JONATHAN GARRISON: From Punk Rock to International Business
#046 - From Punk Rock to International Business | Jonathan Garrison
This week's guest is Jonathan Garrison. Among his other career highlights, Jon was a VP at Goldman Sachs for almost 10 years in both the US and China, a former General Manager of Dalian Wanda Group, an Executive Producer on the movie SOUTHPAW, and most recently, the founder and CEO of a new venture called En Route. Jon’s story is very unique and seriously impressive, but what’s maybe the most impressive is how humble of a guy he is, considering all that he’s accomplished. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the only interview I will ever do with someone who can just as easily and completely authoritatively discuss helping spearhead Goldman Sachs’s entry into China, the Dalian Wanda Group’s splashy self-introduction to Hollywood for the launch of Qingdao Studios, AND rocking the stage as frontman for his own punk rock band back in the days when you could still run into Henry Rollins in the crowd, or have someone pull you up onstage to belt out a song with him before tossing the mic and diving back into the mosh pit. This is a good one.
Of course I hope you listen to the whole interview, but moving forward I am taking a queue from my friend Fei Wu and am now going to bullet point my show notes with a rough timecode reference so that you can skip to the part you’re most interested in hearing - ideally for a second time. However you listen, though, I can glad that you do and I hope that you enjoy.
This episode of “Big Fish in the Middle Kingdom” is brought to you in part by our sponsor, Stackry. Stackry is the global leader in international parcel forwarding from the US to anywhere in the world. The way it works is that you shop at any US retailer, have your packages shipped to your Stackry address, and once everything has arrived, Stackry consolidates your stuff and ships it to you anywhere in the world, even China, saving you up to 80% of the shipping costs versus shipping things directly from the store. Stackry provides free storage, same day consolidation of your packages, and a tax-free US address for you to use. This week’s update is that I am now working to build my next Stackry shipment, so my story will continue! I need some things for Summer from the US, and Stackry makes it easy and cost-effectve for me to get them here in Beijing, but you can use their site and get your Stackry story started, too. Sign up TODAY via the link below, and use the offer code BIGFISH at the checkout to save 10% off your first shipment.
And one quick program note that another special live episode from an Entrepreneur’s Organization event drops this Friday China time, so check back for that.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:
[3:30] - Jon Garrison intro / early days
[7:00] - From Utah / Boston / China intro
[11:00] - Goldman Sachs: from the US to China
[13:30] - Building a business and a life in China
[16:30] - Dalian Wanda group: Hollywood outreach & Qingdao Studios
[35:30] - Back to the US: Park City Studios
[37:30] - Back to China: En Route Media
[50:30] - Chinese cooking
[52:00] - Rock and punk roots: Sex Pistols, Black Flag, Agnostic Front, Dag Nasty, Slayer, and more
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ROB CAIN: The China-Hollywood Experiment
#014 - The China-Hollywood Experiment | Rob Cain
“I think (he) did a great disservice, to both himself and the industry, with his boastful approach, his pretty outlandish claims about everything he was going to accomplish, the really profligate spending, and that came back to bite him.” - Rob Cain
Today’s guest is Rob Cain. Rob is a partner in Pacific Bridge Pictures. He has worked for more than 25 years in Hollywood and the global entertainment industry, primarily as a production, finance, strategy and creative development expert. He writes a column for Forbes magazine focusing on the Chinese and Indian film industries and their intersections with Hollywood. Rob is also an award-winning screenwriter, with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, and he has been doing business in China since 1987.
The short version of all that is that Rob is one of the original “old China hands” in the entertainment business, and his insights into the Hollywood-China experiment are as good as they get.
Before I get into the rest of this, let me share one note about what I mean when I say that I’m not trying to get too political here. By that, I mean that I’m not trying to stir anything up, plus I want shows to age well and not focus too much on current events. But I DO want to be as candid and honest as is polite and prudent, and to let guests speak for themselves without me censoring them as much as possible. Today’s episode is perhaps the best example of testing this idea in practice that we’ve had so far. Hopefully I got the balance right.
In this chat, both Rob and I reveal or underline (respectively) our fundamental positions as being optimists by default, able to find bright spots and some successes now and hoping to see even more in the future. But we also get very candid about the challenges to those optimistic positions, institutionally and otherwise. The conversation skips the standard talking points to provide a small glimpse at how those who are the most in-the-know about the realities of the complicated China-Hollywood relationship oftentimes discuss it in private...
We talk about the impact of capital outflow restrictions, the excessive regulations aimed at controlling content, and the giant attitudinal / cultural mistakes made by Wang Jianglin in particular as an example of how NOT to successfully work with Hollywood, or to build a business here in China that attracts foreign talent organically. On a more constructive note, we dig deep into what we think the smartest people in China need to know to best work with the international system, and vice versa. We talk about the perfect hypothetical pitch for a successful co-pro, and discuss where specifically even the most Chinese films that hope to be export-worthy fall short: STORY. And we even talk a little about how to fix this.
There is loads of both executive-level thinking and on the ground, practical advice in this episode, so I really encourage anyone who is either working in the entertainment business or who aspires to to check this one out. If you’d like to contact Rob, read his writing at Forbes, or learn more more about or support the show, you can do that via the appropriate links in the show notes. And I hope that you like the deeper-dive approach to the subject matter in this episode in general. Please let me know.
Rob Cain links:
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1863014/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertdcain
Articles: Forbes
Blog: China Film Biz
Twitter: @robcain
Brendan Davis on Twitter:
@VeritasInLux
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