Part One: Don Simpson: The Producer of Top Gun Also Ruined Hollywood

welcome back to behind the bastards a podcast about the very worst people in all of history and folks we've got a really fun bastard for you this week among other things this is one of the bastards behind the classic film top gun and in order to help tell this story i'm bringing in my own personal top gun soren bowie soren welcome back to the show hey how's it going oh that's i thought we were gonna do seth mcfarland i thought that was my understanding yeah you're boss yeah uh you you and i worked together for like a decade at cracked.com the old place and now you are an executive producer on one of my favorite tv shows american dad which i've been watching for almost 20 years well 20 years literally 20 years it's been on i think over 20 years yeah yeah i haven't been there obviously all that time i jumped on the bandwagon once it was already rolling pretty fast but yeah and in typical soren fashion took control of it just tuck the wheel well because you're mr big hollywood man now we're talking about mr big hollywood man bastard does the name don simpson mean anything to you no oh yeah baby oh you're gonna love this episode soren okay all right yeah yeah depending on your preferences in media there's a short list of people who tend to get blamed at least online rightly or wrongly for having ruined media and they're not going to be blamed for it and they're going to be blamed for movies right some people will blame kathleen kennedy if they're like star wars fans even though she's somehow convinced disney to spend a billion dollars on andor david zosloff gets blamed a lot these days as the avatar of all that's wrong with movies and of course we can't forget rick berman or at least i won't history's greatest monster but none of these people had the kind of foundational impact on how hollywood makes movies today as our subject this week don simpson you didn't recognize his name immediately but you know his movie soren because in the 1980s and early 90s he was jerry bruckheimer's partner in making some of the biggest blockbusters of all time but don was more than just a producer he came up with the strategy that is today a big part of why studios keep gambling like 300 million dollars on movies that then crash and burn right like don simpson is like the birth of the blockbuster era guy um in a big way he's one of the guys who like because obviously that happened before him that was like a you know jaws is generally credited with that which we'll talk about but he was the guy who like formalized no this is how studios need to be making bets on movies that are going to cost a lot of money in the future right okay he's also the guy who's like we need a line item budget for cocaine like like that's going to be a significant part of what we're spending on 80s movies okay yeah don simpson uh he is uh he's also a fascinating like a massively abusive asshole right like he's one of the like stereotypical guys who would be like crew like you know uh uh tom cruise obviously was doing uh a harvey weinstein but there's elements of like don simpson in his performance don was like the classic like super abusive to screenwriters would like just scream at people for hours and like these coke filled rage meetings like he's one of those kind of guys right um okay yeah so that's don simpson he sounds great so far i gotta i gotta call them he's a fun dude he's a fun dude we're gonna learn a lot about the moving picture business from don this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human games on a break don't doom scroll try rips on underdog buy a digital pack rip it open and reveal a real physical card football basketball even pokemon packs start at just five dollars ship it straight to your door or sell it back instantly at full market value max value up to 125 000 download underdog and get in on the chase deposit five get five free packs real rips real cards real cash only on underdog unleash your dog 18 plus terms apply top grails are extremely rare picture this you're listening to the sniffies cruising confessions podcast and suddenly wait what did they just say well the questions raised in those show stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series sniffies cruising confessions bedside manner hosts gabe and chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's tuesday episode from sexual health and hiv prevention to finding the right doctor listen to this special bonus series sniffies cruising confessions bedside manner now on the iheart radio app or wherever you get podcasts sponsored by healthy sexual from gilead sciences ever wonder how a single court decision will change the direction of our country that's the idea behind let the record show a new podcast from the aclu hosted by history teacher matt beat and journalist shireen marisol miraji each episode digs into a landmark ruling and a human story behind the law from wong kim arc whose case gave us birthright citizenship to paulie murray the trailblazing activist lawyer and journalist shireen marisol miraji and journalist shireen marisol and episcopal priest who pushed our country to take racial and gender equality seriously tune in every other week wherever you get your podcasts dude wipes remove what toilet paper leaves behind flushable plastic-free dude wipes are made with 99 water and plant-based ingredients they're gentle enough for sensitive skin but tough enough for methods of historical proportions unlike baby wipes dude wipes are flushable and designed to begin breaking down when flushed no battles there they come in a range of at home and travel friendly formats from individually singles to 48 count big daddies don't let skids be your lasting legacy grab a dude wipe and destroy the evidence dude wipes best clean pants down available at major retailers nationwide donald clarence simpson was born on october 29th 1943 at swedish hospital in seattle washington his dad russell was a mechanic for boeing again they're seattle people uh and his mother june was a housewife because you know it's the 1940s and he was born in seattle and he was born in seattle in the 1940s the family only remains in seattle for a little bit of time in his biography high concept charles fleming gives the family address as 1124 27th avenue which i bring up in case our seattle listeners want to go there and take a picture and say i'm standing in front of a house where the man who helped make tom cruise a star briefly lived as a child i don't know why you do that but someone might you go on the don simpson tour yeah the don simpson tour here's a building he lived in briefly then you go up to alaska let's move on okay anyway i say briefly because in about two years the elder simpsons decided it was time to vacate the godless communist hellscape of 1940 seattle and retreat from society to the peaceful and inviting environs of impoverished rural alaska what could be nicer right like oh wow yeah where would be better to to raise your small child than the middle of fucking nowhere uh i don't know why the family left exactly they don't like we don't have his parents explanations don simpson gave a number of recollections of his childhood and i don't know why he left exactly they don't like don simpson gave a number of recollections of his childhood and i don't know why he left exactly his childhood to journalists after he was famous and nearly everything he said was like a verifiable lie right wait so this is like 1940s that he's there yeah so during world war ii the the latter stage of world war ii yeah yeah he's born in 43 okay so and his dad worked for boeing right right yeah i wonder if this is like a military like a uh there's like a military reason why they would have gone there no because he i think his dad leaves boeing um because he starts a restaurant and stuff like they don't stay and like they leave in 45 so like after the war ends they bounce yeah um and i i don't know why but his he depicts don would later depict his father as having been a hunter and a survivalist we don't know if that's accurate because again don lies about his background a lot but given that they moved right around 45 it's also possible maybe his dad sees the atom bomb or hears about the atom bomb and is like we should probably probably get up to the dropped out of society a little bit right the precise place they moved in alaska was spenard which today is a suburb of anchorage but was its own small town then and during the time donald grew up there spenard maintained a famous red light district that catered in drugs alcohol prostitution and gambling to workers in distant construction camps in the middle of fucking nowhere right yeah what is the what's the what's the output from menard like what are they making there mostly drunken crime right that's that's primarily menard or a business in this time sorry sorry to all the menard residents yeah yeah yeah i meant spenard yes spenard um and yeah today like today spenard has a high rate of drunken crime and back then it was described as kind of like a wild west place here's what fleming writes about the town in his biography of simpson spenard was a rough neighborhood rough enough that a spenard divorce is the local expression for a man murdering his wife it's called a trial separation if the wife survives the shooting holy shit so it's that kind of town oh that's not a fun joke that's not a fun bit at all that's just really dark that's just incredibly bleak um but you know people in spenard tell it as like a fun joke at the bar and then folks who aren't new to who are new to town are like wait what right yeah he heard that six or seven times while he was there yeah everyone's so excited to say it yeah everyone was really happy to tell that um don would not describe his childhood in spenard as a fun town he was a fun town he was a fun town he was a fun town in spenard as happy in don's later version of events again the one that's probably mostly lies yeah why he describes his parents as christian extremists who pushed him into a youth filled with crime sex and baseball he always emphasizes that the baseball and the sex and crime were deeply tied together um we'll get to that in a second sorry and i know you have questions when fleming interviewed people who had demonstrably grown up and known don simpson in alaska they expressed shock at don's version of his own childhood everyone else's attitude is like he was a normal kid right it was like a small town but Like he didn't do anything crazy. So as we go through this, I'm going to have to split between telling you what we know happened and what probably happened. And then the different conflicting things that are definitely lies that Don claims about his childhood because he's one of those guys. Fleming described Simpson based on these interviews as a pleasant, chubby, shy boy, well-mannered and on the quiet side. Other kids who went to North Star Elementary or West Anchorage High reported that fighting was common at both schools. But Don didn't really get into fights. Right. Like he's just not that kind of kid. His friends describe him as charismatic and say note that he had as many female friends as male ones. He was a good dancer. He didn't smoke or use swear words. And he dressed unusually well. He was actually voted best dressed in high school because he always wore full suits to school functions. So he's that kid. Which there's nothing wrong with being that kid. But he's that kid. He's that guy. This version of Don Simpson, backed up by outside testimony, differs significantly from the version of his father. In fact, this is the second time he's given interviews from the version of his life he'll give in interviews after he gets rich and famous. He told Rolling Stone's Jeff Reznor that he had hunted moose to feed his family from the age of seven on. And look, kids hunt pretty young in the country. Moose are very large. Also, yeah, he's not easy. He's dressing it out there in the wild and dragging home the carcass. How are you packing a moose? In a 700-pound animal or something more? He's just a seven-year-old dressing it. Carry it back in patches. Bringing it back on his back. Better move it faster. Before the polar bears get it. He told another journalist that his town had no grocery store, which seems to be untrue. Spenard had groceries. But he would claim that the family had to hunt for all of their food, right? That we didn't eat unless you could put moose steak on the table. They all had scurvy. They all had scurvy. No vitamin C to be found. Don claimed that as a little boy, he loved to go around the house naked, which infuriated his parents, and they beat him for it. And true? I don't really know. He claims the family lived in the basement of his grandmother's log cabin until their dad built them a house when he was eight. Don described his father as a hard-bitten survivalist who didn't smoke or drink and was, quote, a physical terror with a huge temper. He used to pick me up and throw me against the wall. And as I hit the ground, he'd kick me. I never saw him happy, ever. That's a pretty cool move. I mean, to be able to, the coordination to throw someone against the wall and make it to the wall in time to kick them when they fall. And make it to the wall to kick them off? Again, I don't have trouble believing that a kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere in the 50s experienced parental abuse. That just sounds too theatric. That's the thing. It's like when you're an actual kid who's abused, you're like, oh, no, they use this very specific implement every single time. And they were creative and they used an extension cord and they loved using that. Like, this is just like, if you were going to think of like, oh, what's a way to be beaten in a movie? Oh, you get thrown against a wall. Kick me like a ball as I bounced off. I don't know, man. It doesn't sound accurate. And again, I don't tend to doubt stories of childhood abuse unless the person is someone who has like a documented 20-year history of repeatedly lying about their past, in which case you have to, right? Got to respect that, yeah. Yeah, like you just can't take anything this guy says at face value. However, there's definitely some evidence that he, like, one of the issues is that, and this is something his biographers will note, it seems like Don, as an adult, was trying to impress journalists by making his backstory sound more like the backstory of a character from, one of his movies, right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And the best example of this would be the numerous conflicting stories he told about what inspired him to get into the movie business. The most common claim he would later give is that when he was five, his mother took him to see a movie called The Greatest Show on Earth, and he disliked the ending so much that he cried and demanded his mother change it. And she was like, I can't change the end of the movie. He came to a revelation, and this is something he said later to a journalist. I had discovered what I wanted to do for a living. If a movie could have this kind of effect, on me, I wanted to do it, right? That's a very, again, like, film-appropriate backstory for a movie producer. You can see this in the first place. I wanted the opportunity to make endings that would make children cry. Yeah, yeah. To get back for all the times I had to cry. I was going to kill Littlefoot's mother twice. It stung my ass. Fleming notes that not only did he give this story differently every time he told it, but that the movie in question, The Greatest Story on Earth, came out when he was five. It was three, not when he was five. Now, given the realities of life. When did it get to Alaska is the problem. Right, when did it get to Alaska, right? A time machine, basically. But Fleming is like, well, given the realities of how movies got to Alaska, he wouldn't have been able to see this before he was a teenager, right? So, like, it just couldn't have happened when he was five years old. Yeah. In other interviews, Simpson said that at age 10, he was spellbound by a double bill of Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle. He later said, And again, I vaguely believe the idea that he saw movies as a kid and decided he wanted to get into show business. That happens probably to everybody who gets into show business one way or the other. It's just he's really specific about stories that just probably weren't true a bunch of the time. I mean, I believe that last one, but he gives a lot of different ones, so it's hard to know. There's certainly no clear evidence that he wanted to make movies as a lawyer. There's certainly no clear evidence that he wanted to make movies as a little kid. About the best info we have about, like, what pushed him into this career is that all of his friends as a kid emphasized that he read comic books constantly. And he admitted later that he loved pulp comic books. That influenced the kind of movies he'd later make. And this is basically true of, like, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg. I can buy that. A kid reading a bunch of comics and wanting to get into the movies, you know, totally makes sense. Don would later claim to have been a straight-A student who was also a star Bible study student. And then. This is from an interview he gave. Quote, Then along came Little League and sex. At the same time. Don always ties playing Little League baseball to, like, sex and crime. I don't love that. It does not make any sense. He had one coach that was a problem. And now the two are inextricably linked. You would think so. He has never claimed to have been abused by a coach, right? That's how it sounds when he says, Then came Little League and sex. No, he is claiming that the brutal world of Alaskan Little League was his gateway drug to an adolescence of sex crime and violence. I mean, when you're a star, when you're a star for Spaceman, the women of Anchorage come all the way out to Spenard to see you play. When no other nine-year-old can pitch as well as you, yeah. It brings the ladies out. For the three weeks of the year where there's grass in Spenard, everyone goes nuts for baseball. And then you fuck everyone in town. It's very funny because I've heard so many stories from different bastards of, like, and then I ran into this, you know, element of, like, the fringe society. And it pulled me into a world of drugs and crime. I've never heard Little League. That's your doorway in. Obviously, then my life of crime became clear. Once you're in Little League, obviously. You get that first double play, you're chasing that dragon the rest of your life. That high never gets you. Don would later claim to have confessed his preteen sexual urges towards adult women in his congregation to his minister. In this story, which may or may not have been true, I partly believe it, the minister tells him, stop thinking about that stuff, because if you do, God will get pissed, right? To which Don replies, I'm going to play Little League and get laid. This is bullshit. This is bullshit. I'm starting to worm to Don Simpson. Starting to worm to Don Simpson. I'm starting to not do it at this point. All he wants to do is play giant children's baseball and get laid. Okay, fuck this. I'm going to play Little League. I kind of want to see a reboot of Eastbound and Down, but Danny McBride's character's, like, 11. Yeah, just, like, in mittens and a scarf and, like, in that little tiny congregation thing, whatever, where you tell your preacher everything. Don't you play Little League, Donnie. Thank you. I'm getting laid and playing first base. I'm playing first base so I can get to third. Oh, God. So his parents, he claims, expected him to be Billy Graham, but his uncontrollable libido, an impulse for larceny, won out. And Pete Rose. Yeah, and Pete Rose. Don claimed he spent his early adolescence, quote, with a Bible in one hand and my libido in the other. It was a lot of fun. Go to church three times a week. Get on your knees on a congregation. And thank God for the fact that he didn't kill you that day. Because he's living such a hard life. That was not the first draft of that. That was the thing he would say. He had said the other thing. He didn't say libido in the other hand the first few times he said that. And he didn't get the reaction he wanted. And so then he altered the story a little bit. He changed it a little bit. Yeah, he's fixing it. He described his parents as having taught him that all people are born evil, nasty, and dirty. This, Don would later claim, led him to an early revelation about the purpose of religion. Quote, The way you keep people in line is to scare the shit out of them and tell them the only way they're going to escape this fucking fear is by believing in something that you know all about. I knew they were full of shit. He's an angry atheist kid, or at least he describes himself that way later. I don't know. Maybe all of the Little League sex had an impact. You've got a Christian dad, a hardcore Christian dad. You've got theology in your school every single Sunday, and the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Yeah, it just went. too far back. Now, Don's home life is unknowable to us to some extent his younger brother larry does not share the same and larry also becomes a a producer he puts out a couple of big movies yeah larry does not share these same stories about their parents being religious nuts and his dad being super violent now that's not proof of anything because larry's not getting as many interviews as this more famous older brother it would be weird honestly if their dad had never struck them given the era like in the location and there is some outside confirmation that the simpson boys endured a some degree of abusive parenting tactics even though this if the specifics of what his don claimed wasn't exactly true and this is a passage from the book high concept there is one single and chilling indication that june simpson his mother was abusive to her son a former simpson assistant recalled an incident she was on the phone with mrs simpson when her employer came through the room screaming that's don the assistant put her hand over the phone but too late she apologized to mrs simpson but was interrupted it's my own fault it's my own fault mrs simpson said i used to put him in the closet for hours when he was bad pay no attention to his temper tantrums so definitely like some abuse that don endured that's a lot more believable than the kickball story right yes yeah and also kind of scans to again this guy who as an adult cannot control his temper around people because you locked him in a closet when he was bad as a child that'll do it i don't mean to laugh it's just like yeah that's that's pretty bad yeah incarcerating your child that's not yeah it's one of the big ones you're not supposed to do it's not gonna help make don a happy person we can say that much don's version of his life story is that the abuse and religious nuttery forced him to rebel in his high school years which he spent reading classic literature at the library and stealing cars now no one who knew him remembers him doing either of these things again he played baseball he was stealing cars yeah you gotta steal cars if you're playing baseball it's just a rule it's like a little league are you kidding me yeah don described himself at age 15 as quote the baby face nelson of anchorage he said he was convicted of four felonies including grand theft auto but that he was also elected president of his high school class while he was in jail for a felony don he's the best student he can't stop stealing cars he wants it he wants it all you gotta pick a wayne you can be the best student at school or you can be constantly committing felonies but both don't really make sense don i mean this is the story of a child when a child moves to a new school and they want to sound really cool and tough these are the things they say they did at another school and he's just doing it in hollywood to the hollywood press i'm everything yeah no one's gonna go to anchorage um at times he'd slip and it and would claim that it was during his first year of college that he became student president while in jail or being tried if a crime he'd make both claims representatives of his college found no evidence of this and insisted that they had no elections at all for freshmen that they're like there wasn't a freshman like student government so how could they've been elected in why would there be that's a stupid thing to have well also nobody knows anybody yet right so like you're gonna and you have to in order for them to student government to do anything you got to elect in the first couple months of school exactly what would be the point um there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's no record of his criminal activity as an alaskan youth he has no criminal record at all from this period of time as far as we can tell um several people who have written about don will note that his version of his life story sounded a lot again like the protagonists he put in movies like bad boys or top good his his protagonists are always badasses who play by their own rules and live on the edge of whatever society they exist in right yeah what are i want to know his movies i want to know he's a top gun bad boys top gun uh beverly hills cop was a huge one that he did okay um uh the rock was was one of his and bruckheimer's um although that was like right at the end of his life oh it's every bruckheimer movie every bruckheimer movie up until 96 right like he's a massive guy in hollywood yeah um okay and we'll talk more about that later but right like he is he is making a life story that is like the protagonists he tended to prefer in the scripts and stuff that he picked yeah right um and yeah this kind of character who gets in trouble with authority they're on the edge but they get results that's a don simpson protagonist and the claim is that he basically rewrote his life to fit this schema after he got famous what i haven't seen pointed out is that his version of his life story is also structured exactly like an evangelical christian how i got saved story there's this implausible and nonsensical life of crime that doesn't make any sense because like you clearly didn't spend any time committing crimes as a young person right it's just like not how not how getting involved in criminal activity as a kid really sounds um and then there's a salvation narrative right in don's case the salvation comes from like i mean it comes from a instead of like a a priest it comes from a local cop right that's who who he puts gives the credit for or a local judge he has two versions of this but one of them goes that at the height of his juvenile crime spree quote i was confronted by a cop the dirty hairy of our town again spenard this guy was six four tattoos all over his body got me in a room and kicked the shit out of me he said kid it's real simple you're gonna either turn left or you're gonna turn right you're either gonna be the smartest guy in san quentin or you're gonna have a life you like now there are several reasons i don't believe this for one san quentin is a california state prison and this is a small town alaska cop why would he tell him he's going to san quentin because the cop also just moved there yeah the cop got into baseball got into some trouble had to escape to spenard right he lived the classic life yeah i do love that this cop threw also threw him against a wall threw him against the wall beat the shit out of it um and again it's like it again if you actually throw someone against a wall you could kill him pretty easily like if you're doing it with the force if you're big and strong enough to throw someone like a box against a wall they could die this cop was six foot ten yeah he threw me against the wall so hard i went right through it went right through the wall right through the wall he ran to the other side and kicked me back through kick me back through like a kickball um there's another reason i doubt this i think it's unlikely that a cop in the 1950s would have been good at it he would have been good at it he would have been good at it he would have been covered in tattoos especially in alaska there's a cup number one tattoos just weren't as common even if you had them you probably weren't covered in them if you had a respectable job but also within alaska the inupiaq people and other indigenous alaskan peoples have long established tattooing traditions that were during this period including like suppressed by the government often brutally up until like fairly modern times so just wouldn't it's not likely that there would have been a small-time alaskan cop who was covered head to toe in tattoos that just wasn't a part of life in america unless he was part of one of those tribes and then in which case he might let him become cops way too racist back then maybe i'm wrong no you're no you're not wrong but i mean yeah go ahead no continue i was gonna say that there's a lot of expats when i say expats they're still staying in the country obviously but like they're going to the last uh frontier which feels like it's alaska and so i guess it's possible that you've got somebody who was shady had like a shady life down here and then went up there and went to alaska and then went to alaska and then went to they're like i'm gonna turn things around because a cop kicked me around and told me i should i could go left or right i'm gonna find another teenager and do the same kick it forward i'm gonna kick him forward into the wall yeah yeah um speaking of kicking things i'm gonna kick you over to the ads listener wow there you go games on a break don't doom scroll try rips on underdog buy a physical card football basketball even pokemon packs start at just five dollars ship it straight to your door or sell it back instantly at full market value max value up to 125 000 download underdog and get in on the chase deposit five dollars get five free packs real rips real cards real cash only on underdog unleash 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If any journalist, ever says, hey, this newly famous person is saying you beat the shit out of them when they were 15 and in the Little League crimes and it changed their life. Is that true? I'll be like, yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. I got you guys. So we just went over Don's absolutely false claims that the dirty Harry of Spenard, Alaska beat the shit out of him. He told other nearly identical stories. Another common one was basically the same thing I just told you, but it was a judge instead of a cop. And the judge gave him a choice between college or prison. And he chose college. Fleming, his biographer, makes it clear that all these stories, from Don's parents being abusive zealots to his early crime sprees, were not viewed as accurate by the people who knew him in Alaska. Obviously, they didn't know everything that went on in his home life, but I think they're pretty credible about other stuff. Quote, Don never got into any kind of scrap. Remembered childhood classmate Bowen. He didn't even fight in the parking lot like the other boys, which does say a lot about Spenard that he's like, well, there was a fight in parking lot and he was never there. We were. We were always there. We were always beating each other up. We were beating the shit out of each other. Don never came out and hung out. Don didn't want to get his suit messed up. Yeah. Yeah. He was never there. He never wanted to get his suit. He didn't want to get blood on his tie. That is the funniest version of this. Like, yes, Spenard did have a child fight club, but Don was not involved. To continue that quote from his former friend, his parents were quiet, hardworking people, remembered Merle Butcher Miller, another childhood friend. Butcher. They went to great expense. Butcher, with an A at the end. They went to great expense to provide for Don and his brother when it was difficult for them. They bought him a car. They made sure he went to college, which they had not. So at least some people are like, no, his parents like really worked very hard for him. I don't understand these claims about like monsters. Yeah. He has to have some sort of reckoning though. He has to have that moment, that inciting moment that from a movie of like, oh no, you have an opportunity here. This is where the, the, the, the path forks. Right. And I can believe again that his, you know, his, his peers wouldn't have noticed, you know, that he was abused to some extent. Cause I, I, a lot of kids must've been, again, it's the fifties in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. Some degree of corporal punishment would have been extremely common. I don't have trouble believing that, but it does seem like his peers were like, Don didn't have it worse than anybody else. And he certainly wasn't an out of control teen who like had to choose between college or prison. Right. That's nonsense. Yeah. So rather than the movie ready backstory Don proposed, I kind of think Don was just like a kid whose parents tried the best they could, but they were really conservative and Don wasn't. And he wanted the fuck out of Alaska and later invented this mythology because his real life story was boring. Right. Like, I think that's, Don sounds a lot like me. We all understand that impulse, right? Yeah. And if you live in a small town, you can get away with it. I wish I had come up with a more creative backstory for myself than like, eventually we moved to Plano, Texas and not much happened. Yeah. I mean, I grew up in a very small town. I, and I will, I mean, I will certainly pull out chunks that are more interesting than others and be like, and as the story is told, it sort of embellishes a little bit. I understand that impulse. In fact, I had a, a cop that gave me a decision basically at one point in my life. Oh yeah. Yeah. Said, you can continue, you can go right, go left. I'm just seeing if I can, if I can get away with Don Simpson's story. I'm trying it on. We should all try it now. Look, if we're all lying about our backstory, there's not enough journalists employed anymore. Right. Some of us are bound to get through if we all just lie. There's never been a better time to lie about your childhood than right now. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. So we know that Don left home at the first moment that it became an option for him, right? He is immediately out the door. He secured admittance to the university of Oregon in Eugene. One write-up in LA weekly does note that he told a high school buddy before he left, I'm going to Hollywood to become a movie star. And this is the first like credible indication that by the time at least he's 18, he knows what he wants to do, right? So whenever it happened as a young adult, he's pretty like directly focused on getting into Hollywood and being in some part of the entertainment business. Now he majors in English in college. He's also got dreams and he will be a screenwriter. He's going to write some screenplays. So I think that also by the time he's 18, 19, he knows that that's something he wants to do for an article with the independent. David Thompson describes him at this point in time as a prize student quote, although his subsequent films, there's no hint of this. Don was a bit of an intellectual. A lot of, there's a lot of writing from the eighties and nineties that are like, well, his movies are dumb as shit, but he's smart. Everyone's surprised that he's got any sort of intelligence after watching one of his movies. The bad boys guy is actually educated. Yes. Yeah. It is really funny. You also run into a lot of like, cause he dies in like 96 and a lot of the articles from around that time. Well, I've read a couple that will note that like, obviously the 1980s was the worst decade of all time for, for Hollywood. Like the worst movie, worst movies that were ever made or made in the eighties. I don't feel exactly that way anymore, but I just rewatched blood sport and Soren perfect movie. Oh yeah. Perfect movie holds up. Seems like a dangerous banger, but that holds up. That's wonderful. Yeah. He does. He does. Uh, our, our protagonist, uh, Sean, Claude Van Damme does buy a woman in a game of chance very early in the movie, but that's cool. It's a great film. Um, also a movie that was influenced by the Don Simpson effect. We'll talk about that a little later. Uh, that said, um, so Don is a, does do well in college. He is a smart guy. He also exaggerates his intellect and education to make himself sound like a stereotypical, like movie genius character later. Uh, he'll claim things about a classical education that definitely are not fully accurate. Uh, but by the time he graduated college, he was undeniably well read. And I suspect one of the books he has to have encountered during this period of time was Joseph Campbell's the hero with a thousand faces because of something he's going to do later. He's going to be very influential, changing the way Hollywood thinks about like pitching screenplays. And in a way that makes me think he has to have been familiar with this book, right? Because this is the book where Campbell outlines what everyone now knows is the hero's journey, right? Which is the supposedly universal story scaffolding that nearly all mythic stories follow. If you read Hindu or Greek mythology, if you read Beowulf or watch the big Lebowski, you're engaging with stories that like follow this like broad schema. You can, you can fit a lot of stuff to it. Um, and I suspect Don must've read this book around this point in time because of some stuff. He's going to do later, but it's also going to be hugely influential to like the generation of Hollywood producers and storytellers that he comes in for, right? Like it's not just him. We'll talk about the Vogler memo in a little bit too, right? But like, this is a lot of guys who are going to be like changing Hollywood in the eighties are really interested in this stuff. Okay. Um, by the time Don graduated college, the 1960s were in full swing. He worked as a ski instructor in Utah for a while. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. He's got his ski. Instructor period. Yeah. Yeah. I'll bet he's skiing a lot. Getting that powder every single day. A lot of powder. Certainly will be later. Friends who knew Don when he was a habitual liar would regularly note with surprise that he was as good as skiing as he claimed to be. Cause he would claim to be good at lots of stuff like golf that we know is not true. And everyone was shocked as he would talk about being a great skier. And then they'd go skiing with her and they're like, Oh, actually Don's really good at skiing. Don fucking rips out there. This is the one thing he's not lying about. Um, by the late 1960s, it was clear that San Francisco was the most happening place on earth for creative weirdos who hated the establishment. And so Don got his ass there and found a job per the independent quote. He was working for a show business advertising agency and running publicity for the first international erotic film festival. So that's, this is how John Don's going to get his foot in the door through Hollywood. It's the PR guy for the first erotic film festival. There are so many young women who have made the same mistake as you, Don. There are, they're going to make that mistake with Don, by the way. So that is a part of the story. Um, I do. I mean, what a time, the first erotic film festival in San Francisco. It's the late 1960s. All the good drugs are still over the counter, man. And you, and you shred ass at skiing. You're fucking shred the gnar. You're awesome at skiing. Yeah. You're great at that. Um, now I assume that he, he got into working in like PR for this thing because it was the closest he could get to the film industry. And he learns during this period how to throw really good parties, which is what's going to help introduce him to a number of influential people in the movie industry, doing stuff closer to what he wants to do. Don still holds, holds dreams of being a leading man, but he's not a good actor. And from what I can tell, he never took any like acting classes or spent any time in the theater to try to get better. It was the eighties. It was the eighties. You were the guy or you weren't the guy. Yeah, exactly. You don't take classes. Money was tight enough during this Well, it's the 60s still But money was tight enough during this period That Don tried to convince his roommate To head back to Alaska with him for a few months To work on a pipeline To save up enough money to start a business Like, I'm guessing some sort of PR firm And he warned his friend, like If we're gonna do this, we have to get Arctic training To prepare for, like, this kind of work And I'm gonna quote from Fleming's book again The roommate, who had a cat Simpson hated, refused One afternoon, the roommate returned to their apartment And couldn't find his cat What have you done with him? He asked Simpson Look in the refrigerator The roommate opened the refrigerator and found nothing He opened the freezer and his cat leapt out Why would you do something like that? He shouted Simpson answered Arctic training So Okay, really glad the cat didn't die I'm glad I was worried when I started reading that Like, did he fucking murder a cat with a freezer? No, thank God Jesus Christ, bro But he could've He literally could've He clearly didn't care if he did Yeah, I mean, if the guy wouldn't have come home when he did So he's He's a sociopath Okay Yeah, he's kind of a sociopath Yeah Yeah He certainly has, like, a deadened impulse Towards harming animals for fun That's a sign Yeah So Don seems to have intuited That if he was going to get his foot in the door Anywhere in Hollywood It would be doing things that he'd already learned he was good at Schmoozing and making people like him He made a friend at one of these parties that he's throwing for events This guy, Joe Hyams And at the time, Hyams is a Warner exec Right, he's working for, like, Warners Joe Hyams would go on to become Clint Eastwood's primary fixer And handler for Warners And he saw something in Don Simpson And got him a job doing publicity for Warners For, like, exploitation movies That's an old term We don't really have exploitation movies Except for Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse movies That came out, like, fucking 20 years ago, right? Those are kind of That was sort of like an homage to the old exploitation movies But exploitation films, if you're younger Is a term for, like, a movie that's been around for a long time For usually B-movies That seek to make money by exploiting either current trends Or catering to, like, specific subgroups of the American population There are blaxploitation movies, right? Like, Blackula, for instance Which is a subgenre I think people know best Within, like, the world of exploitation Don's specific niche was youth exploitation movies, right? These are films being made in, like, the 60s and 70s To appeal to teens And they're doing so in part because, like Teens are a new concept As a demographic you would market to In the 60s Think back to, like, in the 40s You're not marketing movies, really To a 17 or an 18-year-old You're drafting them to go fight in a war Right? Like, there's not, like, a youth culture To try to sell to as much as there is now It's kind of a new concept And so, like, yeah Don is working to kind of sell these exploitation movies That are geared towards teenagers And pretty much the first Not quite the first generation that this had existed But pretty close to it We hadn't been doing this for very long By the time Don came out Comes on the scene One of the first films Don handles marketing and distribution for Is a little picture you might know Called A Clockwork Orange He does really well at this job Although I think the fact that it's a great movie Probably helps, you know? If you're trying to, like, advertise for a film Having it be A Clockwork Orange Is gonna make you seem like a success Because it's a brilliant movie Is there anything, like, specifically That he did in the advertising That I could be like Oh, that was actually That's pretty brilliant No, I haven't heard any specifics And I think, honestly When they talk about advertising He's largely worried Working Films are advertised very differently As we'll talk about You're not doing, like, a national ad campaign For, like, a big movie You're putting it out regionally And maybe you advertise it regionally If it picks up steam And then you sell it to theaters in other regions And that's kind of how movies When they're a hit sell It's not nearly the same as it is now Because the film business Is completely fucking different Both in terms of, like, the finances of it And everything, right? If he had done, like, the Clockwork Orange poster I'd be like, well, that fucking gets us No, he's not making the posters He might have yelled at the guy Who made the poster That, oh! Oh, that kicks ass I think that there's a pretty good chance of that But he's seen as doing pretty Like, Warner tends to consider him A pretty competent ad guy And distribution guy And he does well enough That by the early 70s He's established a name for himself As a creative, intelligent person Who is incredibly competitive People will note that, like If you're driving to a meeting He will, like, break every traffic law To get there before you For, like, no reason Whereas, like, we work for the same company, Don Like, why are you trying to beat me To this meeting? Like, what is the power play You're getting out of this? But that's just the kind of dude That Don is And this causes some problems Because he's clearly smart He's super competitive He's not He's good enough at his job But it's clearly not What he wants to be doing And it's clearly not Where his talents lie And none of his bosses Know what to do with him That's the big problem They have with Don Is, like, what do we do with this guy? He's, like, full of energy And he's smart Like, where the hell do we put him? Right? That's the issue They're having with Don Simpson Now, again, the movie industry He entered is super different From the one we know today This is, like, he is kind of Coming into Starting to come into his own In the industry During the auteur era, right? This is when directors Are driving production And very often running the show And often with minimal, if any Intervention from executives and producers The studio note is not much of a thing In this period of time, right? Apocalypse Now, yeah Apocalypse Now Studio note, fuck you Give me another 20 million dollars I accidentally started a civil war In this country Yeah, absolutely Filming in One of my actors had a heart attack The other one had a complete Emotional meltdown We need more money We need more money I need six more helicopters Fill each of them with cocaine Yeah, Don had no say In the movies that he was working on Just in promoting them Which he did with gusto One of his earliest jobs Was doing the press screening For a flick called Performance And for this party For the press party This is, like, the opening night party He purchases two pounds of marijuana And 20 cases of cheap wine Don recalled later The movie became the talk of the town Why not? Everybody was loaded So that's a strategy Get a rep Everybody gets some boxed wine It's gonna be a good night And weed And weed They're coming cases The wine comes in cases Oh, I like that Yeah, that's not great I mean, I feel like that could've worked for Digger Right? I feel like we could've Get everyone high Yeah, get everybody really fucking high Everybody really fucking high And pretend Tom Cruise Isn't a Scientologist You'd have to do better than marijuana today But, like, what if Digger had been like By the way, in addition to the movie Digger We brought back Quaaludes And they're only at the At the opening night party for Digger Would've gotten some buzz I'm suspicious Yeah, that there was a lot more at this party Than is being But they're like These are the ones that are appropriate To say out loud These are the drugs he can talk about? Yeah As a working man Don continued to make close friends With his female peers One of these friends was Bonnie Bruckheimer At the time married to Jerry Bruckheimer She found Simpson Quote, smart, funny, and well-regarded But recalled that he was not very ambitious Which is interesting Everyone says he's really competitive But she's like He doesn't know I think what she's saying is He doesn't know what he wants to do He's just not happy where he is Right? It's not enough for him You know those people in your life Those people who are, like, very driven But not by any particular thing They're just like You watch them self-destruct Because, like, they put it towards drugs Or they put it towards something else Yeah Yeah And Don's definitely going to put some of it towards drugs Bonnie also remembers She remembers him napping a lot at work And she also thought it was weird That in his office He maintained a massive collection Of pornographic videotapes That, like, he's at the office Tons of porn Homemade in a lot of cases That means He's taken to the office That means he's jacking off at work And then getting real tired And having a nice nap afterwards It's not just It's not just that, too Because one thing people will point out Is that Don doesn't just, like, masturbate at work He likes to show people the porn that he makes Like, casually While they're talking to movies and stuff Like, by the way, you gotta see this This is how I picture Hollywood back then This is 70s Hollywood Yeah Everybody's got this If you scrape any wall in that building It's just a quarter inch of cigarette grease That comes off in your hands It was a different time In the 70s, everybody's just Louis C.K-ing Oh, God Everybody's masturbating in front of everybody Louie C.K. was woke in the 70s So many plants were assaulted in the 70s Oh, yeah Yeah, a lot of Pissing in plants Doing other stuff in plants For sure I think you could get fired For not having your own little boutique porn In your office Yeah I'm sorry HR just thinks you're a danger If you're not willing to watch porn in the office What fucked up shit are you into? If you're not making your own porn And showing it to other people Then what is the crazy porn you're making? Yeah, yeah At least we know what Don's into Yeah By this point Don had done well enough to buy I think buy He may have rented It's unclear He's living in Laurel Canyon Right? Which is a pretty nice part of town Right? Even then it's a nicer part of town Wait, is this the Is this also right around the time As the Wonderland murders? It couldn't have been that far from them Right? This is like 71, 72 Okay I'm putting it together in my mind There we go Got it Did Don do Yes, he did Yes Bonnie Bruckheimer describes Don's home in Laurel Canyon As a real bachelor Pad But the good times didn't last He was fired from Warners in 1972 I've never gotten a reason why And we do for the other time he's fired So I think I would have If it was something entertaining It may have just been economics Right? There was a downturn or something And they just couldn't keep him How long is he living in Laurel Canyon? Because I just looked it up And the Wonderland murders are 1981 And I think we're in 70 Oh yeah We're a decade off Yeah, we're a decade off I don't think he's back in Laurel Canyon then I think he moves somewhere else After he gets super rich I see - He's rich by 81. - He still did it, he did it. - He did it, he did it, he definitely did it. So he's fired in 72. Again, I don't know why. It may have been an economic thing. He was decent at publicity, but it's just not what he wanted to do with his life. And that may have come across to his bosses. So it may have just been like, we've got to let go of some people and Don can clearly do better. So let's just send him on his way, right? He grows incredibly depressed after he gets fired. One of his industry friends at the time, Julia Phillips, later told Fleming that this was a horrible time for Don. In this town, you absolutely are what you do. He was without a job for three years. There is no more embittering experience, right? This is a guy who everything he has is tied up in working for the film business, and he loses that for a couple of years. And it just really fucks him up, right? This is a guy who spent his childhood in a closet. And other than that, hunting moose and dragging the bodies home. And he says, this is the worst three years of my life. This is the worst three years of my life. Living in Los Angeles, aimless. Yeah. Well, Los Angeles doesn't have a good Little League scene, so. Don would have. Don would spend those lost years trying to make his original ambition a reality and become an actor. He starts auditioning regularly, but he has absolutely no luck. Again, he's terrible at that. He's not a good actor. He also tries screenwriting, which he does have talent for. Everyone agrees he was a pretty good screenwriter, but it doesn't pay off immediately because it's screenwriting. Yeah. Like, that's the way it works. Yeah. In 1973, he was invited to an industry screening for what became an incredibly influential film, The Harder They Come. This movie, referenced in name by one of the Better Clash songs, is a Jamaican crime drama that's often credited with popularizing reggae. In between doing lines of coke with other studio guys, Don Simpson at this party runs into his old friend Bonnie, and she introduces him to her husband, Jerry Bruckheimer. And Don and Jerry become fast friends, probably over a plate. Yeah, it makes me almost jealous. It was so easy to become, to get initiated into the industry. All you had to do was be willing to do it. It was incredible destruction to your body. Yeah, exactly. And you were in. Yeah, you're in. And be a man. I love being a man. That helps a lot. Yeah. Or be married to a man, turns out. Or married to a man. You do a plate of coke with Jerry Bruckheimer, and you're good to go. Your 80s is booked. That's it. Jerry starts attending parties at Don's Laurel Canyon home. Bonnie recalled, quote, there were always girls around. These were both bright guys, and they attracted a lot of girls. And everybody was doing drugs back then. Just a very. Very succinct description of life. Even at the time, Bonnie noticed Don's tendency towards excess. He did a lot of cocaine. Even for night. He did enough cocaine that Jerry Bruckheimer's wife in the early 70s was like, yeah, this guy did too much cocaine. Like, that's a lot of cocaine. Jerry Bruckheimer's wife is like, we got to draw the line somewhere. Yeah, this guy's just self-destructive, kind of. She winds up divorcing Jerry the next year, 1974. And he leaves their Laurel Canyon. Home to move into Don's Laurel Canyon. Oh, no. The two are roommates for a year or two. Sure. Roommates. Yeah. Roommates. Sure. Yeah. They were not working together at this point. Jerry had left a successful ad career in Detroit behind to become a producer. And he'd had a few successes. He was already working independently. He's doing well. Don has seen less success. He's still kind of out of work. He spent a lot of time networking, which would eventually pay off. And also hustling for food money by playing tennis in West Hollywood. He would. Does he rip ass at tennis, too? He's okay at it. His friends are like, well, he usually lost. But he also, he's gambling on it. And this is how he paid for food. Because the other money goes to drugs. So he must have done well enough to, like, keep himself alive. He would bet $10 on a singles game or $20 on a doubles game. And that's, again, how he fed himself. He'd had to move out of his Laurel Canyon house by this point to a small apartment and could barely afford to keep his aging BMW operational. This contributed to being. Not the BMW. Yeah, his BMW shit. And all this contributes to him being what you might call a sore loser at tennis. One of his friends, actor Peter Cannon, told Fleming this. The tennis money was his eating money, and he hated to lose. He'd get frustrated. When he'd lose, he'd rush up to the net, drop his pants, and piss on the net. He'd say, I can't take this shit. And he'd piss on the net. It's not sanitary, my guy. Dan Simpson. I love that. I love that. That's beautiful. You losing at a. Losing at tennis. Like, you know, it's not. It didn't just. It wasn't, like, a snap of the finger and that happened. No. He was probably, like, building to that, where he was just like. Yeah, because you have to need to piss. You've got to take your pants off. I also love. Because multiple people have that story and seem to have kept playing tennis with him. Which, that's a true friendship. When your buddy's pissing on the net, and you're like, well, all right. Next Tuesday, Don. Yeah. Well, he's still pig. Yeah, Don, are we still on? Yeah. For next week? I just got to book my calendars filling up. Okay, cool. See you then. Drink lots of water. Stay hydrated, buddy. You're looking a little yellow there. You want me to buy you a hot dog at 7-Eleven, Don? Would that make things better? You're doing okay. Have you eaten this week? So his only win during these unemployed years came near the end of this, like, three-year period. He had written a screenplay earlier on. During his time off, you could call it, for a movie titled Cannonball. This would be made into a comedy in 1976, starring David Carradine. And it became a modest success. It netted $1.5 million box office off a $750,000 budget, right? Again, movies are very different back then, right? This is a small production, but, like, this is considered good. Like, $1.5 million box office, given how cheap the movie is, it does okay, right? Don was paid $6,250. After 48 hours of pitching, he and his writing partner, Paul Bartel, who co-wrote the screenplay, went to the Edinburgh Film Festival together, where Don claimed to his friend, and his writing partner, Paul Bartel, is gay. And so when they're hanging out at this hotel together, Don just starts claiming that, like, oh, yeah, I've had a lot of homosexual encounters. In jail, when I was 16, Bartel told Fleming later, my one real regret is that I didn't have sex with him when I had the opportunity. And I don't think Don was coming off as gay. I think he was bragging. I think he was like, oh, this guy's gay, so I've got to brag about all the gay sex I've had, because that's just the kind of guy I am. He has to be the best at everything. To everything. I'm better at being gay than you. And you've been gay for so long. I'm so good at being gay. Guys, if the gay is, I'm the best at it when I try. When I try, you know? That's super telling. I guess he doesn't sound like a bigot. No, but, I mean, those, like, try-hards are even more dangerous. They're the people who are like, you're like, I have cancer, and they're like, I got two cancers. I have cancer. My cancer's got cancer, bruh. Yeah. So, again, I think he was bragging, and in part I think he was bragging because of something else that happens at the Edinburgh Film Festival, per the book High Concept. Simpson later claimed to have demonstrated his heterosexuality on the same festival tour to another rising star. He said that while he and Bartell were attending the Deauville Film Festival, there was a knock at his hotel room door one night. It was Melanie Griffith, totally nude, Simpson said. She was only 19 then. Her body, you could bounce quarters off it. So I went to her room and partied till the sun came up. I mean, thank you, God. I don't believe that happened. You want me to ask her? Sure. Give it a shot. No, probably not. Again, he's certainly going to be in position to, like, have relationships with very famous people. That's mostly not what he does. We'll talk about the sex that he does have. I just don't believe this at all, in part because this is clearly a story he told to impress somebody. Like, the I had so much. I had so much gay sex when I was 16 story, right? He's trying to be cool, you know? So the story is that Melanie Griffith just showed up naked. So attracted to him that she showed up naked outside of his hotel door. With just quarters bouncing off of her body. You could have, you could have. Like, what does that mean, Don? And then Don had sex with her so good that everyone remembers. So good, till the sun came up. Everyone heard it. Now, right around the time he sold Cannonball, Don's fortunes turned around rapidly. In 1975, he got a job interview with Paramount, kind of by accident. He's friends with a guy named Steve Tisch. And Steve Tisch goes on to produce Forrest Gump, among other things. Tisch is another major producer guy, right? And Tisch gets offered this job at Paramount for a junior executive position. But he's got something else going on. And he's like, I can't do it. But you know who'd be great at this job? My buddy, Don Simpson. And Tisch really talks Simpson up. Because the person he's talking to is like, well, he doesn't really have much of a resume or experience doing this. And Tisch is like, I know that, but he's brilliant. You should see him do Coates. Well, you could see him do Coates with Jerry Bruckheimer. Quote, he's the brightest, most interesting guy I've met here. And he knows everything about Hollywood. You have to meet him. So Don's roommate, Jerry, loans him a sports coat and his car so he can drive. That's how bad Don is doing. Like, Jerry Bruckheimer has to lend him both a jacket and a car to make it to this interview. And Tisch lends him cash to get a haircut. So one thing you can say about Don, he's got friends who are willing to go to bat for him, which does suggest something, right? I think it's just drug. I think this is like what drugs do. You're so drugged. These are the truest friendships, obviously. Yeah, it's like being in the trenches with somebody. That is really my experience, too. Once you've done hardcore drugs with somebody, you're like, you've been more vulnerable with them than anyone else in your whole life. And you're like, we're ride or die from now on. Yeah, I told you all my fears. And also, you know, some crimes I've committed. So yes, we really have to stick together. Yeah, this part does make complete sense. Speaking of drugs, maybe that's what's advertised next. I don't know. You can tell me. 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back hopefully you didn't literally go to a gas station in between the ad break take a bunch of weird mushroom products i mean this is a slight tangent but there's one of my favorite people that i follow online is a guy who is a uh he's a chemist and he just goes to gas stations gets these drugs and then oh i know the guy inside of them and i love yeah i know i know the guy you're talking about it's always uh dick hardening stuff every single time there's so much shit out there yeah it's because it's a problem too because like i've talked on the show about this 708 stuff that the d.a. is in the process of banning i think november 13th is when they do that but like it's it's caused one of the issues is that a lot of people online are being like another kratom overdose and you can just like no it was an overdose of like a mix of illegal narcotics and it's incredibly concentrated synthetic drug that also often isn't what's being sold over the counter like there's other shit in the center you have no idea what you're buying guys yeah again the problem is that we let people sell stuff if you just say it's not a drug it's a supplement there's no requirements at all it's honestly fda doesn't want to get involved yeah no it's the same fundamental issue with these kratom products that you have with like all of the exercise powders that are full of lead it's that nobody gives a shit and it's no one's job to care it is someone's job to care but it's rfk jr's kind of spiral man there's no coming out of this spiral um you know who would have loved gas station drugs oh don simpson he loved he loved drugs one thing i can say about don simpson i would have partied with him if i'd had the opportunity um so uh he don gets into this interview at paramount the guy who interviews him likes fishing and so when don's like i'm from alaska they talk about fishing a bunch that kind of gets again super easy to break into hollywood back then of course don simpson's also like i'm the best fisherman there is yeah yeah i'm better at fishing than anyone alive um the guy who interviews him convinces barry diller who's running paramount at that point and either just has hired or is about to hire michael eisner to be his like number two man uh to give don a shot and so don talks to barry and don bowls barry diller over too and soon he's got the job he's a junior executive at paramount now i should say a few things here about where hollywood is in 1975 because that's one of the most important years in the history of like movies as a business or an art form honestly like both uh and that's when don comes aboard at paramount so in 75 the old boss legendary producer and not my namesake robert evans had just stepped aside to enjoy more time with don simpson and he's a junior with his enormous collection of expensive colombian narcotics things were still very unformed in the network's leadership structure when don got hired which is a really good situation to be in if you're young smart and slightly crazy and have a lot of ambition right but you get into this big organization when it's really shook up and nobody knows who's doing what right diller was emphatic that even at the top of the studio they were not professional film executives because those barely existed in the mid-70s and the way we know them now right and just guys who are like yes sir yes sir mr director like we'll get you we'll get you what you need but guys that are like actually directing and planning and like taking like a really forward step in making movies happen like diller who's head of the studio is like we didn't know how to be film executives in 75 um movies are still very much director driven at this point but evans had left them with a problem there were only two movies in production across all of paramount when he stepped down and a handful of other projects that were like not as far along in development including the script for one of the most famous films in the history of film it would become interview with a vampire for an idea of how long shit could take to make its way through to production um so michael eisner and diller uh had ambitions to change the way things were done and to make paramount into more of an assembly line for reliably profitable films that's their vision is we're not going to do this auteur shit anymore because that loses money a lot of the time we are going to put forward and find directors to make movies that we think are likely to generate a profit we the studio executives they and everybody else were massively influenced in this desire by something that had happened to hollywood earlier that year on june 20th 1975 steven spielberg's jaws was released to titanic acclaim jaws is made with a budget of nine million dollars and earns nearly half a billion box office like it's it is impossible to overstate what a big deal jaws is to the movie industry um i could convert that in the modern money for you but it really won't get across what a big deal jaws is because like titanic is the first film to cross a billion dollars at the box office but that was after more than a decade of blockbusters that were bringing home movies in the hundreds of millions of dollars the mid hundreds of millions of dollars in 1975 one of the closest things to jaws that had ever happened was 1972's the godfather which had grossed more than 250 million dollars out of a budget of six or seven million dollars the other huge movies of the era were stuff like the bond films and for reference bond films in the early 70s were pulling 100 to 150 million boxes out of a budget of six or seven million dollars the other huge movies of the era off of again a seven to eight million dollar budget like a big a normal movie is like seven to eight million dollars like a pretty good size production in this period of time and a great amount of money is 150 to 200 million jaws is making more than 400 right it just completely upends the fucking game yeah now there are several reasons why jaws is a huge success the first obviously is that it's a really good movie and young steven spielberg was a force of fucking nature right like that's the most obvious reason oh it was a great movie oh weird if we just make great movies just make a really good movie yeah um but that's not the only reason before jaws again movies were released in set cities as a test and then if it like works in this city or region you expand it more widely to additional theaters right this was a cautious approach right and you don't see big national ad campaigns around a movie until the movie is already blown up right oh jaws was released everywhere all at once in as many theaters as would take it and it had a national ad campaign from the beginning right and it was a really good movie and it was a really good movie right this is the first of its kind in a lot of ways pieces of this had been tried with other productions but jaws is the first time all of it comes together in a way that's very modern right jaws is marketed in a way that's reminiscent even today of how major films are put out and marketed right how could it have failed you're you have like a audience of people are just hungry for movies because they're getting whatever happens to trickle to their particular theater yeah and then you release one movie and everybody gets to see it at once and like yeah the whole reason that we know all these 80s movies you and i and that we're like familiar with these movies that were made during a time when everyone considers the worst time in hollywood for making movies is because there were 12 out a year and you saw every single one of them you had to see every one of them and jaws also had roy scheider i'm not going to say that's not none of it you know i love roy scheider i'm a huge roy scheider fan i i've been watching the leftovers which also plays to like the drunk ass police chief archetype and roy scheider's got to be the best drunk police chief there's ever been in the movies just opening a squad car beers pour to the ground hammered a ship. fighting this shark. God, I love him. So yeah, Jaws just completely changes the way movies are made. Before Jaws, Paramount had been your standard studio. They'd put out a bunch of auteur-driven pieces, many of which are not going to do well or are going to generate a minimal profit. The birth of the blockbuster changed everything. Paramount executives under Diller had war room meetings where producers for the first time started proactively figuring out how are we going to commission and release blockbuster films? Diller brings in Michael Eisner as his number two because Eisner came from television, and television is a more producer-driven medium than movies are in this point in time. So part of what Eisner's brought in to do is, hey, TV is an assembly line where you're just putting together, this is The View at the time, this is definitely pre-Prestige TV, you're just putting together a shitload of episodes a year. We need that but for the movies to have the most chance of scoring blockbuster hits, right? Per a write-up in the LA Times. What was needed in TV was quantities of product. The new guys wanted to set up a system which replicated TV or early 1930s studios where reliably ample product was always under development to formulas specified by studio execs. The most important time unit in their heads was the 30 seconds of commercial. Diller and Eisner knew how much a single idea image could be made to deliver, especially financially. Another head of Paramount, Brandon Tartikoff, once asked director John Borman to describe the 30-second promo spot for a film Borman proposed making. He couldn't. The deal ended right there. If I don't think I can express it in 30 seconds, then you can't make the picture, said Tartikoff. How am I going to sell it? It's the birth of the elevator pitch. It's the birth of the elevator pitch, right? Oh, man. Yeah, that's where this is starting. One Paramount executive, a guy named Silbert, described the change this way. Until then, we worked with writers on material we believed in. Suddenly, it changed. What Eisner brought in was the television mentality, a fodder factory. Eisner said, sometimes we're going to win and sometimes we're going to lose, but we're going to win. We're going to make a lot of movies, with a lot of laughs in the middle and nothing too serious, and we're going to make a lot of money. Yeah. Michael Eisner. I mean, I'm not mad. I'm not mad about the idea of an assembly line for movies. Sure, you're going to put out some stuff that is dog shit. But we're going to get blood sport. I do love that they've got their proprietary formula for what makes a good movie that's determined by these executives. Because what on earth could that have been? What was their algorithm for movies? Yeah, they're early. That is what Don Simpson creates in a lot of ways. That's what we're building towards, right? I mean, other people are trying. Eisner has his own version, right? There's a reason the Vogler memo comes out of not, it's in the 80s, but not long after this, right? Which is Disney's attempt to take the hero's journey and be like, this is how you get a script going, right? And Don Simpson, he's not just fine with Eisner's attitude towards filmmaking. He loves it. And he's going to have some ideas of his own. As to what kinds of movies Americans want to cram into the theaters to watch. And he's going to be really fucking correct about that for a very long time. And we're going to talk about all that and a lot more, particularly cocaine in part two. Soren, how are you feeling? I feel great. I feel great. Let me do a line real quick. We'll go to part two. Let's all go skiing real quickly. Hit the slopes and come back. Just like Don would have wanted. Yeah, you are not ready. I will say this about Don Simpson. I have, in part two, I'm going to quantify the amount of drugs he does to you financially. I can't imagine doing this many drugs. Oh, that's exciting. And I could have gone pro, like if I'd really wanted to. Yeah, no, you were, yeah. I was really out of control. You had no ceiling when we were at Cracked. Anyway, Sophie, what? I was going to say, did you know that the Lakers have a cocaine-themed nickname this season? They're the Snowtime Lakers because their big three are all, like, white guys. And so instead of calling them the Showtime Lakers, they're now the Snowtime Lakers. I thought you would enjoy that. That's not going to take my favorite drug reference in modern sports from Perk Rogers. Oh, Perk Rogers. No, no, no. That's legendary. No one's ever been on more Percocet while playing in a major sporting league. But I thought you'd get a kick out of Snowtime Lakers. Soren, you want to plug something at the end here for us? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a new book out. It's called There Are No Massive Crabs in This Novel. It's a novel. It's a novel. Massive Crabs. See, Jason took credit for that just the other week, but we know what he's like. This has been happening everywhere they go. His is Giant Crabs. Mine is Massive. Massive. Sorry. There you go. I'm doing my book tour everywhere that I've gone. I'm in the wake of Jason. He has already come through with his particular book. My series is also called John Dies at the End. So I understand that's on me. That's confusing. Yeah, yeah. That did come 15 years after he started his. You had ample warning. He did. He did well. I thought I could capitalize on that. Yeah. So obviously, big problem with our books. But yeah, please try and go find Massive Crabs, not his. Massive Crabs. And watch American Dad also. I'm going to do that plug for you, Soren. Thank you. Yeah. You can watch American Dad whenever it's on television. Turns out it's very, it's crazy. Sometimes there's two new episodes a night. Sometimes it goes six months without there being a new episode. So maybe catch it on Hulu or on a plane or in a hotel, wherever you happen to watch American Dad. I also have a podcast with Daniel called, Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. That's right. Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. Daniel O'Brien from Cracked, if you remember those days. And if anyone even knows that Cracked exists anymore. Daniel O'Brien, now with Last Week Tonight. Our Emmy Award winning friend, Daniel O'Brien. I'm reminded of a night, like right after Dan got hired at Last Week Tonight, he wanted to celebrate. And for whatever reason, it was just you, me, and Dan. And we went out to a bar. And Dan was obviously, was ripped. Like Dan was so lit up. Yeah, I wasn't doing it sober. But we, it was just the three of us. And we'd all come out of Cracked. We'd all come out of like, what was a crucible of fire. Like things had gone really wrong. And I was, I was so happy because everyone had laid it on their feet in that room. Yeah. Yeah. It was really nice. And honestly, we don't talk about this enough publicly, but I'm just so proud of how everybody's doing since the old place. Yeah, it's incredible. For those of you who didn't listen to Cracked, this is all nonsense. But it's nice to see your friends all doing really, really well after you all went through some insane bullshit together. Yeah. Well, we can't. I came up thinking like, this is like a new generation of comedy, basically. Like what we were doing was interesting and new and no one else is really doing it the same way. And you start to think that there's no one else who could do it. And then all of a sudden you work for a company that's like, oh, we don't want any of you. Whatever you're making, we're not buying. Bottom fell out of the world. Sorry, guys. And so you all leave. And the fact that everyone then went on and did their own things and are now making really, really great stuff as well. It's like, oh, these were, this was like a genuinely great group of people. We were right. We were just crazy. Crazy and unhinged by the irrational exuberance of the time. Yeah. Yeah. This was like a dynasty team that we had. Yeah. Yeah. And one day we'll all come back together to, like the Beatles, write a bunch of list-based articles on the roof of a barbershop. Incredible. That's the episode. That's the episode. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iFast. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. Underdog already has team picks, player props, money lines, spreads, you name it, they got it. But apparently somebody over there said, you know what's missing? Screaming like a maniac about a rookie card on your couch. And we love them for that. Because Underdog now has rips. You get a digital pack starting at just five bucks. You check the live odds, see which grails you could pull, then rip it open to reveal a real physical card. And the grails are no joke. They have cards up to $125,000 in value, and plenty to pull. From football and basketball to Pokemon, with new limited edition packs dropping regularly. Even cooler, you can decide to keep the card and Underdog will ship it straight to your home or sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. And the cash goes right in your account. 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