But when I genuinely enjoy what I do, then I do a really good job at it and then the financial side tends to take care of itself.
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
I had realised that rather than trying to be someone else, or trying to fit into a system, the best thing I could do was focus on what I thought was right and follow my instincts.
We spent what probably is the best 5 years of my life and career living in Dar es Salaam, working in a nonprofit.
I had been doing stuff in order to have a better future life, rather than actually realising that this was it, it wasn't going to get any better.
I got picked up by a VC firm, that was a disaster from day one and got fired from there two years later, feeling like an abject failure at 42. I think I just read that Blair and Clinton both became leaders of their country at 42 and I was unemployed and feeling pretty sorry for myself.
The CEO was right to fire me, because I wasn't very good at what I did.
The biggest change for me over the past 10 years has been understanding the importance of sleep. I figured out that if I'm in bed reading a book at ten o'clock, tomorrow is probably going to be a pretty good day, and if I'm up at one o'clock, watching a film, it's less likely to be so.
So many things that I'm both grateful and frustrated with are the result of luck.
I admire deeds more than people
ON TOPIC: Film, film-making, Oscars and more
Someone once likened making a film to fishing with 13 fish hooks and needing to be able to pull all out at exactly the same time.
The big learning that I've had over the last 7 years is there are a lot of people who cultivate an image of being fantastic and Mr. Nice guy, and in reality are arseholes, or have been corrupted by the industry. It's like sometimes meeting your heroes and then realizing they're not nice people at all.
Most people work in this industry because of a passion for the product that they make, rather than a belief that this is a way to riches.
One of the things that I think Europe and other parts of the world have got ahead of them is to be a low-cost producer of English language content, because the Americans have just lost the plot in terms of the way they structure and the way these things cost.
The number of series that are being produced in the US today is basically 6 times the number of TV series that's been produced at the end of the 2000, and the budgets are probably 2 to 3 times the size of what they were too.
Our revenues have increased by about 1400% during that time. And that growth has been fantastic, but where it's both been felt has been at the cinemas, because cinema volumes are down. They've been one of the most steady industries over the last hundred years and have been almost recession-proof and suddenly we found a situation where that may no longer be the case.
We've changed our behaviour, so that's one serious dynamic in the industry.
Almost everyone is trying to cut costs and I think we're going to have a look at a very different industry in 5 years.
The industry needs to become much more thoughtful around costs.
In any industry where there's an extreme hierarchy, there's risk that people abuse their power.
The reason why we love our actors is because half the time we dream of being with them.
All THINGS INSEAD AND GIVING BACK
Scandinavia is an INSEAD wasteland.
That is my most treasured possession after INSEAD, is the people that I met.
References, mentions:
The black swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb), Why we sleep by Matthew Walker, Nelson Mandela, Tom Hanks, SF Studios, Sony, A man called Otto, A Man Called Ove (film), A Man Called Ove (book by Fredrik Backman, En man som heter Ove)