The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
Step into the bold and unfiltered world of show business with Alexia Melocchi—PGA producer, international distributor, author, and 30-year Hollywood insider.
This is your backstage pass to the mindset, tactics, and truth behind how Hollywood really works. Through raw and inspiring conversations with A-list creators, business leaders, and global thought shapers, you'll discover the real strategies that lead to lasting success—on and off the screen.
From insider tips to soulful storytelling, each episode is a masterclass in making your mark—not just in showbiz, but in every area of life.
The Heart Of Show Business With Alexia Melocchi
Beyond Hollywood: How One Producer's Nonprofit Work Changed Thousands of Lives
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Peter Samuelson, legendary film producer and philanthropist, shares his journey of combining Hollywood success with meaningful social impact through his foundations and new book "Finding Happy."
• Film credits include Revenge of the Nerds, Return of the Pink Panther, Arlington Road, and many other classics
• Founded First Star organization in 1999 to house, educate and encourage foster youth through university partnerships
• Created a program where 89% of foster youth participants go to college versus standard 6% national average
• Shares harrowing story of rescuing a cat in Morocco during Pink Panther filming as lesson in risk assessment
• "Random Acts of Kindness and Pay it Forward" program teaches foster youth to help others despite their own challenges
• Co-founded Starlight Children's Foundation with Steven Spielberg to help seriously ill children
• EDAR initiative provides mobile, single-user shelters for homeless individuals at $800 per unit
• Believes that helping others creates ripples of positive impact that extend far beyond initial actions
• Films should have "double bottom line" - both commercial viability and positive social impact
• Defines himself as "career producer, philanthropist, dad"
Get Peter Samuelson's book "Finding Happy" on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
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About your Host- Alexia Melocchi
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Thanks for listening! Follow us on X, Instagram and Facebook and on the podcast's official site www.theheartofshowbusiness.com
Show Introduction
Speaker 1Welcome to the heart of show business. I am your host, alexia Melocchi. I believe in great storytelling and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television and music industry works. We will cover dreams come true, the road less traveled journey beginnings and a lot of insight and inspiration in between. I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered, real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll. Sound and action.
Speaker 1Well, first of all, it's been a minute since I have recorded a special, very special, entertainment-driven episode on my Heart of Show Business podcast. I know I had a few lifestyle guests in the past few episodes, but I was so thrilled when this wonderful human was pitched to me by his publicist. Wonderful human was pitched to me by his publicist not only because it's someone that I happen to know we're not going to say how many decades, but I've known for a little bit. But he is also an incredible, incredible movie producer coming out of the UK, peter Samuelson, who of course has it behind some incredible films, including of the nerds, the return of the pink panther, arlington road, which I absolutely love. I mean there's so many movies oscar, wilde, wilde, uh, tom and viv. I mean he has done it all. He has been behind some of legendary films with incredible filmmakers, incredible actors.
Speaker 1But what I love about him is he's also been a philanthropist all his life. Every day of his life, he's found a way to give back to society, especially young people, and he just happened to come out with a book. And of course, you know he's a founder of the First Star Foundation. Then he went on to create Starbrite, which was co-founded with Steven Spielberg. He focuses on storytelling with empathy. So there's so much to talk about, but I'm going to let him do some talking, because you know me, I'm Italian, I talk way too much. So, peter Samuelson, with his book just dropped all over the world, called Finding Happy, welcome to my show.
Speaker 2You had me at one, alexia, anyone whose background is the Carlton Hotel and a piece of the Martinez further on my right, I'm yours. Whatever I mean, you and I. Someone said to me is there anything good about being an independent producer at the moment? And I said the only thing I can think, because it's a tremendously shitty time to be an independent producer. I said that hideous, windowless basement of the ballet in Cannes. I may have to go into it less. So there you go. On the other hand, that's because you know films finance with pre-sales. Where did that go, hi Netflix? So anyway, I'm very happy to be here and thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1It is so great to have you and when we were before we started pushing recorder, we were actually talking about some good old days and some adventures where the business used to be different and you know we could sell movies with our charm and personality and vision and inspiration. But this is what I love about what you just said and even your personality shows. What I always talk about is that storytelling is not just what's on the page, it's not done just by screenwriters, it's not done by directors, but I think the ultimate storyteller is actually the producer, who has to change his or her story a hundred times in different styles, in different ways, to get the projects that they want to see made finance. And look at that, they can also write books. So tell me a little bit about your book Finding Happy and how did that come about?
Speaker 2So one of my nonprofits, which I founded in 1999, and which is, thank God, thriving through the efforts of hundreds and hundreds of people, is firststarorg. What we do we house, educate and encourage high school age kids in foster care. We do it in the United States through 12 university partnerships across the country and we have three partnerships in the UK with great big British universities. And the way that we do it is we bring them in as rising ninth graders and they live on campus, they have role models, they have reliable grownups, they get academics, they get life skills and they get a new family because they've been deprived of unconditional love and encouragement and so forth. And the results speak for themselves In the United States and so forth.
Speaker 2And the results speak for themselves In the United States less than 10% of American foster kids go to college out of 12th grade and less than 6% graduate from college. Our kids right now it's June as we're recording this our kids 89% of them are going in the fall to colleges and universities. So it's a huge knockout success. Now I realized that because of First Star, I have mentored literally hundreds of young adults. And you develop producers, are good at pattern recognition. You know every film is a different set of challenges. And yet you say to yourself oh, I know what works to do with this.
Speaker 2I'll do this solution. So I realized that I knew a thing or two about mentoring and I knew the two or three dozen things that always seemed to come up disproportionately, and I thought you know, those are kind of chapter headings. Proportionately, and I thought you know, those are kind of chapter headings. And what I could do is I could put all of these enigmas to a 15 year old or an 18 year old or 25 year old. I could actually organize a book with chapters and I started writing it. You know you have to.
Speaker 2What else a career producers good at? We have self-discipline. I said, right, if I'm going to do this damn thing, I have to get up every morning at 5am and write for one hour, come what may. And I did that and I realized what I was pulling from to punch it up were examples, things I got right and a lot of things I got wrong from my life and from my career. So, for example, there's a chapter in the book, chapter heading what is a good risk, what is a bad risk? How can you tell the difference? And I found myself, I don't even know how it came back into my mind. I don't even know how it came back into my mind. I remembered sitting on the Pink Panther film. Part of it we filmed in Morocco.
Speaker 2So there I am in the Mamounia Hotel at three o'clock in the morning because I decided I'm never going to catch up with the accounting. I hear a cat, sort of, from the next room. But I know there isn't a cat in the next room because it is the bathroom of the room. So I go in and there's like a closet, two doors that open like that on the far wall, and I open them and it's not a closet, it's a pipe duct. So I look down the pipe duct. It's completely dark. It's got pipes in it going from the top to the bottom. So I go back and I find a flashlight and I come and I'm shining it down and four or five floors lower I see two little eyes looking up at me and, sure enough, that is a kitten. So I thought, well, this is disgusting and smelly and greasy and I'm not going in there.
Speaker 1I'm so sorry cat.
Speaker 2So I go back to the desk and I'm trying to work and it's just meow. In the end I thought, ok, screw it, I will have to rescue the cat, will have to rescue the cat. So I go in, I take off all my clothes, I hold the flashlight in my teeth and I climb down relatively easy four or five floors worth of pipes and I get to the bottom and the cat takes one look at me and it runs away through some horizontal something and I never saw or heard it again and I thought, okay, waste of time. Now I've got to go up and have a shower and so forth. And I started climbing and I couldn't do it and I thought, oh, I am stuck in a pipe shaft of the Mamunia Hotel.
Speaker 2So I went back to the bottom because I'd only managed to get like 10 feet up and I thought, all right, not a time for pride, I'll just shout for help. So I'm shouting and I'm shouting, and I'm shouting. But I think it was built 200 years ago as a royal palace and the walls are like five feet thick and nobody came, nobody heard. Middle of the night I'm screaming, nothing. So I thought, oh well, this is interesting, isn't it? What a strange place to die on a film in a pipe duct in Morocco.
Speaker 1I wonder when they'll find my skeleton, you know After saving a cat, though, so you earned your spot in heaven.
The Pipe Shaft Rescue Story
Speaker 2Well. So I, you know, I thought, okay, well, I'm just going to have to do it very slowly and the key thing seems to be don't slip back. So it took me like two, two and a half hours and I eventually six inches at a time, wedging myself in I get back up and I fall backwards onto the floor of the bathroom and I'm disgusting. I'm covered in black God knows what it was and I get in the shower and I shower and I come out and I get dry and I get dressed and I go and sit at my desk and there's a knock on the door. The sun is coming up, it must be, I don't know. Quarter to six in the morning, something Knock on the door, come in and it's one of my electricians. And it's one of my electricians and he says, oh, so glad you're here, boss, Do you mind if I go through my petty cash with you, Because you know I could use it being replenished? And I said, oh, okay, and I'm sitting there going through receipts with him and I'm thinking he has no idea, I just nearly died trying to rescue a cat.
Speaker 2So in the book I've used it as an example of what is a bad risk. Well, a bad risk, as a young man especially, is the one where you didn't think it through and you might well, odds on, have killed yourself because you know dying not good for the future of your life. No point in having a narrative of the rest of your life, which is a very important thing, but then if you die on page three of your story, not good. So, um, yeah, so I illustrated the life hacks, call them, uh, and I organized it by topic. I also did a word cloud and those words you can see that are a little bit faint, yeah, and there are even very little ones that you can't see properly. Yeah, support, yeah. So the larger the font, the more the book is about it. But it is basically a set of life hacks for young adults, Gen Z, maybe the upper alphas and the lower millennials, but kind of 15 to 30 year olds, and so I thought, oh, I'll have to.
Speaker 2I was expecting nobody would publish it, and you know we think we're having tough times as career producers, you and I. But publishing whoa, that's a whole bad thing. I got an agent, Never had an agent in my whole life before, and the agent goes out with it. He said I love this book. Let me see what I can do. Whole bidding war. I've never had a bidding war. Well, I have on one or two films. But there you go.
Speaker 2It's called Finding Happy. It's on Amazon. Oh, I just had a really funny thing. Simon and Schuster are responsible. They're kind of like the distributor one. I get an email from them. It's going into Target. So on Sunday a few days ago, I'm on the family Zoom with my four kids, etc. And I said yes, your dad's book is going into a new retailer, not just Barnes and Noble and all the ones you would expect, but it's going into Target. There was a silence and my son, the sarcastic one, says where are they going to put it, Dad? And I said I have no idea. Wherever they want to, he said I think you should tell them. A good tip would be put it between the condoms and the plastic cutlery. And I said I think that is actually its natural place in the universe. So maybe they will.
Speaker 1Who knows Fabulous story. It kind of reminds me when we used to put our DVDs at Walmart, right, and our DVDs don't even happen anymore. But it was like, yeah, you want your things at Bloodbuster but then Walmart ends up buying the majority of the things and then they sell them, just like you. But you were lucky, my friend, because I published know, I published my own book as well, called an insider secret master in the Hollywood path, and mine is a little bit more. You know wisdom nuggets, very condensed cliff notes on how to navigate the business, which I also created out of my blogs. And I never thought I would do it, but I actually took a chance, kind of like you in the shoot to save the cat. I actually self-published because I have a lot of bestseller author friends who are like, don't go to a publisher, you're going to make 5% and blah, blah, blah. And so I self-published. But you know there is a purpose for everything in life and now I have a publishing company. So now we're publishing all our IP and all our books and our scripts and everything, turning them into books. Because, as you said, I think there is a resurgence for books. I think people like to have the feel and I love that you're holding the paperback of your book. They like to be able I still do, I mean, I don't you have some Kindle, but I like to hold the book and you, my friend, have so many great tips at the end.
Speaker 1What I love about your chapters for everyone who's going to pick up the book I'm giving you a little preview is that, first of all, he tells you incredible stories of his life, not just, obviously, behind the scenes of the business, like this one that he just heard, but even how he managed to get his foundation going, how he met up with Spielberg, who are his own mentors. But I love that in every single chapter he has a list of questions which you can journal, because what we put down stays and we can revisit, as you said in one of your chapters. And I believe and I love that you have all those great trigger questions for the youth to start reflecting on the kind of humans they want to be. And I have to say one of my favorite chapters is when you talk about your dad. You know like I had to pause because obviously I couldn't read everything in 24 hours, but I did pause to read the whole story about your relationships with your dad, and I loved what you said about there are two lives that will leave, and one is the one that has a beginning, middle and end, and then the other one is what we do in service of others, and to me, like I'm getting truth bumps as I talk about it, and that's why we must ask the question about your philanthropic.
Speaker 1I know you're helping the youth and foster kids. How challenging was that? Because we all know fundraising of any form, whether it's movies or to help people, is crucially hard. So how did you do it?
Speaker 2Well, it's the same toolkit as being a career producer and it has to do with storytelling, because think of what we do. It's raving mad what a film producer has to do. We sell something before it exists. You know, try that in any other walk of life. You are using your mouth and your vocal cords to tell an empathic story in six minutes which will make someone with a checkbook or make a director or make an actor want to be part of your thing. That doesn't exist yet Turns out.
Speaker 2It's easier in nonprofit. Maybe not in the first week, month or year, but once you're up and running, once you have foster kids who are shining examples of how well they do. It's like watching flowers grow after you remove the glass ceiling and give them the reliable grownups and the peer support and unconditional love and so forth. All I have to do these days is I take some potential donor and it could be government, it could be a company or it could be high net worth individual. I just say come have lunch with the kids and me, and I don't even sit at the table with them, I just let them sit there and talk to the kids. Same thing come to a hospital, come and see what Starlight does. You can't not be moved, and it's exactly like being a film producer.
Speaker 2What are we selling? We are selling character identification, where people feel that they care about a fictional character and they want to see them survive. And when we do the second act turn and it all gets horribly wrong, they are dismayed, it's as though they themselves are back footed. And then we have this great victorious third act where it all comes good If it's an American film, or where they get killed if it's a European film. You know we have different sense of what what the third act is supposed to do. So I think it's a similar skill set. It's also that very first day where someone brings you an idea, or you have the idea yourself, or you find a Richardon novel and you think this could be an amazing film. You have to be in love with the idea yourself. You have to be able to see in your mind's eye if I could make this into a film boy.
Speaker 2I think this would have an audience and they would either be scared, shitless or they would laugh like a drain, or they would laugh like a drain, or they would be terribly moved and they would cry. You have to believe it yourself. And my eight nonprofits God help me I you know the three of them that I really run hands on all began with an idea that I thought was incredibly pictureable and strong.
First Star Foundation's Impact
Speaker 2Seriously ill children are sad. Because they are sad, their T-cell count is suppressed and then they don't recover. Seriously ill children experience pain and they dwell on it. If we could distract them, wouldn't that be a good thing? Yeah, it would. Foster kids don't go to college. I think we can get a ton of them in. And indeed, you know, instead of the benchmark of 6%, our most recent crop 89%. Or how about? Perfection is the enemy of the good.
Speaker 2I would love to be able to raise enough money to house the homeless. If you do the math, if you build a hundred bed building, it works out $5 million. That's $50,000 a bed. Multiply that by 100,000 unhoused people in LA County, that's $5 billion. Where does $5 billion dollars come from? I have no idea. Um. So I thought well, I wonder what's the best we could do with 800 bucks ahead. Surely it would have to be better than a damp cardboard box on a rainy night. And sure enough, edar it's the acronym everyone deserves.
Speaker 2Roof, which is a mobile, single user, very attractive, looking, not an eyesore, very comfortable to use. In the daytime you push it around, you do your recycling, whatever, and at night you unfold it and it turns into a two window with a door, to a two window with a door call it what you will, dwelling, and we've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these things all over Skid Row and elsewhere. We have them in Miami and we have them in New Jersey and so on and so forth, and they're 800 bucks, and, yes, on a 10 scale, if the fluffy bed with the duvet in an apartment is a 10 and if the old lady who I met and when I said to her where do you sleep at night, she said come with me, I'll show you.
Speaker 2And she sort of pulled me by the sleeve onto the caltrans land next to the freeway and there, behind the bushes, was a gigantic damp cardboard box with a piece of blue tarp over the top and she said this is where I sleep at night. And on the side of it and this was the epiphany for me on the side of it it said sub-zero. And I thought, oh my God. And I thought, oh my God, I have the refrigerator. She is sleeping in the box.
Speaker 2What is wrong with this story? From a high, I can teach videography Boy. I know how to do that. But also I invented this course that's called Random Acts of Kindness and Pay it Forward, and I teach it to 10th grade, so say 15 years old. And I say okay, a question for you. You're walking along the sidewalk and there is an old woman in rags, fast asleep, face down. What do you do? You have three choices. I want to go around and see which you do. Do you A pause, put a dollar under her arm and walk on. Or B, do you wake her up, give her the dollar and walk on, or C, do you not give her anything? Look the other way and walk straight on past. And it leads to a very vivid conversation. And then I say to them you want to come tomorrow to this class because something remarkable is going to happen to you. Each one of you is going to receive.
Speaker 1I say oh, the $20 story. It's in your chapter. I think that you give them $20, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, no, it's more than that you can't do much with $20. No-transcript unhoused gentleman buy the shoes, or did he buy a big bottle of brandy? Because philanthropy doesn't always work. And they are amazed by this opportunity to realize that they are not the worst off in the world. These are all abused or neglected kids and we get the most amazing little vignette essays. My name is Jose, I'm adding $10 of my own because that makes $210. And down at the shelter it takes $70 for them not to euthanize a dog and I'm going to save three puppies. So that's $210.
Speaker 2and the reason I'm going to save three puppies is the last time I was down there I looked into the eyes of a puppy that had been very badly beaten, almost killed and I saw my own eyes because I was very badly beaten as well. So I'm saving three puppies. Love, jose, or how about this one? My mom is in prison. She did some very bad things and she's in prison for another two years, three months and seven days they always know exactly how much longer and I know she hates the shampoo and I love her very much, so I'm putting the money in her prison account so that she can buy better toiletries.
Speaker 2And as a result of this little class, the kids. I think they're all taller. It's like watching flowers grow. They are given what the psychologists would call agency control. They, to be a foster kid is to be out of control in every direction.
Random Acts of Kindness Program
Speaker 2And, for example, how can you tell who is a homeless or a foster kid in a high school classroom? I will tell you they are the ones with no technology at all. Why not? Well, because nobody, nobody, um bought them a laptop, whatever. Uh, day one of our ninth grade, every single one of them gets a brand new laptop. Uh, where you have to unpack it. Um, and it's partly because you can't exist as a teenager without technology these days. But in addition, um, of course you should have one. You're, you're, you're an adult, you're, you're, uh, an American, and you shouldn't be the only kid in the class who doesn't have one. Um, we do that. The other thing we do in that first week is I say we need a drum roll, and they all go like this and the door opens and in through the door comes a conga line of rollerboard, beautiful rollerboard suitcases which we get donated, and every one of our kids gets a rollerboard to put their stuff in. Why? Well, because what we normally give in this country to foster kids is a trash bag. What does it say to your soul if your worldly belongings, your clothes, your shoes, your poetry, your diary and your music and maybe your instrument, are only deemed worthy by the system of going into a trash bag? Not good. So it's a cruel old world. But what I've said in the book, if you want to find happy, you know there's like 50 things that are building blocks of being happy, for good and bad life experience says to me that if you want to be happy, get out of your space and go and help someone. Yes, cross the street and help someone, and I know that that class Random Acts of Kindness and Pay it Forward. I know it works because the kids do it without us telling them to every day.
Speaker 2You see examples we had a Christmas party on Westwood Boulevard and somebody donated a very posh restaurant and we had, I should think, probably two full cohorts of 60 of our scholars, and then we had alumni and we had donors and we had staff and so forth and we had a big, big, wonderful lunch. And we're standing outside afterwards on the sidewalk waiting for the university vans. So we're standing there and we're still waiting for the vans. So we're standing there and we're still waiting for the vans. And out of the corner of my eye I see Michael, a troubled young man sidling away from the group, going off up the sidewalk and I'm thinking where is he going? Is he doing a runner, as we would say in England? Is he running away? And I'm getting ready to grab one of the youth coaches, who are either undergraduates or grad students who we hire, and I'm going to send him to go and get Michael to come back. And then Michael stops and indeed there is an unhoused man asleep on the sidewalk and Michael goes up to him, does not wake him up and puts the cupcake in the crook of his arm and then sidles back to us because he doesn't want anyone to notice and I thought, oh, he listened.
Speaker 2In that class we talk about Maimonides, the great rabbi, with the pyramid of giving. Don't give a man fish. Teach him to fish. That helps you be at the top. And don't do it for the signage. The highest form of giving is anonymous, and if you have your name in gold letters on the wall or the building, that puts you right down the least valuable of the philanthropy and it really works. And part of being nurtured is you're not just getting the academics or the life skills, you're being a plate. You've been given a place called home and we say to them it's a ladder. You know, don't worry, if you fall off, we'll put you back. Nobody leaves the ladder except through the top. You're the only one who can walk up the steps, so do your homework.
Speaker 1Oh, my goodness, what an incredible story. And you know what I mean. Everybody you got to get a copy of this book. Not going to say, but speaking of again you.
Speaker 1Obviously your life messaging is being a mentor and helping the people, and I think our In our little, you know, job as producers, I think we're also acting as mentors when we are creating films and television shows that are going to set an example or maybe inspire that Michael Kidd or whatever to do something about their life.
Speaker 1And unfortunately, you and I know that a lot of the movies and the series that are being put today, they're certainly not giving that messaging, sadly. So my question to you is you have done some films that have been significant in so many ways, from making you laugh and telling you that you can be a nerd but you can become popular, to telling you about legends like Osterweil, to telling you like how can you, you know, take responsibility, like in Arlington Road, when something shit is going to go down in your country? You are an immigrant, as I am. You know you have a chapter about loving our country and doing something, and democracy and immigration and all of that. Is there a film in your career that you are specifically or most proud of. And I know it's hard to pick one of your babies and say this is my favorite, but is there one from all the films you've done?
Speaker 2Well, every film that I work on now has a double bottom line. I believe, at least at the beginning, that it's commercial. You know that I'm not lying to raise the money. I think they'll get their money back and make a good profit. But also I have to believe that if this film exists in the world, we will be able to do something important with it.
Speaker 2And we partner on every film with between one and three 501c3 non-profits. Example, we're working on one about um, the great extinction. Uh, with the world wildlife fund. We're working on a different one with the american cancer society. We've got another one coming up which is designed to encourage people who know that there is going to be a school shooting to do something about it, uh, before it happens. And we're partnered or about to be part. I better not say who they are, but there's a wonderful charity which was founded by the surviving parents of the victims of a school shooting back east, and we're in discussions with them at the moment. So I believe films not every film. You know I've made distractive entertainment, but even when I did Revenge of the Nerds, you know nerds deserve love too. Exactly, you know, nerds turn out to own multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley companies.
Speaker 1I have one last question before we get to the actual two last questions, the preface to the last question of the show, which I'm curious because what would you tell your younger self today? I just want to know. It's not part of the last question segment that comes later, right after this, but what would you tell your younger self today? I'm just want to know. It's not part of the last question segment that comes later, right after this, but what would you tell your younger self today?
Speaker 2Well, if we had worked out how to put it in fewer words, kind of the log line yes, If we did a film poster would have been what I know now that I wish to God.
Speaker 2I knew when I was 18. So, and we talked a lot about that and it's like the unofficial log line. I think that it is possible in parallel to build a life, your education, a career, a family, buy a house, put food on the table with one part of your brain while you help other people. And I believe that by helping other people it's kind of like ripples on a pond, that by helping other people it's kind of like ripples on a pond. And when you help someone who then helps someone else, who helps three people, who help 10 people, who help 100 people, you are in them when they do that and I think that is the closest I can get to the meaning of life.
Speaker 2Closest I can get to the meaning of life and the book talks about that I, when I founded the Starlight Children's Foundation, I did it because my cousin introduced me to a little boy who was British and who was dying and whose wish was to go to Disneyland. And we flew him and his mom over and everyone moved into my apartment back when I was single and we had a fine old time and he went home and he passed away and we realized this was certainly, for a film producer, quite straightforward to do and it wasn't difficult and we had made his mom happy and she had something to remember him by that wasn't him in a hospital bed with a tube up his nose dying. And we made ourselves happy and I called a meeting because, in the end, what is in the toolkit of a career producer? We call meetings. You know we are the convener. So I called a meeting and I thought, okay, I need to crew, I need to cast this meeting. I need a lawyer, I need an accountant, I need a graphic designer, I need a publicist, I need an organizer, I need a person who understands hospital politics and I need a couple of doctors, so I had them all there. Boyer said so what do you want me to call it for? The? You know, incorporating it and getting the 501c3? I said I haven't given it any thought at all.
Speaker 2And there was this young lady, so beautiful, and I had one date with her and then, because I was a shit or busy or something, I hadn't called her and I had phoned her up and said hello, remember me. I am so sorry I didn't call you my bad, awful, awful, I apologize. And she said, yes, I was disappointed in you. And I said with good reason. And I said, oh, by the way, I've got this charity meeting. I need an accountant. Could you please, please, please, pretty, please, could you come? So she came to the meeting and when the lawyer said what do you want to call it, the accounting lady, the pretty one, said you know that children's rhyme starlight star, bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight. She said why don't we call it the starlight children's foundation? And that's what we did and the example I've given in the book of why there's a whole chapter that's called selflessness, can be selfish and that is a good thing.
Speaker 2So that was our second date, that organizing meeting, and then there was a third and a fifth and a tenth date, and then it was Christmas.
Films with Double Bottom Line
Speaker 2And then it was Christmas and we threw a party for seriously ill children in County USC Medical Center, in the children's ward, and some of the kids were so ill that they had to be wheeled in in their hospital beds and we had a live band and everyone was having a fine old time and there was one little girl who was terribly, terribly ill, who was dancing in her bed horizontally and we had these adult animal costumes that had been donated to a second hand by SeaWorld and one of them was a dolphin and inside this life-sized costume was the accounting lady who I was dating and I looked in through the little kind of grill in its chest and there was her little face and she was crying big, we weepy tears and all the mascara had gone down her cheeks and I was thunderstruck and I thought, oh good god, I love this person. Anyway, she is the mother of my children. We've been married 40 years. Um, there you go. And she's two, two rooms over.
Speaker 2So there you go I had this benefit from the starlight children's foundation which, as always, um you know, over all those years has raised well over a billion dollars in australia and canada, the united states and the uk, and it's helped hundreds of thousands of children and their moms and dads and siblings. Because the original idea these kids are sad, that's bad. How do we make them happy?
Speaker 1that is still what we do oh, what a perfect ending to this podcast. And of course, I'm going to drop in all the links to all your foundations for people to find out more about it, to support financially, time donations, you know, participation, whatever it is, because, like you said, that's what producers do they convene, they build teams, they have a big vision for what could be that hasn't materialized yet, and we make that happen, whether it's a movie, a TV show, a foundation or just writing a book that is going to help foster kids to believe in themselves and believe in a better future. It's been so lovely to have you on my show. You know what's coming. It's the last two little bits of questions, which is how do you define yourself in three words? And I think you've already given me the life mantra in the previous story. So how do you define yourself in three words? And I think you've already given me the life mantra in the previous story. So how do you define yourself in three words?
Speaker 2Career producer, philanthropist or, if you take away two words, dad of four splendid young adults, grandpa to three splendid grandchildren.
Speaker 1Oh, you covered it all. It has been so lovely to have you. I would have had you for 2020 podcast shows because you have so many incredible stories. I might have to invite you again, who knows?
Speaker 2you know I I listen you and I go back into the 1990s yes, into the good day good days, we must have been children.
Speaker 1Yes, and we all went to the Harvey Weinstein vote, but nobody got raped and nobody got abused. We're good, we're here, but we have stories I'm sure to share in another podcast, which will be salacious, but for now, try to get happy, and by Finding Happy by Peter Samuelson, if everybody enjoyed this podcast, please do subscribe. Rate review. I don't have to stress it enough. I make zero money off of this. It's my little 501c that I don't have, but it's symbolically what it is and that's exactly what we do. We're trying to make the world a better place, and so here we are. So thank you, peter.
Speaker 2Thank you for having me on Kindred Souls with the Carlton Hotel in the backdrop Fantastic, thank you. And it's Finding Happy and my website is samuelsonla and more than any one of you ever wanted to know is right there.
Speaker 1Oh, thank you so much, so very much. And this is the heart of show business, over and out. Okay, it stopped. Okay, it's stopped. Okay, it's been so fun to have you on. I was just like trying to stop on my little thing, but oh, what a lovely episode. There's so many wisdom nuggets. We'll promote the heck out of it. We'll send you lots of little audiogram clips for your Instagram and all of that, and then you're in LA, obviously. So, yes, absolutely, let's have a proper lunch, get together to talk about I?
The Starlight Children's Foundation Story
Speaker 2it'd be my pleasure. I've just emailed you. Okay, I'm working on at the moment okay because you said the fatal words and I still represent some of the big european companies for co-productions and things like that. Yeah, um, so you know who eduardo ponti is?
Speaker 1yes, of course he's a friend of mine. Oh my god, I've known eduardo forever and I have developed.
Speaker 2Uh, you know who richard condon was yes, of course yeah yeah, prince's honor. Yeah, of course, prince's Honor. Yeah, okay. His best novel that nobody made so we're going to, is called An Infinity of Mirrors. It's a thriller, but it's also Romeo and Juliet. In Berlin in the early 1930s, who falls in love with a dashing, handsome German panzer tank officer?
Speaker 1Oh, wow.
Speaker 2As the backdrop is Hitler comes to power. Don't worry about a thing, you are married Now. He becomes a general and she I won't tell you the rest of it, but it's the most amazing script and eduardo is the perfect director for it. And what we need yeah, we want it would lend itself to being a co-production with an italian or german or french, um, big distributor production entity kind of thing. And I just thought you might like it.
Speaker 2And, furthermore, you don't even have to. I sent you the script, but you don't have to read the script.
Speaker 1No, please do. I mean, you know what I like. I said I always love the peer to peer collabs because you know I may know somebody that that could be the perfect fit. There's no competition, it's we're all trying to do something that is meaningful. And yeah, no, I'll definitely take a look at it because I could already think of a few people that could be right eduardo's.
Speaker 2Eduardo has made a sizzle reel and I probably link to that in as well, which is the quick way of grokking it and I, and in return, I'm going to send you the pitch deck of the monkey club, because I am in desperate need and if it's not you, maybe you have someone to suggest of a british producer, because it is a legendary finishing school in london.
Speaker 1There is so much history to it. My mom has an angle about the people that cross her life. It's not by. It's a little like Queen's Gambit meets the crown, meets sex in the city. So it's it's in a very important moment where all this girls could change the world and they were all coming from very powerful families. And you know I've been trying to try to access the UK. You know for UK film funds and the different development funds, but you do need a British producer. As you know for uk film funds and the different development funds, but you do need a british producer, as you know, to check mark the cultural things. And I would love to send you the deck and maybe, if you think that it's something either that you can put some dots together or you know someone that could, it would be amazing because you know the games.
Speaker 2You know, I promise to take a look.
Speaker 1It will take me a little bit of time because I'm doing like four podcasts and three don't worry, and me too, I'm taking, I'm taking a little, I'm taking it slow this summer too, because I know everybody's on vacation, as we all know, especially in Europe. But no, I'll, I'll, definitely. I don't ask you to see it like tomorrow, but I would love to get your thoughts on it as well, because you know the games. You know, I went to Emma Thompson's people in the UK and then they sent it to CAA, and then you know, and they're like, oh, but, but I'm like, I'm European, I'm, yes, I'm an American, but this is your side. And then they play the games. You know how it is Like oh my God.
Speaker 2I do. I didn't say I wouldn't say it in public, but the people in our industries who don't have souls usually have something to do with an agency that has three letters in its name.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, who's reminiscing of something, of Star Wars especially?
Speaker 2Ha ha ha. All right, it was so good Onwards, we roll so great to see your lovely face, you too. And let me know and we'll blast it. We've got a social media guy who's working 15 hours a day. God bless him. I love it. We'll blast it in every direction.
Speaker 1I love it. I'll be sending it to you a week before launch. I'll send you the audiograms and the cover of the thing and then I'll send you the drop, the live links when it's live Okay, usually I have 24 hours before, but you will know the date, so okay.
Speaker 2Thank you so much.
Speaker 1Bye, alexia, listening to this week's episode of the heart of show business. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can also subscribe, rate and review the show on your favorite podcast player. If you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at the heart of show businesscom.