the same epic level visually and storytelling wise, but had the budget to be able to do it. And now I think you're seeing You're seeing all kinds of different storytelling taking place. And I also like that you're not pigeonholed into a time. Like you got two hours to tell the story. You can do a three-part miniseries, a five-part mini-series. You can do television that's all kinds of different format. And that, I think, is allows creators to do a lot more interesting things”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was, and I can't tell you around Hollywood anybody that says that everybody thought it was a great idea is not being truthful because everybody I talk to said this is they're idiots, right? What do they know about movie making and TV? What I saw happening was if you look at what Netflix pulled off and they realized that there isn't really a moat around the studios, you really could make stuff and really good stuff. And so they started to create their own content. That pulled in Amazon, which pulled in Google through YouTube, and then you had Hulu, then you had Disney deciding that they're going to have Disney Plus. And the next thing you know, you have some of the biggest companies with the largest balance sheets on the planet being in the creative business.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't know yet that understand how to innovate and how to make you feel something in that environment. And to your earlier point, I saw probably around 2015. When Netflix decided to be bold, put out House of Cards, put out all the episodes, leave you in charge of the pace at which you would view them, which I thought was great.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I thought if you saw Ready Player One, which I love the book, and the movie was cool too. But that's one version of it, right? Where you go in, now everybody's talking about the metaverse and all that, but you go into a world that's fully rendered as yourself and you interact with that world. The other side of it is to go in somewhere between being a passive observer, but being able to move around your point of view and experiences, which I think is interesting. And then I think another adventure, so to speak, I could think of is a blend of video games, so there's a mission, right? There's obstacles, there's everything, and you move through it, but it's immersive and it tells a story at the same time. And that's why I think you're going to see new amazing storytellers.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I think the other category that I would add to that that will be the next great medium is truly immersive virtual reality. In which new storytellers will emerge, especially when you can go into VR and there's enough computing power to sustain it and to allow it to be social and for you to have different paths to go down, that'll be, I think, the next realm of what storytelling and experience will look like.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, if you're using big effect shots, And all kinds of tricks to cover over the fact that you don't have a very interesting story to tell, that's where I think it gets in the way. Where I think you have these incredible filmmakers, we mentioned Chris Nolan and Jim Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, you could go on and on of folks that Just see the world differently and use technology to enhance the storytelling, right? To make you believe differently, rather to make you not just suspend your disbelief, but to feel like you're immersed in it. So I've certainly seen it done expertly and I've seen it done poorly”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It blew my mind, and I said, okay, this is truly people talk about a big leap. This certainly is one. So he has continued to push the envelope in terms of the art of the possible. And I just think he's an incredible genius in that way”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But so I never made a film with Jim. I'm just a huge fan and got to know him. And John Landau, his producing partner. One of the things that just fascinates me about Jim is so he makes Titanic, and there's a bunch of underwater cameras and things that they need that don't exist. So he goes and invents them and has a good grasp of engineering and has not only the imagination, but the ability to lead a team to build them. I got to go down early when they were shooting Avatar at a warehouse, I think it was, where they were shooting. And as they were explaining to me how they were capturing it and that they could go back later because they created the environment.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, those are generally pretty massive components of the budget, and especially if you're doing it and inventing things. As you go. I mean, Jim Cameron is one of those filmmakers who is designing the plane as it's flying in such a brilliant way. And I've got to know him over the years and just in awe of the way his brain works. And so, yeah, it's a big component.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, it's one of my favorites. They just did an amazing job. And frankly, the crazy thing about my life is all the stuff that I loved as a kid somehow came full circle back into my adult life. And having the opportunity while I was out there to develop a friendship with Stephen Spielberg and then have my name on the same film as Steven Spielberg. I mean, that was pretty surreal. So that was an expensive film, you know, Dark Knight Rises was an expensive film. But again, to me, there's a difference between expensive and irresponsible. Expensive because the vision warranted, and it turned out financially, it certainly did.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to do things that are uncomfortable and you don't want to do them because you're tired, because that in some ways builds up that you're comfortable being uncomfortable muscle. And I sometimes think we're losing that a little bit. And you can't sort of paint with a wide brush. But that's one of the things that I kind of observe and hope that we don't. That way.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think capitalizing things just, you know, to the nth degree does create some problems. So I think there's that perfect blend of don't starve the oxygen to the point where you make short-term decisions or non-strategic or thoughtful decisions because you've got to pay the rent. And on the other hand, you can't have it be like this everlasting gobstopper of whatever you want will just keep flowing the cash because that doesn't create any friction points that I think do result in works of genius and things that are transformative. And one of the things that is interesting to me about society sort of writ large is I think that when you go through hard times”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think if you're focused on a particular problem or a company or a thesis, if you have that focus and you feel like I have unlimited resources or renewable resources, so there's really no leverage in the situation. If I fail with this, I'll just go get more money, right? I'll just go, I think that's a hard way to be resilient and to think of new ways to solve problems.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Making sure that that capital is patient enough so that it's, you know, if you're going to do things that are extraordinary, it takes some time. And you're going to break stuff, right? You're going to make mistakes. You're going to have a whole bunch of film on the cutting room floor, so to speak. Or if you're in the lab, you're going to have a whole bunch of broken stuff. And I also think it's very important at the beginning, and I always try to do this with companies I invest in or buy, is make sure that you have a philosophical and somewhat mechanical alignment with the management team so that going in, you both understand, hey, this is how we think about this problem or this company. This is what we feel like our culture is. This is what our goal is. And these are the metrics by which we'll agree to measure them by. Because if you don't have that shared...”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would say a couple of things enough money that whatever endeavor you're going into that you're not so nervous about the edges, right? If I have $100 to spend and I think I can create a perpetual motion machine or something for $104. I can't do it because they're all over me about the budget. So I would say making sure that you have enough capital.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, now, and again, massive difference between large private equity shops who are professionalized and in the same category that I mentioned earlier versus private individuals who are wealthy or whatever. But again, it's much more individualized when you're going to people who like your idea and just say, I'd like to invest in this.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guessing and things like that. So that was always one of the idiosyncrasies of the business that I thought was interesting. And then when you talk about private equity versus public equity, if you're a public company where the companies are traded, you want to buy Microsoft shares, you just go to your broker, go on TD Ameritrade and buy them. If on the other hand you're talking about private equity, institutions or individuals investing in private companies. So thus, if you have pools of capital that mostly invest in private equity deals, that's how you'd think about it.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the benefits in some ways are they're professionals who are largely dispassionate, right? It's like, look, if you're hitting the numbers you told me and you're hitting your plan, great. And the other thing that always was interesting to me about the movie business is if I'm investing in artificial intelligence company or a chipset company or something like that, a lot of the institutions don't have the technical expertise to really truly grasp what's being done so they don't, you know, other than good business practices, they're not offering every little opinion. The movies and television are completely approachable. Meaning everybody has an opinion. So, you know, whether it's, I think you guys chose the wrong actor for that or why did you do that movie? So it invites a lot more sort of second.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Getting money from fidelity or T-Row or a sovereign wealth fund or an endowment fund from a university that has large pools of organized capital, that has a long-term point of view on your business. So if you get money from your neighbor who's a successful dentist next year, the dentist may say, hey, times are hard. I need my money back. If your partner's with Fidelity or Morgan Stanley or any of these institutions, they have the capital and the wherewithal to say, okay, I'm looking in this over the next five to ten years. And I thought there was an opportunity to bring that type of capital to the movie business to be patient.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got it. Okay. Well, so if you're starting a company, And you go around to a bunch of your successful friends and say, hey, you should invest in my company. Well, that sort of, that's great and it's capital, but it's not.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On to all the Disney stuff. He probably had as great a career as anyone I've ever heard of in the movie business. So my first focus was around sort of two concepts, global, worldwide large tent pole films and franchises, and then the business aspect of bringing long-term institutional capital to bear.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And had the right approach, went out, raised the money from the capital markets, which was Herculean, still maybe the hardest thing I've ever done in my career to walk around and say, look, I have no experience. I've never done this before. But then the second thing being very fortunate at the time was able to partner up with Warner Brothers, Warner's at the time was run by a man named Alan Horne, who besides being creative is also a Harvard MBA. So really understood what I wanted to do. And Alan was just an absolute gentleman, someone that I still look up to this day. After Warner Brothers, he went and ran Disney with their run between Marvel and Star Wars and everything. And so between Alan being responsible for Harry Potter, the Dark Knight stuff.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, the business has changed so radically since 2004. When I started legendary, DVDs were still a cash cow. So, you know, that's how far things have come. But I would say a couple of things. The reason that I started it from a business perspective was at the time it was a $30 billion industry and there was no institutional capital around the movie business. And I was fascinated by that because almost every other category that you look at of that size has institutional capital, private equity, et cetera, as kind of a cottage industry set up around it. And I was perplexed and fascinated that that didn't occur. And the way the movie business worked was unlike any business I'd ever looked at before. So after kind of convincing myself that you could actually make money if you were disciplined.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when you build a big movie like that, it's an enormous effort, 360 degrees. I mean, from digital effects, certainly the actors. I mean, if you have an amazing script, an amazing director, but you don't believe anybody playing the parts, that's a problem. So the reason I think it was so difficult to pull off is always used to say you start with a stack of papers with words on it called a script. Bring that to life. And you're asking an audience to believe in everything that you're trying to put out there. And you've got to cast that even if they're immensely talented individually, they have to mesh together. They have to have chemistry together. And, you know, the director is kind of the general on the battlefield. But if you have a strong producer who's very hands-on, but it truly, to me, is each one had its own.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Total luck that we had the opportunity to make five movies at the time with Chris Nolan, who turned out to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. But each one is its own little startup company. And I don't think there's any formula to get there. But I know that if you don't have a great director and a great script, if you don't have that foundation, it's hard to pull off.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, I've been enamored with movies since I was a kid as a fan, and I think what you need is to be able to tell a great story. And if you're going to tell a great story, you need a great director. You got to start with a fantastic script that is able to take some of these iconic characters that we did and put your own stamp on it while still respecting the mythology. And I had zero experience in movies and television before I started legendary. So it was a very interesting trip.”
2022-01-26 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source