 This is Beyond the Lines. I'm Rusty Kamori. We are live from the Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines, which is about having a constant striving for excellence, creating a superior culture of leadership, and finding greatness. My guest today is Chris Lee, the former president of Columbia TriStar Pictures. He oversaw the production of hugely popular films such as Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise, My Best Friend's Wedding with Julia Roberts, Philadelphia with Tom Hanks, and As Good as It Gets with Jack Nicholson. Chris was also the executive producer for Superman Returns, Valkyrie, and SWAT. Today, we are going beyond blockbuster movies. Chris, it's great to have you joining me on the set today for Beyond the Lines. Good morning, Rusty. You accomplished extraordinary things in your career. It's an amazing career that you have, but I want to start from the beginning. You attended Eolani School. Yes. Tell me about your experiences at Eolani School. It was still a boy's school, but it also gave me a chance to do my first work in media because I was with the AV department, and we would record all the football games. And so whatever technology we had in the school, I had a chance to play with there. Great. And then you ended up going to Yale for college. What did you study at Yale? I was a political science major. Why did you choose political science? I had every intention of becoming an attorney. I had been an admirer of public defenders in particular, and that's sort of the field that I was interested in pursuing. That's interesting because it was the same with me. I actually went to Creighton University to study law, but my career took a different turn. How did your career begin after graduating Yale? So when I was at Yale and I graduated, I really wanted to go into entertainment business, and I also wanted to stay in New York. I had visited a lot because New Haven is very close to there. But there's actually not a lot in New York in the entertainment field. A lot of the management is, but it's really a Los Angeles business. So you had the morning shows, you had the soap operas, you had the newscasts and things like that, and actually I sort of focused on getting a job at Good Morning America. Wow. I really literally just learned everything I could about that show and the history of the show. When eventually I was able to get an interview there, I could be somewhat fluent in, like it seemed to have some idea what I was talking about. That's amazing. And then you connected with the director, Wayne Wang, for the film Dim Sum? Yes. Actually, so I was at GMA for a couple of years, and eventually I was a segment producer doing a lot of entertainment stuff, and what I noticed about having to fill two hours of programming every day is that you kept doing the same stories over and over again. I think after the third time that I had done the anniversary of Elvis' death, I thought, maybe I should do something else with my life. And Wayne had finished his first, his first film had been a success, Chan Is Missing, and then he offered me a job as an assistant director on his second film, which was going to shoot in San Francisco. And I just said to him, I have to tell you, I have no idea what a film A.D. does. I know what they do on television, but it's a very different job. And he said, well, I've never had one, so if you come out and you're willing to not be paid any money and work with me, we'll find out together what they do. So, you know, I think that's an important lesson in that, especially in this business, because it's still a business of apprenticeship, of being a journeyman, of basically taking advantage of whenever opportunity comes your way, even if it seems like a bit of a left turn. And so, you know, I left a paying job with a network where I guess I could have risen through the ranks there, but I wanted to pursue something different because I was really interested in film. And so this was kind of like my film school. So how did you get your start at TriStar Pictures? You know, I did a lot of interviews that summer. I think I finally got a job in August. I was really about to come back to Hawaii because I had no money and I was very literally destitute. But, you know, you have to just sort of network yourself. You have to get out there and just beg anybody you can to get yourself in the door. People know people and, you know, people generally want to help other people. So, you know, eventually I was able to get an interview, which led to another interview, which I think I had six or seven interviews before they finally hired me. So what was your first job at TriStar? What did you actually do? So TriStar is a similar situation where, you know, I had worked on the film. I had been the assistant director. I actually ended up being the apprentice editor. And this is back in the time when it was actually 35 millimeter film. So, you know, I learned about production. I learned about post-production. And I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to be an A.D. and I wasn't going to be an editor. So there's a part of the process called development, which is where you identify material and then you develop the script and you try to get it made. It's basically producing, right? And there are very few entry-level jobs in the business in Hollywood if you're not from the right family. And one of them is to be a script analyst. Now, most of the studios, it's a union job, so it's very hard to get. TriStar was a very young studio at the time. And they had freelance script readers. And again, somebody knew somebody. I got an interview. They sent me down for another interview. They gave me a test to see if I knew what I was doing. I didn't know, again, I'd never done it before. But I got hired to be a freelance script analyst. And that was, you know, $25 a script, $50 if it was a rush overnight or something like that. You got more if you had to read like a book of 500 pages overnight, things like that. But that was my first gig. And then sometimes it's just luck. And what happened was, after a short period of time, my boss got promoted. And for whatever reasons, other people didn't want the job or get the job, but they offered me the job at my boss's job, which suddenly made me the assistant story editor at TriStar Pictures. And from then, I was actually in an office. I was in the building. I was able to then work my way up to eventually president of production for the studio and then for the two studios. But I will say that along the way, again, there was a woman named Bonnie Lee, who's from Hawaii. She's Edgy Lee's sister. And she was this really big executive at Warner Brothers. She discovered Tim Burton. She was huge executive. And she took me out to dinner one night and she gave me a list of 11 people. And she said, use my name and go meet these 11 people. And 10 of those 11 people actually saw me. And so that started my sort of networking process of getting to know people in Hollywood and introducing myself around town. So it really is a combination of you have to have some skill sets, but then you also have to be able to get out there and sell yourself. It's absolutely fascinating to me how you started as a script analyst for TriStar and then you became president of production for Columbia TriStar Pictures. That's amazing. Well, it's a process. I mean, I was assistant storyteller, then I was director of creative affairs, and I was a vice president, then I was a senior vice president, then I was executive vice president, and then I was president of production. So it's a process. One of the biggest movies you oversaw at the time was Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise. Was Tom Cruise always the first choice for that lead role? Actually, no. The history of the project was Cameron Crow, who had done Say Anything, and I was a huge fan of his work. And he had done a movie called Singles and stuff. And he basically had a deal with another producer at the studio named Jim Brooks. Jim Brooks is very famous for winning the Academy Award for Terms of Endearment, to doing The Simpsons, to doing Taxi. He's a complete genius. Anyway, so Cameron was kind of under his wing, and it was a project. I didn't know anything about it. It was just about a sports agent. I never saw a script. I never saw a script for three years. Really? It's a little unusual that you don't know that much about it, but when you're with Jim Brooks and Cameron Crow, you go with it. So during that time, I think Cameron did a lot of drafts and worked very closely with Jim on it until eventually he was delivered to us. And as I understood, it was originally written for Tom Hanks. But Tom eventually got busy on his own. I think this is when he directed his own picture, that thing you do. It was like a band or something like that. And then we came this process of everybody wanted Tom Cruise. And I think at the time, Tom was married to Nicole at that time, and they had this deal where one made a movie and one took care of the kids. He was off in early. Anyway, so we were very fortunate. He said yes. And then it was putting everybody together. And it just became a huge hit. And then after all of that, you also became the executive producer for hit films, such as Superman Return, SWAT, and some Valkyrie with Tom Cruise. How was it working with Tom Cruise? I love Tom. He is literally the hardest working man in show business. And you'll see it next week. And I think the new Mission Impossible comes out. And he's still throwing himself off of buildings and falling out of air. I mean, I heard something crazy. There's a parachute stunt that he did like 100 takes of it or something like that. It was very funny when we were making Valkyrie because he wasn't just the star of the movie. He was running the studio. That's when he was running United Artists with his partner at the time, Paulo Wagner. And so as a producer, you don't want your stars doing certain things because you can shut down your production. But Tom would fly his own airplanes all the time and everything. And I think he was just doing it to get a rise out of me. That's great to hear. But he's great. He's wonderful. I love hearing that. Now, you've walked the red carpet countless of times. And you've worked with the most famous actors in the world. How are these experiences for you? Well, of course, they're fun. It's an odd thing because a lot of it is work, especially if you're there with somebody. I worked on a movie called Legends of the Fall once. And we had a royal premiere in London with Prince Charles. And I basically was given the assignment to take care of Brad Pitt for the night. So he's a little bit shy in some of these things. He knows what he's supposed to do and stuff like that. But I remember I had to go get him out of the stairwell and stuff like that. And I just remember we had to sit in the balcony with him and Prince Charles. And then every time he'd come on screen, the audience would start screaming, which was to the great dismay of the director, Ed Zwick, who's amazing. But yeah, I mean, the red carpet is, if you're in the business, it's a work opportunity. But of course, it's fun. And I think I haven't gone for a while. But I want to have a film that goes back. I'd be happy to go back. Now, I want to ask you this, Chris. You've worked with so many famous actors. Which actor would you like to work with that you haven't had the opportunity to work with yet? There's a huge generation of actors that I haven't worked with. I mean, it's very kind of you to list the movies that I had a chance to work on and stuff like that. A lot of those people are not working as often as they used to. And the business has changed so dramatically. It's not a movie star business anymore. It's you basically, you see Will Smith doing his deals on Netflix these days and stuff. So the whole star industry thing has gone away. And now it's essentially Hollywood is bifurcated between superhero films, which often star really great actors in unexpected parts. But they drive those movies because their performances are so good. But you may have thought of them. Who thought of Robert Downey Jr. to play Iron Man? He didn't have a career when they cast him in Iron Man and stuff like that. So it's like, I can't think of any names on the top of my head. But I think all actors are hopefully right for the part. And they're really, really great to work with. In your opinion, is it more important who you know or what you know in that industry? Well, like I said, it's this combination. Everybody comes to Hollywood with some level of talent. And everybody comes to Hollywood with some level of ambition. But the ones who I think survive and succeed are the ones who have tenacity. Because it is a business of rejection. It's not quite as bad as being an actor, which is a miserable life. And I admire all actors for putting up what they have to put up because every day is going out and audition and not getting the part until finally. And when you're a star, you're not really an actor. You're a star. It's a really different lifestyle. But I think, yeah, it's very much about being willing to get knocked down and pick yourself back up and then move forward to the next day. Resiliency is key. Very important. I love watching music videos. Have you produced any music videos in the past? Yeah, actually, I was partnered with Joseph Conn for a while. We had our own company. And we did everybody from Backstreet Boys to Janet Jackson to Elton John. Joseph is probably most famous because he does almost all of Taylor Swift's videos now. But he has done thousands of music videos. I mean, he's one of the top couple music video directors in the business. And he's extremely talented. That's great to hear. Chris, we're going to take a quick break. And then when we return, I want to focus about you founding the Academy of Creative Media for the University of Hawaii. Sure. You are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my guest, Chris Lee. We will be back in one minute. I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark. And every Monday at 1 o'clock, I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's research in Monart. And at that program, we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university, ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the Earth from space, going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes, and other things which have a direct relevance not only to Hawaii, but also to our economy. So please try and join me at 1 o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's research in Monart. And see you then. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all of your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii in Uniform, Fridays, 11 AM, here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. If you're just joining us, my guest today is Chris Lee, the former president of Columbia TriStar Pictures. Chris, you founded the Academy of Creative Media for the University of Hawaii. When and why did you start that? It actually was approached a few times by the university to start a film school for the university. Awesome. And it wasn't something that I thought I could do remotely. And so when I eventually decided to relocate and base out of Hawaii, which was around 2001, 2002, that's when I took a much closer look at what they were suggesting. But what I asked them to do was to allow me to look around and explore things. So I actually went to every campus in the system. I talked with people in the business community here on Bishop Street. I talked to the legislature. I talked to the film industry folks and stuff like that. To see about, do we really need this? Do we want this? And if we did, what should it look like? And what I proposed was something that I guess is a bit unique and that it was actually system-wide. Because what I found on all the campuses has already been a lot of investment in this area, in different areas. KCC had a really good New Media Arts program. Leeward had television production studios and stuff like that. HCC was getting into building the home LA program, which was music, audio, recording. And so I knew that they weren't going to give me any money to do this. And while I know that Manoa wanted a traditional film program, I thought if you could get the programs to work together, the whole would be stronger than the parts. That's so great to hear. And we're actually going to show a video of the new building that's going to be built groundbreaking this January. So let's have our viewers take a look at this video right now. So this is going to Brown Creek in January 2019. It will be accommodating 500 majors. It's at the West O'ahu campus. It'll be the building that's closest to the train station, actually, which is going to open around the same time in the fall of 2020, which is when this is going to be occupied. It has a traditional, a great, like a 3,000 square foot soundstage. It has emerging media for VR and AR. It has a complete post-production suite. It has a separate screening room for 100, but it also has a little bit of an Avid S6 mixing panel. So you can do like Dolby Atmos in there. I think it's going to have like 66 speakers in it or something like that. I'm so excited about it. Let's run the video here. I thought we were. That's an amazing vision and video about the exciting things that's going to be happening with the Academy of Creative Media. Can you share more about what's currently happening with Creative Media now? Yeah, so we now have programs on all 10 campuses on every island. And they, like I said, they do a lot of different things. But they, like, we do a lot to sort of enhance existing programs. So at HCC, we added audio post-production. We added Foley and ADR. And that's actually where we recorded Moana. And Moana is the best example. The Hawaiian language version of Moana is something that I was able to work out to deal with Disney animation for us to re-record the entire movie in O'lello, Hawaii. And that required us to use programs from five different campuses. Ali Kravaleo came back as the star, which is amazing. Nicolas Schrodinger plays the mom again. But then we had open auditions and we had 143 auditions uploaded to our website by native speakers. And we cast about 30 people locally. And we recently premiered the film at O'Lani. And then we had a second free screening at the Bishop Museum. And the main purpose, though, is for education. It's really to encourage students to really want to study the language. So we will be distributing the DVD for free to every school throughout the state. So from preschool all the way through college, any accredited school will be getting a copy. Some will get multiple copies, depending on the programs that they have. We can't sell it, unfortunately, because it was done as an educational effort. But it was all recorded at MLA by student engineers. I think they did something like 4,000 files. And we ultimately did the final mixdown at Disney with the Disney folks with us. But it was really very much a student and faculty-driven program. That is absolutely fascinating. Now, Disney Moana Movie is such a huge, popular, successful movie. I want to know, Chris, what advice would you give to people that's interested in creative media? Well, I use the term creative media because it's very broad. The program that we set up at Manoa campus originally is very much based on USC and AFI. It's kind of very much a legacy film school kind of program, which is fantastic. And they've developed some great filmmakers there. But for instance, West O'Wall campus is everything that's happened in media since. So it has a much stronger emphasis on things like this, like trans media. When we started, there was no YouTube. There was no Facebook. There was no Instagram. There was no Snapchat. There was no smartphone. Everything has changed because of technology in a very, very short period of time. And the modes of production and distribution have completely changed. And you have to be aware of that and keep moving forward like that. So the focus at West O'Wall, as I said, is everything that's happened in creative media since we started the first program. That's amazing. Technology, the advancements, it's evolving at a rapid pace. You have to keep up with what's going on. Obviously, you're forecasting a lot. So the building is very, we're making it as much future proof as possible because we don't really know what's coming down the line. And we do now work with a lot of this emerging stuff like VR and AR and what the story, what kind of shapes and forms the storytelling is going to take in the future. But it does just come down to telling stories. And that's always going to be a sort of a key thing that we hope we can impart to our students because they do have a lot of great ideas for stories, but then we've got to figure out how to get them to tease it out and figure it out and tell it. Well, you have so much experience in your career. What's been the biggest adversity that you've faced in your career? You know, I started at a time when there were very, very, like I was the first minority head of a studio. Wow. I actually started a group called the Coalition of Asian Pacifics and Entertainment, which was a network group. There were three of us when we started. Now there's about 10,000. And they're basically at every level of the industry in front of and behind the cameras. I mean, I don't think people even know like the head of Amazon Studios is Albert Chung. He's a point-a-hole grad. But I'm working with this guy named Kevin Lin who founded this thing called Twitch, which is the eSports channel. Like he sold it for a billion dollars to Amazon. Ryan Higa is like one of the biggest YouTube stars ever. Sure. You know, and he started in the backyard of Hilo. So it's really about, you know, people started taking advantage of changes that were happening in the industry and were ahead of the curve and not sort of stuck in the past. Who was one of your mentors? Who impacted your career the most, would you say? Well, I think there's been a few that I've been very, very grateful to. There was the head of production at TriStar at the time. I mean, you know, Sagancki who also ran NBC and CBS and stuff like that. And I got a lot of great advice from him. You know, I think some of it is a little bit about finding your own way, especially when you happen to come from Hawaii and you don't really know anybody to begin with. But as I said, you know, I was very grateful to Bonnie who sort of gave me a little booster rocket when I was just getting started and stuff like that. So you kind of remember those kindnesses and you try to emulate them for other people. What are some mistakes that you see people make when they're trying to advance their careers? I think it's really easy to suffer from hubris, to think you know it all and think you're the smartest person in the room and you rarely are. I prefer to put myself in a room where everybody else is smarter than me and to continue to learn from them. And so I think that you can get kind of dogmatic in your opinions and kind of stuck in certain places. Your career, I'm just fascinated the things that you've accomplished and the things that you're still accomplishing right now. What would you say was your lucky break in your career? Was there like one lucky break that happened? I don't know if there's any sort of one. Yeah, you know, my boss got promoted and I got my boss's job, you know? But I think before that, it was a willingness to explore different things. So I went into television first and found out that that's not where I wanted to be and I was still young enough to make a change. Then I went and was working in physical production and physical post-production and I learned a lot about the process. But I also realized that this probably wasn't the right thing for me. And then I settled into creative development and being an executive and ultimately being a producer and that's where I felt most at home. You know, I think everything that I do is kind of what a producer does. Even ACM was something that I looked at as a startup. I didn't look at it as a traditional academic program. I looked at it as something that was gonna be disruptive, was gonna try to do something that was different. But I also had to go out and raise all the capital for it and then you had to find the right people to execute it. And that's the most important lesson that I could give anybody is that you have to find the right people. No matter how good your vision is, if you can't write the right people to execute it, it's not gonna work. So there are challenges to that and sometimes maybe you think too far in the future. I mean, I recently was accused of always being at 30,000 feet and seeing the big picture too much and not enough of the nuts and bolts of stuff. But I really do try to correct myself when I get that criticism and stuff. What are you most proud of with Academy of Creative Media? I mean, it's been in existence for a long time now and there's so many exciting things that's ahead. But what are you most proud of? Well, I'm most proud of the kids that did stay here in Hawaii and that have jobs. We actually have a number of graduates that are doing extremely well on the mainland. We have kids that are working for Blumhouse, kids that were the story editor of Newsroom on HBO. But the thing about when Hawaii folks go to the mainland, it's not hard to be successful because there's so much more opportunity and that's the only difference. It's not that we don't have the ability to do these things. It's just that we're not necessarily given the chance here. So I always feel like there's something else that we have to get to. So getting this building done after a long time is gonna be really important. But getting an actual studio built, that's been my goal for over 10 years now and I think we're getting closer to doing an actual studio complex. Diamondhead is great, but it's been, 5-0 has been there for the last seven years and loss was there before seven years before that. And there's no more room for anybody. And we have a wonderful film and television industry and we've had one since 1908 when Edison shot his first film here. But we have a capacity issue. We basically have like we're a tourism business with one boutique hotel. And until we have fully fledged studio facilities like you can find in Georgia or you can find in many parts of the world, all of those big shows that come here like Jumanji or Jurassic Park or Journey to the Center of the Earth, parts of the Caribbean, they can't shoot anything here except for the exteriors, the beaches and jungles. So I'm really looking forward to the day when we can actually build out the industry so it's not just this fantastic $200, $300 million dollar business, but it's a billion dollar business. And that's really where we should be with this. It should be a billion dollar business. Well, Chris, it's been such an amazing pleasure having you on the show today. You've accomplished extraordinary things in your career and you're continuing to accomplish even more extraordinary things with your career and all of Hawaii is lucky to have you here and wanted to really thank you for being on the show today, Chris. Thanks for having me. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Rusty Kamori encouraging you to consistently outdo what you have done and find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.