Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Muriel de Meo
[L.A. Confidential - Behind Hollywood's scenes]
Good evening to all!
I’m smiling because in my career,
I’m usually the one who puts other people on stage.
I place other people in front of the camera.
And now that I'm standing here,
I have to admit, it isn’t an easy task to do.
Let’s pretend that we are in a movie and this is a story about a boy.
This is me, when I was four years old -
and yes, I had hair.
(Laughter)
As a child, I had three very different dreams:
becoming an NBA player;
becoming a professional soccer player;
becoming a Hollywood actor.
Three dreams with, at the very least, a common denominator:
a great ambition.
But also three dreams, if you think about it,
that were pretty common among children my age in the '80s.
Children fans of Hellas Verona during the Bagnoli era;
grown up watching the first NBA footage,
watching movies like E.T., or "The Never Ending Story"
that captivated a generation.
As a child, I had a great imagination, a great creativity,
and at night I dreamed a lot.
And I would patiently recall my mom, every morning, what I had dreamed.
I often dreamed of fantastic castles, endless landscapes, and wild animals.
Then one evening, during a dream:
“Zeno? Wake up. Wake up!
I am Danilo Gallinari.
You don't know me now,
but I assure you that in the future you will have the chance to meet me.
I have to tell you,
you will never be an NBA player.
You will never be as gifted as me:
but you will certainly have a bright future.
One day you will understand, so many things are waiting for you.
In that dream, Gallinari killed all of my NBA ambitions.
Not a problem, I would go on to become a great soccer player
and win the FIFA World Cup with the Italian national team.
Some time passed, and I had another dream.
“Hi Zeno! I'm Alessandro Del Piero.
You don't know me now,
but I'm here to tell you something very important -
even a bit hard to swallow.
You'll never become a soccer player.
You'll never become a World Champion.
Believe me, it's impossible.
I know it's hard to accept,
but you better learn it now, so you can concentrate on other things.
But I also have cheerful news for you:
we will become great friends,
and just maybe you will become a world champion in another industry.
So, see you soon.
Ciao!"
Now, both of my idols had killed all of my sport dreams.
Two out of my three aspirations failed
and I thought the third was impossible to reach.
I then veered onto something more secure, something I could already attain.
I decided to follow in the footsteps of my family
and work in the building company started by my Dad,
a person I had always admired.
It was a secure path.
For this reason, I graduated in Architecture in :
but more than the design part,
the business part always attracted me more.
So once I completed my training in Italy, I went to Los Angeles, America,
to learn how Americans taught marketing
and their sales techniques.
Little did I know, this all would shortly come in handy.
In the meantime, I fell in love with Los Angeles
and Hollywood wasn’t too far away afterall.
While working for my family, my life seemed to be on the right track -
but you have to remember, we are in a movie.
And like in every movie, there’s a “plot twist”, as Americans say.
Italy's economic crisis worsened, and wiped all ambitions out.
The safety that once was there suddenly disappeared.
During that time, I thought of a sentence my father always told me:
“Zeno, remember my advice,
look for a niche in the market, and try to be the best at it”
In a moment of extreme hardship, I said to myself,
“What do I do? Do I give up or do I fight?”
I had to start from zero.
Actually, making a play on words, I had to start from Zeno.
“Do what you are”, I told myself.
I had passion and ambition.
And above all, a great idea, a big goal:
aiming for Hollywood.
And with a sort of an "all-in mentality",
I nosedived into this world, where I had already made my first steps.
Today, after 15 years, I am the owner and founder
of a Beverly Hills-based company called Cangrande Inc.,
whose name is a tribute to my city, Verona.
My job consists
in managing and negotiating all the aspects of the contract
to secure the biggest names
in sports, fashion, cinema, and entertainment industry
to be placed in tv shows, brand & ad campaigns,
film productions.
I went to America to learn how to manage and sell buildings.
Today I am a full-fledged seller:
I get talent, I sell dreams, I sell people.
Said this way, it sounds very bad, I can see your shocked faces -
(Laughter)
But we are in a movie, don’t forget.
It is up to you to distinguish between fiction and reality.
Now, let's leave the set: I'll take you behind the scenes of my job
to explain you how to negotiate in Hollywood.
Which is a world apart,
with its own set of rules.
[NEGOTIATIONS]
In a negotiation,
the most important part is within the first three minutes -
where anything but the sale is talked about.
This is something Americans taught me.
They showed me how to flip concepts and see things from another perspective.
Another fundamental thing is the handshake,
which is your bodily business card.
So you should stare into the person’s eyes,
smile, and repeat the name of the person before you.
It is essential.
Now, talking about movies,
how many of you, by a show of hands, remember the movie, Jerry Maguire?
Enough of you, OK.
There is a beautiful scene in the movie
where Cuba Gooding Jr., who plays the part of a football player
shouts to Tom Cruise on the phone, "Show me the money, show me the money!!"
You might remember it.
This is something
that we can keep as a staple for all things in Hollywood:
while money in Hollywood actually moves everything,
they also have more than enough of it
to decline any offer presented to them,
if there's a side detail they don't see fit.
So I typically have to leverage something else.
I always have to walk in their shoes,
with a deep understanding of their personal interests
as details sometimes make the biggest difference.
What is considered a side dish
is sometimes more important than the "main serving".
In Hollywood -
I have a rule that I always keep in mind.
I call it “five for one”
and it can be split into two phases: research and closure.
I give myself five attempts to find the right talent,
then a month to close the deal and sign the contract.
If I break these boundaries,
I know that the situation is not safe,
because one of the two parts does not have the urgency to close.
I have to be good at pushing the right buttons.
It's like a poker game
where you have to be surgical, you have zero margins of error.
If you make any mistake, you're out.
You have to be good at anticipating the moves of those before you.
It's like a sword duel:
you have to know when to attack and when to pull back.
An essential feat of negotiation
is to keep the knife by your side.
It is a tough thing to do here,
as you are the one chasing them and you hope that they will listen to you.
Everything must always be done with the utmost specialization
and precision.
It is a job
where the concentration must be extreme and professionalism has to be high.
If you don't know the rules of this game,
you don't get to the finish line.
It's a career you can do on your own,
being available 24 hours a day.
I have clients all over the world and I have to honor their time zone.
Your strength lies in your relationships: with your clients, on one hand;
and with artists and agents on the other hand,
who expect you to move things forward and they want to hear your voice.
As a result,
the only thing that matters here, more than any marketing tactic,
is a referral;
your reputation should precede you.
Now, I’ve given you five key points
that in theory could be ported to every negotiation.
But they can’t.
because in the end, only experience matters.
When you are working with the subjectivity of others -
and here the others are fickle -
there is no set of rules, no precanned formula.
Artists and actors have incredible talent
and a unique and sensitivity, that is expressed in quixotic forms.
The requests they ask you, at times, are particularly peculiar.
Americans use to say, "The devil is in the details".
[Translates into Italian]
Now, I will give you some examples of details
that made all the diference in closing the contracts.
This dog was essential to closing a $2 million contract.
The dog!
This is a famous dog because it’s owner is very famous,
and wherever the owner goes, the dog follows along.
The treatment for the dog
must be that of a five-star extra luxury service,
because they demand it from you.
They’ll ask you for 20 toys for the dog.
They want you to put the dog on a comfortable bed:
well, three beds,
because one has to be put in the hotel,
one in the dressing room and one on the set.
And they will ask you a three star Michelin-grade food.
This cocktail is called "Penicillin."
How many of you, party animals, know this drink?
Let’s see, no one?
No, one actually does.
Folks, there's a hero with us.
This is the favorite cocktail of a famous actor.
As soon as I signed this contract, one-minute later, I received an e-mail
titled: “Penicillin Cocktail” with the recipe.
I had to double check, this e-mail was meant for me.
So I call them and said:
"Look, I got this email, Penicillin Cocktail.
I think it's for your bartender that is organizing the evening."
Their answer, "No, it's the actor's favorite cocktail.
You have to tell your client to prepare a 24-hour barista
who's always ready to make him”.
In three days, he took it once.
(Laughter)
The bartender was there all the time.
Six suitcase full of shoes,
a request made to me by a female artist.
I see men shaking their heads and saying,
"Yes, my wife also makes the same request and she is not an artist."
(Laughter)
There were 100 pairs of shoes
for only two days of an advertising campaign.
I reckoned, had the artist been awake 24 hours,
she could have changed one pair of shoes every 33 minutes.
Try to imagine my client’s face when I came and told him
he had to pay tens of thousands of Euros
to carry these suitcases.
But no suitcases, no artist.
And these are just small examples of a particular world
where the strength is in creativity.
In Los Angeles, there is a unique light.
The temperature year round is 20 to 25 Celsius degrees
and you can only tell summer from winter by the sunset time.
In LA, and Hollywood, you get the feeling
you can achieve anything you want.
Hollywood is a microcosm where the best of the best comes in,
where the intellectual level of people is very high,
where they judge you for what's in your head,
not how you look.
And where there is an endless stream of ideas,
and you are sure
that the idea coming out right now is better than the previous one.
But the strength of this system, based on an extreme competitiveness,
is also its weakness.
It is a vortex that takes you and overwhelms you.
In Hollywood, every day is a battle
and nobody is safe, not even the actors because all the jobs are unstable.
One thing you immediately get is,
from an outside perspective, it looks huge.
It is actually a microcosm
and the elite is at the tip of a pyramid,
where everyone knows each other but one mistake and you're out.
In the end, what matters is what you contribute.
Today, I live in Beverly Hills and work with Hollywood everyday.
If I had to write a letter, talk to the child me,
I'd tell him not to worry, because dreams will eventually become true -
though in a different way.
I would tell him to believe in himself
because passion is what matters.
To love the things you do, even at the cost of sacrifices.
Luckily, I’m not acting on stage -
otherwise the anxiety would overcome me.
I'm not in movies, I didn't become an actor,
and I'm not in any ad campaign either.
But knowing that an artist is there
because I helped secure that deal and there was a child who dreamed big,
makes me so proud.
As Americans say,
"Shoot for the moon: even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars."
[Translates into Italian]
Today -
(Applause)
Today, I still dream at night, as much as I did as a child.
But instead of telling my dreams to my mother,
I tell them to my wife.
There's been an evolution.
And a few days ago, during a dream:
"Zeno, Ricky Martin here. Welcome to Hollywood bro, all the best."
(Applause)
And this is the end of my movie.
Thank you all.
(Applause)