- Attica! Attica! Attica! - [people cheering]
[Gregory Nava] Warner Bros. was always pushing the boundaries.
They were always the studio that took risks.
It's part of the DNA of this place.
Warner Bros. was known at that point for how they treated their stars.
And they were really good to directors.
We became part of the family that way, like a Warner Bros. family.
[Morgan Freeman] During the creative renaissance of the '70s,
Warner Bros. provided a safe haven for storytellers.
Maybe we can cut a deal.
[Freeman] In the coming age of blockbusters and big business,
it was a family worth fighting for.
[Oliver Stone] Warner Bros. had a very good system.
They had good people. They worked very hard
to make you happy too.
[James] Never rat on your friends
and always keep your mouth shut.
[Tim Burton] There's no denying the fact
that it's an industry and a business, but...
there was a little bit more humanity at Warner Bros.
Deal! [laughs]
[Matthew Modine] In order for any business
to be successful, you have to lead.
You're going to work harder than you've ever worked before.
[Modine] You have to have the courage to invest
in stories that have never been told before.
[Freeman] Amid corporate turmoil,
Warner Bros. needed to fortify its studio machinery,
and chase the biggest, boldest ideas to satisfy audience demand.
It was just all about epic filmmaking and giant franchisable movies.
You never know if you got a hit.
Meow.
And you're ready to die for me?
It's the job.
[Jon Chu] Going to the theater, we felt like the whole world
was sort of descending into this dark room to watch this vision.
Hey, Data, where are you going?
- I'm setting booty traps. - You mean booby traps.
That's what I said! Booby traps! Be quiet! Shh.
[Ke Huy Quan] My childhood is here.
That's what's so great about these movies,
is I don't think it would have been as good as it was had we not had fun.
We were like a family back then.
[Patty Jenkins] It's bigger than an industry.
It's an incredibly powerful force to make art that speaks to the world.
The truth often poses a threat to power,
and one often has to fight power with great risk to themselves.
There's such a long line of people,
who have made just some of their best films at Warner Bros.
I told you I can only show you the door.
You have to walk through it.
[Freeman] In 1983, Warner Communications suffered
a $500 million loss from the Atari collapse.
To fend off corporate raiders who prey on company debt,
Steve Ross sacrificed valuable assets, including MTV.
More regrettably, he laid off staff.
To safeguard against future catastrophe,
Ross siloed the business units
into separate divisions.
But to regain shareholder confidence,
he needed commercial hits from his crown jewel,
the movie studio.
The key to our industry and maybe to most industries is
having good people, and good people can make anything happen.
Having the relationships
all the way through with the artists is very important to us,
and creating an ambience,
a creative atmosphere where people want to work.
[Freeman] From the ashes of Atari's ruins
rose a friendship between Ross and Steven Spielberg.
The name of Hollywood's hottest blockbuster director
attached to Warner Bros.
could turn their fortunes around.
Ross won him over with a promise.
"Make the films you want to make."
Once Steven Spielberg finds something he likes,
and he wants to make it, it's hard to say no.
[Steven Spielberg] Gremlins is a picture about
something that probably
could never happen in real life.
Gremlins. What a fairy tale. [laughs]
[Chris Columbus] Well, I think the name "Gremlins" caught Spielberg's eye
because Steven, being a fan of old Warner Bros. cartoons,
there is a cartoon, I think it's a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with gremlins.
Could that have been a...
[whispers] gremlin?
[Columbus] I probably saw it as a kid,
forgot about it, so it was a subconscious thing,
and then I created a whole mythology around what gremlins were.
[Randall] Probably the most important thing,
don't ever feed him after midnight.
[Columbus] Immediately, once we started Gremlins,
Steven and I were already into the writing of Goonies.
[gremlins cackling]
Ready. And... shoot it! Number one.
[Columbus] The films I had set out to make, Dog Day Afternoon
and all of those types of films,
I was going to employ what I had learned from those films in the dialogue,
making sure that they were always speaking over each other,
that they were very naturalistic,
that they were saying things that felt very real from a kid.
- That's it, guys. - What's it?
Those three rocks out there. Take a look, one, two, three.
- You're right! Let's go get 'em. - Out there.
[all shouting]
[Quan] The Goonies is about seven outcasts
who are on the verge of losing their homes, and they stumble upon
a pirate ship...
Oh, wow!
[Quan] ...that takes them on the greatest adventure of their life.
In fact, the famous Stage 16
is where we built that full-sized pirate ship.
It's a Steven Spielberg-produced movie, with Dick Donner at the helm.
[Richard Donner] I think the uniquest part
of working with this many kids in the film
is that every night I'm contemplating suicide.
[Quan] I think we all drove him crazy
because it was just so loud, you know,
constantly fighting and arguing.
We would ride bikes on the Warner Bros. backlot,
just going around from sound stage to sound stages,
knocking on doors...
messing up people's shots,
and we'd hear the AD go,
"Oh, my God, what are you guys doing here?"
And we'd just tell them, "We're the Goonies!"
[all yelling]
[Quan] Steven and Dick, they were just like this great father figure.
I didn't see them as the most successful filmmakers of all time.
They allowed us to be kids, to be ourselves,
and not actors.
Everywhere I go,
people of all colors, of all ages,
have come up to me and told me how much they love The Goonies.
Goonies never say die!
It doesn't get old.
[Freeman] With Gremlins and Goonies,
Spielberg re-energized Warner Bros.
with a sense of adventure and box office gold.
But, in addition to making money,
Steve Ross sought projects that achieved cultural capital.
That same year,
music mogul Quincy Jones, also Ross' dear friend,
urged Spielberg to direct an adaptation
of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple.
[Jacqueline Stewart] Totally uncharacteristic film for any studio.
And another characteristic gamble
on the part of Warner Bros., to say,
"Yeah. This is something that we're gonna invest
a significant amount of money in.
This is a blockbuster film director,
and we're going to cast unknowns in the key roles."
Whoopi Goldberg's first film. Oprah Winfrey's first film.
[Oprah Winfrey] It's been over 35 years,
and I still can tear up talking about it.
Because I never wanted anything as much as I wanted to be in The Color Purple.
The arc of Celie's story,
how she withstood the abuse,
having the world look at you, literally, and say, "You sure is ugly,"
and, in the midst of that,
find a way to believe in herself.
You told Harpo to beat me.
Coming from a world of abuse myself,
so when I say...
All my life I had to fight.
...that is part of my story.
There is a definitive following of women,
specifically Black women,
who walked out of the theater, who felt
a little more emboldened themselves,
a little more expanded.
I'm gonna knock you up one...
Everything you done to me...
already done to you.
[newscaster] The Color Purple is one of those movies
people seem to be talking about everywhere,
and it's a movie that some people are getting upset about.
[Winfrey] Warner Bros. and Steven Spielberg
and Quincy Jones and Alice Walker
all took a lot of heat.
Black organizations in particular were criticizing it
because they thought it was detrimental to the images of Black men.
They need to change it.
If that's the way all Black men
are supposed to be, it's not true.
The rise of, you know, domestic violence
is real in the Black community, and every other community,
so I was happy that the studio stood by it.
[Freeman] The Color Purple also signaled Spielberg's evolution
into a director of more serious material.
- Jimmy! - Mama!
I don't think I could have made either Empire of the Sun or Schindler's List
without the first big, for me,
stepping stone of Color Purple.
[Freeman] For decades to come,
the kinship between Warner Bros. and Spielberg only deepened.
Whether as a producer or director, he supplied the studio
with a variety of crowd pleasers.
1985 brought another harbinger of good fortune.
An unlikely hero from Warner Bros'. own backyard.
[Tim Burton] It was strange growing up in Burbank
because the studios were so close, yet so far away.
Kind of magical, impenetrable walls, you know, that you drive by.
We used to kind of try to sneak into the studios...
[chuckling]
...which was not very easy to do.
Excuse me, sir. Do you have a pass?
Oh, no, I'm sorry. You can't enter without a pass, sir.
So the other fellow said,
"What do you think I got down here? A duck?"
[all laughing]
"A duck." [laughs]
[Burton] I started out as an animator,
and then a couple of short films,
which was the thing that probably helped me to get my first feature,
Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
- [bell dings] - [screams, chuckles]
[chuckles]
[Burton] Warner Bros. has one of the best backlots.
It was like a playground.
What more fun could you have, trashing the Warner Bros. backlot?
[screams]
[Burton] It was an era where things could still surprise people,
you know, kind of come out of left field a little bit.
Beetlejuice.
It's showtime!
[thunder cracking]
[Burton] I think that happened with Beetlejuice.
People really didn't know what it was, and it could have gone either way.
[shrieking]
It felt like making a Warner Bros. cartoon, in a funny way.
- Don't you hate it when that happens? - Let's go, Barbara.
[Freeman] Burton's lower-budget escapades,
turned into surprise hits
at just the right moment.
[male reporter] Time and Warner executives have endorsed
the new law of survival in the media universe.
We are moving toward
a handful, six, 12, companies controlling information flow in the free world.
[Freeman] Still mired in the financial fallout caused by Atari,
Steve Ross staked everything on a potential merger
with the publishing powerhouse, Time Inc.
As negotiations plodded along for over two years,
neither side knew who would have the upper hand.
At the same time, Bob Daly and Terry Semel were searching for
a new kind of blockbuster to flex the studio's muscle,
and called upon a hero from its DC pantheon.
[Bob Daly] It had to be a different type of Batman.
And we worked on it for a decade,
but nothing ever materialized
until we decided to go with Tim Burton to direct it.
You're not exactly normal, are you?
It's not exactly a normal world, is it?
[Leonard Maltin] In the post-studio system
every film has become a gamble,
so making a film of the comic strip character Batman
was a risk.
And trusting it to Tim Burton, who was still a fledgling director,
was another risk.
[Burton] Obviously, the first really big film I did
in terms of budget and awareness,
and I felt the pressure of it.
- ...67, take one! - Action!
And then casting Michael Keaton,
who'd made his name doing comedy,
was yet another risk
that provoked cries of outrage from fans.
[Freeman] Batman was the polar opposite of Superman,
the aspirational hero beloved by all.
Burton's Caped Crusader masked a deeply flawed man.
I loved the idea of making it darker,
the Jekyll and Hyde nature of it.
[screams]
[Burton] We were kind of charting new territory.
[Daly] You make the movie, keep your fingers crossed,
and then you have to come up with a good marketing campaign.
[Freeman] Daly and Semel devised a strategy
that signaled a seismic event,
one that couldn't be missed.
Batman was also very important, for one reason.
We were in the middle of our merger agreement with Time.
[Freeman] The film's performance could radically shape
the outcome of the merger.
All eyes were on Batman.
Wait until they get a load of me.
[crowd cheering]
[male reporter] Some of Hollywood's biggest stars
turned out for the premiere,
giving the event the glitter of vintage Tinseltown.
There's no other way of putting it.
This evening, Los Angeles has gone bats.
[Kim Basinger] I don't think you could have been prepared for this.
I'm sure they were imagining a good box office.
But to this extent?
[Freeman] Batman shattered opening weekend records,
became the year's highest grossing film,
and the studio's biggest box office success to date.
[male reporter] Studio boss is a very rich and happy man.
I loved it. Loved every minute of it.
[Chu] Batman had a huge influence on me.
It was the first time that I felt like
the story wasn't just on the screen, but also, like, came home with us.
[Freeman] Batmania ignited the sale
of more than $500 million worth of merchandise.
Where does he get those wonderful toys?
[Chu] We got the toys, the soundtrack,
and to be a part of a pop cultural moment
where everybody had to show up.
[Freeman] Warner Bros. had revolutionized the way films were marketed,
which also promoted synergy between the divisions of the company.
[Daly] Remember, the deal with Time is, they bought us.
I'm Batman.
[Daly] But once we had Batman,
there was no question who should run the place.
[Freeman] Steve Ross emerged the victor.
He had orchestrated the deal of the decade
and transformed the Warner Bros. into a colossal force
atop the entertainment world.
[Terry Semel] I think we had a real advantage over many of our competitors,
and that is, we were a stable company.
We could win or lose,
so sometimes we could lose, but we would not go away.
[Freeman] One after the other,
Warner Bros. churned out sequels to Batman.
Riddle me this.
[Freeman] Even when the quality slumped, event movies minted money
and validated the franchise mindset.
Hollywood only hungered for more.
Do you really want to jump?
Do you wanna?
Well, then, that's fine with me. Come on!
[Freeman] Box office ticket sales boomed yet again
when director Richard Donner
and action producer Joel Silver
turned Lethal Weapon into its own franchise.
[Jenkins] I feel torn about it because, on the one hand,
I think that it paved the way for a new genre of filmmaking,
which were tent poles.
On the other hand, sadly,
our industry often all scuttles after
only one thing at the same time.
Studios are addicted to that success and that success only, often.
It's like a gold rush.
They can't help but go for the one sure thing.
[Freeman] But Daly and Semel
took their winnings from safer bets
to bankroll their pursuit of long shots.
Films that traded popcorn entertainment for prestige.
I've always known I was born to dominate your sex
and avenge my own.
And the Oscar goes to Dangerous Liaisons.
[crowd applauding]
You don't know what you want.
One minute you like me and the next you don't.
One minute you're ashamed to be seen with me,
the next, you think I'm the best thing that ever happened to you.
- Geena Davis! - Geena Davis, The Accidental Tourist.
[Ms. Daisy] You're speeding. I can see it.
No, Miss Daisy, no, we only doing about 19 miles an hour.
I like to go under the speed limit.
We are hardly moving.
Might as well walk to the Piggly Wiggly.
I'm pleased with my association with Warner Bros.
They didn't spend much money making Driving Miss Daisy,
but they spent a lot promoting it.
[Jack Nicholson] And the Oscar goes to...
Driving Miss Daisy.
Thank you, Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck.
[Freeman] Lauded with accolades and loaded with cash,
Warner Bros. found itself firing on all cylinders.
But ever since 1971, the executive team resented
having to share the lot with Columbia Pictures.
The joint venture had long gone sour,
and they looked for a way out.
There was a lucky thing that happened a few years later
when our two producers who were on Batman
took the job to help run what was then going to be called Sony.
[Freeman] Sony, which had recently purchased Columbia,
stole Jon Peters and Peter Guber away
from Warner Bros. in dramatic fashion.
A Hollywood hit and run.
[Semel] And, of course they violated their contract with us.
And, as a result of that, the two of us together
negotiated for an extraordinary deal,
which included a 100% of this studio.
Because of this break we got,
which was an unbelievable break,
to let two producers leave and get $750 million worth of assets,
it all worked out nicely.
[Freeman] In 1990, after a nearly 20-year marriage
of inconvenience,
Columbia Pictures vacated the Burbank lot.
It was time to party.
[upbeat dance music playing]
[Tom Selleck] It's kind of stunning.
I expected a little party, you know, on a sound stage.
This is show business personified.
[Ross] Now all of the family is under one roof.
And it's called Warner Bros. So exciting.
I got David Wolper to produce it.
We invited 1,000 people.
We had a parade. Reagan was here.
All the stars came.
[upbeat dance music continues playing]
It was the best party I've ever attended in my life.
[applause]
The symbol of the studio has always been
our illuminated landmark water tower.
And tonight it is our joy to reignite that beacon of light,
to let the world know, once again,
that it is the Warner Bros. Studio.
One, two, three.
[applause]
[Freeman] The return of the Warner Bros. shield
restored the studio's identity
and would rekindle a connection with its roots.
Ripping a page from the founders' book,
Ross, Daly, and Semel next put their chips
on a classic Warner gambit, the wise guy flick.
[Robert de Niro] As far back as I can remember,
I always wanted to be a gangster.
♪ I know I'd go from rags to riches ♪
The people who ran Warners had a certain understanding of that kind of culture.
They felt more connected to it in a certain way.
[Ben Mankiewicz] You could certainly draw a through line
of Warner Bros. crime pictures
where you have this rooting interest
that seems incongruous with a good person.
But there's rooting interest in the criminals.
[Henry] You know, we always called each other good fellas.
Like you'd say to somebody,
"You're going to like this guy. He's all right.
He's a good fella. He's one of us."
You understand?
[Scorsese] It was like a guy telling a story on a street corner.
And that's how I learned about narrative.
It was how my father told stories, my mother, my friends.
In this case, we took Nick Pileggi's book, Wiseguy.
We put images to it, we made camera moves, music, et cetera.
And make it with an energy level
that would just blow the place apart.
But back in July 1990, it was a war zone at a preview.
What's the world coming to?
[gunfire]
[Scorsese] People were upset because they weren't expecting
that the violence in the film was combined with humor.
I'm funny how?
I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?
I make you laugh?
I'm here to fucking amuse you?
[Scorsese] But Warners released the picture.
And when finally it came out,
people started laughing, people were reacting,
then we sat up.
So, yeah, that's right.
It was an extraordinary reaction.
[Freeman] Goodfellas reinvented the genre Warner Bros. made famous
and influenced every Mafia picture that followed.
Sixteen years later,
Scorsese would return with another gritty portrait of gangster life.
The Departed examined the perils of power...
and the price of loyalty.
These twin benchmark films were only made possible
under the financial protection of Warner Bros.
And in the early '90s,
no one supported the studio family
more than its godfather, Steve Ross.
[David Zaslav] Steve Ross had a love of this business,
but he also had a love of being around
great talent.
And if you worked for Steve,
he would love you and you would never want to leave.
He was the head of the corporation, but he was a mensch.
You would say, "Steve, I need this or that,"
even things like a plane.
He'd send you a plane if you asked for it.
Steve Ross taught us to take good care of all those people.
It was one big family, and we were doing everything it took
to keep the family together of great talent.
[Kevin Costner] You know, I came to Warner Bros.
because of Terry Semel and Bob Daly.
And how they treated me.
[Maltin] They believed in relationships,
long-term relationships,
that meant supporting filmmakers and stars
in good times and bad.
It meant if they had one flop,
you didn't write them off and kick them off the lot.
It meant, "We're in it with you for the long haul."
[Freeman] The partner who lasted the longest and delivered the most
was none other than Clint Eastwood.
My name is Gunnery Sergeant Highway.
I've drunk more beer and pissed more blood
and banged more quiff,
and busted more...
than all you numbnuts put together.
Clint Eastwood deserves anything, as far as I'm concerned.
He's the rock of the studio.
In all the movies Clint Eastwood's made at Warner Bros.,
he's never gone over budget. Never gone over budget.
Terry and I visited Clint Eastwood on every single movie
when he was shooting it.
You know, he's the best.
Get the security. Call security immediately.
[Semel] I can't wait to see you in another Western.
- Yeah. - Yeah, well, we'll do it.
[Clint Eastwood] Terry and Bob were terrific.
And they're the ones that gave me Unforgiven to do.
How about it, Will?
How about what?
How about being my partner?
[Freeman] Daly and Semel encouraged Eastwood
to dust off an old script from 1976.
It was the story of an aging outlaw in the Old West,
but Eastwood never felt old enough to play him.
I read it and I said, "Jesus, this is really good. I'd better do this."
[Freeman] Unforgiven rectified the traditional Western.
Eastwood told a grim tale of regret,
one where the act of violence harmed even the culprit.
Take a drink, kid.
[Eastwood] It wasn't just your routine deal of the bad guys come over the hill
and the good guy fights 'em off or whatever.
It had this whole deal of this bad history,
and how he was a haunted person.
I've seen the angel of death.
So the hero is everything that isn't heroic.
I don't deserve this.
Deserve's got nothing to do with it.
Look down there.
Look down at him. You can't believe it.
First thing you learn about Clint is he works.
Get him. Action.
[Freeman] He's really on the job.
I don't think he's ever going to say, "That was great. Let's do one more."
I like working with somebody who's just,
they know what they want, they know when they get it, and...
we're moving on.
And when I saw Unforgiven cut together, he'd done it again.
This is really a terrific film.
It's one those that's gonna last, I think.
You better bury Ned right!
Or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches.
[Freeman] Unforgiven showcased Eastwood's ability
to walk the line between the popular and the artistic,
which certified his reputation as a master director.
As Eastwood entered the third act of his career with Warner Bros.,
he crafted more provocative, critically acclaimed films.
Whether a neo-noir thriller...
a World War II epic...
or a knockout sports drama...
Eastwood toppled every genre.
[Frankie] It's not about hitting it hard.
It's how good you hit it.
[Freeman] That reinvention began in 1992,
when Unforgiven rode into the Oscars
with nine nominations.
Including Best Director and Best Picture.
And the Oscar for the Best Picture of 1992
goes to Clint Eastwood.
I want to thank Bob Daly and Terry Semel,
the whole executive strata over there.
We lost... Warner Bros. lost a great friend, Steve Ross, this year.
Steve did get to see this picture,
and he predicted this outcome,
so I'll dedicate this to Steve Ross.
[Freeman] Only four months prior,
Steve Ross succumbed to a secret seven-year battle
with prostate cancer.
His passing stunned his studio family.
I was shocked, just shocked.
He was one of a kind.
When he died, that was a big loss for the company.
[Meyer] I just remember him being a great boss
because he had confidence,
he trusted you.
He loved people, and he loved talent.
[Eastwood] He had just a tremendous amount of charisma.
He just knew how to make everybody feel like
this was the greatest place in the world.
But I miss him.
[Daly] When Steve Ross died,
I had an unlimited budget
to do anything I wanted to do in honor of Steve Ross,
so I built the Steve Ross Theater.
And I decided, when I'm building the theater,
let's put a museum in.
[Freeman] In that same spirit,
Daly took the opportunity to build a corporate archive
that would restore and showcase nearly half a century's worth
of costumes, props, and mementos.
From then on, Warner Bros. has rallied around every effort to preserve,
not only its physical history,
but films themselves.
[Scorsese] Myself, Spielberg, a number of other people, were afraid that
the films themselves would disappear.
Literally disappear.
I feel that the people who made the films
have a responsibility to the rest of the world, really.
They have an obligation to share that for future generations,
for our children.
[Christopher Nolan] Warner Bros., of all the studios,
has always done a very good job
of protecting their assets and future-proofing them
preserving their negatives.
There's a lot of money that has to go into these processes,
but they're extraordinarily important.
[Scorsese] Films allow us to see ourselves, of course,
see who we've been, how we've evolved.
There may be things we don't like to see about ourselves in the past.
We don't really have a chance of knowing where we're going
unless we know where the hell we've been.
[Freeman] The studio never lost sight of its moral duty.
Like Harry and Jack Warner, Daly and Semel chose projects
that critiqued recent American history on an epic scale.
Films of reckoning.
[Nava] One of the things Stanley Kubrick would always say is,
"If you make a movie that everybody likes, you failed."
Because a great movie has to get under people's skin.
From now on, you will speak only when spoken to.
And the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be "Sir."
Do you maggots understand that?
[all] Sir, yes, sir!
Bullshit. I can't hear you.
Sound off like you got a pair!
[all] Sir, yes, sir!
[Freeman] Stanley Kubrick returned with a razor-sharp examination
of the Vietnam War, and the wounds that linger.
Kubrick stopped at nothing to confront
the hard truths of human nature.
Private Joker, why did you join my beloved Corps?
Sir, to kill, sir!
- So you're a killer? - Sir, yes, sir!
Let me see your war face.
[screams]
You don't scare me. Work on it.
[Modine] For the first three months, we never completed
anything that was on the call sheet
that said what we were going to film the next day.
Could you stand the way you do with your gun?
Or simulate the gun?
[Modine] He said, "Who cares how many takes I do?
Would you ever go up to Picasso
and say, 'Hey, Pablo, how many strokes in that painting?'"
[Kubrick] Do something brilliant.
[Daly] He is who he is. He's an icon.
You have to play by their rules.
John Calley was playing by their rules long before we got there.
You think we could change the rules?
There was no changing the rules.
[Modine] I remember having conversations with Stanley
about Warner Bros., Terry Semel and Bob Daly,
that they had his back.
It's very important to have producers that will say no,
but producers that will say yes.
Should we try it? Let's give it a crack.
[Modine] Sometimes it's hard to raise money and greenlight
a picture that's going to make people uncomfortable.
People like Hollywood endings,
but we live in a world where that's not necessarily the truth.
[praying in Vietnamese] Oh... my God...
[Modine, in English] There's an expression they use in combat
where somebody gets a thousand-yard stare.
When you see beyond this life
because you've taken somebody else's life.
[gunshot]
When I pulled the trigger on that young girl,
I wanted the audience to feel Private Joker died.
He was no longer ever going to be the boy that he was
before he pulled the trigger.
[Stone] I went to Nam as a soldier in '67, '68,
and I saw things that just shocked me.
And you see a lot of ugliness in your fellow man.
When you come back from war,
you just don't look at people the same
or relate to them the same way.
You don't have friends.
You don't trust anybody. And then eventually you get to the point
where you don't trust your government anymore.
[gunshot]
[indistinct, overlapping news reports]
[male reporter] In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired
at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
The first reports say that President Kennedy
has been seriously wounded by this shooting.
[Stone] Terry Semel and Bob Daly came after me.
I sat down to dinner with them one night,
and I told them the story of what I wanted to do.
We're going to revisit the events in the beginning,
and, as the story goes along,
we're going to show you what really happened in the last reel.
They killed a president of the United States,
and they got away with it.
[Freeman] Stone's pitch was incendiary, but timely,
marshaling the anger that gnawed at the country's psyche
after Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran-Contra.
Stone raised difficult questions few had dared to ask.
[Stone] Warners was relatively conservative,
but they were a studio willing to take a risk at that time.
Kevin was also known as a conservative,
so this was pretty scary to him, perhaps.
[Costner] One thing I said with Oliver,
I said, "If we can't ever prove something,
don't have me say, 'This is what happened,'
because we're trying to fill in the blanks of history.
Let me say, 'Let us suppose.'"
And, you know, he honored that.
Maybe Oswald didn't even pull the trigger.
Nitrate tests indicate he hadn't even fired a rifle on November 22nd.
I feel like JFK was almost like a fight
that everybody knows is going to happen after the school.
When you think about the people that the Kennedys had issues with.
You are so naive.
J. Edgar Hoover, Castro, the CIA, FBI.
[man] Oswald!
[Costner] Not to mention Hoffa.
They don't give a shit if he gets killed.
It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!
They decided to not stop it because they didn't like him.
We're talking about our government here.
No. We're talking about a crime, Bill,
pure and simple.
Now we're through the looking glass here, people.
White is black...
and black is white.
[Stone] We started the movie and we had a tremendous amount of interference
from the press.
They were knocking the film before it was made.
Washington Post,
Newsweek, horrible stories.
The film came out.
Tremendously exciting reviews.
But I got nailed on a lot of shows, and people were coming after me.
Like flies they came, and attacked and attacked.
[Costner] I got death threats about doing it,
which kind of shocked me.
This has become a dangerous country, sir,
when you cannot trust anyone anymore, when you cannot tell the truth.
Warner Bros. was great,
and I have to say, they fought for the film.
[Freeman] The outcry only drew audiences into theaters.
In turn, Warner Bros. used the publicity
as ammunition to lobby Congress,
which declassified JFK files 12 years sooner than expected.
The film still sparks debate.
[Stewart] JFK is a film that really forces us to think about
what the political possibilities could have been
if many of our key progressive leaders
had not been gunned down.
[interviewer] We still need an action program
that will eliminate these evils that are in our community.
Do you consider yourself militant?
[chuckles] I consider myself Malcolm.
Oh, I say, and I say it again.
You've been had!
You've been took!
You've been hoodwinked!
Bamboozled!
Led astray!
Run amuck!
[Freeman] During a year of racial uprising,
Warner Bros. released Spike Lee's uncompromising saga
of an American leader
and his struggle for Black liberation.
When Spike and I first met at NYU,
first day,
there was only Spike, me, and I think two other Black folks.
One of our dreams was actually
to do The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Didn't know if we would ever get a chance to.
And then we got the chance to.
[Scorsese] Malcolm X was an American epic, beautifully made.
Denzel Washington is superlative.
The emotion in it just flows out of the edges of the screen.
[Dickerson] We wanted to put Malcolm right in front of the people.
Malcolm was not one man. He was several people.
His whole life was a journey.
[people chanting] We want justice! We want justice!
Malcolm X was a person that spoke true truth to power.
And what he was fighting for, we're still fighting for.
[Costner] I think that Warner Bros. want to be
more than just about action movies,
more than just about hits.
To look at our past, and do it effectively, is to teach.
[Freeman] Whether national icons or local heroes,
Warner Bros. dramatized true life stories
that have lasting impact far beyond the box office.
[Edward James Olmos] Thousands of teachers all over America
have been using the film for 35 years
in their classroom.
Stand and Deliver, to me,
has really become what this art form can do
at the highest level.
There's nothing like it.
[Freeman] But Warner Bros. applied
that same level of social commentary to television,
where creators found a more pervasive way to blend fact and fiction.
[enthusiastic greetings]
Murphy Brown was an unusually strong female lead.
She was a television journalist,
very successful in her field.
You can do better than that. Come on!
Everybody's talking about sitcom character Murphy Brown.
It felt so current. It felt so lively.
You had to tune in to Murphy Brown
to see what the writers were saying about current events.
If you remember, our vice-president at the time made a blunder
because Murphy Brown was having a baby and wasn't married.
It became a big issue.
Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong.
It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown.
He is talking about you.
There was a firestorm.
It became this sort of headline for days.
"Murphy has baby, Quayle has cow!"
We were not trying to negate the importance of fathers.
I didn't just wake up one morning and say,
"Oh, gee, I can't get in for a facial. I might as well have a baby."
We were trying to reflect the reality
of what was happening in the world at that time,
and people appreciated the writing
and the ambition of it.
Everything rang true.
[Freeman] As Murphy Brown took off,
Warner Bros. purchased Lorimar,
a production company with a TV division so prolific
that it earned the nickname the "fifth network."
[Daly] When we acquired Lorimar,
we ended up getting, not only good assets,
meaning shows,
we ended up getting unbelievable people.
[Freeman] As big as the hits that Lorimar brought to Warner Bros.,
it was a homegrown show with a bunch of unknown actors
that would become the studio's biggest hit,
and one of the greatest shows in television history.
["Friends" theme song playing]
[Marta Kauffman] When the six of them,
for the first time in the show, were together,
I got chills up my spine.
How you doing?
[David Crane] It was like they'd worked together for years.
[both groan in relief]
You heard the material just rise.
What is Chandler Bing's job?
Oh, oh! He's a transpons... Transponster!
That's not even a word!
[Quinta Brunson] It's not easy to write jokes for six characters.
A Chandler line is a Chandler line.
It can't be given to Joey.
Oh, my God!
That is so not the opposite of taking somebody's underwear.
[Ross] Here we go. Pivot!
Pivot!
- Pivot! - Shut up, shut up, shut up!
[Crane] You rarely in life get any experience
where everything comes together.
It's talented people, who connect with the writing.
It's lightning in a bottle.
♪ Smelly cat, smelly cat ♪
♪ What are they feeding you? ♪
No, no, no. I'm sorry. It's... [clears throat]
♪ Smelly cat, smelly cat ♪
Don't feel bad 'cause it's a hard song.
Yeah.
[Kevin Bright] After the first season,
we were the number one show on television.
And the whole thing kind of exploded at that point.
But we felt the pressure to keep telling the story better.
I can't have sex with you.
- And why not? - Because I'm in love with Monica!
You're-- You're what?
[Freeman] As the superstars aligned,
their ensemble chemistry created a cultural frenzy.
Yeah, baby.
[Freeman] The show averaged 25 million viewers a week,
making it television's number-one comedy
for six straight seasons.
[Channing Dungey] It's a bunch of friends hanging out in a cafe,
spending time with each other and no one's on their phones
because, of course, there weren't phones when the show was made.
They were filming a show that very much spoke to
the era that we were living in,
but there's something almost nostalgic about it
for young people who are watching the show today.
This is everybody. This is Chandler, and Phoebe, and Joey,
- and you remember my brother Ross? - Sure.
- Hey. - Hi.
- [gasps] - [grunts]
[Kauffman] In the beginning, what struck me
was how innocent and naive they were.
And maybe the show was innocent and naive.
As they aged, the show ages,
and they're now facing the realities of growing up.
If the show is about that time in your life
when your friends are your family,
once you have family of your own,
it's no longer that time.
Thank you.
I guess this is it.
Wow.
This is harder than I thought it would be.
[Freeman] The Friends farewell remains
the most watched television finale since 2004,
when 52 million viewers tuned in to say goodbye.
[Kauffman] It was not just the end of a series,
it was the end of ten years of relationships.
It's the kind of TV I really enjoy.
TV that withstands the test of time and can bring people together.
[Freeman] Yet when Warner Bros. debuted another
freshman cast of characters in the fall of 1994,
lightning struck twice.
[indistinct dialogue]
The frenetic medical drama was the brainchild of author Michael Crichton,
but only after a referral from Steven Spielberg
did the project find its way to Warner Bros.,
where executives trusted resident showrunner John Wells
to give it life.
We didn't have a large budget to make the show.
We had to build the set in a certain way
and shoot it in a certain way,
and that meant that it looked real.
- She's bleeding out! - Carter, Chen, gown up!
[Wells] So we had real doctors, real nurses as all of our extras.
We had two doctors who were also writers on our writing staff.
We did not change any of the medical jargon.
- Oh, man! - Pressure's up to 90 palp!
- Why wasn't he in restraints? - I don't know.
[Clooney] John Wells rightly said,
"It doesn't matter if they don't understand what you're saying
as long as they understand what's going on and root for the people."
It was really just one thing after another.
You know, someone comes in, go, go, go!
And it was electric.
BP's sky-high, 170 over 120.
- What about anesthesia? - No, there's no time.
[Schneider] Every television show that came after ER
that deals with medicine,
that deals with hospitals, owes a credit to ER
for changing the game in terms of the realism.
Book an OR. Get ready to send Connor up.
- Where's the foley? - I'm working on it.
[Schneider] The camera angles,
the cinema verite style of shooting, the action.
- Hey! - Move!
Go! Go! Do it!
[Schneider] It was chaos.
[man] Get off of me!
That's what a real emergency room looks like.
And television hadn't really shown that before.
[Wells] The show took off right away.
And by the third week, we were the number one
or number two show in the country.
Routinely, at that time, we had 35 to 40 million viewers a week.
[Schneider] You had to go home
and you had to watch on Thursday nights.
It was appointment television.
It was an exciting time at Warner Bros.
Really, 'cause that lot was magical.
It just felt like really new blood.
Everybody would go to the commissary to eat,
and we'd all play basketball outside with the Friends cast,
with whoever was around.
Friends and ER were quick phenomenons, changed the game,
and quickly made NBC
the number-one network in television.
When I was at NBC, I was running the cable group,
as people tuned in all around America.
The majority of our content was produced right here on this lot.
And we had established the Thursday night that was called "Must See TV."
Must see TV, Warner Bros. TV.
[Freeman] The company's appetite only grew.
In 1996,
Time Warner made Ted Turner an offer he couldn't refuse.
Will it be a marriage made in media heaven
that will provide quality and not just quantity for cable consumers?
With Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting
for the proposed merger of the two media giants.
[Freeman] The unified juggernaut
took control of CNN, HBO, and New Line Cinema.
And in a twist of fate that would have made the founders proud,
Warner Bros. now owned the MGM movie library.
Despite the company's added weight,
Daly and Semel made sure it didn't lose its soul.
They embraced human stories that made headlines.
[reporter] She was a singer with one name, Selena.
Known as the Mexican-American Madonna.
But in this motel in Corpus Christi, Texas,
the former head of her fan club killed Selena.
Young fans across the country were heartbroken.
[Nava] Her death was a tremendous loss to our community,
and we wanted to do everything we could
to try to make something positive out of this tragedy.
We went around town pitching the idea of doing a film about Selena,
and a lot of people thought, "Well, this is really a movie for TV.
This really isn't a big movie, you know."
I went into Warner Bros., and I told them the story
about how I met these two little girls and they were Mexicanas.
And I said, "Why do you love Selena?"
And they looked up at me and they said,
"Because she looks like us."
They don't have a Disney princess.
They never see themselves on the screen.
I'm going to make this film for them.
At the end of that pitch, they were in tears,
and they said, "Yeah, let's do it."
That takes a huge amount of courage for a studio to do such a thing.
But we couldn't just offer the role of Selena to anybody.
We wanted to see who could really do it.
All right. Here we go.
- [man 1] Rolling sound. - [man 2] Quiet!
Action.
[Freeman] Nava chose a relative unknown named Jennifer Lopez.
Warner Bros. offered her
an unprecedented salary of $1 million dollars
making her the highest paid Latina actress ever.
She dedicated herself completely.
Because she knew that this was her shot,
and she was keenly aware that the hopes and dreams
of our entire community and all those young Latinas
were riding on her shoulders.
[loud cheering]
How you doing, Houston, Texas?
[Nava] Jennifer is a marvelous dancer.
She used her acting talent to dance like Selena.
And the performance is absolutely mind-boggling.
[Nava] She lived and breathed Selena.
[Olmos] Doing that film and what it meant
was an advancement of the culture
in a way that had never been seen before.
Selena still is one of the few movies that have been made
with Latino themes and a Latina actress leading the way.
[Nava] I really feel that if you tell the story of your village,
you tell the story of the world.
[Freeman] But Warners didn't yet realize
that authentic storytelling would unlock the future.
Instead, the media empire wagered
on the promise of new technology.
[male reporter 1] It's three times sharper than VHS.
[female reporter] A revolution is about to hit the entertainment industry.
[male reporter 2] Now, this is the wave of the future right here.
[Freeman] In a move that echoed the dawn of sound,
Warner Bros. became the first studio to embrace a cutting-edge innovation.
[male narrator]
[male narrator continues]
Whoa!
[male narrator]
[female narrator] Say goodbye to videotapes, hello to DVD.
[man] A digital video disc.
[woman] And sales are soaring.
[Freeman] Warner Bros.' conviction
persuaded the entire industry to follow suit.
Audiences went wild.
Rather than just renting content,
they craved owning it.
The DVD ignited a huge revenue engine
that would soon outpace box office
and drive Hollywood out of the analog age
and into a digital one.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.
You have to see it for yourself.
[Keanu Reeves] The Matrix was all about
the beauty, importance...
of the idea of the real.
How do we talk about what we are and who we are?
The Matrix was just so cutting-edge and so profound.
It was insane.
That made you think about the world and the possibility that maybe
this is all a simulation or something. [chuckles]
It's like, "Well, I don't know." It's really crazy.
[Freeman] Warner Bros. invested big in a dystopian vision
that felt very plausible in a Y2K-fearing world.
The pair of writer-directors, the Wachowskis,
imagined a future ruled by machines where humanity is imprisoned.
You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland,
and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
[Reeves] The Matrix's themes are cautionary.
Systems of control,
who has it, who uses it, ideas of revolution.
[Freeman] Far more than a mere action movie,
The Matrix played as a parable on paranoia, truth, and liberation.
Its message rattled the psyche and awakened the conscience.
The Matrix, to me, was a Warner Bros. film.
You know, it was science fiction,
but it gave back in other ways.
I've met people who say they saw the first Matrix,
and they weren't the same, you know?
They felt like they could see the world in a different way that,
at the core, made them feel better. Like, there's less confusion.
The films are a message of love and, in a way, to take care of each other.
[Freeman] One month before The Matrix went viral,
another moment marked the company's future.
Stanley Kubrick unveiled his longtime passion project,
Eyes Wide Shut.
[Calley] Stanley called and told me that he had run it through the studio
and that Terry and Bob thought it was fantastic,
and I could feel a sigh of relief because it had gone on forever.
And in some terrible way,
I feel that he could let go then.
Then he died two days later after he talked to me
and three days after he showed it to Terry and Bob.
[Freeman] The creative partnership
that symbolized an era of artistry had ended,
but the body of work endures.
[Reeves] I had never seen films like that before.
The production design, the costumes, the cinema, the detail,
everything working together for the vision of a filmmaker.
I just wanted to be in those movies, wanted to play those roles,
wanted to say those words.
[Freeman] A few months after Kubrick's passing,
Daly and Semel made an announcement.
[Daly] We decided we were going to leave,
but I didn't want to tell anybody until we opened Eyes Wide Shut.
Because Stanley only had a relationship with Terry and I.
We wanted to get the movie open,
get everything set, before we told people we weren't going to stay.
[Freeman] Leadership continuity was rare in Hollywood,
a place often fraught with studio upheaval.
But for two decades, Daly and Semel exerted a calming influence
and championed more than 500 films together.
[Clooney] They had a movie that didn't open,
and I asked them, "Was somebody gonna get fired for it?"
Because that's what happened at all the other studios at that point.
And they were like, "Look, kid, this is a crapshoot.
We've made really good movies that've bombed
and we've made really bad movies that have been big hits.
And, you know, it's timing, it's a lot of things."
And it worked for them.
They hired people they loved and they stuck with them.
And they said, "Okay, I trust you, you know."
That's why Kubrick stayed as long as he did.
[Freeman] The days of indulging artists
through thick and thin were numbered.
Daly and Semel made their farewell speech
inside the Steve Ross Theater to their Warner family.
[Semel] From time to time, we've been accused
of being too generous with people.
I think that's the greatest thing that we could ever be accused of.
There are so many extraordinary filmmakers
who've worked under the Warner Bros. banner.
And I think it's a testament to the structure of how a studio works,
that they can find a home within what is often portrayed in simplistic terms
as a mere sort of commercial machine.
The fact that great art comes through that system is really remarkable.
I think if Warner Bros. ever loses that sense of supporting individual voices,
then it'll cease to function correctly.
[Freeman] As the countdown
to the new millennium crept closer,
rumors spread of yet another corporate shakeup,
one that raised doubts about endless growth
in the Internet Age.
Warner Bros. braced for an oncoming identity crisis.
[Neo] I don't know the future.
I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end.
Where we go from there...
is a choice I leave to you.
[suspenseful music playing]