Epic Fails in Film, Media, and Advertising – Stories From the Cutting Room Floor

Orlando Wood (00:00)
Today’s episode is a special one as we near the end of our first season. We’ve got a few more episodes coming in the next couple of weeks, then we’ll take a short break and return in the second week of July. In honor of our incredible guests, who have been so generous with their time, so open with their stories, I’m sharing a few of their answers to my favorite question.

What’s your biggest fuck up and what did you learn from it? ⁓ That’s the only real format we have on this podcast so far. We might add more in the future, I don’t know. ⁓ But I do ask everyone and the answers are always different. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always pretty interesting. ⁓ What I love is that these people are at the top of their game and yet all of them got there, not in spite of their failures, but sometimes because of them. ⁓ Now I haven’t shared any of mine and I’ve had plenty. ⁓

Some funny, some deeply not. But really, I think this podcast, this first season is my fuck up. ⁓ And you’re getting to watch it in real time. ⁓ If you’ve been listening from the beginning, you’ve probably heard the wobbly audio and the awkward edits and the messy bits. And as someone who’s spent 25 years as a production professional, I find that really mortifying. ⁓ But here’s what I’ve learned.

⁓ For years I wanted to start a podcast. I’ve thought about it over and over again. But honestly it was my experience that kind of stopped me from doing it. The pressure to do it perfectly, ⁓ expensively, meant I never really started. And then about 12 weeks ago I had a mini stroke and I lost my ability to speak for a period of time. And weirdly that ended up being kind of a blessing. ⁓

Because at that point, the fear of doing nothing became so much more terrifying than the fear of doing something badly. And so here I am doing it badly. ⁓ So yes, again, you’re hearing us fail in real time, but you’re also hearing us grow in real time. We’re messing up and we’re gonna keep messing up. And I guess that’s kind of the point. ⁓ So, this, you’re gonna hear it. You’re gonna hear it in this episode.

You’re going to hear us be bad and you’re going to hear us get better and you’re going to hear the audio vacillate and I’m sorry for that. But here it is. You know, this episode is kind of a celebration of that. guess. Ralph Taylor learned that sometimes the money lost is worth the audacity. Eran Creavy learned to trust his gut, not just the gig. Kate Morrison learned that giving people a chance to show you grace can be transformative to you.

And I think everybody I’ve heard one reminded me that failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s often the prerequisite. ⁓ So anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you for sticking with us. We’re getting better. We’re trying certainly. And we’re not stopping.

Orlando Wood (03:09)
Eran Crevy is a writer and director known for his work on Welcome to the Punch with Ridley Scott and the new Netflix show The Gentleman with Guy Ritchie. In this story, he opens up about the film that nearly derailed his career. What followed was a hard lesson in creative instinct, self-trust, and how failure can be the best kind of teacher.

Speaker 2 (03:26)
The process of making a movie like Collide is a movie where I most derailed my career. What did I learn in the process of making something like Collide? I sort of licked my wounds a lot after I made that movie. It wasn’t very well received by Chris.

Speaker 1 (03:29)
I did something where all my

I knew the reasons why. I knew that that was happening.

Speaker 2 (03:43)
as

I was going on to set, I knew that I was not making something that I could stand by. The script was kind of falling apart around me. A lot of that was my own fault. like, got as a director is what you say yes to and what you say no to. And it has to say yes to the studio at some point, but he chooses that was when to say no. And I think I would have greater conviction in what I would take and whether I would just walk away from a project because I was just like,

Speaker 1 (03:53)
They say the only strength is you’ve…

You know, even Christopher Nolan.

that now stood up again

Speaker 2 (04:12)
You know what? I can see that this is falling apart and I can sniff that out.

Speaker 1 (04:16)
I think that with Collide, in all respect to the script, I never truly 100 % believed in it.

Speaker 2 (04:22)
like the script,

it was smart enough in order to make it work. I thought I was smart enough as a creative and an artist to kind of get the script to the place it could be.

Speaker 1 (04:32)
but I never really truly believed in I never really liked the script and that was always an issue with my music video. If I didn’t like the song, I often wouldn’t make a very good music video. If I really loved the

Speaker 2 (04:35)
in the film. What?

whenever I

song

and I really was into the music. I would often make a really great music video. It would be part and parcel of that. If I really into what it was or the creative, you’d always push that a bit further and do something better.

Speaker 1 (04:52)
If I do commercials, it’s really into the product.

And I think I just had a niggling in my.

Speaker 2 (05:04)
stomach when I made Collide that I kind of like, I don’t know what I should be doing next,

Speaker 1 (05:07)
don’t know if this is the… They’re

offering me a lot of money to do it.

Speaker 2 (05:11)
It’s a great opportunity.

I get to work with some amazing actors.

Speaker 1 (05:14)
And what

I’ve learned now is just to kind of remember that thing and remember the center script. And there’s just something in him. says, there’s a lot of good stuff about this, but there’s something in my head. This is not for you. This is not right. I just think in like,

Speaker 2 (05:17)
feeling. Remember that and if I get

man this is not for you and I like this my gut says right

you’ve just got to follow that feeling just follow that gut feeling you know and off in the same bracket as people like Spielberg but

Speaker 1 (05:32)
I’m not putting myself

When he made Hook, he says a very similar thing. he just, he never could get his head around that script and telling that story properly. I think he wanted to make it, but he just couldn’t ever figure out what that story was, what the movie was. And he’s something in his stomach told him this is off. And so he pumped just loads of effort into the production design of Hook. So when you watch Hook, it’s like production design to fuck. It’s like, this is the most OTT because Spielberg said, just focus on my energies on the production design. Cause I didn’t really know the film I was making. And I think that’s what happens.

Speaker 2 (05:46)
Well, the water.

me

when I was doing Clyde, sort of, got lost. didn’t really know what the film I was making. It suddenly got rewritten. You know, and is that Joel Silver’s fault? Is that my fault? I don’t know. It’s just the circumstances that I put myself in. I think more learn I think out of that process is to follow my instincts, to follow my gut instinct. From now on, I only do stuff that I’m a hundred percent into and committed to. Yeah. I think that’s what I learned, man. And that was a big life lesson. Lots of therapy to get to that point.

Speaker 1 (06:30)
landing lots of lots of crying lots of crying under a duvet for months I think it was a part of my life

Speaker 2 (06:36)
pretty angry about what had happened and I was quite bitter and angry and I felt it was like the world’s fault that I’d… All I’d have done is tried to do a good job. But I think at some point, yeah, with me as we’re in that situation, like you point fingers your whole life and go, it’s the fault the film didn’t work or this producer’s film or it’s Joel Silver’s film. It’s like, at end of the day, God’s just got lucky itself and the fault lies with you, right? And like, I just have to sort of process what I did wrong in that and how I learned not to make those same mistakes.

Speaker 1 (06:41)
that the world is against me.

You go, where does the full load?

States

moving forward. I came out of it.

Speaker 2 (07:06)
better

filmmaker and sort of understanding the process. Everyone says, you know, you don’t learn until you fail. You need to go through those processes of having major failures and filmmaking is an alchemy. There’s a million and one reasons why things don’t work. know, so many things have to align to be to make it a good movie or TV show.

Speaker 1 (07:09)
I think you need to go through.

I’m going to choose things in the future that I’m really into that I’m a hundred percent believe. Why not work? You know, this is even if you never know, you know, just what I

Speaker 2 (07:26)
that I

I but I’m going

to do those. I’m older and I’m just going to enjoy the journey more. I took it all too seriously when I was younger. I took it all too personally. I felt like the world, felt, yeah, I just took it all on my own, took my shoulders too much. Now I’m just like, I don’t care, man. I’m just out here having some fun. Shit.

Speaker 1 (07:47)
and get some

sh- living the dream man living the dream

Orlando Wood (07:52)
Ralph Taylor is the global head of contemporary art at Bonhams, but before that, he helped run the Lazaridis Gallery, home to some of the most rebellious art in Europe and also home to the failure Ralph opens up about with us. In this story, he reflects on one of the boldest shows they ever mounted, an audacious takeover of the old Vic Tunnels beneath Waterloo Station. It lost a fortune, but as you’ll see, it maybe earned something far more lasting.

Ralph Taylor (08:17)
Yes, interesting. I mean, there are so many examples of Orlando. hundreds of examples just from today. ⁓ So a good one is from the Lazarides days. We, we did this project. ⁓ We took on these drainage tunnels, these huge, great tunnels.

Orlando Wood (08:20)
No. Right. Right.

Right.

yeah,

yeah. The Old Vic tunnels. Yeah, right.

Ralph Taylor (08:41)
which I think you would have attempted. Old big tunnels,

And we took these tunnels on like four or five square acres or hectares or whatever.

Anyway, a big space. You know, quite derelict. Vast great tunnel, very high ceilings, very damp.

Orlando Wood (09:02)
know, or war bunkers. Yeah, yeah, right. Right.

Ralph Taylor (09:02)
were sort of drainage and storage tunnels underneath Waterloo station in London. You know, they They They

were very macabre, think Jack the Ripper style, but a kind of really atmospheric and extraordinary place to show art. And so we did that a few times. And so when you say fail big, I think we did it four times. So we failed big four times. But we carried on doing it and losing a lot of money.

Orlando Wood (09:09)
Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (09:26)
Partly because our costs on it was so big and the average price of what we were selling was maybe £5,000, £10,000 at the time and our

Orlando Wood (09:33)
Right.

Ralph Taylor (09:33)
on that was 50% after discount and whatever else. You’re making, let’s say, £2,000 or £3,000 per transaction. If you’re spending a couple of hundred thousand out of pocket on the project,

and you don’t have enough paintings in there to break even, you’re going to

pretty spectacularly. Now we kind of went into that with our eyes wide open, but the financial failure was pretty astonishing, particularly after the fourth time or maybe the third time.

Orlando Wood (09:51)
Yeah. Right.

Ralph Taylor (10:05)
I think, you know, that kind of Wayne’s World thing. We just thought if we build it, they will come. And in the end, commercially, it wasn’t a success, but brand-wise, reputationally for the artists and for us, it was a huge success in the sense that

Orlando Wood (10:10)
Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (10:23)
When we were licking our wounds financially in the aftermath, you look at the volume of… Something like 50,000 people came through an art exhibit that wasn’t a museum in some random tunnels in quite a scary… The access point was an underpass full of graffiti in a slightly salubrious part of London. So having tens of thousands of people come through, particularly on the opening night, which was bonkers…

The quality of art buyer and, you know, it’s really influential advisors, museum acquisitions committee members, curators and things like that that came through. You know, what we we learned from it in the end was actually the financially, yes, it was a disaster, but we’ve been reaping the benefits ever since. Certainly, you know, even

over well over a decade beyond in my time at Bonhams, the relationships that we created and the associations that we made. And certainly for me, that experience of going to the wall, pretty much financially, you know, about actually facing up to the worst case, almost the worst case scenario, because, know, ultimately we rode it out, but that…

Orlando Wood (11:37)
Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (11:48)
experiencing that kind of financial peril, not because you would put a million pounds on red in the roulette table, but you’d done something meaningful and earnest and there’s a real cultural investment in artists and the community and everything else, and you’d lost a lot of money. The benefits were great long-term, but actually learning through adversity and the actually…

Orlando Wood (11:52)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (12:16)
the almost worst case scenario looks bad, but if you look at it from a different angle, it’s trite thing to say so, but it definitely taught me that, you can take a few lumps and you’ll come out stronger. We didn’t learn from our mistakes in that sense, but, you know, everything we did and all the success that we had was based on that willingness to be bold. And I think, you know, we learned that actually net-net,

Orlando Wood (12:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (12:46)
You know, it’s worth not dying wondering, really giving it a whirl and being ambitious and hungry and aggressive in those kind of things, because, you know, you can’t take it with you.

Orlando Wood (12:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

And it was the most audacious thing anybody was doing in London at the time, you know, and that alone is to be commended. And commended four times, well done.

Ralph Taylor (13:09)
Yeah, I mean,

It was silly, but the time, you know, it was when Frieze Art Fair was really coming into its pomp. you know, Steve, with his kind of man of the people hat on, you know, you used get very worked up, the idea that, you know, if you’re a civilian going to Frieze, you have to pay to get a ticket to go in and see some art, which is for sale. And he…

Orlando Wood (13:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (13:32)
It didn’t bother me at the time, but looking back on it, I kind of really understand where he’s coming from. He was like, you don’t charge someone 10 pounds to go into, you know, Urban Outfitters to buy a pair of jeans. You know, this is utterly insane. So he was like, right, we’re not gonna change, I’m not gonna charge, and not only are we not going to charge, we’re going to, you know, fund all the artists up front and do all this kind of crazy stuff and make it a kind of, you know, carnival.

Orlando Wood (13:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ralph Taylor (14:00)
The fact that we’re talking about this now, no one is talking about anyone’s Frieze exhibition back in 2010 or 11 now, but everyone still remembers those projects and you know, something that I’m proud of and look back on fondly.

Orlando Wood (14:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (14:18)
Kate Morrison is head of production for products and services at Google, where she oversees some of the most complex creative operations in tech. It’s hard to imagine there was ever a time she didn’t know nearly everything about production. But in this story, she talks about a moment early in her career when she dropped the ball by pretending to know more than she did. But she also mentions how the grace her colleagues showed her changed the way she leads teams today.

Speaker 1 (14:42)
I was working on a huge Adidas project and I was, think, the junior producer, sort of becoming a producer. And there was an era where televisions were square and they were kind of like, they were called four three televisions because they were kind of square. And then everything moved to those sort of more rectangular, like flat screen TV that we have now, which is a 16:9 aspect ratio. And what would happen is when you were trafficking things for TV, was like, did you deliver them to TV stations?

When things were squares, you delivered them in squares, and when they were rectangles, you delivered them in rectangles. And there was a moment in technology where you could deliver a thing that was called a 14:9, which was like neither, it was like an intermediary rectangle size.

Speaker 2 (15:28)
it

well was that it was the letterbox you would see on the 4×3 TV.

Speaker 1 (15:32)
Correct. And it was like, not really great, but I didn’t know this and I was sent to like, okay, can you just go, we’ve like been working on this campaign for seven months, 20 hours a day. Can you go ship this campaign and get it out the door? And I was like, sure. And I get in there and they’re like, well, do you want to deliver it in four three or 16 nine? I didn’t know the answer to that question. And I didn’t, but I didn’t want to say that I didn’t know the answer to that question. So I said,

If you deliver 14:9, it will just do both. like, you know, the like optimization efficiency piece, which runs so deep in me was like, well, that seems like a great idea. So we deliver, I spent the whole day sitting there, like delivering, I don’t know, 30 spots or something in 14:9. And then somehow I got to the creative or the next day they were like, would you deliver in 16:9, right? And I was like, and I was so tempted not to actually say that I hadn’t that I.

had done this like compromised version. And I came clean on it and we had to delay, they had to push media because we had to miss the shift. Like it was like terrible. And everybody was so kind to me about it. We had to reship and spend the whole next day doing it in 16:9 and 4:3, which it turns out was the right answer for good creative at that time.

And it was just one of those things where I think you end up in life in the situation where, know, it’s like that sort of imposter syndrome that we all talk about where you’re like, I should know the answer. I feel like I should know the answer. I don’t want to bother anyone with this question. I don’t want to admit that I don’t know the answer. And I just in doing that, like, you know, created a real problem for him. It was a real fuck up to be honest with you. And then I think the other learning on that was that everyone was so

to me after the fuck up, that it was like, wait, like you, it would have been okay to ask, like what were you doing? You know, and I think also just like in terms of like good leadership, what we talking about before, like the grace of like, you didn’t know, but you know, I also should have asked. You know, I think owning the places where you don’t know and being willing to ask is really key. So that is the one that’s just seared into my brain of like, I will never do that again.

I also once forgot to have all my little Excel things add up and I missed a row and had to make up $600,000, I think within a $2.6 million budget because I had had the client sign off on 2.6 million. So I will tell you, I will never, ever not double, triple check a spreadsheet before it goes out.

Double click, all the boxes in, we’re good. But that is also just like, moment when I realized, like, know when all your blood just feels like it goes straight to your toes and you’re like, how, where do we go now?

Speaker 2 (18:29)
Yeah, that’s the worst. It could have been any other line. A line for 7,000, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:36)
Yeah, miscellaneous shipping, $250. Like, no, wasn’t that guy. And you’re just like, oh man. So yeah, it’s about any of those moments that got really sort of seared into your brain. there are a couple, there’s many more. But essentially you do, you learn more and I hate losing and I’m really competitive. But you know, there is sort of this notion that you learn more by losing than you do by winning. And I think that there is a ton of truth in that.

And I think it shapes your behavior. I think you have to be willing to sort of take the lessons, which is not always easy.

Orlando Wood (19:11)
a veteran of the UK’s post-production scene. In this story, he reflects on a time when expanding his hugely successful British company into LA proved to be more than they could handle. What he learned was to double down on what they did best and that sometimes staying small is the boldest move.

Lee (19:29)
When we opened in LA, We were doing, we opened in London, we were a bit under the radar. No one really took us seriously and we did, and we were, as my business partner’s dad said, we were farting silk. Everything was just fucking going good. Like everything we did, it was just great. Anything bad we did, it was just brilliant. And we’d come from LA.

Orlando Wood (19:52)
Yes.

Lee (19:55)
and we knew people there and we were slightly seduced, like we were doing music videos for people in London. I’d been there, like I knew people there and Giles knew people there and then we, and I remember we were working with these

Orlando Wood (20:01)
And you had had that experience at the Mill out here. Yeah. Yeah.

Lee (20:12)
talented music video guys and we were working on a job, it had like hardly any money and they were like, we’ve just put this super bowl job, it’s like half a million quid for like VFX. We were like, we should be there. Why are we not there?

So we opened and we opened, we made two mistakes. We didn’t follow the success pattern what we did in London. We opened too And the second thing was me and Giles knew people, we didn’t go. And it impacted the business at that time because…

It was just knackering we were working hard in London you guys like this is your morning. It’s my end of the day I’m like knackered and all those people are looking to you to be excited and to be like let’s go let’s do this and we were so it was becoming like tougher and tougher to keep that energy going for another eight hours you do your day and When times were tough over there, they had a massive impact people in America

Orlando Wood (20:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Lee (21:12)
and in the VFX industry get paid a lot more than the UK. So if you win, you win big. But when you fail, and we were fully independent, it was us, we didn’t have any money, there was no secret millionaire in the background going, eh, don’t you have some losses, we’ll ride that out. It was on us. So when we had losses,

Orlando Wood (21:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lee (21:31)
they were like, that was tough. And I remember going into a room and seeing like the P&L and then walking out and my mate was like, you’re all right, you look fucking like shocked. and I was like, we gotta close, we gotta close it now. And that was

tough but coming out of it.

Orlando Wood (21:48)
And how long How long

was that from starting to the realization just, this is not, we gotta cut and run? How long was that?

Lee (21:55)
I think it was about, I think it was, we were open for about two and a half years, maybe three years I think we were open. And we had really like, some of my favourite jobs came out of that office, they were really, really good jobs. And it just got tough. I think people took us very, like, they weren’t just like,

they’re idiots, they’ll go away, which is what I think they thought in London.

They were like, we’ve seen what they’ve done in we’re not gonna let them do that here, we’re gonna hang on to clients, we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna

and we’re gonna get them out of business as quickly as we could.

Orlando Wood (22:25)
really, I see. So it was just

a more mercenary environment here. And because you didn’t kind of set up lean like you had in the UK, you were sort of more at risk of a sort of, you know, market forces.

Lee (22:38)
Yeah, there

was a point where LA had half the

of staff, but they cost more to run than London. And that was like, this is quite crazy. We should have just opened, started smaller, lower risk, less fixed costs. You don’t get a massive office, don’t do all these things. Grow organically rather than trying to force this on people. And it was a mistake, but I think learning that lesson,

I’m glad we made it earlier in electric history because the success that came after that in London, you know, we knuckled down, we focused on the good thing we had.

Orlando Wood (23:08)
Mm.

Lee (23:15)
We had Michael, our chairman, who’d been through stuff like this before, and Steph working in finance, and obviously the partners and all the staff. Everyone just focused on, this is what we need to do today. This is what we need to focus on the good thing we’ve got. And that was like, all of a sudden, it was like the rocket had been strapped to us, and the losses we incurred, we got to wipe away pretty quickly.

And it was just really successful.

And towards the end, my job changed. I like being part of the creative part of it, The worst part is I literally felt like sometimes I would, the buck stops with you as a partner and as of the business. So things that I had nothing to do with, you’re apologizing for, that’s tough. wheeled out Hannibal Lecter into a room, like, these people are gonna

at you now and tell you about it.

Orlando Wood (24:02)
You’re right.

Lee (24:03)
and can you make it all better and then we’ll get back on with the job. We’re just trying to manage. It’s a bit like being a politician. Yeah, I’m like, just use me as a bad guy. Just kick me. Put me on the floor. come and kick me for a little while. But you know what? That’s part of it as well. Just taking it. I remember being at the Mill.

Orlando Wood (24:05)
Yeah. Yeah. And then when you leave, we’ll slide you off after you leave.

Lee (24:23)
and someone said, this job was going really badly, can you come in and produce it? And I went into the room, the director hated everyone in the room. He said to one of the producers who he was having a row with, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna kick you. And I was like, hang on, wait, we’re not gonna start kicking people. And he was only saying, he didn’t mean it, wasn’t really gonna kick someone. I went, hang on a minute, and he was like, no, I’m gonna kick you as well.

I’ve just come in the room, I’m just turned up, and then everyone laughed about it, but I was thinking for a second, yeah, okay, I’m gonna get like, I’ve never been kicked before because of just trying to help. That’s the story of VFX. someone gives you a kick. I’ve never been kicked, I wanna say that, I’ve never been kicked in a VFX, but just nearly, just threatened with a kick, was, yeah, for something I didn’t do, but that’s fine, part of life.

Orlando Wood (24:49)
I’m out of

Okay. Just nearly. Yeah.

Lee (25:16)
people were shouting at me, I’m used to it. Just going numb behind the eyes, I’m good in a crisis, Orlando I’m good in, that’s what it is.

Orlando Wood (25:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, always. I’ve seen you in quite a few. Yeah. Well, it’s it’s that that the producers trick is you got to be the one that stays calm. I’ve always felt like you’re a lot better at it than I sort of go quiet. Try to look calm. You very often will break the tension with a joke or or be

Lee (25:24)
There’s still a bit of those ones there.

Thank

Orlando Wood (25:45)
you know, you’ll calm everybody else down. I kind of go calm and just leave the room quietly.

Lee (25:51)
No, I learned.

I I

learned a really good trick which was I’ve got a dog. She’s been, like I said earlier on the call, she’s been snoring and making noise and she just taps me and hits me all the

But I read a study that when you stroke a dog it calms you down. So I’d have the dog with me in the office like all the time and if I knew it was getting a bit tense in somewhere I’d just like creep the door open and just push the dog in and the dog would just walk in. She loves people so she’d go in, everyone would stroke her. I could hear everyone go, whose dog is this? And being happy I’m like, I’ll go in the room now.

And I go in and I’ll be like, is everyone okay? They’ll be like, yeah, it’s great, it’s great. And they just stroke the dog and hang out. And it was like a real calming influence in the office. So I’m learning all the skills

Orlando Wood (26:27)
Lee.

Lee (26:32)
like.

Orlando Wood (26:32)
That is the greatest hack I’ve ever heard in my life. I imagine edit houses around London, if anybody watches this, which of course they won’t, but I imagine if they do, edit houses around London will be getting office dogs immediately.

Lee (26:46)
Mate,

I don’t want to get too political. When I saw the

Trump thing, I did think to myself, Zelensky should just bring a dog in. Just let it into the room. And JD Vance and

would get distracted by it. They’d start stroking. And then the war would be like, all the tension in the room would have just disappeared. collie had come in. Everyone would have been like, OK, let’s get back to being serious and just calm down a little bit. Take the emotion out.

Orlando Wood (27:11)
That’s the greatest

producers hack I’ve ever heard. I might actually add to these things, you know, what’s your personal hack for doing your job right and whatever else. Cause that’s phenomenal.

Lee (27:19)
Like get a dog distracted.

Yeah, get a dog, get distracted. It has to be a cute dog. The cuter it is, the more stress it can get rid of.

Orlando Wood (27:30)
John Papsadera and Kim Winter are the dynamic duo behind some of Hollywood’s most iconic casting, like Oppenheimer, Superman, Yellowstone, and Tenet, just to name a few. John’s unflappable calm meets Kim’s meticulous, detail-obsessed precision, and together, they’re a double act that somehow always lands on their feet. In this story, they share a few stumbles and how their balance keeps everything and everyone on track.

Orlando Wood (34:53)
Thanks for listening to this special episode. We’ve got a few more coming up before we wrap season one, then we’ll take a short break and be back mid-July. If there’s one thing these stories remind me, it’s that no one doing great work has done it without messing up along the way. We’re all just figuring it out. Sometimes loudly, sometimes messily, but always moving forward. So see you next week and thank you for listening.