Welcome to Big questions. This is countless men. And this week. I'm going to try something new. That's because I heard of a new form of Storytelling that got me curious It's called quippy short for quick bites. You can find it at quimbee.com. That's q u IB i.com it caught
My attention because while back Dan pink the best-selling author of the book when told me to pay attention, he said that people were taken in content in different ways and different places and Dan told me the content that he wanted to sit down to in front of a big screen on the sofa with his wife was very different from the content. He was looking for while he was on the line at the supermarket when he pulled out his cell phone.
He advised me to experiment by creating content at different lengths that's been on my mind for a while now. So when I heard that that guy behind The Lion King Aladdin and Shrek was now behind a new form of content that is framed in short bursts. I knew I had a laser in guy behind. This content is none other than Jeffrey katzenberg.
Many of the offerings on the company he started or eight minutes or less. Some of the world's best directors and actors are jumping in to be part of what katzenberg sees as the next evolution of Storytelling when people like cats and burn Jennifer Lopez and Kevin Hart around bored. You gotta take it seriously.
Bottom line is got me to wondering what can be accomplished in eight minutes. So I arranged for a purposely short conversation with cats Berg to talk about just that the big question what can be accomplished in less than 10 minutes. Also. I wanted to get a brief overview about could be came about and what it was about. So let me know what you think this episode is.
In 10 minutes long, maybe you like big questions in the hour-long version. Maybe you'd like the conversations to go more than an hour. Maybe you'd like me to do a longer version that has a seven-minute highlight reel. I don't know the concept is just got me thinking and it seemed like the perfect time for the experiment little background on katzenberg when he was 14 and growing up in New York City. He volunteered to be part of
John Lindsay's mayoral campaign within a week of volunteering katzenberg was running a team of three hundred kids and guess what it helped Lindsay would ultimately win the election and become the mayor of New York a few years later. One of Lindsay's Pals would introduce Jeffrey to Barry Diller then the chairman and CEO at Paramount Pictures. Jeffrey started out as berries gopher and
Move through marketing distribution the international division and business Affairs which gave him the perfect understanding on how to build projects. It was almost like Diller was training him to be a studio head. It was also a Paramount or katzenberg started working with Hollywood Titans, like Michael Eisner Dawn Steele Jerry Bruckheimer, and when eyes are went over to Disney katzenberg followed and went on an incredible run is Chairman of Walt Disney Studios for decade.
Oh mermaid Beauty and the Beast Aladdin The Lion King all were done under Jeffrey supervision then after a fall out with the powers of Disney moved on to start DreamWorks and the 90s with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen Spielberg was a dreamer and Storyteller Geffen was the entrepreneur and katzenberg was the Builder and that's how Shrek Kung Fu Panda and how to train your dragon came into the world.
And straight to you most recently Jeffrey founded quit be in partnership with the former CEO of eBay Meg Whitman and their investors include the backbone of Hollywood Studios. Now, that's a lot to talk about in eight minutes. So I figured you know what? I'm just going to focus on what we all could learn about the power of eight minutes in an eight minute conversation. I want to point out that this
Ation was done over the telephone so it's not going to have the same audio quality is what I'm talking to a guest face-to-face with my zoom recorder in the middle. But hey, this is the time of the great lockdown and we're all doing the best we can before we get going. I want to give a shout out to my sponsor, you know who
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Berg and let's get started by asking him what he learned in 10 minutes or less while making how about The Lion King. What was the best ten minutes of creativity during The Lion King,
I would say the first time that we saw the opening six minutes of Lion King. Remember this is wonderful Circle of Life beautiful panoramic.
take the audience on this magical journey to Africa and to just instantly be immersed into their world with this incredible song created by Pendleton John and sung by him and written by Tim Rice and This brilliant brilliant score by Hans Zimmer in its rough unanimated form and it's sort of barest, you know, sort of
Moment of creation if you will every person involved with that movie in the making of that movie knew that there was magic and here we are. However, many 25 30 years later and it's still magic and Jon Favreau took it and made it even more magical. So it's a gift it has kept on giving to people around the world and you know, hopefully will continue to give her many many many more decades.
Has to come so that was six
minutes. What about Shrek? Was there a 10-minute period in Shrek where you learn something?
Well to me the magic of track was always the relationship between track and donkey and you know, when the two of them meet for the first time and Shrek and Donkey or walking down the road and he explains to donkey how ogres are like onions and which is just one of the
Most wonderful and funny and Incredibly revealing character moments, you know, I can think of it almost any film. So if you remember the two of them walking down and ogres are like onions that you know, and he says, you know when they and and Donkey talked about parfaits, you know onions have layers parfaits have layers.
So so actually that's like a couple of lines of dialogue that told you
yeah. Well, it's well, it's a whole scene. It's a
it's a it's an entire sequence that goes on between the two of them and you know, that's where their bond and their partnership and their friendship all happens right in those couple of minutes.
How about Aladdin?
Well, the magic of Aladdin, you know was Jeanne and you know when Robin Williams broke into song and introduced himself to Aladdin and goes through that extraordinary Transformations. It's just expensive and wildly entertaining. So all of these movies had something, you know, I had their iíve been involved with 406 live-action movies 41 animated movies 17.
TV shows or 76 something like that. There's not a one of them. Even the dogs even the bombs. They all had something and and and that's kind of the fun of it. But you know, you know the mrs. You know of which there are a mighty amounts of them and this still had great moments and rewarding moments and friendships and relationships that came out of them and I don't regret any of them. Maybe some of the audience's that got to see some of them were running up a little bit but I did
Well it is that just thing that you just expressed how in a very short period of time you knew something was going to be really good or had amazing potential or there it is and I'm wondering are you trying to do something along those lines with quippy
sure. Once again, you know attempting to do something do different Innovative. I think of it as the
First third generation of film storytelling film narrative first generation or to our movies that are designed to be watched in a single City clean movie theaters a next generation of film narrative were these 13 to 26 episode stories told in chapters that were one hour long. We call a TV and you watch it on a television set mostly or maybe a laptop or a desktop or an iPad.
And the next generation of film narrative, we have imagined and amounts not imagine. It's quite real is that you can tell to our stories and chapters that are six to eight or nine minutes under 10 minutes in length to be viewed sad in a way that makes them really gorgeous on your phone on the go and has been meant very specifically for your in-between moments. And that's a new idea. It's not just taking
Existing content and you know putting it on your phone or cutting it up into chapters. It's you know, if you took an episode of Game of Thrones and cut it up into six ten minute pieces of would be any good. You actually have to create this is what storytellers great storytellers great filmmakers, you know, you present them with a new challenge which could be did and they Rose to the occasion and just hit the ball out of the park the content that Hollywood has delivered to quibble.
She is phenomenal and when people watch it, they see it. It's not like anything you've seen on your phone before that was the idea.
So you felt basically the same feeling that you felt with Robin Williams with Shrek and Donkey with opening of Lion King when you're saying some of these pizzas that you're putting together for
Quimby.
Hundred percent. Well, you know what? I look for some I'm going to check it out and our 10 minutes is up, and who knows
where you're going to take me with it, but thank you brother.
Thank you, sir. Appreciate. Thank you for the time. I say you to tears. Take care.
That about wraps it up and man that was quick gotta say I finish this conversation feeling like I would have rather it lasted for an hour, but I'm gonna see if I can experiment with different formats on the same podcast going forward. It's definitely time to start putting out air quotes over social media and working in different ways to get the same content out in a way that will
Fit your schedules, but let me know how I can help because I'm in lockdown and I'm just trying to think about how you're thinking. Really. I don't know what your day is. Like now. I just got out of the bunker myself. We're in my sport teks after finishing up a book to help some friends out. They were on deadline. So now I have time to think about some of this stuff if you
Have any ideas on how I might be able to make big questions better apply to your schedule. Let me know. Let's have a conversation and hey, if you want to do it over a virtual meal email me at kalfus mint.com. Let me know you will get a response. You will get a reservation and we will clink glasses from afar until then. She is.
