Peter Guber
Peter Guber
Howard Peter Guber is an executive, entrepreneur, educator, and author. He is Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. Guber's most recent films from Mandalay Entertainment include The Kids Are All Right, Soul Surfer, and Bernie. He has also produced Batman, The Witches of Eastwick, and Flashdance. Guber's films have earned over $3 billion worldwide and 50 Academy Award nominations...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionProducer
Date of Birth1 March 1942
CountryUnited States of America
The reality is that every movie is a new business. Nobody says, 'Hey, let's go down to the Pantages Theater, I hear a Warner Brothers picture is playing there.' Or, 'Let's go to this theater, I hear the film came in on budget.' It'd be ridiculous.
So when you tell a joke, you want to make someone laugh, or if you tell a story about someone who had a heart attack, it may be because you want the listener to exercise. Stories are tools to create social cohesion and to get humans to strategize together.
With a purposeful story, you can change a "wanna be" to a "gonna be" to a "be".
Good storytelling is harder than it sounds, but the easy part is that everyone has the ability to do it. ...Tap into it.
There are no rules, but you break them at your peril.
I think any new technology that helps connect and create social cohesion is great. But at the end of the day, you and I are analog creatures. We have to take 'oohs and aahs' and convert them to 0s and 1s and then convert them back to 'oohs and aahs.' Narratives that work in social networks are the exchange of stories that are told well.
Most young people haven't used their storytelling skills since they were 8 or 9 or 10 and wanted to persuade Mom and Dad to take them to the ball game.
My mom used to tell me stories at night, read books to me - and I read 'em over and over and over again. And you know what I learned from that? I went back and looked at everything - Why do I like reading the same stories over and over and over again? What, was I some kind of nincompoop? No - the narrative gave me connection with my mom.
I've worked with Jack Warner and Jimmy Stewart - and Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp twice. I've had dinners with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.
The Internet is an audience of one, a million times over.
Stories aren't the icing on the cake; they are the cake!