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Brian Forti's Creative Journey from Television to Live Theater · The iDesign Lab Podcast

0:00
Voice Over: This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design.
0:05
Voice Over: Curator of interiors, furnishings and lifestyles.
0:09
Voice Over: Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott, idesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends.
0:25
Voice Over: Idesign Lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life, through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite.
0:43
Voice Over: And join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things design.
0:50
Voice Over: Today, we're joined by an entertainment powerhouse, brian Forty.
0:53
Voice Over: With over 35 years in television and streaming production, brian is a producer, writer and director who has worked with networks like MTV, disney, cbs and PBS.
1:05
Voice Over: Director, who has worked with networks like MTV, disney, cbs and PBS.
1:09
Voice Over: He's won six Emmy Awards and collaborated with icons like Paul McCartney, shakira and Prince.
1:12
Voice Over: As the co-founder of 14 Lane Entertainment and the executive producer at Fianna Live, he continues to shape the entertainment world.
1:19
Voice Over: Let's dive into his incredible journey.
1:22
Tiffany Woolley: Welcome to the iDesign Lab podcast.
1:25
Tiffany Woolley: Today, our guest is Brian Forty, who we've known for a lot of years I've known him as long as I've known Scott and has a very colorful history in the entertainment world but has a very I feel like, a lot of influence with design in every aspect of what you do.
1:46
Tiffany Woolley: So I'm excited to kind of.
1:48
Scott Woolley: So first thing, how long has it been Like 30 years we've known each other.
1:51
Scott Woolley: Got to be Been working together.
1:52
Brian Forti: Got to be something like that, right.
1:53
Brian Forti: I mean, how long have you guys been married?
1:56
Brian Forti: 24?
1:57
Scott Woolley: 24, okay, so it's got to be, but it's a lot longer than that.
2:01
Scott Woolley: Oh, you're right, it is.
2:01
Scott Woolley: It's a lot longer.
2:02
Scott Woolley: Yes, you're right.
2:03
Brian Forti: Because I remember all the pre-stories before Tiffany.
2:06
Tiffany Woolley: Well, of course, those stories, but I remember when we were first dating too, like the whole Pepsi-Cola.
2:12
Tiffany Woolley: I want to dive back into all that eventually, but so you guys can continue.
2:16
Tiffany Woolley: How long it's really been.
2:18
Scott Woolley: No, it's got to be from the 90s.
2:19
Scott Woolley: I mean hundreds of productions and shows and specials we'd done together yeah.
2:25
Brian Forti: I remember the days Corey James brought you down and I just saw him on television somewhere.
2:31
Scott Woolley: Thank God Doing something Good.
2:32
Brian Forti: Glad We've all missed Corey James.
2:34
Scott Woolley: How many of you will find him?
2:36
Brian Forti: I saw him somewhere.
2:37
Brian Forti: I think he's in Mexico.
2:38
Scott Woolley: Is he really?
2:39
Scott Woolley: No, he did some.
2:40
Scott Woolley: I saw some production of something with him.
2:42
Brian Forti: Corey James, I remember you came down.
2:44
Brian Forti: We were doing something for the Box.
2:47
Brian Forti: Do you remember the Box?
2:48
Scott Woolley: Yeah, sure, the first network where you would.
2:51
Brian Forti: It's pretty much the start of streaming almost where you would pay Right back in the.
2:54
Brian Forti: You would be able to pay to see a music video that you would want to see, and that was kind of like the beginning of that whole concept of paying for something.
3:04
Tiffany Woolley: Were you primarily focused in the entertainment industry through music, or was it television?
3:11
Tiffany Woolley: No, luckily.
3:11
Brian Forti: But I'm happy we went down the music path, I mean when I started.
3:15
Brian Forti: We would do anything when we started.
3:18
Brian Forti: I mean, you know just to, can I go back a little bit?
3:21
Brian Forti: Well, let me go back.
3:23
Scott Woolley: Where I started with you was, and I call it, the iconic little company 40 Lane.
3:28
Scott Woolley: And I say iconic because in South Florida I mean even more than South Florida it was an iconic, well-known brand.
3:37
Tiffany Woolley: Dynamic doing.
3:39
Scott Woolley: Yes with you and Kevin.
3:40
Brian Forti: Yeah, I think it was the timing.
3:41
Brian Forti: You know, before Kevin Lane and I met, before we created 40 Lane Entertainment was a company called Cable Marketing Systems and Cable Marketing Systems was the beginning of buying advertising, being able to buy commercial spots on things like MTV and CNN and USA, which sort of was which blew up, you know in the 80s, right had a good 20-year run, kind of right.
4:10
Brian Forti: Yeah.
4:11
Brian Forti: And then Kevin and I just said, hey, you know, we're doing so well in this cable marketing, creating some pretty cool commercials for like $200, you know, basically, wow, no budgets at all.
4:21
Brian Forti: But we said, let's start a production company.
4:23
Brian Forti: Basically, no budgets at all.
4:24
Brian Forti: That we said let's start a production company.
4:26
Brian Forti: So we created 40 Lane Entertainment in 1986.
4:30
Brian Forti: And, of course, had to struggle to find work.
4:33
Tiffany Woolley: In Miami too In 1986.
4:36
Tiffany Woolley: It was just kind of coming back again.
4:37
Tiffany Woolley: There was a resurgence in Miami.
4:39
Tiffany Woolley: I feel like back in that time too, exactly I probably met you guys, maybe in 93.
4:46
Scott Woolley: Somewhere, maybe earlier 90s in that, and the reason for me searching out and meeting you was I needed some additional assistance in a team or person.
4:57
Scott Woolley: But I came to a team to help design television programming.
5:01
Scott Woolley: Yeah, exactly, and I think the first thing was Today's Health, a series that I had created, and you guys came in and pretty much designed the first few episodes, which basically became the timeline for that series.
5:16
Brian Forti: Sure, and the signature look, which is funny because, to go from what we were doing, kevin and I, we were doing music videos.
5:25
Brian Forti: Basically, that's really what took off for us because MTV launched in the 80s and when MTV launched, suddenly every artist needed music videos.
5:36
Voice Over: And.
5:36
Brian Forti: Miami became the area to come and shoot them.
5:39
Brian Forti: So, whether you're based in Miami or from New York or whatever, they would come to Miami and shoot these music videos.
5:45
Brian Forti: And that is really how we grew, grew, grew, until one day the Estefans Emilio called us and said come in and Gloria's been in this accident and she's going to make her big comeback and we need somebody to document this.
6:01
Brian Forti: We heard you guys the two of you were pretty good at what you do.
6:04
Tiffany Woolley: Wow.
6:04
Brian Forti: Which started that whole amazing career with the Estefans, which we did, you know, for many, many, many years.
6:12
Brian Forti: And then you know you were coming down and we had gone to a couple events with Gloria stuff like that.
6:18
Brian Forti: Right, yep.
6:20
Brian Forti: And then you said, yeah, come up to Boca and start doing some of this, which was totally different than anything we had done before, but we were so into doing new things, you know, and being a series was kind of interesting to do.
6:32
Scott Woolley: Yeah, I remember the first show that you guys helped me design and it was really you guys putting a lot of the design to it.
6:37
Scott Woolley: I don't know if you remember the first episode.
6:39
Scott Woolley: There were over 300 episodes that we ended up doing in that series.
6:46
Brian Forti: It was on schizophrenia.
6:47
Scott Woolley: Oh jeez, I don't remember it was a full half hour episode on schizophrenia and we shot this scene at the offices of five star with smoke machines.
6:55
Scott Woolley: You guys brought in and fog machines and you know how schizophrenia and illusion and wow, how it affects people you should play a clip of that.
7:02
Brian Forti: I'd love to see a clip of that.
7:06
Scott Woolley: Yeah, it was nominated for an Emmy that it was our first, I think, nomination.
7:09
Scott Woolley: We didn't win for that one, but we had a lot more wins than nominations.
7:14
Brian Forti: After you know some great stuff Today's Health and then we did a promo for something where we used your art designer and he did this.
7:25
Scott Woolley: The Next Millennium, the Next Millennium With Alex, sevilla With Alex, and just which was amazing, amazing, it still is today.
7:31
Scott Woolley: Yeah, it still is today, that demo.
7:34
Brian Forti: Yeah, that series was so cool, was so different, and that demo, that promo, we did.
7:39
Scott Woolley: Yeah.
7:39
Brian Forti: Just amazing.
7:40
Brian Forti: He was a great guy and he was part of your team for many years.
7:43
Scott Woolley: It was somewhat cutting edge.
7:44
Scott Woolley: I just recently watched it and it still is.
7:51
Tiffany Woolley: It's been fun about the podcast is because Scott's background, as well as yours, has a very creative element to it, obviously, with design, which is my world, it's fun to bring them together.
8:03
Tiffany Woolley: What made you, from the very beginning, decide that your path was the entertainment business?
8:13
Brian Forti: I would say I was in when I was in high school.
8:16
Brian Forti: It didn't start with entertainment, it started more like audio-visual.
8:21
Brian Forti: I used to love photography and stuff like this.
8:22
Brian Forti: When I was in high school.
8:23
Brian Forti: You know how there was always an AV team or something like that.
8:27
Voice Over: There was a guy that would go and set up the projectors or set up the cameras with the big video recorders like they used to be in the 70s.
8:35
Brian Forti: And I was the guy that kind of led the group that did that.
8:38
Brian Forti: I started a photography club, an AV club and I think that was kind of what started that.
8:42
Brian Forti: Your curiosity and I just loved the electronics and filming and that kind of stuff.
8:47
Brian Forti: And then when I graduated from high school, I decided I was going to go to the University of Florida, because the University of Florida had an amazing journalism and communications department and broadcasting was one of their big things and they had the largest PBS station on campus, wuft, which allowed students who were getting up and doing well in broadcasting to work at a station.
9:12
Tiffany Woolley: And that's where you got on the job training.
9:13
Brian Forti: That's where I started doing a lot of television.
9:15
Brian Forti: I was actually directing at WUFT while I was a junior in college.
9:20
Scott Woolley: Was there a pivotal point or moment or person that kind of helped springboard you to take that direction?
9:28
Scott Woolley: No, not at that point.
9:33
Brian Forti: There were people later on that sort of pointed in a direction of the path that I would go on after that and I ask that because for many, many years it's been video, film, music, television.
9:48
Scott Woolley: Now, which we'll get into, it's live theater, which is like a I mean it's similar but it's a whole different gamut yeah, definitely.
9:58
Voice Over: Jumping into live theater.
10:00
Brian Forti: Yeah, no, you're right, we should talk about that Because television.
10:05
Brian Forti: Basically I didn't know if I was going to go into entertainment or news, Because when you're graduating- from college you're going.
10:10
Tiffany Woolley: I just need a job.
10:12
Brian Forti: So I'm trying to figure out if I could get a job in a TV station somewhere in the United States and just do news, because that's what I was doing at WUFT.
10:19
Tiffany Woolley: I was directing the news Right.
10:21
Brian Forti: And couldn't find anything.
10:23
Brian Forti: Couldn't find a job and then got a job with Cable Marketing Systems, which allowed at least some creativity.
10:31
Tiffany Woolley: Right.
10:35
Brian Forti: You know, I was able to run a production team and do cheap commercials for people who wanted to be on CNN or MTV, and then Kevin and I met together, created 40 Lane and took off, blew up from there basically, Especially when we met Gloria and Amelia.
10:47
Tiffany Woolley: I was just going to say so.
10:48
Tiffany Woolley: You've worked with really incredible artists.
10:51
Tiffany Woolley: Obviously, down here in South Florida, the Estefans are huge.
10:55
Tiffany Woolley: What was the inspiration really there, beyond who they were in those collaborations?
11:02
Brian Forti: Knowing that our work, the design of our work, would be seen on a global level.
11:08
Brian Forti: And that's a whole different thing, when, suddenly, that door opens and the work that you're going to design and create as a team and there's only two or three of us at the time that it was going to be elevated to a platform that the world would watch.
11:23
Brian Forti: And then you'd have huge companies like Sony Entertainment and MTV and VH1 going.
11:28
Brian Forti: Hmm, those guys look like you know they're really good.
11:31
Brian Forti: They're not a big company, they're not as expensive as a lot of the other production companies with you know well-known directors.
11:37
Brian Forti: So let's give them the work.
11:39
Scott Woolley: And then MTV starts hiring us, vh1 starts hiring us, shakira- I know Paul McCartney, paul McCartney I mean, we can go on and on with the list of people that we've worked with Amazing.
11:50
Brian Forti: Amazing stuff that we all did together.
11:51
Brian Forti: And then some cool things like I'm bleeping.
12:03
Tiffany Woolley: I always can't retreat.
12:06
Voice Over: Matt Damon and Sarah.
12:09
Scott Woolley: I'm effing Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman.
12:12
Scott Woolley: Matt Damon and the joke kind of video we put together for Jimmy Kimmel exactly yeah, which came from your friend.
12:19
Brian Forti: Doug DeLuca what a blast that was yeah, that was funny and then it blew up as like the most viral video.
12:26
Scott Woolley: Do you know how many videos Before viral videos were?
12:28
Brian Forti: We're talking like 200 million views of that Before viral was viral.
12:32
Brian Forti: And then they had to follow it up with yeah, the rebuttal, the rebuttal, the rebuttal With Ben Affleck.
12:39
Tiffany Woolley: Those were good times I actually remember going down there too when you guys were doing that shoot at the Delano.
12:45
Brian Forti: Exactly.
12:52
Tiffany Woolley: I mean and that's what's so fun about what you have created together and done through the years is there is so much change.
12:55
Tiffany Woolley: It's not like your locations change, your venues change, Like you get to experience and see so much creativity.
13:00
Brian Forti: It's the beauty, I think, of the entertainment business Right, which can be great, or not, I mean you never know, how, and it can suck you in.
13:06
Brian Forti: It can.
13:07
Brian Forti: You can be sucked into something you don't want to do and then you'd like, or you can go down this path of being allowed to design things with all these different artists and all these different production companies that you just you know, but all of it is design.
13:22
Scott Woolley: It's all creating something new.
13:24
Brian Forti: Exactly, it's all creating.
13:25
Brian Forti: It goes from what are we going to do?
13:27
Brian Forti: Designing where you're going to shoot it, how you're going to shoot it, what they're going to wear, how you're going to film it, the lighting, everything, it's all design.
13:34
Brian Forti: Yeah, it's all design, and that's the cool thing.
13:36
Scott Woolley: Is there one moment or one project that comes to mind that was complex, difficult, you know, that you think back about or you can remember about something that was really challenging um, there was a music video that we did for Gloria and Amelia called live for loving you and uh-huh, and I can't remember.
13:59
Brian Forti: I think it was back in the early, maybe 90 or 91 or something like that, but it was the first video that was all blue screen.
14:09
Tiffany Woolley: What's blue screen?
14:10
Brian Forti: Blue screen meaning Same as green screen, green screen, same thing as green.
14:12
Brian Forti: It was blue back then.
14:15
Scott Woolley: They found that too many people had blue eyes, so they changed it to green.
14:20
Tiffany Woolley: That's funny.
14:21
Scott Woolley: Because the eyes became the biggest problem.
14:25
Brian Forti: Yeah, but it's basically where you're shooting something and all the backgrounds are created, meaning in this case, she was on a train, in a car with her dog and sitting on the moon at the end.
14:38
Brian Forti: So it was.
14:40
Brian Forti: You know, we did it at Limelight Studios, which was a place where we had our offices, a big studio complex down in Miami and it was easily, you know, going to cost $600,000, $700,000 to do it, and I made a deal with the Limelight people to let us do it for super cheap and they'd get a lot of exposure and experience, right.
15:03
Brian Forti: And it was tough because, you know, we had to design all these scenes and not know what they looked like.
15:09
Brian Forti: We had no idea what they were going to look like.
15:11
Tiffany Woolley: Right.
15:12
Tiffany Woolley: Technology was so different and it was way different back technology.
15:16
Brian Forti: Right and then we get in the edit room and you know, and piece by piece, we're putting this together and it was stressful, it was long hours to trying to figure out and then in the end it became one of the best videos we ever did.
15:29
Brian Forti: It was actually Sony used it on there when they started selling laptop computers.
15:34
Brian Forti: They actually used it as a promo that when you opened it there was that you get residuals from that we were always work for hire.
15:44
Scott Woolley: Is there a project you have been most proud of?
15:46
Scott Woolley: I mean, I think a lot of the projects have been.
15:52
Brian Forti: I would say that's one of them.
15:54
Brian Forti: The stuff we did with Shakira we spent a week with her in the Bahamas and produced a documentary with her A lot of the documentaries for Gloria.
16:03
Brian Forti: Did you know we won Ace Awards back in the Bahamas and produced a documentary with her A lot of the documentaries for Gloria.
16:05
Brian Forti: Did you know we won Ace Awards back in the days when Ace was the cable award that you would win.
16:10
Scott Woolley: Doesn't exist anymore.
16:10
Scott Woolley: Doesn't exist anymore.
16:11
Scott Woolley: It's sad.
16:12
Brian Forti: Yeah, it is.
16:13
Brian Forti: And then we were lucky enough to somehow hook up with Brazilian Globo TV, which is a Brazilian, the largest Brazilian network.
16:23
Tiffany Woolley: Was that the 40 Lane Days?
16:24
Brian Forti: That was still 40 Lane.
16:25
Brian Forti: That was 40 Lane Days.
16:26
Brian Forti: We hooked up with them.
16:27
Tiffany Woolley: And what about was that when you did the Pepsi Cola?
16:30
Brian Forti: Pepsi was either before that or after that.
16:33
Scott Woolley: I don't remember.
16:33
Scott Woolley: That was after the Pepsi show.
16:35
Scott Woolley: That's when I met you.
16:37
Brian Forti: That would probably be the number one Doing the Brazilian telenovelas.
16:41
Brian Forti: We would get to travel to Texas and I spent three months in San Francisco, which is fun just going there and shooting.
16:48
Brian Forti: We shot this thing with people jumping out of the helicopters and flying with those wingsuits down to their wedding, which was on a mountain overlooking Los Angeles.
17:01
Brian Forti: Those were cool things.
17:03
Brian Forti: Those were not officially our productions Like Pepsi, the Pepsi chart, which probably, like you said, was the biggest thing we ever did.
17:11
Tiffany Woolley: That's when I met you.
17:13
Brian Forti: Yeah, pepsi chart came from London.
17:15
Brian Forti: Basically, the British were doing something called Pepsi chart.
17:19
Brian Forti: It was a huge show.
17:21
Scott Woolley: That's around the time of what's the network Barry Diller did Whammy yes.
17:26
Brian Forti: Yeah, it was actually right around the.
17:27
Brian Forti: Whammy studio.
17:28
Brian Forti: Yeah, Whammy studios in Miami.
17:29
Scott Woolley: Beach, yeah, on Lincoln, super cool.
17:31
Brian Forti: Yeah, on Lincoln Road.
17:32
Scott Woolley: Yeah, and that had a nice run.
17:34
Brian Forti: That had a very nice run.
17:36
Brian Forti: Yeah, and I think the plan was always the same.
17:38
Brian Forti: He had designed the plan to create a station because he had a low power tv license you remember low power tv license and nobody thought they were valuable, those licenses kind of like streaming.
17:50
Brian Forti: You said like it is today, and he had that license and he says I'm going to create something like they have in canada called city tv, which is about the public coming and going and you can walk by and see the studio.
18:01
Brian Forti: So you put it together on lincoln road and but he had it in a couple of cities but had it yet.
18:06
Brian Forti: Well, I only know about that one.
18:07
Brian Forti: I mean, you know, we sold a couple shows to them and that was tough, it was not easy because he had no money.
18:12
Brian Forti: He didn't put any money and then in the end, I believe it was his plan.
18:15
Brian Forti: I meant to ask him this because I ran into him a couple years ago but I didn't get a chance to ask.
18:20
Brian Forti: I think his plan was always to build something and then sell it.
18:23
Brian Forti: He sold it to Univision for a billion dollars, jeez, but it was a low-power TV station, wow.
18:31
Scott Woolley: Well, he did a deal with the Heat and was broadcasting the Heat games.
18:34
Scott Woolley: Yeah, he was the first one.
18:35
Brian Forti: No, not the Heat.
18:36
Brian Forti: No, it was the Heat of Baseball.
18:37
Brian Forti: I think it was the Marlins.
18:38
Brian Forti: He was the first one.
18:38
Brian Forti: Oh, he did the Heat, yeah, but he knew how to build the value of something and then dump it.
18:43
Scott Woolley: Yeah, well, that's.
18:44
Brian Forti: Barry Diller.
18:44
Brian Forti: Yeah, that's Barry Diller, brilliant, brilliant guy.
18:47
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, totally so.
18:48
Tiffany Woolley: As someone who's worked from everything from large-scale music, as we've just discussed, to intimate theater performances, how is the approach to designing a story or telling that story vary Are?
19:04
Brian Forti: you talking about live entertainment now.
19:05
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, Well, just in general, what?
19:07
Tiffany Woolley: How does that audience engagement get translated in each of these different kind of genres?
19:14
Brian Forti: That's something I had to learn actually, because, being in television for as long as we were in television 30, 35 years, pretty much Right I got burnt out in television it's, yeah, it's a lot totally because you're, you're planning you're designing, you're shooting shooting, shooting, shooting, editing, editing, editing, editing, changes, changes changes and then it airs and it's gone.
19:35
Brian Forti: You know, and I'm not burning out, I got burnt out, so I took, I took.
19:39
Brian Forti: Basically I said I'm out of here.
19:42
Brian Forti: I went to sedona ari yeah, that's pretty mellow Sedona, arizona, which is a very spiritual place there's a lot of energy there, a lot of shaman and spiritual people.
19:52
Brian Forti: Because I wanted to Reconnect, kind of.
19:55
Tiffany Woolley: There was somebody there.
19:57
Brian Forti: James, which had worked for.
19:59
Tiffany Woolley: Oh, that's, right, Remember James, yes, yes.
20:01
Brian Forti: Okay, james was there working for a bio cybernauts Institute which was into alpha waves and creating, teaching people how to create creativity through their alpha ways to design better things.
20:13
Brian Forti: Went there, did a documentary there, ended up staying there for a year sitting on the mountains in Sedona under the stars, you know, doing all kinds of stuff, and everything changed in Sedona, under the stars, doing all kinds of stuff, and everything changed in my life, completely changed.
20:30
Brian Forti: All the things that I believed in before changed.
20:33
Brian Forti: I realized that we have the ability to create whatever it is we want in our life.
20:40
Tiffany Woolley: It's so true.
20:40
Brian Forti: You know, I think the universe has designed this place that we're in, this consciousness we're in, to allow you to create whatever you want.
20:54
Brian Forti: It's a matrix.
20:54
Brian Forti: This is what I truly believe and this is what I was taught there.
20:57
Brian Forti: And I was sitting on a mountain on a Tuesday afternoon one day in Sedona.
21:02
Brian Forti: It was a beautiful day, beautiful skies and I started to visualize myself sitting in a theater and I had no idea I'd never been to, you know and I started to see actors and people moving around and dancing around me and I focused on that and focused on that.
21:17
Brian Forti: And two weeks later, I get a random phone call.
21:21
Tiffany Woolley: Eye of the blue.
21:22
Brian Forti: From a production assistant who had worked on a reality show years before us and said there's a company called Faina that's opening a new hotel and they're going to have a theater.
21:32
Brian Forti: They need somebody to run it and to program it and to produce things.
21:36
Brian Forti: Are you interested?
21:37
Brian Forti: I said yeah, because I had that vision.
21:41
Tiffany Woolley: Right.
21:42
Brian Forti: Suddenly.
21:43
Tiffany Woolley: You had clarity.
21:44
Brian Forti: I had clarity on what that?
21:45
Brian Forti: Was all about.
21:48
Tiffany Woolley: And so I came back to.
21:49
Brian Forti: Miami.
21:49
Brian Forti: I got an interview, I was hired by Alan Fain and Len Blavatnik, who is huge in the business, and and I opened the theater that same year.
22:02
Brian Forti: It's been 10 years.
22:03
Tiffany Woolley: Has it been 10 years?
22:05
Brian Forti: Yeah, so I had no live entertainment, was not in my live theater, was not in any of my program, but the vision came to me, I grabbed it, I felt it in my heart and I designed my life to go down that path and it's just been amazing.
22:19
Brian Forti: And you haven't looked back.
22:19
Brian Forti: I haven't looked back.
22:20
Brian Forti: It's been amazing and to experience live thing, meaning the energy every night is different.
22:28
Scott Woolley: Well, I can tell you just going back a second before you went to Sedona and just saying getting burnt out.
22:33
Scott Woolley: I kind of know why you got burnt out.
22:35
Scott Woolley: A couple reasons Well one of the reasons was that you were doing stuff with me on all the races going all over the country every weekend to a, every weekend to a race.
22:45
Brian Forti: Yeah, but see I found that, yeah, 10 different videos.
22:48
Brian Forti: That was one of the most exciting things I had ever done.
22:50
Brian Forti: I don't believe it, or?
22:51
Scott Woolley: not really, because to me it was like watching paint dry.
22:55
Brian Forti: I couldn't go to those races anymore well, you had done it, but I had recently gotten divorced, because you know my unfortunately had gotten divorced, one of the biggest regrets and biggest mistakes of my life.
23:05
Brian Forti: But that was a distraction, going on the road with Patron and doing all those different races and it was a great escape.
23:14
Brian Forti: But it was also a blast because you know, you had created a great club.
23:18
Scott Woolley: I always thought you thought like, maybe I did that.
23:21
Scott Woolley: It was like oh my God, he's sending me to my….
23:23
Brian Forti: I loved it.
23:24
Brian Forti: It was amazing.
23:25
Brian Forti: I'm glad to hear that and the rate and racing became part of my life too.
23:28
Brian Forti: I just you know, I thought it was amazing.
23:30
Tiffany Woolley: I mean it was a fun time it was a fun blip.
23:32
Tiffany Woolley: But going back to the Faina, I mean you literally created a vision from somewhat nothing I mean, and and the whole experience experience when you do come to the Faina Theater is so design worthy on every sense.
23:51
Brian Forti: Yeah, I mean, I had no idea.
23:52
Brian Forti: I didn't know what Faina was.
23:54
Brian Forti: I had no idea what that was.
23:56
Brian Forti: And then when I came and I met and I saw the plans of what was being done, faina Alan Faina is a brilliant creative artist and he opened a hotel in Buenos Aires in an area that was totally desolate and it blew up into one of the most amazing areas and the value of all that land and everything around it blew up Because of this vision.
24:24
Brian Forti: Because of the hotel and the art event place that he created.
24:29
Brian Forti: And then he had the opportunity to build on Miami Beach, and when I saw what they did, because they had set up when I went to see it we were in a trailer on Miami Beach in this mid-beach area and I saw this design and go my God yeah it was next level.
24:46
Scott Woolley: When I think of Faina, I think of luxury gold leaf velvet Over the top Five star luxury over the top, but artistic, very artistic.
24:56
Brian Forti: Nothing cheesy in any way, obviously.
24:58
Scott Woolley: I mean for anyone who hasn't been to the Faina.
25:01
Brian Forti: I mean just a night of, just even if you're going out for a drink.
25:04
Scott Woolley: You need to go there just to experience it and see it.
25:06
Brian Forti: Yeah, I mean the experience from the moment you walk in the door with the art on the walls and the way the personnel.
25:13
Brian Forti: It's nothing like a normal hotel.
25:15
Scott Woolley: No.
25:19
Tiffany Woolley: And then the venues are well designed, the music and the culture, and they're warm and they're cozy and they're embracing.
25:22
Scott Woolley: So was the theater and the hotel built when you got involved.
25:26
Brian Forti: Yes, basically, the you know, the Faina Hotel is the Saxony Hotel.
25:31
Brian Forti: So the Saxony Hotel was the first hotel actually built in Miami Beach in 1947.
25:35
Brian Forti: Before the Fontainebleau, before the Eden Rock, before any of those hotels, the Saxony was built.
25:41
Brian Forti: It was the you know, and it became the icon of Collins Avenue, basically, and because of the success of that, the other hotel, font Bleu, was built, eden Rock was built, all those other hotels were built, but there was no theater.
25:56
Tiffany Woolley: Magic City.
25:57
Brian Forti: Back in those days, back in those days, everything they designed these hotels to have everything on the top.
26:02
Tiffany Woolley: Oh yeah, for the view.
26:03
Brian Forti: So that you for the view.
26:04
Brian Forti: They didn't realize that the top can be the most valuable penthouses.
26:08
Brian Forti: You know, back in those days it became the place to go.
26:10
Brian Forti: So when Saxony was emptied and they decided, and Alan Faina had the opportunity to create a whole new town, actually a whole district, five blocks in that area.
26:21
Brian Forti: He designed a very artistic space and he said let's put a theater.
26:25
Brian Forti: Let's create a theater on the bottom level.
26:29
Scott Woolley: So you're hired and the theater's already built and finished?
26:31
Brian Forti: No, I'm hired and the theater is just starting under construction yeah.
26:36
Brian Forti: And now all the equipment had been purchased already.
26:39
Brian Forti: They had put down a lot of money, so I had to go through that and supervise sort of all that stuff and the construction I was part of that.
26:47
Brian Forti: It took a whole year before it was completed and but yeah, I mean once it, once it opened, I realized what an amazing place.
26:58
Brian Forti: This is an intimate space that you don't find, you know we've all been to Broadway.
27:03
Voice Over: It takes you back, we've all been to shows in Broadway.
27:05
Brian Forti: We've all been to shows in Las Vegas, and those are huge venues.
27:08
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, you feel like you're walking back in time.
27:10
Brian Forti: Where you're not close there's.
27:11
Brian Forti: No, the experience is totally different than the experience you have at Fina Theater, which is immersive.
27:16
Brian Forti: There's dancers that come up to you, behind you.
27:19
Brian Forti: They're coming from all sides of you, all sides of you.
27:22
Brian Forti: So I saw such an opportunity there and I got so excited about it.
27:30
Scott Woolley: So from there we started designing shows that were so.
27:32
Scott Woolley: Faheen is a small venue 160 people.
27:35
Brian Forti: 160 people Seated like cabaret style.
27:37
Scott Woolley: Right, so very small, extremely intimate.
27:40
Scott Woolley: How do you go about designing and creating a show that's in such a small space?
27:46
Brian Forti: well, we knew we, we have a, we have a good size theater, I mean a good size stage right um, which, uh, you know, just like, basically 24 by 24, uh, with hydraulic lifts.
27:57
Brian Forti: So we had the opportunity to go, you know, change the look of the stage up and down, or have artists come down, walk off, come into the room, come back, go back up.
28:10
Tiffany Woolley: So is there choreographers in your collaboration?
28:12
Brian Forti: Choreographers of course I'm a producer.
28:16
Tiffany Woolley: Right.
28:16
Brian Forti: I understand as a producer, as we have always to put the best team together To have the best show you bring in the best people in each department, whether it's a choreographer, a costume designer, art director, lighting designer.
28:29
Brian Forti: That's how you create amazing things.
28:32
Brian Forti: Amazing designs come from the talents of everybody else coming into the mix.
28:36
Brian Forti: The curated group yeah, so, yeah, so that's what we do.
28:39
Brian Forti: So a lot of the people when I brought all these different people into the mix and they saw what we had to work with.
28:44
Brian Forti: The creative juices, probably the creative juices just came right out.
28:47
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, it's a creative space, and then you understand who your audience is.
28:52
Brian Forti: It's the most important thing.
28:52
Brian Forti: Who's your audience?
28:53
Brian Forti: Back in the day it was who's your client.
28:55
Brian Forti: Now it's who's the audience.
28:57
Tiffany Woolley: Who's the audience?
28:57
Brian Forti: yeah, who's coming in?
28:58
Brian Forti: People are coming to Miami Beach to to have fun, to escape.
29:03
Scott Woolley: But how did you pick or how did you select the type of shows that you're doing that for the last 10 years we didn't know, until we were in it.
29:11
Scott Woolley: We didn't know until we were in it.
29:12
Brian Forti: So the first year we just decided we hired a director from Paris who had done a lot of cabaret before.
29:19
Brian Forti: So she came in and did a standard cabaret show that you would see in Paris called C'est Rouge, basically, and we learned what worked and what didn't work.
29:30
Brian Forti: We could see what people really.
29:31
Tiffany Woolley: So how long would you keep, like when you're saying you learned what didn't work and worked?
29:35
Tiffany Woolley: How long would you guys keep it going?
29:37
Tiffany Woolley: A year, a year, okay.
29:38
Brian Forti: Yeah, but we would tweak along the way.
29:40
Brian Forti: Okay, we could see along the way if things were working or not and then make changes, and that's the beauty of live entertainment.
29:47
Brian Forti: You can't do that on a television show.
29:48
Tiffany Woolley: Right Really.
29:50
Scott Woolley: Every night.
29:51
Scott Woolley: You can change a little bit from the night before Exactly.
29:53
Brian Forti: And perfect it and then you can see how it works.
29:55
Brian Forti: It's not like you edit, edit, edit, throw it on the air and you've got to wait a couple weeks and see how it works.
29:59
Tiffany Woolley: See how it sticks Right, right, so you get to.
30:01
Brian Forti: That's the beauty of live entertainment.
30:03
Tiffany Woolley: Okay.
30:04
Brian Forti: So as the years grew on, I mean we've done now 10 years of shows, so 12 shows, maybe over these 10 years and how has the cast evolved and that initial group of you know talented people that you put together?
30:18
Brian Forti: Has that the amount of people now that are banging on the door coming to?
30:21
Brian Forti: See me calling me constantly to be a part of the show.
30:24
Brian Forti: In the beginning it wasn't like that.
30:27
Brian Forti: It's like anything.
30:28
Brian Forti: You have to build something.
30:29
Scott Woolley: You mean to work on the shows.
30:31
Brian Forti: To work on the shows and to be a part of the shows.
30:33
Brian Forti: A lot of the talent now that we get the dancers, the singers.
30:37
Brian Forti: They didn't know if we were going to make it, so they didn't want to take a chance.
30:42
Brian Forti: They'd rather take a chance on a cruise ship, go out for six months or take a gig and what?
30:47
Tiffany Woolley: in new york or in vegas or something like that.
30:48
Brian Forti: They didn't know, uh, until as as the years went on and they could see now every cast and every team that has an approach is like a family right I mean they get paid very well.
31:01
Brian Forti: You know, we, we treat our talent very, very well.
31:04
Brian Forti: Uh, we treat our talent very, very well.
31:07
Brian Forti: We treat our crew members very, very well and that creates an environment of everybody really doing the best that they can and it shows in the production.
31:16
Tiffany Woolley: It really does.
31:17
Brian Forti: It shows in the production.
31:18
Scott Woolley: Yeah, and that's what I love, I got the opportunity a few years ago to do a deal with you and bring in a comedy show that I shot for Netflix.
31:26
Scott Woolley: I had a great time in that facility doing that.
31:30
Scott Woolley: Like you said, the equipment that was purchased before you started it was phenomenal equipment that was purchased, yeah.
31:37
Brian Forti: It was a fabulous comedy show, siri.
31:39
Brian Forti: It was a couple of shows we had done.
31:40
Brian Forti: I think right, yeah, we did a few shows yeah it was great and it was from that experience that I realized that.
31:47
Brian Forti: And then the Prime Video.
31:51
Brian Forti: After that, prime Video did a series called Marvelous Mrs Maisel.
31:57
Scott Woolley: Yep, oh, I love that.
31:58
Brian Forti: Yeah, we're familiar with that and they came and saw the theater and said, oh my God, this is great, Because Mrs Maisel was coming to Miami.
32:05
Brian Forti: She theater and said oh my god, this is great because she, she, mrs maze, was coming to miami.
32:07
Brian Forti: She's yeah, so she was going to come and do do some scenes.
32:09
Brian Forti: So we made a deal and, and you know, they made the theater look like it was the 60s, because that was the time period which was very cool, and I realized from from what we did with your production and mrs may, we could do comedy here.
32:22
Brian Forti: It's a great venue for comedy, upscale comedy, not like the venues you go improv or all those other places you go, which you know luxury so from there we
32:32
Scott Woolley: launched comedy.
32:33
Scott Woolley: The shows that we shot did very well on Netflix and Netflix one of them still is highly still promoting and pushing it.
32:41
Brian Forti: Yeah because of the art direction and the theater.
32:43
Brian Forti: It looks amazing.
32:43
Brian Forti: You know Noting and pushing it.
32:45
Brian Forti: Yeah, because of the art direction in the theater.
32:46
Brian Forti: It looks amazing.
32:46
Tiffany Woolley: You know a lot of places you go, especially comedy shows, comedy venues.
32:48
Brian Forti: they're nothing, they're like small stages with no backdrops or something like that.
32:53
Tiffany Woolley: That was going to be one of my next questions was really when you do think of Fianna we mentioned, it's very luxurious, it's extremely a rich experience.
33:02
Tiffany Woolley: How is that luxury intertwined with the production?
33:09
Brian Forti: Every production has to maintain the level.
33:12
Brian Forti: Alan Fine is very involved in every production we do, which means he is, he's hands-on.
33:18
Brian Forti: Hands-on yeah.
33:20
Scott Woolley: That's good Nice to hear.
33:21
Brian Forti: And because his brand, because it's his brand and he values his brand and his brand is all luxury, class, artistic, and so the productions have to reflect that.
33:34
Brian Forti: We can't be anything cheesy, or the costumes that we have have to be amazing looking.
33:41
Brian Forti: The backdrops, the visuals that you see around the theater have to be at a level that you would expect.
33:48
Brian Forti: And people, now that they've been coming to Faina, they expect a level because now they understand what it's all about and we could never drop the ball on that.
33:58
Brian Forti: We'll be called out on that immediately, both from Alan and from the public, the guests.
34:04
Tiffany Woolley: Right.
34:04
Tiffany Woolley: So you have two new productions happening right now there.
34:09
Tiffany Woolley: Is it difficult to have two different shows going simultaneously, as far as setting up and pulling down it is if you try and do them at?
34:19
Brian Forti: the same time, meaning launch them at the same time.
34:21
Brian Forti: Because, launching a show is all those rehearsals and all the technical designs and all those things that we have to do.
34:28
Brian Forti: You can't do it at the same time because it's way too much work, so we did these separately.
34:33
Brian Forti: Fortunately we had we opened.
34:35
Brian Forti: We're doing a show called carmen.
34:37
Brian Forti: Carmen is an opera from the from the 1800s.
34:40
Brian Forti: It's a love triangle, an opera, an opera.
34:44
Brian Forti: It's based on.
34:45
Brian Forti: It's not a an opera, it's not burlesque, no, no but the story of Carmen was originally an opera an opera and it's been made into several, many movies.
34:54
Brian Forti: I've heard of it yeah, and we decided we were going to do a reimagined version of it for Miami Beach cabaret burlesque style.
35:03
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, inject a little bit so we did.
35:05
Brian Forti: Basically, you know it has a lot of the Spanish, from Spain music Okay, the feel, the costumes are all part.
35:13
Brian Forti: Look like you'd be in Spain, in Madrid, except it all has very sexy edge to it and it's a combination of popular music that has been remixed in sort of Spanish ways.
35:30
Brian Forti: So very passionate, very sexy, a very artistic production.
35:34
Brian Forti: We had launched that last October and then in this past few months, at the beginning of the year, which was tough because it's our busy season everybody comes to Miami, miami Beach, in January, february, march.
35:46
Brian Forti: So we decided to launch another show and it's called Retro, and Retro is stars Rocky Lanes, which is the singer that was in the Allura show, which I believe you guys came to she was fabulous and one of our best shows, one of our biggest and best shows ever and Retro.
36:05
Brian Forti: We decided, because she's so good musically, that we were going to do this musical journey, build a show around her Musical journey from the days of Motown through the 60s, the 70s and 80s, so through disco, through funk, through pop and rock, and we launched it about a month ago and it's doing fantastic.
36:24
Tiffany Woolley: And is there dancers in the same room?
36:25
Tiffany Woolley: Dancers, all of it.
36:27
Brian Forti: Dancers all around you.
36:28
Brian Forti: You know catwalk that comes out into the middle of the audience.
36:31
Brian Forti: So you're looking right up into the dancers and they're interacting with you Rocky's interacting with you and because it's the music that anybody who's come through the 70s and 80s you know I was born in the 60s I remember the music but you know, disco was my big days, right, of course.
36:51
Tiffany Woolley: I mean we're talking great disco, and that goes along with the vibe too of the faena and everybody's dancing because we're talking about Donna Summer.
36:57
Tiffany Woolley: We're talking about Cher.
36:59
Brian Forti: We're talking about Diana Ross and the Supremes.
37:01
Brian Forti: It's just an amazing mix of music that Rocky performs and everybody is singing because it brings back all those feelings.
37:10
Voice Over: Right joyful, you know, music is timeless.
37:12
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah.
37:16
Brian Forti: And it takes you back to a time when you hear those songs of where you were back in those days.
37:19
Scott Woolley: What's the process that you go through to design a new show?
37:22
Scott Woolley: Is it one person who comes up with it?
37:25
Brian Forti: No, it's great.
37:26
Brian Forti: Yeah, we take the top creative people who are very good at brainstorming and creativity.
37:31
Brian Forti: How about this, how about that?
37:34
Brian Forti: And we sit around the room, we toss around ideas.
37:37
Tiffany Woolley: How long does that process take?
37:39
Tiffany Woolley: Weeks, really.
37:40
Brian Forti: Weeks, sometimes months, and then we design.
37:44
Brian Forti: Then we have to sit down and design the look, which takes a lot.
37:47
Brian Forti: What's it going to look like?
37:49
Brian Forti: How are we going to design the clothing?
37:52
Tiffany Woolley: So how far in advance are you working on the next one Months?
37:57
Brian Forti: usually so we will open a new show in October.
37:59
Brian Forti: Retro will actually go to the end of the year and then most likely go to our new theater in New York.
38:05
Voice Over: that's opening up in the spring of 2026.
38:09
Brian Forti: We'll open a new show on August or September of this year.
38:16
Scott Woolley: So you're probably working on that now, so we're starting to figure out.
38:18
Brian Forti: Right.
38:18
Brian Forti: We're getting ideas now to figure out what we're going to do.
38:20
Scott Woolley: Are there any elements that kind of stay within each production?
38:25
Brian Forti: Specialists that do aerials.
38:27
Brian Forti: I was just going to say Things that people do in the air, you know because we're one of the few theaters and one of the venues around that can do aerial.
38:36
Brian Forti: You know where people are swinging.
38:38
Tiffany Woolley: And I noticed when we were there, they're actually doing it like the people who are doing the aerial.
38:43
Tiffany Woolley: It's all like real people doing it, it's not even mechanical.
38:47
Scott Woolley: No, no, no no, yeah, from me going up.
38:49
Brian Forti: Yeah, no, it's pullers, it's pullers.
38:53
Brian Forti: Yeah, it's motors that are doing that, correct, yes, we don't do that, we don't do that no, it's such a which adds sort of a more of a flow, believe it or not.
39:02
Brian Forti: It's not as mechanical looking, when you have somebody who's lowering and raising, and usually that puller is in the, he's dressed in costume, he's part of the production as well, yeah, I noticed that in the last show we went to.
39:15
Brian Forti: That's one of the things we design is to make sure that even those people who are coming into the room where we're doing a fire effect and we need people to be there just in case something happens they're all in costumes, they're all designed to be part of the cast Because they're three feet from you.
39:33
Tiffany Woolley: You're going to see them.
39:33
Tiffany Woolley: Yes, exactly, are there any changes to?
39:34
Tiffany Woolley: They're three feet from you, right, you're going to see them.
39:35
Scott Woolley: You can't Exactly, so that's you know it was all part of it.
39:36
Scott Woolley: Are there any changes to like the venue itself for each of these different shows?
39:40
Scott Woolley: Was it more of just the performance?
39:42
Brian Forti: Equipment.
39:42
Brian Forti: More we buy, more equipment.
39:44
Brian Forti: More cool, because every year something new comes out more lasers, more smoke machines, more bubble machines, you know stuff like that, and the screens too.
39:52
Brian Forti: So usually it's a lot of electronic.
39:53
Brian Forti: The sound consoles have that.
39:56
Brian Forti: We just replaced all our sound consoles because sound design is such a big thing in live entertainment, right?
40:04
Brian Forti: So when you have a board that can create effects within the room, right, because if you're trying, you know if you have lightning or you have whatever like thunder or some sort of sound, you want to be able to spread that around in some really cool way.
40:20
Brian Forti: So we bought a board recently to help elevate our design of the sound experience.
40:29
Brian Forti: Same thing with lighting Lighting, you know, electronics, constantly changing what you can do and can't do it's electronics, constantly changing what you can do and can't do.
40:43
Scott Woolley: So yeah, electronics are a big part, because it takes the design of what you're doing to a whole other level.
40:46
Scott Woolley: So most of these shows have a decent-sized cast.
40:48
Scott Woolley: You have a decent-sized crew, but one of the things that I recognized when I did the show there for that week for the comedy shows is behind stage, backstage, you don't have much space.
40:58
Scott Woolley: No.
41:00
Tiffany Woolley: It's like the theater is small so there's not a lot of hanging out.
41:01
Tiffany Woolley: Yes, it's a tight.
41:03
Scott Woolley: So you know, like the show that we went to and that was one of the things I was sitting there thinking about while I was watching the show was like, yeah, it's a struggle.
41:13
Tiffany Woolley: Where are they?
41:14
Tiffany Woolley: Where's the dressing room?
41:15
Tiffany Woolley: Is there?
41:15
Scott Woolley: They're right behind.
41:16
Brian Forti: But because?
41:17
Brian Forti: But it's tight.
41:17
Brian Forti: It's like two little dressing rooms and Because it's the Saxony.
41:21
Voice Over: Hotel.
41:21
Voice Over: Right, it's an old.
41:22
Brian Forti: What's an old?
41:23
Brian Forti: The first hotel in Miami Beach.
41:24
Brian Forti: Those are historical hotels.
41:26
Tiffany Woolley: You can't Thank goodness, you can't touch them, knock them down.
41:31
Brian Forti: law that says you cannot do that.
41:32
Brian Forti: You have to use the structure and go inside and recreate or redesign inside.
41:37
Brian Forti: It doesn't make more space.
41:39
Brian Forti: There's not much space backstage.
41:42
Voice Over: What does the backstage look like in the midst of a show?
41:45
Brian Forti: You'll have to come backstage next time it's very small, except the green room, and the dressing rooms actually are very nice because it's right out the back of the stage and we're able to make them look really nice and comfortable in there Storage space, nothing.
41:59
Brian Forti: Nothing.
42:00
Brian Forti: No storage space Very tight, barely anything.
42:03
Tiffany Woolley: So where does all the set design stuff reside?
42:05
Tiffany Woolley: It just stays.
42:06
Brian Forti: In hallways, in the loading dock and we have to bring them in and out and stuff like that.
42:10
Brian Forti: It's not easy.
42:12
Scott Woolley: I mean it's design and just how you handle all that Exactly.
42:17
Tiffany Woolley: And are you there every night?
42:18
Tiffany Woolley: I mean, are you there conducting this effort?
42:20
Brian Forti: I'm there if we launch a show and it's still, we need to get it to where it's totally in sync, whether it's the cast or the backstage crew.
42:32
Brian Forti: I'm always there for that.
42:33
Brian Forti: Once it's in sync, I don't have to be there all the time because I have to move on and think ahead.
42:38
Brian Forti: You know, my job is about what's next as well as make sure everything's what's happening now is going well.
42:45
Brian Forti: Are we?
42:45
Brian Forti: You know, the review is good?
42:48
Brian Forti: Is everything strong?
42:49
Brian Forti: Are we on budget?
42:49
Brian Forti: Are we making money, you know?
42:51
Brian Forti: But it's also what's coming up.
42:53
Brian Forti: I have to design what's coming in six months, right, what's in eight months?
42:57
Brian Forti: So that's a big part of my.
42:58
Brian Forti: So I can't be there all day and all night.
43:00
Tiffany Woolley: Right, you got to pick or choose, I mean for anyone who's listening to this podcast.
43:04
Scott Woolley: if they're in South Florida, it's a night that they should go experience, and if they are listening somewhere else and they plan on coming to.
43:11
Voice Over: South.
43:12
Scott Woolley: Florida.
43:12
Scott Woolley: It's something they should put on their agenda to go do yeah.
43:18
Tiffany Woolley: Because it's like, no matter when you, it's definitely a special experience.
43:20
Brian Forti: Yes, it is, and I appreciate you saying that.
43:21
Scott Woolley: No, it's.
43:22
Brian Forti: It's.
43:23
Brian Forti: You know we get a lot of, obviously, the locals.
43:27
Brian Forti: Now, after 10 years, the locals that live in Miami are now coming for all their special occasions.
43:32
Brian Forti: The tourists have all heard about it.
43:35
Brian Forti: So anybody who's come to the hotel, or at least on Miami Beach, all the concierges up and down, are always recommending that they come and see the show.
43:44
Voice Over: But now basically, the amount of people we get from Boca and West Palm.
43:49
Brian Forti: Now that are driving down because, again, the experience is completely different and it's worth the drive.
43:57
Tiffany Woolley: It is.
43:58
Brian Forti: A lot of people will come down and spend the night.
44:00
Brian Forti: They'll just come down and spend the night.
44:01
Tiffany Woolley: It's a good excuse to get down there, Just to go down to Miami Beach, and you know staycation kind of thing Exactly.
44:06
Brian Forti: You're in town, but yeah, but people.
44:08
Brian Forti: Now it's amazing that people are planning their trips.
44:13
Brian Forti: They're planning their trips to come to Miami Beach, stay at Faina or somewhere close, go to the hotel I mean go to the theater or go to the Sobe Beat Wine and Food Festival go to the.
44:24
Brian Forti: International Boat Festival, all those other things.
44:26
Brian Forti: So they're planning these mega things.
44:28
Brian Forti: Always Faina Theaters coming included now, which is great because it's taken 10 years to get to that point.
44:34
Scott Woolley: The first time I saw it, the first thing I thought about was Moulin Rouge in Paris.
44:39
Brian Forti: Yeah, which I've never seen.
44:41
Brian Forti: Have you seen it?
44:42
Brian Forti: Oh yeah.
44:43
Scott Woolley: We've been to shows there.
44:47
Tiffany Woolley: But it is in that same genre.
44:49
Tiffany Woolley: And it's not only in the same genre, but it's that same experience of when you know a destination.
44:55
Tiffany Woolley: It kind of goes hand in hand.
44:57
Brian Forti: Like in Paris, Crazy Horse.
44:59
Tiffany Woolley: Crazy Horse, yeah, crazy.
45:00
Scott Woolley: Horse which you know, oh Crazy, the original Crazy Horse and Moulin Rouge are like.
45:04
Brian Forti: Next door yeah, next door to each other, exactly.
45:06
Brian Forti: And Crazy Horse, which I am a big fan of, because in the past they've made a lot of changes to the way they do the shows now and they have a very small venue.
45:17
Brian Forti: You know the new venue in Paris.
45:20
Brian Forti: It's not big, it's nice, but they use the stage and they have conveyor belts on the stage which means they can have talent sort of going by in three different levels and up and down and back and forth the original and they use the visuals on the screen as amazing and I'm a big fan of them and what they've done.
45:36
Brian Forti: And same thing All the Crazy Horse people come to find it and check out our show.
45:41
Scott Woolley: Well, there's the Crazy Horse in downtown, like in Paris.
45:44
Brian Forti: Right.
45:44
Scott Woolley: Then there's the one that's near the Moulin Rouge, which is a little out of Paris.
45:47
Brian Forti: It's in.
45:47
Voice Over: Paris, but a little bit out yeah.
45:50
Scott Woolley: They both have that moving stage, which is cool, but going to the original one and actually going to Moulin Rouge is.
45:56
Brian Forti: I bet yeah, and I hear Moulin Rouge in New York is really good.
45:59
Brian Forti: The show's in New York now.
46:00
Brian Forti: It's supposed to be really really good.
46:01
Brian Forti: I haven't seen it, but yeah, those are great shows.
46:05
Brian Forti: They are great shows.
46:07
Tiffany Woolley: They really are.
46:08
Brian Forti: The choreography, the costumes.
46:11
Tiffany Woolley: I know the whole design of the show, the whole design of the show, the whole design of it, and in New York you can go for five, ten years, those kinds of shows.
46:17
Brian Forti: We won't do that.
46:18
Brian Forti: So your goal is literally every year you're going to be pretty.
46:24
Brian Forti: We want things to completely change all the time.
46:25
Brian Forti: Well, you need to, we need to, you need to.
46:26
Voice Over: We're not New York.
46:27
Brian Forti: Miami Beach.
46:28
Brian Forti: We're not New York.
46:28
Brian Forti: New York can maybe have because so many people big, big population, a lot of you, but Miami Beach and the faena mentality, the whole culture of faena, is to experience something new every time you come.
46:43
Tiffany Woolley: Well, and it makes people want to come check out the new one, because you had such a great night when you were there for the last one, right?
46:47
Brian Forti: Yeah, and bring your friends.
46:49
Tiffany Woolley: Correct.
46:49
Brian Forti: That's the best part of it.
46:50
Brian Forti: People just come and bring their friends all the time, so they're seeing the show two, three, four times.
46:55
Scott Woolley: So what do you like?
46:56
Scott Woolley: Better Television production or live theater.
47:02
Brian Forti: That's like asking you which kid do you like which?
47:05
Brian Forti: Child do you like better?
47:07
Brian Forti: There isn't.
47:07
Brian Forti: I loved the journey I had in the days of television production, from working my way up as a production assistant all the way to a producer and a director, the experiences that I had with your teams and my teams and all the clients we had.
47:26
Brian Forti: It's amazing.
47:28
Brian Forti: You learn so many things and you experience such great things that you'll never forget.
47:33
Brian Forti: But now that I'm into live theater, I love it.
47:37
Brian Forti: At this time in my life I call it the third chapter of my life in a sense.
47:42
Brian Forti: It's something that every day I can do something different and new and I can feel the reaction of the guests right then and there and not have to wait months for the show to air or whatever.
47:56
Brian Forti: And so there's a beauty in both things and I really respect and am happy about where I am now and where I was.
48:05
Tiffany Woolley: And what a special niche really.
48:07
Tiffany Woolley: I mean, not everybody gets to curate something of that magnitude.
48:12
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, well, again I learned that we can design our lives in any way.
48:17
Brian Forti: I learned this in the mountaintop in Sedona, arizona, because the energy came to me.
48:22
Brian Forti: I realized you can create anything you want, anything you want.
48:26
Brian Forti: You have to feel it in your heart, you have to believe it and feel it.
48:30
Brian Forti: If you can do that, anything, anything is possible.
48:34
Brian Forti: It's true I believe that's the way the universe designed our consciousness in our life I know it's amazing that you got to that point right me too.
48:42
Scott Woolley: So if you're not like, that in the early days, if you could tell young producers or directors, people who want to you know, create a career like a career that you are still in.
48:54
Scott Woolley: What piece?
48:58
Brian Forti: of advice would you throw out to someone Believe in yourself.
49:01
Brian Forti: Have the confidence that if you focus and you work hard, a lot of people that are in the business now or are coming into the business now think they can come out and, and and get huge salaries right out of the way and I don't understand how I don't know that comes from social media influence or whatever that comes from.
49:20
Brian Forti: But it's not how we came and and we worked hard, we worked our.
49:25
Brian Forti: You know, we worked really hard, every day long days and and it was those and those people in the positions above us recognized that and saw the talent, saw the hard work and that's what elevated you slowly up in the business.
49:41
Brian Forti: And your talent will always come out if you believe internally in your heart that that's what you're supposed to do and you can feel it will come out and as the opportunities, the doors open, that just keeps coming and coming.
49:55
Tiffany Woolley: It does, just keep coming, don't give up, never stop.
49:58
Brian Forti: Don't stop and work hard and don't think that you deserve something as you start.
50:05
Brian Forti: You have to work, you have to work for it, you have to believe in it, you have to work hard for it.
50:09
Tiffany Woolley: I think that's a great message.
50:12
Scott Woolley: So we like to wrap up this podcast by asking our guests a couple of simple little questions about design.
50:18
Scott Woolley: Okay, so the first thing I'm going to ask you I really shouldn't ask you this question, because I know what the answer is going to be, but what would be your favorite hotel for design?
50:33
Brian Forti: Would be the Fianna.
50:34
Tiffany Woolley: Hotel would be the Fianna Hotel.
50:36
Voice Over: And actually the Fianna.
50:37
Brian Forti: Hotel in Tulum, which is going to be an amazing design.
50:42
Brian Forti: You guys will have to come and visit and see it.
50:45
Tiffany Woolley: I can't even imagine.
50:46
Tiffany Woolley: Just the design.
50:47
Brian Forti: Remember, because the Fianna Miley Beach is an existing structure, but the other ones are all going to be built.
50:53
Brian Forti: The New York is also an existing structure that's being redesigned, but from there on out are all new.
50:58
Brian Forti: So that's going to open up.
51:00
Brian Forti: So find a hotel.
51:01
Brian Forti: Designs are just amazing.
51:02
Tiffany Woolley: They really are, and it does have an incredible design, yeah, in every aspect.
51:05
Tiffany Woolley: And what's the background of the woolly mammoth?
51:10
Scott Woolley: It's an art piece.
51:11
Brian Forti: Which is a huge statue, yeah, on the property, on the property near the pool, which is a great Instagram.
51:17
Tiffany Woolley: It's a famous artist, it is.
51:18
Brian Forti: It's a famous Dante.
51:21
Brian Forti: I forget his name now.
51:24
Voice Over: But it was bought by the owner.
51:28
Brian Forti: I should know the name.
51:29
Brian Forti: I don't know the name, but it's one of the icons on the property and even if you're walking down the boardwalk on Miami Beach, you're not actually on the property.
51:36
Brian Forti: You can see it when you look inside and people stop.
51:39
Brian Forti: Groups of people stop.
51:40
Brian Forti: It's a gold.
51:42
Brian Forti: It's 18-garret gold.
51:43
Brian Forti: The entire mammoth is gold.
51:46
Tiffany Woolley: So do they have a design element like going like that in Tulum and in?
51:50
Tiffany Woolley: New York yes yes, there you have.
51:52
Brian Forti: Yeah, yeah, I can't tell you what to tell you.
51:55
Brian Forti: I don't like it.
51:56
Tiffany Woolley: I want to see Okay, what about favorite restaurant?
52:01
Tiffany Woolley: Design-wise, miami's got a lot of good ones.
52:04
Brian Forti: I like restaurants on the water.
52:06
Tiffany Woolley: I know.
52:06
Brian Forti: We don't have one.
52:07
Brian Forti: We don't have a restaurant.
52:08
Brian Forti: We have nice restaurants outside, two nice Los Fuegos and Pow Great food.
52:14
Brian Forti: But outside to Los Fuegos and Pow Great food.
52:16
Brian Forti: But I love being on the water.
52:17
Brian Forti: So there's actually a new place called the Palm Club.
52:20
Brian Forti: It's on 79th Street.
52:22
Brian Forti: It used to be called Shuckers.
52:24
Brian Forti: It's been redesigned as a club by a big New York developer.
52:27
Brian Forti: Music producer designed this new place called the Palm.
52:32
Tiffany Woolley: I love the name of it.
52:33
Tiffany Woolley: It's beautiful.
52:34
Brian Forti: And it's the music at night.
52:36
Brian Forti: It's music, so I love sitting outside on the water.
52:38
Brian Forti: To me, that to be on the bay or on the ocean Live music.
52:41
Tiffany Woolley: We are like entering in the most gorgeous weather season for us here in Florida.
52:45
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, see, and during the winter.
52:46
Brian Forti: it's the best time to sit outside During the summer.
52:49
Brian Forti: Forget it.
52:49
Brian Forti: You know it's too hot, but that's awesome.
52:53
Scott Woolley: So I'm going to ask you a question.
52:54
Scott Woolley: It really doesn't have to do with design, but you can look at it as design Is there?
53:10
Brian Forti: an event, a favorite event that you would love to attend or you've attended.
53:13
Brian Forti: I used to love going to the races, To me being in those races, you know, being in the middle of the race, being down in the pit zone Right when the action was.
53:23
Tiffany Woolley: That's that energy too that energy.
53:25
Brian Forti: It was such an amazing experience.
53:27
Brian Forti: And then going back to the hospitality areas, which were all these elaborate places.
53:30
Tiffany Woolley: They're all experiences Amazing food.
53:33
Brian Forti: Those are great experiences.
53:34
Brian Forti: Big food and those are great experiences.
53:34
Brian Forti: Big races like that are tremendous.
53:38
Brian Forti: Big golf tournaments I love going to the golf tournaments.
53:41
Tiffany Woolley: Really, have you become a golfer?
53:44
Brian Forti: I try to play golf.
53:45
Brian Forti: I don't have much time to do it, but I love when I'll go to a tournament.
53:48
Brian Forti: But it's always the best time is when you're invited into a suite.
53:52
Tiffany Woolley: Right, especially the golf, that where the parties are.
53:55
Tiffany Woolley: That's the whole thing.
53:57
Brian Forti: Or a big game, or you know the Orange Bowl or some you know big event or something like that.
54:01
Brian Forti: I remember when we were in the Indianapolis 500.
54:06
Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, that was a fun.
54:06
Voice Over: Indianapolis 500.
54:09
Scott Woolley: In the pits during the race In the pits during the race walking on the brick.
54:13
Brian Forti: In the rain too.
54:13
Brian Forti: Walking on the race, in the pits during the race, walking on the brick In the rain too, walking on the bricks, yeah, which was the famous you know tell me that wasn't.
54:19
Brian Forti: Those are great times.
54:20
Scott Woolley: No, that's one of my highlights in racing.
54:23
Scott Woolley: I've had a lot yeah, it was the Indianapolis 500.
54:27
Scott Woolley: Absolutely standing and being in part of the team, the pit team right there, yeah, while the race is happening.
54:35
Scott Woolley: And I'll tell you is that when I experienced that, I actually stood there looking around going.
54:40
Scott Woolley: What the hell am I standing in this pit for?
54:44
Scott Woolley: And as a kid growing up every Indianapolis I watched with my dad.
54:49
Scott Woolley: And here I am.
54:52
Brian Forti: I was standing there.
54:52
Brian Forti: It's one of those things you just never forget.
54:55
Scott Woolley: Or being at a drag race when the car takes off and you're literally three feet from the car and your chest is caved in and your ears are blowing up.
55:06
Brian Forti: That's just another experience, that wow.
55:08
Brian Forti: Physically it's hard to handle that because you remember how loud.
55:13
Brian Forti: Oh yeah, 10,000 horsepower, oh my gosh.
55:17
Brian Forti: But great times, Great times.
55:19
Scott Woolley: Great times.
55:19
Scott Woolley: We had a lot of fun.
55:20
Scott Woolley: Well, we appreciate you coming in spending some time with us.
55:24
Scott Woolley: It's always a pleasure.
55:26
Tiffany Woolley: You've had such an incredible career.
55:28
Scott Woolley: Thank you.
55:29
Scott Woolley: Thank you, and we plan on coming back down to the Fianna Fáil very soon.
55:32
Scott Woolley: Please do anytime.
55:32
Scott Woolley: We'll be there to see another show Absolutely, you'll be my guest.
55:35
Tiffany Woolley: We have to see Carmen.
55:37
Brian Forti: Please come see.
55:38
Brian Forti: Or the other one, and thank you for bringing me today.
55:40
Brian Forti: I enjoyed this.
55:41
Voice Over: Me too, thank you, thank you iDesign Labs Podcast is an SW Group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors.
55:51
Voice Over: To learn