by Alex Banayan
Because I had no idea how to get my interviews, I spent the day emailing every adult I knew, asking for advice. I reached out to professors, parents of friends—anyone I’d met who seemed relatively put together. The first person who agreed to meet with me was an administrator who worked at USC. We met at a café on campus a few days later. When she asked whom I wanted to interview, I took the index card out of my wallet and handed it over. Her eyes scanned the names and a smile spread across her face.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said, lowering her voice, “but Steven Spielberg is going to be at the film school in two weeks for a fundraising event. Students aren’t allowed to attend, but…”
It wasn’t until much later that I learned the full extent of this rule. On the first day of school for film students, the dean makes it clear that they can never, ever attend fundraising events and pitch the donors. But I didn’t know that then, so as I sat in that café my only question was “How can I get in?”
It’s a small event, she said, and if I showed up dressed in a suit, she could bring me in as her “assistant.”
“Look, I can’t guarantee I’ll get you next to Spielberg,” she added, “but getting you through the door shouldn’t be hard. Once you’re in there, it’s all on you. So if I were you, I would prepare. Go home and watch all of Spielberg’s movies. Read everything you can about him.”
I did just that. I pored over a six-hundred-page biography by day and watched his movies by night. Finally, the day arrived. I swung open my closet, threw on my only suit, and headed out.
* * *
The film school’s outdoor patio had been transformed to look like anything but a school. A red carpet flowed along a walkway, tall cocktail tables lined the manicured gardens, and waiters in tuxedos glided around carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres. I stood among the crowd of donors, listening as the film school dean began her opening remarks. The dean wasn’t much taller than the podium, but her presence gripped the crowd.
With trembling hands, I straightened my suit jacket and inched forward. Just ten feet in front of me, standing shoulder to shoulder, were Steven Spielberg, Star Wars director George Lucas, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, and actor Jack Black. I’d walked in nervous, but now I was in a full panic. How could I approach Spielberg when he was in the middle of a conversation with the man who’d created Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker? What would I say? “Excuse me, George, out of the way”?
As the dean continued her speech, I inched nearer. Spielberg was so close I could see the stitching of his graphite-gray blazer. He wore an old-fashioned newsboy cap atop a head of wispy hair; soft, kind-looking wrinkles surrounded his eyes. There he was—the man behind E.T., Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Schindler’s List, Lincoln, Saving Private Ryan—and all I had to do was wait for the dean to finish.
Applause took over the patio. I tried to take the remaining steps toward Spielberg, but my feet turned to stone. A large lump formed in my throat. I knew exactly what was happening. This was the same sensation I felt whenever I approached a girl I had a crush on in school. I called it The Flinch.
The first time I remember feeling The Flinch was when I was seven. During lunchtime, I sat at a long table in the school cafeteria and looked around: Ben had chips and granola bars, Harrison had a turkey sandwich with the crust cut off, and then there was me, taking out a heavy plastic container of Persian rice covered in green stew with red kidney beans on top. When I opened the lid, the smell spread everywhere. The kids around me pointed and laughed, asking if I had rotten eggs for lunch. From that day on, I kept my Tupperware in my backpack, waiting to eat my lunch until after school when I was alone.
The Flinch started out as my fear of being seen as different, but as I grew up, it mushroomed into so much more. I felt it every time the kids at school called me Fatty Banayan, every time my teachers yelled at me for speaking out of turn, and every time a girl bit her lip and shook her head when I told her I liked her. These little moments added up, one on top of another, until The Flinch was a living, breathing being.
I was terrified of rejection and mortified of making mistakes. Because of that, The Flinch would paralyze my body at the worst possible times, hijack control of my vocal cords, and turn my words into a stuttering, stammering slur. And The Flinch never had a stronger hold on me than when I was standing a few yards from Steven Spielberg. I stared at him, hoping to find an opening. But before I did, Spielberg was whisked away.
I watched him glide from one group to another, smiling and shaking hands. The party seemed to orbit around him. I looked at my watch: I still had an hour left. I headed to the men’s room to splash cold water on my face.
The only comfort I had was knowing that Spielberg could probably relate to what I was experiencing. Because what I was trying to do was pull a Spielberg, on Spielberg.
* * *
Steven Spielberg got his start when he was right around my age. I’d read varying accounts, but according to Spielberg, this is what happened: he boarded a tour bus at Universal Studios Hollywood, rode around the lot, and then jumped off, sneaking into a bathroom and disappearing behind a building. He watched the tour bus drive away then spent the rest of the day on the Universal lot.
Wandering around, he bumped into a man named Chuck Silvers who worked for Universal TV. They spoke for a while. When Silvers found out Spielberg was an aspiring director, he wrote him a three-day pass. Spielberg came for the next three days, and on the fourth, he showed up again, this time dressed in a suit and carrying his dad’s briefcase. Spielberg walked up to the gate, threw a hand in the air, and said Hey Scotty!—and the guard just waved back. For the next three months, Spielberg arrived at the gate, waved, and walked right through.
On the lot, he would approach Hollywood stars and studio executives and ask them to lunch. Spielberg snuck onto soundstages and sat in editing rooms, soaking up as much information as he could. Here was a kid who had been rejected from film school, so in my eyes, this was his way of taking his education into his own hands. Some days he’d smuggle an extra suit in his briefcase, sleep overnight in an office, and change into the fresh clothes the next morning and walk back onto the lot.
Chuck Silvers eventually became Spielberg’s mentor. He advised him to stop schmoozing and come back when he had a high-quality short film to show. Spielberg, who’d been making short films since he was twelve, began writing a twenty-six-minute film called Amblin’. After months of directing and grueling editing, he finally showed it to Chuck Silvers. It was so good that when Silvers saw it, a tear ran down his cheek.
Silvers reached for the phone and called Sid Sheinberg, Universal TV’s vice president of production.
“Sid, I’ve got something I want you to see.”
“I’ve got a whole goddamn pile of film here…I’ll be lucky to get out of here by midnight.”
“I’m going to put this in the pile for the projection booth. You really should look at it tonight.”
“You think it’s that goddamn important?”
“Yes, I think it’s that goddamn important. If you don’t look at this, somebody else will.”
After Sid Sheinberg watched Amblin’, he asked to meet Spielberg immediately.
Spielberg rushed over to the Universal lot and Sheinberg offered him a seven-year contract on the spot. And that’s how Steven Spielberg became the youngest major studio director in Hollywood history.
When I’d read that story, I originally thought Spielberg had played the “people game”—networking around the lot and making connections. But the word “networking” made me think of exchanging business cards at a career fair. This wasn’t simply a people game. It was more than that. This was the Spielberg Game.
1. Jump off the tour bus.
2. Find an Inside Man.
3. Ask for his or her help to bring you in.
The most import
ant step, I realized, was finding that “Inside Man”—someone inside the organization willing to put his or her reputation on the line to bring you in. If Chuck Silvers hadn’t offered Spielberg a three-day pass, or called the VP of production and demanded he watch the film, Spielberg never would have gotten the contract.
Of course, Spielberg had incredible talent, but so do other aspiring directors. There was a reason he got that contract when so many others didn’t.
It wasn’t magic. And it wasn’t just luck. It was the Spielberg Game.
* * *
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I knew if I couldn’t approach Spielberg while he was standing in front of me, the mission would be over before it started.
I drifted around the party until I spotted him again. When Spielberg moved to one side of the patio, I moved to the other. When he stopped to talk to someone, I stopped to look at my phone. After heading to the bar to grab a Coke, I scanned the patio and my stomach dropped—Spielberg was heading for the exit.
Without thinking, I slammed my glass down and chased after him. I swerved through the crowd of donors, dodging waiters and cutting around tables. Spielberg was a few feet from the exit. I slowed down, trying to time my approach perfectly. But I had no time for perfect.
“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Spielberg. My name’s Alex and I’m a student at USC. Can I…can I ask you a quick question as you head to your car?”
He stopped walking and swung his head over his shoulder, his eyebrows shooting over his metal-framed glasses. He lifted his arms in the air.
He gave me a hug.
“I’ve been on a college campus for hours and you’re the first student I’ve seen all day! I’d love to hear your question.”
His warmth melted The Flinch away, and as we walked to the valet, I told him about the mission. The words spilled out almost unconsciously. This wasn’t an elevator pitch. This was what I believed.
“I know we just met, Mr. Spielberg, but”—the lump came back in my throat—“would you…would you be willing to do an interview?”
He stopped again, then slowly turned toward me. His lips pressed and his eyelids clenched like heavy iron gates.
“Normally, I’d say no,” he said. “I usually don’t do interviews unless they’re for my foundation or to publicize a movie.”
But then his eyes softened. “Even though I’d normally say no…for some reason, I’m going to give you a maybe.”
He paused and looked at the sky, squinting although the sun wasn’t bright. I’ll never know what he was thinking, but eventually he lowered his head and locked his eyes onto mine.
“Go make this happen,” he said. “Go out and get your other interviews. Then come back to me and we’ll see what we can do.”
We spoke for another minute and then he said goodbye. He stepped toward his car, but then suddenly turned around, facing me one last time.
“You know,” he said, holding my gaze, “there’s something about you that tells me you’re actually going to make this happen. I believe in you. I believe you can do this.”
He called over his assistant and told him to get my information. Spielberg climbed into his car and drove away. His assistant asked for my business card so I reached into my back pocket, taking out one of the printout cards I’d made in the storage closet. Then a single word sliced through the air.
“NO!”
It was the film school dean. Her arm shot between us. She snatched the card out of my hand.
“What is this regarding?” she asked.
I wished I could’ve calmly said, “Oh, Mr. Spielberg asked his assistant to get my information,” but instead I just stood there, frozen. I glanced at Spielberg’s assistant, hoping he’d help explain, but as soon as the dean saw me looking at him, she motioned for him to leave—without my card, my number, or even my name.
“You should know better,” she snapped, her stare shooting straight into my bones. “We don’t do these types of things here.”
She asked if I was a film student, the rage in her voice almost pushing me back. I stuttered, which even to me sounded like an admission of guilt.
“I told you,” she railed. “I told you on day one that we don’t tolerate this type of behavior!”
I apologized profusely, not even knowing what I was apologizing for. I said whatever I could to escape her wrath. The dean continued to berate me until my eyes welled up. Although she wasn’t much taller than five feet, it felt like she towered above me. A minute later, she stormed off.
But before I could move, the dean spun around and marched back.
She glared at me once more. “There are rules here.” She lifted her arm and pointed for me to leave.
CHAPTER FIVE
Crouching in the Bathroom
I woke up the next morning, the dean’s voice still ringing in my ears. By late afternoon I still couldn’t shake my gloom, so I dragged myself to the storage closet and scanned the shelves, looking for inspiration.
An orange-colored book was sticking out: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It was the book Brandon had given me. I grabbed it and stretched out on the floor. As I turned to the first page, it felt like Tim Ferriss was talking just to me. His words sucked me in so deeply that I didn’t lift my head for the next hour except to reach for a pen to mark my favorite parts.
The opening scene was of Tim Ferriss competing in the Tango World Championships.
The next page had Ferriss racing motorcycles in Europe, kickboxing in Thailand, and scuba diving off a private island in Panama.
Two pages later I discovered a line that almost made me scream “yes!” out loud: “If you picked up this book, chances are that you don’t want to sit behind a desk until you are 62.”
Chapter two was called “The Rules That Change the Rules.”
Chapter three was about conquering fear.
Chapter four had a passage so powerful it felt like Tim Ferriss whacked my “what do I want to do with my life?” crisis with a wooden bat:
“What do you want?” is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer. Forget about it.
“What are your goals?” is similarly fated for confusion and guesswork. To rephrase the question, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture…
What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness…The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is—here’s the clincher—boredom.
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all. When people suggest you follow your “passion” or your “bliss,” I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same singular concept: excitement.
Three pages after that was an entire section titled “How to Get George Bush Sr. or the CEO of Google on the Phone.”
Thank you, God!
I went to Tim Ferriss’ website and saw he’d written a second book. I bought it immediately. If The 4-Hour Workweek was about hacking your career then The 4-Hour Body was about hacking your health. I flipped to a chapter called “The Slow-Carb Diet: How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days Without Exercise.” It sounded as if it were written by a snake-oil salesman, but Ferriss had used his body like a human guinea pig to prove it worked, so what did I have to lose? The answer: a lot—a lot of weight. Following his instructions, I shed forty pounds over the course of the summer. Bye-bye, Fatty Banayan. My family was shocked and jumped headfirst on the Tim Ferriss bandwagon too. My dad lost twenty pounds; my mom, fifty pounds; my cousin, sixty.
We were just a few of the millions of people following Tim Ferriss online, reading his every blog post and liking his every tweet. The Internet had changed the world, and a new world needs new teachers. Tim Ferriss was that guy.
His name w
as now at the top of my list, and The 4-Hour Workweek gave me just the clue on how to reach him.
As I was going through the book a second time, I noticed something on the dedication page that I hadn’t caught at first.
10% of all author royalties are donated to educational not-for-profits, including DonorsChoose.org
Wait a minute…DonorsChoose…
I had my Inside Man.
When I’d volunteered at that business conference during my freshman year, the one where I’d gotten Tony Hsieh’s book, I saw an attendee wobbling on crutches, so I asked if he needed help. “No, no, don’t worry about it,” he said. He told me his name was César and that he was the COO of DonorsChoose. We kept running into each other over the next few days and we had stayed in contact ever since.
César had explained that DonorsChoose.org is a site where anyone can donate to classrooms in need. Potential donors could search through requests from across the country—picture books for kindergartners in Detroit or microscopes for high schoolers in St. Louis. You pick whichever project resonates with you and donate as little or as much money as you like.
After some Googling, I learned that Tim Ferriss and the CEO of DonorsChoose had been on the same high school wrestling team. Ferriss even sat on the nonprofit’s advisory board.
I emailed César and asked him to lunch. Once we got together, I asked if there was any way he could help me reach out to Ferriss. César said he was sure his CEO would pass along my interview request.
“Consider it done,” he said.
A week later, César emailed me saying his boss had sent along my request to Ferriss. And to top it off, César also mailed me a stack of DonorsChoose gift cards to give out as thank-yous to the people I interviewed. They were each valued at one hundred dollars—a large donor had put up the money—and Stephen Colbert even gave out the same cards to all the guests on his show.
