Transcription
A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a director an army, said Orson Welles. Apparently, he was a total dick.
Lately, it seems like the dicks have been winning. This is not just because of Donald Trump or the rising tide of authoritarian leaders around the world, but something I’ve experienced personally. You see, I’ve always loved making movies. Whenever I met someone who worked with a famous director, I’d ask what are they like, and nine times out of ten they’d say, “Well, he’s kind of a dick,” and I’d be disappointed. You can read about James Cameron terrorizing his actors to the point of mental breakdown on *The Abyss*, or about Stanley Kubrick browbeating Shelley Duvall into hysterics while shooting *The Shining*. Michael Bay’s name comes up again and again when talking about dick directors.
I’d always chalked these stories up to inflated ego and abuse of power, until I directed a movie of my own. It had movie stars, it had trucks, it had producers, it had crafting, it had Zac Efron. I approached the movie like a kid in a candy store—really bright-eyed, enthusiastic, accessible, and democratic. I made friends with the actors and the crew, and I really cared about keeping up a good vibe. It was a trial by fire, and as I quickly gathered empirical data on set, I found that people responded to me more when I was snappy, tired, or moody. Maybe there was something to being a dick after all. Maybe it was actually the key to those legendary directors’ success.
I came away from the experience both confused and fascinated by the subject of leadership. This was a whole other discipline, and it would take a study of its own. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to interview directors, writers, and thinkers on the subject of leadership, and maybe they can tell me once and for all whether or not you need to be a dick to be a great leader.
In an effort to answer this question of whether or not I have to be a dick to be successful, we are going to interview Davis Guggenheim, the Academy Award-winning director. I’m kind of in the red here; I might be able to pull up a little bit. See, I don’t want to be a dick and park in front of someone’s driveway. One, two, this is Davis. One, two, three, four. Davis Guggenheim has directed documentaries, features, and television shows. In 2007, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for *An Inconvenient Truth*.
So the basis of this is you having done a movie, and you’re like, “I just went through the storm and I come out saying, ‘Who am I and what is a great director and can I be that person?’”
I like to consider myself a nice guy. Some people may not say that.
You seem like a nice guy.
I seem like a nice guy. Do you think being a nice guy gets in the way of you directing?
I do. You know, I made this film called *Gossip* for Warner Brothers, and it had a pretty good cast. It had Kate Hudson and James Marsden and Norman Reedus and Josh Jackson—a really good cast—and I spent the whole time getting them to like me. I think by the end they didn’t like me. I wanted to be their friends, and they didn’t want to be my friend; they wanted a director. So there’s some of that. You know, there is something about wanting a boss, and there is something about… and I was too young to know it was my first job, and maybe I leaned on that quality of my personality too much.
You see the problem with your position about being nice? Nice people don’t live life. I don’t want to go through all my days being all sweet and polite and realize when I’m 80 that I’m just some nice dead person.
Peter Berg, who used to be—I was used to be a really close friend of mine—the night before the first day of shooting I did on a television show, he said, “Show up and within the first two hours fire somebody, cause then everyone will be afraid of you.” You should talk to Peter Berg. You really should.
Peter Berg got his start in Hollywood acting in movies like *Aspen Extreme*, *The Great White Hype*, and TV shows like *Chicago Hope*. Then he transitioned into directing big movies like *Hancock*, action movies like *Battleship*, and raw emotional movies like *Friday Night Lights*—he did the TV show, too—and if that wasn’t bad ass enough, he just completed the Mark Wahlberg trilogy with *Lone Survivor*, *Deepwater Horizon*, and *Patriots Day*. Clearly, with all of his success, he was doing something right. So I contacted him, and he invited me up to Boston where he was shooting *Patriot’s Day*.
Okay, so I just got to Boston. I’m taking a taxi from the airport. Unfortunately, I just got word from Peter Berg’s assistant that Peter would rather not do the interview here but would rather do it back in LA once he finishes production. Kind of a bummer, because he told me to come up to Boston this week, and now I’m finally flew up, I’ve got a hotel, I paid for the flight and everything, and now he doesn’t want to meet until after he’s back in LA. So not really much I can do. Is this a dick move? Perhaps.
Since I was already on the East Coast, I decided to go down to Chevy Chase, Maryland, to learn a little more about what makes guys like Peter Berg so effective.
Hello, Dr. Maccoby.
Maccoby. You’re Max.
I’m Max Joseph. Dr. Michael Maccoby has written extensively on leadership, and central to all of his writing is a type of person called a narcissist. Narcissistic type is a person who lacks a strong super-ego, lacks a strong conscience, but has a—has instead an ego ideal. You can see it in some of the great leaders like Abraham Lincoln. See it in Barack Obama; in his autobiography he talks about creating a sense of who he is. Narcissists reject the world as it is and instead have a vision of how it should be, and those people are kind of driven to be leaders because they have a vision, they have a sense of what they want to create, how they want to change the world. Common traits among all narcissists include an undeniable charisma, unshakable conviction, not listening to anyone except for themselves, being slightly paranoid, over controlling, lacking in empathy, and being occasionally cruel. The reason they’re abusive is because they have such a powerful vision, and they’re going to make sure it’s going to be—they’re going to realize it. Now that can be a terrible vision, like Hitler, but a lot of people bought into it because they believed he was going to make Germany great—glory; he’s going to create glory—even though there were going to be a lot of blood.
Make Germany Great Again. Yeah, right.
I’m going to make our country rich again. Donald Trump is an asshole, if you had any doubt.
I think it’s essential to his success. Aaron James is the world’s leading expert on assholes. The world can be divided into two kinds of people: assholes and non-assholes. James imagines a world where there are cooperative people who play by the rules and do as they’re told, keeping their promises, not being too rude, and then there’s the asshole who takes advantage of other people doing their part. If the average person feels special on their birthday, the asshole’s birthday comes every day. He cuts in line, interrupts often, and drives like, well, an asshole. The asshole does these things out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; they’re entrenched in it in a sense that it’s very difficult for them to see things differently, meaning this is how they’re wired.
Who is your kind of model of a great leader who’s not an asshole? Who do you think of a great leader who is not an asshole… um, let me think about this…
It was starting to sound like being an asshole was essential for success, so I read up on how to become one. “When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal. Be tough, to prove how he would bring soldiers under his firm control.” Sun Tzu beheaded the king’s two favorite concubines when they failed to command the company of women. To have the ultimate victory, you must be ruthless. It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than a bad reputation. I was getting the message that I needed to turn myself into a cold-blooded alpha male with killer instinct. So I decided to get another perspective on the matter.
Do you always film the opening part?
Yeah. Okay, wish I’d known that, but thanks.
For the last 16 years, Karyn Kusama has directed projects across all platforms, from indies like *The Invitation* to big studio features like *Jennifer’s Body* and *Aeon Flux*, to high-profile television shows like *The Man in the High Castle* and *Billions*.
Close the fucking door.
I think we cherish this idea of the single-minded, ambitious, driven—I want to say almost socially maladjusted male director—like we love that trope. I think the question gets complicated when you’re female, because the idea of not caring—that can seem visionary if you’re male; not caring about what other people think, if you’re female, is considered sort of disrespectful and sociopathic. I do think women require a completely different kind of toughness; it’s a willingness to—to really listen—I mean, like hear an opposing point of view, really listen to it, occasionally say, “Okay, I need to just think about this.” It gets more tricky when you’re working in situations where you’re not getting what you want and you have to keep saying, “Okay, this isn’t really what I was talking about; let me reiterate, here is what I want.” Sometimes you’ve just got to say, “I’m sorry, I completely disagree with you; if we have to keep talking about this, maybe this isn’t a relationship meant to be.”
Karyn wasn’t a dick, but she was tough.
So there is a new update in the Pete Berg saga. How should we do it? So yesterday I sent him a text message in the morning. I said, “Pete, I swear this is the last time I’m going to reach out to you regarding this interview. Truth is that I actually flew up to Boston and rented a hotel room just to interview you on your suggestion a few months ago, but as I was in the cab leaving the airport I got word from your assistant saying that you’d rather do it in LA. That kind of sucked, but I took it in stride because I really wanted to include you in this; would really mean a lot to me in the piece. Please say yes.” Praying hands emoji. To which Pete actually texted me back and said, “Hey, I don’t know you. I have no idea what you’re doing. I’m not doing anything on camera until I know more. Show me some of your cut. Call Lauren”—that’s his assistant.
It was a frightening text to get back, and it kind of shook me to the core, but I did get a response. Maybe I pushed too hard; maybe I needed to push that hard; maybe he only responds to force. I don’t know.
While I waited to hear back from Peter’s assistant, I decided to go to New York to visit my friend Randy.
Alright, going up to see Randy. No idea what floor I’m going to. I think it’s four. I was right about the floor. What up, Max.
This is Randall Poster. Randall Poster has worked on over one hundred and thirty movies and TV shows as a music supervisor, but what’s even more impressive is that he’s a longtime collaborator of some of the biggest names in American cinema: Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Todd Haynes, Harmony Korine, and Martin Scorsese. I figured Randy must know a thing or two about what it takes to be a great director.
Do I need to be a dick to be a good director? No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you can be, so I don’t think you should be. I think that an authentic personality is really what will attract the legions to a director. I mean, in life I think it’s important that you are true to who you are and build strength from that.
Here they are, the Joseph family. But who was I? People come from all sorts of backgrounds, have all sorts of hurdles that they’ve had to overcome, and if you look at yourself like Jesus, you know, I’ve—you know, my life has been pretty smooth going, and you know, my parents borderline—they love me too much—where everything you’ve done has been like, “Oh my goodness, look at that perfect bowel movement.” Growing up as the child of two overly supportive, doting parents didn’t exactly breed me to be a general. You’re not sure who you are or you’re not coming at people from a true place, I don’t know that you can have the real insight that you need to manage everything, because I think the biggest issue about being a dick when you don’t want to be a dick, for being a compromiser when you don’t want to be a compromiser, is having to sort of live with this idea of self-deception: “Like I’m not being myself.” I don’t think I stand a chance of becoming that dick general leader that we’re even talking about. I don’t—I have a funny feeling that you can’t be that; it’s not your nature.
I can’t be that. I think I just need to accept the fact that… here I am at 35 years old, a pussy.
Okay, so right now I am going to meet my old friend and kind of mentor since I was 15. John Hamburg is the comedic genius behind *I Love You Man*, *Along Came Polly*, and the co-writer of *Meet the Parents* and *Zoolander*. He’s also not a dick, so I figured I’d ask him about his secret to how he pulls that off. The phrase I came up with on *I Love You Man* was an open-minded control freak. That’s what I think I feel. It’s my job to be the most energetic, positive person on the set, even if I don’t feel that way. I just feel like people feed off the director’s energy. I like to invite everybody into the process, but I think the more people are kind of in the filmmaker’s brain, the better work, the more invested they are.
What John was talking about sounded familiar, like something I read once upon a time in Aesop’s fables. It’s a story of the wind and the sun. The wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said, “I see a way to decide our dispute; whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger.” You begin. So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler, but the harder he blew, the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak around him. And the Sun came out and shone in all of its glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on and took it off of his own volition. And if you do care what people think and are open to their thoughts, then something that neither of you might have imagined could come out of it. Wow, that’s it, that’s the secret. But wasn’t this the exact approach that got me here in the first place?
Sometimes I feel that being too polite gets in my way.
Sometimes it can get in your way. Yeah, you—yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. I think that I got better at—you can’t, as a director, hear every point of view all day long and allow people to push you this way or that. It happens all the time in our business, and those movies suck. You can tell they were made by committee.
Do you have to embrace your inner asshole?
Yes, I definitely think you have to, because you—you can’t please everyone. I mean, that was my point about people-pleasing and why it’s healthy in a certain way in terms of like listening, but you do have to be an asshole. You have to make hard choices, and you do have to call someone out if they’re not doing their job.
So hold on, you can be yourself and you can be the sun, but you also have to be a dick sometimes.
This was getting confusing. How can I remain kind of the person that I am but be a better leader?
I’m sorry, Max, I’m not that kind of psychologist. I don’t know if I can help you here.
Adam Grant is a psychologist, a writer, a TED speaker, and the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School of Business. When he’s not lecturing or teaching, he spends his time advising companies like Facebook, Google, Pixar, and the US Army. In his book *Give and Take*, Adam scientifically disproves the myth that nice guys finish last. In fact, what he found is that being a giver and helping others is what actually gives you the competitive edge.
I think you’re doing something that—that I watch leaders do all the time, which is you’re confusing being a giver versus a taker with being agreeable or disagreeable. So giving and taking is about your motives, right? What are your intentions toward other people? Do you want to help them succeed, or you’re trying to take them down? Whereas being agreeable, it’s just about pleasing other people; it’s about having harmony, getting along. Being highly agreeable as a giver is a curse, right? Because you end up becoming like a pushover, right? Everyone expects you not only to listen to them but to implement all their ideas, and you feel very uncomfortable saying no because you kind of built this relationship where no matter what, right, like you’re the person who’s smiling, who’s encouraging, is nodding. My advice to you would be to be more of a disagreeable giver, which is about being gruff and tough on the surface, but underneath having other people’s best interests at heart. Sometimes, in the right moment, it makes sense to withhold a little bit, give yourself time to really consider something, where the fact that something is like, you know, I—you know, you’re making everybody work over the weekend, or you’ve changed everything where you’ve rewritten a scene, it’s like it fucks people’s lives up, but you know, it’s like, well, who cares? That ruthlessness doesn’t necessarily have to manifest itself in being a dick; it’s just resolution. There are definitely times where I feel myself, because I’m quite congenial in everyday life, where I’m like, “Oh, I’m kind of—for me, kind of being a dick.” I think there are certain things that you work against that I’ve learned to work against in my nature. I can’t make everybody happy. It’s never going to be your first nature, but it could become your second nature.
I was starting to find the sweet spot between being true to my nature, also being enough of a dick to be effective.
Okay, today is a really important day. Pete Berg. Pete Berg has agreed to meet with me. The catch is that I can’t bring a camera, and he just wants to meet me.
Bringing my magic good-luck charm and getaway driver, let’s go.
Okay, so a change of plan. He just moved the meeting from his office to his gym. Shit, I’m going to miss my exit. Okay, so I have arrived at his gym. Let’s go see what Pete has to say. Okay, change of plan. Pete has left the gym. I’m now supposed to meet him at his office as originally planned. That’s him. Oh my god. So I was just at the light, and this Range Rover in front of me was like not pulled up enough, and I was just trying to get in the left lane. I kind of honked at it, just a little tap honk, and I saw in the rearview mirror—rearview window—that it was Pete Berg in the—the Range Rover I just honked at him. Oh my god, this is not gonna work out. My heart is pounding. Alright, gonna put the camera away. Wow. Okay, I just came out of meeting him. It lasted about like—like five minutes, and—and he said, “You know, this is a bad time for me. I’m finishing two movies. Let me think about it,” which is fair. And then as we were leaving, he looked at my shirt and he said, “Your shirt—you should change your shirt to say ‘We are not your friends,’ because that’s the rule number one of being in charge is to make enemies,” and he—he recommended that I read a book called *The 48 Laws of Power*.
Okay, real quick, *The 48 Laws of Power*, which is actually outlawed in the Utah State Prison system, imagines the world like the classical aristocratic court—think like Queen Elizabeth, Louie the Fourteenth, or *Game of Thrones*. A king does not ask; he commands. A king doesn’t discuss battle plans with stupid girls. You are talking to a king! Some of the laws in the book include: Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies; conceal your intentions; court attention at all cost; get others to do the work for you but always take the credit; play on people’s need to believe to create a cult-like; preach the need to—need for change but never reform; pose as a friend, work as a spy; play to people’s fantasies; act like a king to be treated like one. It’s good to be the king. Crush your enemy totally.
But something about law number 12 caught my eye. It says, “Open hearted…”
Gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. A timely gift, a Trojan horse, will serve the same purpose. I was going to make a gift for Pete Berg.
You must be Max. Hello Robert. This is Robert Greene, author of the 48 Laws of Power and a really nice guy. Yeah, I mean, like, people with me, with the 48 Laws, you know, if I sneeze, they interpret it as a Power Move, and I get a little tired. And no, to Peter, a man who knows the laws of power better than anyone. I can tell you've used that before when you've signed books.
No, no, I don't think so. Okay, how about this: the gift has been delivered, so now we wait. All right, he—I just got the email from Pete's assistant. I'm on for an interview at 12:00 p.m. on Monday. Let's not get too excited because, you know, I've gotten the interview with him before, and at the last second, something went wrong. So let's—I guess let's not get our hopes up. Where? Check, two, check, check, check, check.
So is this just you personally wanting advice from me? Because if it is, you don't have to pretend you are really making a movie. I'm real. Okay, so I'm really making a movie. So I've interviewed like some writers who have written on leadership.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a good, good score. Okay, it's good, good subject. There's like, howdy, what—how did you become the leader that you are, and what advice would you have? Well, I mean, I remember my first movie was very bad things, and I was so defiant and aggressive and vicious when I made that film that people come up to me in the morning, they'd be like, "You know, good morning," I'd be like, "Go fuck yourself." "What does that mean? What the fuck does that mean? Good morning? The fuck you talking about? Fuck with me? You fucking with me?" We're just saying good morning. I think like being too nice is a problem, you know, you—there's such a thing as being too nice, and I—I was—I probably erred on the other side of it, but I was so protective, and a lot of that came from, you know, fear and insecurity, being a first-time director, not really knowing. But there was also this sense of like, I am NOT going to let anybody fuck with me right now. I'm gonna do this.
So, where have you—on your first movie you were like Mr. Aggressive. Yeah, demand your space. Yes. What has your journey been to a much, much more kind of aquanomos spot? I'm very relaxed on set now. I'm better understanding that everybody's scared, you know, and everybody wants to feel respected and all those kinds of things. And so, you know, I'm much more of like a good coach than an obsessive lunatic director like I used to be, and it's much more fun. It was around now that I realized that Pete Berg was a disagreeable giver, just like the kind Adam Grant described. I kind of have a theory that—and you ever play golf? Yeah. Have you ever taken golf lessons?
So I've played golf on and off for a long time, and I've taken lots of lessons from different, different golf—golf swing coaches, and I find it amazing. Every swing coach you show up, they look at your swing and they're like, "Oh no, that's horrible. Everything's wrong." And of course, you're doing something—you learn from others. They each—each swing coach, like, "No, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. Everything." But the way you're addressing the ball, the way to holding the club, your weight transfer, everything's wrong, and each guy has his own completely different theory. What's interesting to look at all these different theories—at the moment of contact, they're all pretty much at the exact same spot. And I think that might be a little true for directing. There's a lot of different ways to get at it and approach it, but I think most directors are probably some similar qualities that they all possess. Probably the first is—is you've got to be a visionary. You have to have a vision, you know, that sounds like a cliché. My vision, you know, it's not—you better have a fucking vision, you know, and if you don't, they're going to eat you alive. And people confuse that with being an asshole. You look, there's a million ways to have your vision into—and but but you don't have to be angry about it. You can be quiet and gentle, and like Ron Howard, I don't think ever gotten angry in his life. Michael Bay screams the entire way through. They both have an idea of what their visions are though, and they're very clear about that. This idea of plurality, or that there are many roads to the temple, reminded me of something Dr. Maccoby said: You don't have to be hard, you just have to be consistent. The key is consistency to who you—to your approach. If you really know what your vision is, you—they can't—will you go open that door for a second? Hey guys, can you all shut up? Thank you. See, that's not—I'm not nice. Love you. So you can do it in a way, right?
One question I've kind of asked everyone is, you know, there's this famous quote that I'm starting a movie off with, which is Orson Welles saying, "A writer needs a pen, a painter needs a brush, and a director needs an army." Is that true for you, or is there a more ideal metaphor? I think it's um, more related for me to the idea of an architect and her team, you know, an architect designs a house, but he or she doesn't build the roof necessarily. The conductor of an orchestra is an interesting one, and I have actually thought of that before because you have artists, whether they're in front of or behind the camera, they're doing their own thing, and they're there because they're really good at what they're doing, and you want them all to be in sync. I think it's being a dad, being a conductor, being a general. But then if it's all those things without the core of believing so much in a bigger idea, then it's all empty, but it's all just role-playing. Right, at the core of what you're doing is meaningful to you, and you express that, and everyone's on board, you don't have to—any of those things.
So do you have to be a dick to be a great leader? Well, the simple answer is no. It's just one approach of many, and apparently it's not even the most effective. So how do you become a great leader? Well, first you've got to accept who you are. Maybe you're the sun, maybe you're the wind. You could be a complete asshole or a total pussy. You don't really have much choice in the matter, so best to just accept your nature and build on it. Two, have a fucking vision—something you believe in so much and are so passionate about that it inspires others to be passionate about it too. Hopefully it's not genocide or white nationalism, but that's really up to you. And three, use every trick you got, every weapon in your arsenal to realize that vision. This means however you get the best out of people, how you keep them in rhythm, knowing what each person needs, setting the tone, and keeping pace. And last but not least, accept the fact that it's inevitable that you—yes, even you—are going to have to be a dick sometimes.