Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Entertainment Series 3: Eric Kline / Film Production and Creativity

Transcript

Entertainment Series 3: Eric Kline / Film Production and Creativity · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we are live with Eric Klein. Eric, welcome to Mr. Klein.
• 0:19
  Rather, thank you so much for joining me.
• 0:20
  I really appreciate it. Thanks for making the time.
• 0:22
  How are you today? I'm great, thanks for having me
• 0:25
  on the show. Of course, of course, I'm so
• 0:29
  happy to have you here. So you, I, I did some, I did
• 0:32
  some homework on, on your, on your pretty illustrious career,
• 0:37
  I guess over the last 35 years. And one thing that I, that I
• 0:42
  really found to be so impressive and so creative and so
• 0:46
  entrepreneurial is that it, it looks to me at least that you've
• 0:51
  got this amazing skill of storytelling and particularly
• 0:56
  behind the camera. And then and you, and then, and
• 0:59
  then there's actual application of however anyone wants a story
• 1:03
  to be told, right? And story time can be done in a
• 1:06
  ton of different ways. We've done the marketing can be
• 1:07
  done as music videos. It can be done as a documentary
• 1:10
  or as a film. And so I just wanted to ask, I
• 1:15
  guess when you got started off in this industry, was there a
• 1:21
  particular, was there a particular passion that you had,
• 1:23
  a particular direction you wanted ahead and how did you get
• 1:26
  to be, how did you get to wear so many hats?
• 1:28
  Yeah, Well, yeah, Thank you. First off, you know, I
• 1:32
  definitely was enamored with music and music videos.
• 1:36
  I was sort of influenced by, you know, one of my older cousins
• 1:39
  who was a singer-songwriter and veterinarian out in LA named Doc
• 1:44
  Lawrence. And he gave me a guitar when I
• 1:47
  was 17. And so it turned me on to
• 1:51
  Springsteen and Bon Jovi and all that.
• 1:54
  So I was really, I was really into the singer-songwriter.
• 1:58
  And when I got into college, I started to pursue doing visuals
• 2:02
  to augment, you know, MTV was, was sort of a fever pitch in the
• 2:06
  late 80s, having started in 81. So, you know, I started doing a
• 2:12
  lot of music videos for college and whatnot.
• 2:14
  And my senior project was, was one of my cousin's songs, Go,
• 2:18
  Where did the sound go? And it was, you know, we were at
• 2:22
  FIU at the time. And so we were down in Miami and
• 2:26
  it lended itself. It was a homeless themed video.
• 2:30
  You know, you're a little young, you may not remember, but the
• 2:32
  Camillus House, which is still there, but it's a much bigger
• 2:36
  building. It was for homeless that people
• 2:38
  would come in and literally across the way from the old
• 2:42
  Miami Arena. So we went down there, I don't
• 2:47
  know, 7 or 8 times during the course of the semester and shot
• 2:51
  hours and hours of just B roll of, you know, the homeless
• 2:54
  flight of the homeless and dot dot dot became a music video
• 2:58
  and, and that, you know, started.
• 3:00
  I was like, wow, this is, you know, it's a great feeling to to
• 3:03
  take someone's song and, and create visuals for it.
• 3:07
  And so I started to pursue that path pretty passionately.
• 3:11
  And then, you know, that led me to meet Max Goose, who was at
• 3:18
  FIU at the time and, and Max introduced me to Video Jukebox
• 3:22
  Network, which became the box. And that was sort of the
• 3:24
  beginning of my career in 1991. Wow, wow, wow, wow.
• 3:32
  There's a whole lot to unpack over there.
• 3:33
  First of all, I love the, I love the, what do you call?
• 3:37
  I love the, the music influence first, especially because, and I
• 3:40
  mean that while you were speaking once.
• 3:43
  I'm a massive Springsteen fan myself.
• 3:45
  Yeah. I could say safely that he had
• 3:48
  changed my life when I was 21. I was, I graduated college.
• 3:52
  I was lost. I had no idea what I wanted to
• 3:54
  do with myself. I had a quid writing and
• 3:56
  literature degree. And my uncle had passed away and
• 4:00
  my grandfather giving me a bunch of his records, his old vinyls,
• 4:03
  and I got my hands. I'm born to run.
• 4:05
  There you go. And one of the first things that
• 4:07
  I, oh, yeah. And one of the first things I
• 4:10
  and that I, that I would look at, look at while I was reading
• 4:13
  the book. I was reading the, the lyrics,
• 4:15
  you know, on this, on the record sleeve while I was playing.
• 4:17
  It was how cinematic the entire album was and how all his how
• 4:23
  all his lyrics and poetry would just create this, you know,
• 4:27
  these scenes and vibrant images in my head and and, you know,
• 4:31
  and, and I really, and then, you know, I really felt that he was,
• 4:34
  I felt that he could have been a movie, you know, a screenwriter.
• 4:36
  I felt like he could have really come up with some, you know, the
• 4:39
  whole Born to Run album could have really been a film, you
• 4:43
  know, and it would have been amazing.
• 4:44
  Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's such a, it's an interesting
• 4:47
  point. I mean, born to run, it was like
• 4:50
  a Seminole moment in his career for me.
• 4:52
  It's like, you know, the river born to run or born in the USA.
• 4:56
  Those are my, you know, I mean, Bruce was like you, you know,
• 5:00
  just such an incredible inspiration to me.
• 5:04
  You know, just the messages of of what he was, you know,
• 5:07
  illustrating. I got into him in the Born in
• 5:10
  the USA era and I sort of went back and, and now, you know, now
• 5:15
  he's, you know, he's always been a socially conscious guy.
• 5:18
  And that really fed into, you know, what I was trying to do as
• 5:21
  well as a younger kid, you know, with like we are, if you
• 5:25
  remember, we are the world, which again, was sort of before
• 5:28
  your era, but I was really influenced and that was right
• 5:32
  around the time, you know, I was in high school.
• 5:34
  So Bruce has been much like yourself, just an, you know, an
• 5:39
  immeasurable influence to me. Yeah, that was he watched that
• 5:44
  documentary that was released on Amazon recently, about maybe a
• 5:47
  year ago. About yeah, the road, the world.
• 5:50
  I thought that was yeah, Rd. Diary was great, yeah.
• 5:52
  And then now in October, they've got really the first biopic, you
• 5:57
  know, depicting the, you know, the Nebraska and what would be
• 6:02
  the Born in the USA sessions coming out.
• 6:04
  Deliver me from nowhere. So yeah, incredible.
• 6:08
  Yeah, I'm very excited about that.
• 6:09
  Oh yeah, I'm very. Excited.
• 6:10
  Oh yeah, me too. What's what's the gentleman's
• 6:13
  name that's starring? I forgot his name.
• 6:16
  He he was great in the bear. Great actors.
• 6:18
  An iron claw. Jeremy.
• 6:20
  Jeremy Allen. White Yeah.
• 6:21
  Jeremy Allen White. I just saw the first trailer to
• 6:24
  it yesterday. It's incredible.
• 6:27
  Awesome. I'm very excited about it.
• 6:29
  Yeah, I'm very excited about it. What kind of what kind of
• 6:31
  homework do you do? I know obviously based on the
• 6:34
  project it, you know, because I know I want to talk to you a
• 6:37
  little bit about two heads or better than one also.
• 6:40
  But in terms of the, I mean, you know, whether you're making a
• 6:45
  music video or a documentary or, you know, you're just trying to
• 6:49
  think about a project, you know, what kind of what kind of
• 6:51
  homework do you have to do based on each assignment that you do?
• 6:55
  And you know, is it is it, is it research?
• 6:59
  Is it interviews? Is it like what you did with
• 7:01
  your first, with your first, you know, music video where you kind
• 7:05
  of just camp out and get a lot of footage?
• 7:07
  Yeah, no, it's a good question. I you know, it depends on the
• 7:10
  situation. I mean, and you know, 30, you
• 7:13
  know, 36 years later, you know, after doing that music video and
• 7:18
  you know, just it's a different universe today, but you know, we
• 7:21
  have access to more information. Sometimes it's not all real
• 7:24
  information, of course, with the Internet.
• 7:27
  But no, I absolutely try to do a lot of homework on on everything
• 7:30
  I do. You know, if I can meet the the
• 7:34
  artist or the individual, the subject, you get really a better
• 7:38
  sense, you know, in person to me with everything, whether it's
• 7:42
  this or, you know, going the other extreme of, you know,
• 7:45
  dating people or, you know, business partnerships that
• 7:48
  people do virtually. It's it's almost, you know, if
• 7:51
  you don't have that sense of who they are as an individual or
• 7:55
  what they're trying to communicate, you know, that that
• 7:57
  to me is paramount. And then, you know, research is,
• 8:01
  is obviously important, looking at their prior work and, and
• 8:05
  what or music or whatever the situation would be.
• 8:08
  And sometimes it's a little tougher if they're not in your
• 8:11
  state. So I tend to be more fluid as
• 8:13
  to, you know, being able to travel these days.
• 8:17
  Now that we're, you know, I mean, it's great to, to do stuff
• 8:20
  like this, which, you know, I mean, you and I are based in the
• 8:23
  same state, even though I'm all over the place.
• 8:25
  But you know, we're going to hopefully get a high quality
• 8:29
  product for your podcast and, you know, just doing audio.
• 8:32
  So it's, I think flexibility is the key.
• 8:35
  You know, in, in, in this day and age and different, different
• 8:39
  generations, you know, my parents generation, your parents
• 8:42
  generation, you know, my generation, yours, you know,
• 8:45
  everything's a little different. So having flexibility, I think
• 8:49
  is really the key. But I pretty much do whatever I
• 8:51
  have to do to get a sense of, you know, inside the artist's
• 8:56
  head or inside the subjects, you know, mind at that point.
• 9:01
  Right. And when you look at these
• 9:03
  projects, do you look at that, for example, if someone hires
• 9:05
  you to do a music video, you know, are you looking at this
• 9:11
  typically? I have you found often that they
• 9:13
  want creative control over, you know, the, I guess the
• 9:17
  cinematography or they, you know, they tend to just be kind
• 9:21
  of hands off and just want to see the final product that you
• 9:22
  come up with. Yeah.
• 9:23
  Because I can imagine that. Yeah.
• 9:25
  Yeah. You know, it's a good question.
• 9:27
  I think back in in the 90s when I started, you know, the budgets
• 9:33
  were significantly large and they are now course technology
• 9:37
  is is driven it down in terms of the cost to do these things.
• 9:42
  Still though, you can, you can look at, you know, a music video
• 9:45
  today and you can see the quality on the camera or on
• 9:48
  screen. Excuse me or or not, but yeah.
• 9:51
  I mean, it's like back then you would deal with the artist and
• 9:55
  then you would deal with the record company and vis A vis
• 9:57
  the, you know, the manager. So whether it's like Mariah or
• 10:01
  Bon Jovi, it's like, you know, I'm dealing with the label and
• 10:04
  then I'm sitting with the artist, working with the artist
• 10:07
  and you know, they would feed through, you know, their manager
• 10:10
  in some cases. Call me.
• 10:11
  Hey, Eric, you know, let's chat about this and you know, it's,
• 10:14
  it's a, it's an integration of, of everybody's ideas.
• 10:19
  You're there to help execute against an idea with which you
• 10:22
  pitched. So you're basically submit a
• 10:25
  pitch to the cons for the concept.
• 10:28
  The the label first looks at a manager artist and and then they
• 10:31
  say, Hey, we like this. Let's let's work around that.
• 10:35
  And you know, it's and then it becomes, you know, first first
• 10:38
  cut, second cut, final cut. You know, when you're a
• 10:42
  director, producer for an artist is always that process.
• 10:49
  When you're doing a documentary, most of the time you know the
• 10:54
  subject is not really involved other than you know, they're
• 10:59
  talking, you're getting information background and then
• 11:02
  they're them or their representative will have and you
• 11:05
  want them to have an input as things you know, you start
• 11:10
  editing and what not. So it's always a, it's a
• 11:13
  collaborative process and I like that.
• 11:16
  I'm not against that. I think artists today have more
• 11:20
  artists on the music side have more creative control because a
• 11:24
  lot of the times they're paying for the music videos directly
• 11:28
  and certainly indirectly as a recoupment of, you know, the
• 11:31
  money that say, Columbia Records or Sony's going to put out.
• 11:34
  So it just depends on the dynamic when you're dealing with
• 11:37
  the streamer streaming situation like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu.
• 11:42
  If you go to them with a project and you sell it to them, it's
• 11:46
  one thing. If you they pay for it, they are
• 11:50
  absolutely integrated into the entire process.
• 11:56
  Sure, and they're going to do whatever they want with well.
• 11:57
  I don't know, whatever they want, I think it's, again, you
• 12:00
  know, they're going to have final say unless there's a, you
• 12:04
  know, big name attached to it, you know, say an artist attached
• 12:08
  to it. It just depends on the
• 12:09
  situation. But you know the old saying,
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  whoever you know, whoever's paying the bills has the final
• 12:16
  say so. Oh, yeah.
• 12:18
  Oh, yeah. Money talks, Lenny.
• 12:22
  Lenny certainly talks when it comes to documentaries.
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  I feel like, you know, and I guess you made that point.
• 12:27
  I even think about it while you were talking about it, but when
• 12:30
  it comes to documentaries, I guess there would be some kind
• 12:34
  of conflict of interest, right? If someone's getting them, you
• 12:37
  know, especially if the individual is alive or if
• 12:39
  they're fit, if you're dealing with their estate, then, you
• 12:42
  know, there might be something that makes them, you know, not
• 12:44
  look as great as they would have wanted.
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  Or maybe they, you know, misunderstood or misrepresented.
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  You know, how do you deal with with, do you ever have to deal
• 12:52
  with those kind of conflicts? And if you do, how do you work?
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  How do you work with them around?
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  That, you know, back in the in the 90s, I would do, you know,
• 12:59
  these shorter documentaries like, you know, again, you know,
• 13:04
  there's their layers of people with an art with a big name
• 13:08
  artist, say like Mariah Carey, we did a documentary on her in
• 13:11
  Japan. And so there were a lot of
• 13:14
  layers to that, but it was pretty seamless ultimately
• 13:17
  because it's. Yeah, we all had the same goal
• 13:19
  in mind, really no conflict of interest.
• 13:23
  Like you said, if someone passes away, are you doing something on
• 13:27
  somebody that has passed away, let's say like Tupac or, and you
• 13:31
  know, whoever it may be, you know, then you deal like you're
• 13:35
  saying with their estate and they're the legal people with
• 13:38
  the estate or the, you know, the, the, the parents or the
• 13:42
  siblings or, you know, the descendants of the individual.
• 13:46
  But I haven't really had to deal with that per SE, you know, at
• 13:49
  this point. But you know, we have a, a big
• 13:52
  project I'll share with you once.
• 13:54
  We'll maybe we'll do another one of these when it comes out, But
• 13:57
  I'm going to be dealing with, with a mix of, you know,
• 14:00
  yesterday, today and, and tomorrow's artists.
• 14:04
  So you know, it, it's you have to sort of be cognizant that,
• 14:09
  you know, people's images are there and you have to respect
• 14:13
  it. Unfortunately, we're in a
• 14:15
  climate now where you know, most of the the news driven things
• 14:20
  are the social media driven things.
• 14:21
  And I'm on social. So I'm not one of these guys
• 14:24
  that go out, you know, I'm in my 50s.
• 14:25
  I'm not going to be on social media now I'm on, I'm in
• 14:28
  engaged. I work it, I use it, you know,
• 14:31
  and and I network on you network on it, and but I see, I also see
• 14:35
  what you know, algorithmically. It's very difficult to, you
• 14:39
  know, say that things are positive out there, but you
• 14:42
  know, there's there's some some interesting dynamics.
• 14:45
  I mean creative, you know, people today have more outlets
• 14:49
  than ever, but when you get to the right, like your question,
• 14:53
  you know, is illustrating, you get to the rights of someone
• 14:57
  that passed away. It's a whole nother legal
• 14:59
  dynamic. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:02
  And one that's pretty complicated, I'm sure.
• 15:04
  So it must have been a pretty big pivot, I imagine.
• 15:08
  I mean, it's interesting because it looks like you got a really
• 15:10
  wide range of, you know, I guess emotionally charged or I guess,
• 15:17
  you know, there's different types of projects that you've
• 15:20
  done, ranging from music videos, documentaries, and, you know,
• 15:23
  and I want to talk to you about the Holocaust in the, in the
• 15:27
  projects that you're working on now, because one thing that I've
• 15:30
  noticed actually, so I, I actually teach part time, I
• 15:33
  teach high school English part time.
• 15:35
  OK. In a Jewish school in North
• 15:36
  Miami Beach, Nice. And and my grandfather who just
• 15:39
  passed away, I think two years ago now at 92 or 3 was, was a
• 15:45
  was a Holocaust survivor. He was in the he was actually in
• 15:47
  the Soviet labor camps during the war.
• 15:49
  And my grandmother had passed away a long time ago, maybe 25
• 15:53
  years ago. She was actually, she was
• 15:55
  actually in some of the concentration camps and she, you
• 15:58
  know, she was passed around through there and ultimately ran
• 16:01
  away and was living in the forest.
• 16:03
  But I've what I've found is that it feels like even in the last
• 16:07
  decade, and I'm sure that's my parents and for, you know, my
• 16:10
  mom and for, you know, that, you know, my generation, it feels
• 16:15
  like something slipped where people kind of just either
• 16:17
  forgot about the Holocaust or it went straight into ancient
• 16:21
  history. You know, like you may as well
• 16:22
  say Christopher Columbus in the same sentence to a lot of these
• 16:24
  people, a lot of kids today, you know, and I think that, and I'm
• 16:29
  curious what your thoughts are and you know, what the research
• 16:33
  was like in your, in your newest, in your newest project.
• 16:36
  And, you know, I mean, I, and one of the biggest challenges,
• 16:39
  I'm sure, you know, just in terms of logistics is that the
• 16:43
  generation of survivors are pretty much all extremely,
• 16:47
  extremely old. And they're, you know, mid to
• 16:49
  late 90s are passed away already.
• 16:51
  So you want to tell me a little bit about that?
• 16:52
  Yeah, well, you know, I started working.
• 16:56
  I had a client that I developed, I had a friendship with here in,
• 17:01
  in, in Florida. He was in South Florida.
• 17:05
  I'm not in South Florida right now, but I'm based there.
• 17:08
  And Yaakov Heller, who's a, you know, at that point, he was like
• 17:12
  75 in or so and he was still a globally renowned artist and
• 17:17
  started working with him, got hired to create.
• 17:21
  He had no video, no visual representation of, of his work
• 17:25
  other than pictures and whatnot. You know, he'd been doing it at
• 17:28
  that point since he was a young kid.
• 17:30
  And he was, you know, world renowned, but very, very few
• 17:33
  people outside of, you know, I would say his, the people that
• 17:37
  already knew him, we're going to find out about him.
• 17:39
  But he had a big, big social media following.
• 17:42
  So we started working together and and he had, you know,
• 17:46
  several being he was actually born in Cleveland, but he, you
• 17:50
  know, made his name for himself to being an Israeli artist, even
• 17:54
  though he's not technically Israeli.
• 17:56
  So interesting. And so I started developing some
• 18:00
  ideas to do short documentaries on his items, the making of his
• 18:04
  items. And yeah, so he would we'd go
• 18:09
  back retrospectively and, you know, things that were made and
• 18:12
  he talked about it. And I noticed, you know, not and
• 18:15
  not everything was Holocaust related.
• 18:17
  But the big thing was this garden of humanity that he was
• 18:20
  commissioned to create, which is really not just about the
• 18:24
  Holocaust, but, you know, dealt with the all the atrocities of
• 18:28
  the 20th century mixed into one beautiful garden, if you will.
• 18:35
  And they had different benches with different sayings on them
• 18:39
  and from world leaders to pop culture fig figures.
• 18:43
  And then Benjamin Ferenz, who I had no idea who he was.
• 18:47
  And so Yaakov had had sent me some information about Ben.
• 18:50
  I started researching Ben to your question from a few a few
• 18:54
  questions ago. And I was, I found like a video
• 18:59
  of him. It looked like it was a Ted
• 19:01
  video, Ted X video. And he'd, he'd done it like in
• 19:05
  his in his living room and, and it was, it was incredible.
• 19:07
  This guy was like 95 or whatever he was at the time when he did
• 19:10
  it. And I was like, you know, and
• 19:13
  he's talking about the Holocaust and what he lived through.
• 19:15
  And he tried the Nazis. And I was like, wow, this guy's,
• 19:18
  you know, incredible. So I said to Yaakov, I said,
• 19:21
  well, we should, you know, bring him down here to the Garden of
• 19:24
  Humanity. And because while he was here
• 19:27
  once before, when, you know, we unveiled it and I said, I know,
• 19:31
  but now we can talk about with you and him.
• 19:33
  And so I, we brought him down. He was living in Delray at the
• 19:37
  time and came down with his, with his son had come into town
• 19:41
  and I'm here he is. He's little man, 4 foot 11.
• 19:46
  But he was like, you know, such a giant in the world if you, if
• 19:49
  you research him. And again, I hadn't didn't know
• 19:52
  much about him, but I'll tell you just the 2-3 hours we spent
• 19:55
  with him. You learn so much about history
• 19:58
  and he's sort of reflecting, looking back as we're going
• 20:02
  through the garden of humanity. There's, you know, the all the
• 20:05
  different things that Yaakov created in the garden that you
• 20:09
  talk about, you know, the flame and, and.
• 20:11
  The busts and the things of nature that, you know, reflect
• 20:15
  what happened during the Holocaust and, you know, the
• 20:19
  signatures that never again and, and things of that nature.
• 20:22
  It's not all about the Holocaust.
• 20:24
  But then you really open my eyes, you know, even being a
• 20:28
  Jewish person in this era still, you know, the denial not within
• 20:33
  the Jewish community, but the struggle to people like yourself
• 20:38
  who had grandparents that lived through the Holocaust or Yaakov,
• 20:41
  you know, that had family that lived through the Holocaust or
• 20:43
  Ben, who at 27 tried the Nazis. He was the youngest, came right
• 20:50
  out of Harvard and and General Patton tapped him to try the
• 20:54
  Nazi. So he he was, you know, the
• 20:55
  Einstein group in trial, which was one of the 11 trials that
• 21:00
  were going on simultaneously to try the Nazis.
• 21:04
  But I don't know, I just sort of, I got sucked into it in a
• 21:08
  good way. And I was like that we got to
• 21:10
  tell this story. So actually I did this whole
• 21:12
  series of Q&A with both of them, and I went back to Yaakov's
• 21:18
  investor. I said, you know, I think we got
• 21:22
  something here. And and, you know, Yaakov said,
• 21:24
  you know what, I don't know if you heard this, but I asked Ben
• 21:26
  if I can make a bust of him. And I said, no, I didn't hear
• 21:29
  that. He goes, yeah.
• 21:30
  And he said, yeah, go for it, 2 heads are better than one.
• 21:33
  I said, oh, OK. And I, And so that's sort of sat
• 21:37
  in my head and we got the approval and I sort of went back
• 21:41
  in time. But then I, I followed Yaakov to
• 21:43
  make this bust over 12 days. I just on my own, I didn't have
• 21:47
  my videographer with me or just because he would work in
• 21:50
  different stages. And so we we then went to Ben's
• 21:54
  home and he would, you know, talk about what happened and
• 21:57
  final finishes of his face. And so it became, you know, the
• 22:01
  short documentary that came out of just conversation about, you
• 22:07
  know, peace, tolerance, humanity and, and what Ben went through
• 22:10
  and what Yaakov's mission is to, you know, keep those memories of
• 22:15
  alive, not just the 6,000,000, but the people like your
• 22:18
  grandparents, who, you know, struggled to get out, made it
• 22:21
  out in some cases, in some cases where little kids don't have
• 22:25
  the, you know, in the the memory that, you know, an older person
• 22:30
  would have. But to your point, you know,
• 22:33
  that was that became like a driving mission.
• 22:35
  And so it took a long time because we're dealing with the
• 22:39
  pandemic and and editing, you know, virtually and whatnot.
• 22:44
  But bottom line is we create this little half hour piece of
• 22:48
  history. And the the bust that that
• 22:52
  created that was created by Yaakov now sits in the
• 22:55
  International Criminal Court in The Hague, which, you know, I
• 22:58
  was the 1:00 to be able to tell him that, which was a very nice,
• 23:01
  you know, feather in his, you know, extremely Yakko's not an
• 23:06
  emotionally charged man visibly, but he was just so he was very
• 23:12
  he's very excited about it, obviously.
• 23:14
  And it's like he loved, you know, what Ben represented.
• 23:19
  And, you know, I think the more people that get exposed to not
• 23:24
  just my film, but other films about Ben, there's been a few
• 23:27
  others that are incredibly well done.
• 23:30
  But two heads are better than 1 is really, you know, this, this,
• 23:34
  you know, magical thing that had transpired between the two of
• 23:38
  them. And I was able to, you know,
• 23:39
  sort of be the the buffer between them in a good way to,
• 23:45
  you know, capture these moments and tell the story.
• 23:48
  So storytelling, you know, sometimes is very innate.
• 23:51
  You feel it like there's a story here has to be told.
• 23:55
  Or you go in, you know, upstream and you say, I want to tell this
• 23:59
  story. So this case it was, it was like
• 24:02
  really a bizarre situation because we're just there to talk
• 24:06
  about, you know, the the garden of humanity and bends, you know,
• 24:10
  history. And we were going to just put
• 24:12
  some videos together and now, you know, 2 heads are better
• 24:16
  than one. The Making of the Benferent Bus,
• 24:18
  which is an interesting title. I, I really wanted to capture
• 24:20
  what, what, what it's about 'cause it's, there's, you know,
• 24:24
  I don't know if you've seen it yet, but it's literally not,
• 24:26
  there's not one image in the entire thing that that has any
• 24:31
  negative connotation. In other words, there's no
• 24:33
  Nazis, there's nobody's dying. It's all, you know, present day.
• 24:38
  And then a little retrospective on Ben's history.
• 24:41
  And I did that so that, you know, people would, would
• 24:44
  obviously have their own imagination.
• 24:46
  We all know which Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish
• 24:50
  with Schindler's List. But, you know, this is a guy
• 24:52
  that, you know, stood, he was the last living chief prosecutor
• 24:58
  from the Nuremberg Trials. And so he just passed away.
• 25:02
  So, you know, it's just an incredible moment for for me to,
• 25:07
  you know, to be able to do that and to honor Ben and Yaakov,
• 25:12
  obviously simultaneously. And then, you know, Yaakov's
• 25:15
  bust is just, you know, it's emblematic of what Ben did in
• 25:20
  his life. So it was a very gratifying
• 25:23
  thing to do. And you know, you don't get to
• 25:24
  do those things too often. Definitely not, Definitely not.
• 25:30
  You know, and I mean, it's, it's, it's so it's so beautiful.
• 25:34
  It's so emotional too. Also because I saw that much of
• 25:37
  the emphasis is, you know, this is something that obviously
• 25:40
  takes a really special type of human.
• 25:41
  And, you know, my grandfather, for example, you know, I love
• 25:46
  him and he loved nothing more than his family and, you know,
• 25:51
  Jews and Israel and America, you know, like, those were like the
• 25:56
  priorities in his life. But he has some, you know, like
• 25:58
  he had some vehemence. You'd push back if, you know, if
• 26:00
  anyone tried to kind of make any kind of light or like, you know,
• 26:03
  you wouldn't be afraid to emphasize that, you know, the
• 26:06
  pain or the struggles that he went through.
• 26:09
  But I think it's something else entirely.
• 26:11
  It's a different type of human being.
• 26:13
  And I don't even know if I would be the same kind of person that
• 26:16
  can kind of look back. I choose to make a documentary
• 26:18
  about this and choose to like only look at the unifying factor
• 26:22
  that arise from it as opposed to avoiding all the, you know, all
• 26:25
  the all the negativity, especially that they've gone
• 26:27
  through personally, you know, all the trauma and all the I
• 26:30
  mean, this is the work with some of the some of the worst crimes
• 26:32
  in human history, you know, And I can't even imagine a 27 years
• 26:36
  old, you know, that you're going to be like, I'm 30, you know,
• 26:40
  and I cannot imagine standing in front of my, you know, my
• 26:44
  greatest enemy. Forget about, you know, you
• 26:46
  know, some of these, not some of these Nazis and some of the, you
• 26:49
  know, some of the leaders of the Nazis.
• 26:51
  I can't imagine sitting in front of them today and and going
• 26:54
  after them. You know, it's probably it takes
• 26:56
  such a different type of human being.
• 26:57
  Yeah, it's really, really, you know, it's.
• 27:01
  Moving. I mean, Ben.
• 27:02
  Ben was a different type of human being.
• 27:04
  He came from nothing, rose up, you know, went to, went to
• 27:09
  school. It grew up in New York.
• 27:12
  I went to school that, you know, was, was so smart that he got a,
• 27:15
  you know, full scholarship to Harvard and went to Harvard and
• 27:20
  then went into the service and came out of the service and and
• 27:24
  I said Patton tapped him to be one of the the chief prosecutor.
• 27:29
  So, you know, he obviously was so intelligent and having the,
• 27:33
  the unique history that he had. And then what was sort of
• 27:38
  interesting and it was it kept very emotional for him.
• 27:41
  And I captured a little bit of it in the in the documentary is,
• 27:46
  you know, after the war. In other words, as he was
• 27:50
  preparing for the trial, he actually went into the camps.
• 27:55
  And so he was seeing the aftermath OK, not just of of.
• 28:00
  Have you been there? Not, and I, you know, it's like
• 28:05
  one of those things I, I don't have a desire to go because I
• 28:08
  just to your point, it's such a, there's a painful part of it.
• 28:12
  But having done what I've done, you know, I feel like my
• 28:15
  contribution is there, but I, I don't know if I could, you know,
• 28:19
  have any, any emotion, any more emotion to it.
• 28:22
  On a positive side, it would just be like, I think non Jews,
• 28:26
  every non Jew that you can get to go there and, and watch these
• 28:29
  things because that, you know, look at large Jewish, Jewish
• 28:33
  people understand that this is history.
• 28:35
  There's a there's a faction of society and you know, it's
• 28:39
  getting louder. You know, they're denouncing the
• 28:43
  Holocaust as as we've chatted about.
• 28:45
  And that to me is the danger. And that's why these things,
• 28:49
  permanent fixtures, art documentaries, conversations, it
• 28:55
  needs to have a louder voice. So to me, you know that that you
• 29:01
  know that that's that's most important.
• 29:03
  But we've got leaders of the of the world, some of them here in
• 29:06
  the United States and some of them abroad that, you know,
• 29:10
  don't necessarily denounce the Holocaust, but they denounce
• 29:13
  Israel, they denounce the United States.
• 29:15
  And so, you know, this, this, it's a scary moment and, you
• 29:20
  know, you have to rise up and, and speak out.
• 29:23
  So I think that's why, you know, a lot of a lot of the, you know,
• 29:26
  that generation that is, you know, fading away,
• 29:29
  unfortunately. I mean, I'm, I'm really excited
• 29:32
  about on the other side, there are people that are capturing,
• 29:35
  you know, interviews with the, you know, Holocaust survivors.
• 29:38
  I've an associate in New York and she's done close to 200
• 29:42
  interviews with survivors over the last five or ten years.
• 29:45
  So I'm going to work with her on getting that out.
• 29:49
  And you know, this is the problem is, you know, the mis
• 29:51
  education of the world. And so, you know, you know, one
• 29:56
  and one is not 3 globally, but yet, you know, when you look at
• 30:00
  the history of the Holocaust and people say there there was no
• 30:03
  Holocaust where they change the history books that the next
• 30:07
  generation is is reading and coming up with.
• 30:10
  This is the danger. Thankfully, we've got enough
• 30:12
  video in film. And so if people are really, you
• 30:18
  know, interested in exploring it, they have no, no shortage.
• 30:21
  So I was able to get this short film on several platforms, which
• 30:26
  to me was exciting. And we're we're, we're just
• 30:28
  really, I mean, it took a long time to get there, but we're,
• 30:32
  we're now going to have a pretty big campaign to get this word
• 30:35
  out. And, you know, Yaakov's going to
• 30:38
  make more busts available for those who want to honor Ben.
• 30:42
  So it's, you know, to me, you know, that that's makes it all
• 30:46
  worthwhile. That's awesome.
• 30:50
  It's really awesome. I agree.
• 30:51
  I think that that's such a beautiful.
• 30:53
  It's such a beautiful. It's endeavor.
• 30:56
  The last question I'll ask you and then I appreciate your time
• 30:59
  and you know, I'll let you go after that.
• 31:02
  Just in terms of logistics, out of curiosity, when you when, now
• 31:06
  that this film, short documentaries, documentaries
• 31:09
  filming on all those platforms that you mentioned, Amazon,
• 31:11
  Netflix, what else? It's Amazon, Apple, Apple TV
• 31:16
  Plus. Yeah.
• 31:18
  So, so did you, did you have to, so you, you've, you've basically
• 31:23
  shot the documentary, edit it, wrapped it up and then went to
• 31:27
  each platform and said, hey, I'd like to distribute this on this.
• 31:30
  Or did you go to them with the concept and then they and then
• 31:34
  they want to do? How does that work?
• 31:35
  No, no, it was it, you know, this thing was done privately
• 31:40
  and then, you know, it's it's an interesting question is to get
• 31:46
  to that level. It's it's all about, you know,
• 31:48
  making the right connectivity to a distributor, Apple, Google,
• 31:54
  you know, Netflix, which is not on Netflix, but you know,
• 31:59
  Amazon, these these are, you know, the giant platforms as we
• 32:02
  all know, it's it's ubiquitous. So you either.
• 32:07
  But do they? But do they not want the?
• 32:09
  They don't want to be the exclusive.
• 32:11
  Platform that it's you know. How do they?
• 32:14
  How do you get across multiple platforms?
• 32:17
  The the short answer is through a distributor.
• 32:21
  So I pitched this to 1 distributor.
• 32:23
  They loved it and we moved forward accordingly.
• 32:26
  The X Factor for me was I didn't really want to have to charge
• 32:29
  people. It's only a few bucks to watch
• 32:31
  it, but they sort of required me to do it to be honest with you.
• 32:36
  But aside from that, I mean, truthfully, I, I, I said I want
• 32:39
  many people to watch us as we can.
• 32:41
  I I, I don't want to make any money off of it for you know, so
• 32:45
  in other it's also like a psychological thing.
• 32:47
  I think if you charge people to watch it, you know that you can
• 32:52
  have a fewer eyeballs, but sure, sure.
• 32:57
  The answer that that's sort of the what on YouTube, but
• 32:59
  typically, you know, if you, you have a distributor, you have an
• 33:05
  agent, you have a lawyer, those three things sort of work
• 33:08
  synergistically. But projects I'm working on now,
• 33:12
  we're in that stage now as well where we're we haven't done it
• 33:16
  yet. We have a sizzle reel, so we,
• 33:18
  you know, that always helps people can see what the
• 33:20
  project's going to be about, who's going to be in it.
• 33:23
  And then you can pitch it with those those entities to the
• 33:29
  bigger platforms. And to your point, typically
• 33:31
  they will buy it or they will license it and it'll just be on
• 33:36
  that platform. If they license it is for a
• 33:40
  finite period of time. And then you can go to another
• 33:42
  platform or you can do what I did where if it's independently
• 33:46
  produced and financed and you can get it on as many platforms
• 33:51
  as you, you can or you want. But typically if you're, you
• 33:54
  know, it's a, if it's a monetary venture, money making venture,
• 33:59
  then you're going to go with one and you'll hopefully get enough
• 34:03
  interest where they bid on it. And, you know, you could have a,
• 34:07
  you know, a little bidding war going on depending upon what the
• 34:10
  subject matter is. Gotcha, gotcha.
• 34:14
  And what about if you want, would would you have any
• 34:17
  interest? I know that and that that
• 34:19
  YouTube actually gets by far the most eyeballs these days.
• 34:24
  Would you ever put any of? These documents, this one's on
• 34:27
  YouTube as well. It's it's on YouTube, but again,
• 34:30
  they it's, it's, you know, you pay the dollar 99299 fee, but
• 34:36
  it's no big deal. I'm sure it's about working I.
• 34:39
  Think exactly, you know, absolutely, but it it to me,
• 34:42
  it's just more of a like I said, a psychological thing.
• 34:45
  YouTube is you know, you know, when I worked at the box Music
• 34:49
  network, really we were sort of the precursor to YouTube and and
• 34:53
  all these streaming platforms. It was the first on demand video
• 34:57
  network in the world. And so people would call a 900
• 35:01
  number to be able to watch a music video.
• 35:03
  And in this case, you know, YouTube, you know, obviously
• 35:07
  with the Internet the way it is, you can either charge people the
• 35:10
  way the way we're doing it or, you know, like most people,
• 35:16
  you're able to just watch it freely.
• 35:17
  Just throw it up and help you get.
• 35:19
  Lost. And then, you know, so content
• 35:21
  creators now you know, the, the barrier to entry is, is nothing.
• 35:26
  You know, it's, if you, you create good content, create good
• 35:29
  followers, you'll get good advertisers and you can monetize
• 35:32
  it. As we're seeing, I mean, most,
• 35:34
  most of these content creators are in that category.
• 35:37
  And it's it's an amazing thing in 2025.
• 35:42
  Yeah, yeah, It's really awesome. Eric Klein, I really appreciate
• 35:45
  your time. Thank you.
• 35:45
  Thank you so much for this. Maybe we'll be in touch.
• 35:48
  Maybe we'll watch the Bruce Springsteen document the new
• 35:51
  making of the. Mask together, that's good.
• 35:53
  But best of luck with all these new projects that you have
• 35:56
  coming up. I'm really excited to hear about
• 35:57
  them and hopefully maybe we'll do another another interview
• 36:00
  again. I.
• 36:01
  Appreciate we'll talk about your efforts and thank you and you
• 36:05
  know good luck. You're you're a sharp young man,
• 36:08
  I can tell so good luck with your podcast.
• 36:10
  I'm sure it's going to keep keep growing.
• 36:12
  I. Appreciate that.
• 36:14
  Take care. Thank you so much.
• 36:15
  Have a great weekend. All right, Take care.
• 36:17
  Thank you. Bye.