Show Notes
It’s official: Bela Bajaria and Dan Lin are out at Netflix, and Peter Rice is in as the streamer’s new chief content officer. Kim Masters and Matt Belloni break down the shakeup, how Rice landed the top job, and who he might recruit to oversee Netflix’s future projects.
Plus, we’re sharing some unheard moments from Masters’ recent conversations. Tiger King filmmaker Eric Goode explains how his years running New York nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels prepared him for a documentary career involving venomous snakes and armed exotic animal traffickers. And veteran marketing executive Gerry Rich looks back at working with the Broccoli family to revive James Bond with GoldenEye, along with his experiences working for a notorious Hollywood producer who once threatened to break Kim’s kneecaps.
More from The Business
This week, Kim Masters sits down with veteran Hollywood marketing executive Gerry Rich to talk about his memoir, Chasing Hollywood. Rich recalls the nightmare of working for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax, helping launch Iron Man before Marvel became part of the Disney empire, and getting a crash course in Amazon’s bizarre corporate culture after it acquired MGM. He also revisits a bitter Paramount power struggle involving Josh Greenstein, who now co-chairs Skydance’s film group overseeing Paramount and Warner Bros.
This week, Van Dyke Parks sits down with The Business showrunner Joshua Farnham to look back at a career that stretches from childhood acting to collaborating with Brian Wilson, and scoring films for Jack Nicholson. He also recalls his first arranging job, The Bare Necessities for Disney’s The Jungle Book, and how Harry Nilsson talked him into spending five months in Malta for Robert Altman’s Popeye.
This week, Kim Masters speaks with actor Malcolm McDowell about his six-decade career and the long journey to finally making his latest film, the western Last Train to Fortune. McDowell reflects on his friendship with mentor and director Lindsay Anderson, shares stories from the set of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and looks back at the chaotic production of Caligula, including how Penthouse founder Bob Guccione took control of the film and added unsimulated material in post production.
This week, Kim Masters speaks with Sharon Horgan about her HBO series Youth. The writer, actor and producer reflects on taking control of her career by creating her own material, building the production company Merman, and working across broadcast networks and streaming platforms. Horgan also explains why she returned to the idea for Youth after years spent making Bad Sisters, and how a brief pitch to HBO quickly turned into a green light.
This week, Kim Masters reports on the newly formed U.S. Film and Television Production Coalition and its push for a federal tax incentive to stem the loss of production overseas. Members representing studios, producers and unions lay out the industry’s unusually unified campaign, the backing of President Donald Trump, and the details that still have to survive Congress.