Get Used to It: Ep. 93, "Voices of Our Lives: Bruce Cohen"

ah [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila cuell your hostess guide whatever and today we have one of our occasional series which we've called voices of our lives in which we interview a person in our community who has not made a spectacle of themselves no actually some of them have but this one hasn't and today i'm very happy to offer up my guest bruce cohen an academy award-winning producer one of the co-producers of american beauty but he hasn't always been so famous and all his life he's also been a gay activist welcome bruce thank you sheila thank you for being here i'm thrilled to be here i should tell you i have so made a spectacle of myself but that's another story good enough that it wasn't a public spectacle because no one's sitting at home going i remember when he or people magazine or something well i can't tell you how i felt when i was watching the oscars and you were up on the stage um i mean american beauty did very well of course that year and it was a wonderful film and i've known you for a really long time as an activist in the community but you have to wonder how does a friend get to be you know an academy award-winning producer just it's not a thing that absolutely everybody you know is going to do in their lives so i thought i'd invite you on the show and see kind of what your story is and i i know other people would be interested too so i know you didn't start out as an academy award-winning producer where did you grow up i grew up in washington dc falls church virginia right outside and actually though um when i was eight years old my parents were out of town and my grandmothers let me stay up to watch the academy awards and it was 1969 it was butch cassidy and sundance kid year and i remember looking at robert redford and paul newman and thinking oh my god look at those two gorgeous men i didn't quite know what that meant yet but i knew i thought they were hot but i also that night i thought to myself i want one of those and i've always having an oscar has always been a dream of mine since that night when i was eight years old so how does this all start out though do we have an ordinary childhood or are we carrying around eight millimeter cameras there was a it was basically an ordinary childhood although looking back because i didn't i didn't really decide to go into movie making as a career until college but then in retrospect i realized that i was sort of involved in all these little film projects my whole life and i there would be the occasional elementary school science project that i would turn into a film and have my friends running around and direct directing them doing something in front of the camera so so it definitely always was a a love of mine and what what then happened did you could you pursue it in high school or did you get a chance to do work or did it have to wait it had it waited other than the occasional project here or there back when back in the days when i was in high school there really wasn't you know anything like film courses and now i think it's now especially with video you know there's a lot more access to that and kids are thinking about making films way earlier which is fantastic but but then no i really until i got to college there was no even chance to take any formal film courses or study movies in any way and where did you go to college i went to yale university why yale um i had just i had wanted to go to the best school that i could that i could get into basically um coming from it's a jewish background where education was highly valued and and that the idea of trying to get an ivy league education had had been mentioned around the house more than once or twice my parents have both gone to cornell which is where they had met and um when so when it came time to apply for colleges i i aimed high and i applied to the best schools i could find and went to visit a bunch and but yale was really the one that i fell in love with um when i went to visit it and just the whole the beauty of the campus and and the history and the the quality everything about it um i was really taken with and so when i found out the day i found out i got in was one of the great days of my life i remember just being incredibly thrilled and actually the mailman this was how sort of quaint our community was he knew that i was waiting for the yale application and the day that it came he knocked on the door which he didn't usually do and he had it behind his back and he was i was like do you have any mail for me and he's like no i don't have anything for you i'm like oh god and he's like oh there may be just this one thing and it was the letter from yale and my mom was not home at the time and i opened it and the mailman was the first person to find out how about that right yeah probably well i know that um at least all the time that i've known you uh as as your career has become more and more successful you've also never failed to be involved in some way or another in uh in activism in our community and the truth is i know a lot of people in the industry and that is not necessarily always the case even if they're out you know as gay people they don't necessarily feel they need to get involved but this notion of sort of of giving back or of of concern about communities is this something else that might have you grew up with i mean i know a lot of jewish families sort of have this you know you've got to give back and you've got to be involved politically kind of thing yes that was instilled in me as well my parents were both had been very active politically and were god blessed them bleeding heart liberal democrats and my dad had mar marched with martin luther king i was very proud of that and had been a union lawyer his whole life so he's really walked the walk and um when i was uh growing up my next uh a neighbor across the street was sort of the grand doyan of northern virginia democratic politics she was probably in her 50s or 60s then and she started me campaigning for democrats when i was four it was literally the first time that i would walk door to door i was a little precocious as a kid and was evidently quite a hit because here is this four-year-old campaigning so i think i got a few votes here or there for my candidates and i the first letter i got was from a county supervisor who actually won when i was seven years old and i have a letter from him thanking me for all of my hard work on his campaign so i i have i politics um got in my blood really early and i've been a political junkie pretty much my whole life but of course there's something beyond politics in terms of what we care about i understand that i mean i also equate kind of the ethos that you might have in terms of the political work electeds uh what you do when you're in office et cetera with kind of a mission about taking care of the most vulnerable among us but um i when did you first start to kind of have a at least a consciousness about your own sexual orientation well i think i've i pretty much knew my whole life i actually remember when i was four like wrestling with my little friends and thinking oh this is really fun which is hot cause i was the same year i started democratic campaigning so the strains have been linked from the beginning but um i i i didn't admit it to myself fully and deal with it until i was in college but it was something that i had i had always known and and looking back i mean i i feel like i was for me personally i was absolutely born that way and it's something that i've been aware of really my whole life and was there activism in college at this time about uh sexual orientation stuff yes um yale was a very pro-gay place and there was a lot of gay activities going on there and a lot of um uh liberal politics that was that was um involved in all that but something that was sort of interesting for my um activist journey which i i kind of feel like it was a nice accident of timing is that i really i started as a democrat from the time i was four that was sort of my first association with with activism of any sort and then when i came out as a gay man and i really had to put that aside in 1981 and 82 being a gay activist and being a democrat did not always interlink and it was right at the beginning of of aids and there were of course a lot of great battles to be fought and it was at the very beginning of even getting the major political parties to be able to mention the word much less be supportive so then there was like a 10-year period where i sort of had to put my demo democratic loyalty aside and be a gay man first and a democrat second if if at all but what's happened over the last 10 years or so which we'll talk about later in the program i hope we'll get a chance to and i believe was led by clinton um is that those two great loves of my life have become closer and closer together whereas today um being a gay activist and being an a loyal beloved member of the democratic party is so very much in sync and continues to get more in sync and that's a for me it's a really exciting thing well of course it was exciting for me too i mean you certainly didn't find any gay people running in the other party at least not yet in california um but you were studying film while you were in college yes i started i decided at yale that that i sort of admitted to myself that you know what do you really want to do with your life and and i i knew deep down it was film i just never really thought about it that way i never really thought that it was an option i'd always sort of you know thought well you're a lawyer a teacher or a doctor or a fireman or an airplane pilot or an architect or something i mean now it is more but it really wasn't in people's consciousness back then um and but but i was i've realized you know films really what i love and what i want to do so i got the idea in college just to to do that and switch my major to film and started studying at yale so what was the breakthrough because colin you know a lot of people want to play with film in college and they do their student films and you know they hope that they're going to make the next step and you clearly did what was the next step well i went to um after my sophomore year in college i did an internship at nyu for the it was a film program nyu intensive where you just went and made movies all summer long which was really fantastic and then junior year so i decided okay well that was great i decided that i wanted to come out to los angeles because that was that was hollywood of course um and i luckily my dad had only two connections in the movie business but they both worked at warner brothers and i got them both resumes and they got them both to the personnel woman and i actually found out later that um i ended up getting an internship at warner brothers that summer i've had a lot of luck being in the right place at the right time which i think is a a lot of that's not an unusual thing that people look back on their careers and they're like if this one little thing hadn't happened that's true the head of personnel at warner brothers got two letters within the space of three hours on one morning from different people in the company they both came with a resume of mine attached saying that i was looking for summer and a summer internship they didn't have summer internships at warner brothers so she tossed them aside they didn't mean anything to her and that afternoon she got a phone call from one of the departments saying we what is happening with our request for an additional person we're dying here and she was like you know that request has been rejected and they said well get us a summer intern something she said well we don't have summer interns at warner brothers and they said they it was it was um the distribution department and they and it was probably somewhat a dramatic and idle threat said if you don't get us help the movies aren't going to be on the screens this summer we are dying and then so she hung up the phone and the summer interns clinged into her mind and she was like well i did get these two resumes for the same person and so that's how i got my job at warner brothers for the summer well when i uh when i went to law school i i was lucky enough to go to harvard and people would say to me well how do you get into a place like that and i said well first you have to apply you know you have to actually sit down you have to send the letter so it often when people say oh i was very lucky or i was in the right place at the right time they they often don't count the fact that maybe among 27 of their friends nobody called and said you know do you know anybody out there that i can ask to help me get a job yes because a lot of times people are very sh i don't know whether they call it shy about that or whatever but they really don't make the effort and i think sometimes that's you know what leads to it yeah so you are in distribution i'm sorry well i was just going to say i though i was really lucky too because when i came out to hollywood in 1983 people it was before the premiere magazine it was before entertainment weekly it was before really like right at the beginning of mtv people didn't really know about the movie business and people were coming out here to be actors and actresses people really weren't coming out here to work behind the camera and i've seen and the sad news is i have to tell kids today when they call for advice you know it's so much harder to get started in the business now but 20 years ago you wanted to come be a production assistant you just walked into this to the office and they were hiring and you know you jumped on it was a whole different thing because no one no one knew what movie making was then or understood what the jobs were and people didn't come out here trying to do that so here you are stuck in an office as a summer intern what what happened well they had um i had a great summer and really learned a lot and all the people at warner brothers had said come back when you graduate you know go back to school for your senior year and come back next june and they actually had told me they said you know you'll have a real job and you'll get a promotion and a salary and a desk and the whole thing so i go back to yale all completely the cocky senior and i've got a job at warner brothers you know which was actually very exciting i had a great senior year and actually made a one-hour narrative video as my senior thesis and didn't take much else in the way of classes but which was great for my creativity to work on that project and when i got back to so i moved out uh to california a week after graduation and to start my new life and i got there on the first day and they're like well we don't really have a job for you we don't really have the desk or the office or the promotion but we can give you your internship again which and there and they said you know we didn't want to tell you because we felt so bad and we didn't want you to be depressed and i actually said you know what i'm glad you didn't tell me because i had my whole fantasy thinking i had this great job and i moved out here and now i'm here and so it's fine so i started as a college intern again as a college graduate which went fine until about november when the same woman from warner brothers personnel called and said to them um it's november why hasn't your college intern gone back to college and they said well he's graduated and we want to keep him so after a series of uh back and forth they ended up getting permission to to keep me on but i worked there for about a year and people kept coming up to me and saying get out of here you've got to get on a set you know we're all none of us wanted to do this we didn't want to be in office jobs we wanted to make movies and we got stuck and if you don't make a jump now you're going to be like us in 15 years whatever which i also thought was very nice of you know they were sort of warning me you know run to the set so i did asked everyone who would say that to me well how do you get on a set and i a couple different people told me about the director's guild of america has a training program to train you to be an assistant director who are the people that have the walkie-talkies and run around and organize things at the time i didn't know what an assistant director was but i talked to people and asked around and it started the job started sounding a lot like sophomore class president to me and which i had been coincidentally i was like if if this is about putting on the homecoming dance and making sure all the arrangements are in the right place at the right time i think i can do that so um i applied for the director's guild training program and was fortunate enough to get accepted to that and turned out that i just loved ading it really was a perfect fit with my skills and my personality and it really was was a job that was kind of made for me so i had a great time doing that now what does a dga actually do um in terms of this training do you get some training and then they uh place you on a film no it's all on the job there's there's a um a welcoming a three hour welcome to the to the your new life seminar which just scares the out of you because you have no idea what it is like there's a first aid and a second ad and then there's the dga training and then you show up on the film and that's your first day of work i'm actually my first job was on hill street blues which was a great experience because it was just a it was the fifth season of the show and by that point it was a critical success it was a commercial success and it really changed the landscape of television to some extent when it came along it was a very much the landmark drama and was really the you know started all of the great one-hour dramas that we have seen since so hill street was a very exciting place to work and but you show up the first day just you know with no idea and then the all your bosses you know say okay do this go here do that go here do that go here so and you run around like an idiot so how long is the traineeship well they they want you to get a lot of different experiences over about that takes about two years but they only let you stay on a show or movie for about three months and then they take you off and they move you on to the next one so um i was on hill street blues and um then they took me off it was time to go which was sad and seemed very cruel to me i was like but i'm having to try to do it and everyone was saying what a good job i was doing so then i was out of work for about four months i didn't hear from for the from the training program and i was collecting unemployment at that time because you can't take other work you're just on call and so literally about four months have gone by and i was like this is ridiculous i'm going stir crazy and i called the director of the training program and said what is the deal you've got to get me work she said well and i said what she goes well there's this interview this afternoon for a feature film and they wanted to meet three candidates and they were only supposed to i was only supposed to send them the most experienced trainees who were at the end of their program but since you're calling me today and since i only have two slots filled and the interviews in three hours and there's one more slot and since you did a really good job at hill street blues i will send you to interview for this movie called moon song at warner brothers so that was my old home so i called a friend of mine at warner brothers i said oh i'm going to interview at moon song this afternoon and they said oh my god that's the secret code name for the color purple directed by steven spielberg oh wow and i i really at that moment i just this sort of light bulb went off and i thought this is my lana turner moment i mean you know getting discovered at schwabs i felt like i needed to do whatever i could to get that job and to get a chance to to work with stephen a friend of mine reminded me years later i didn't remember this at the time but in college this summer that i was at nyu we had gone to see raiders of the lost ark and at the end of the movie i had turned to my friend and said i really would like to work for steven spielberg someday which da who wouldn't a lot of us i've said exactly yes exactly um so i was very fortunate in that i was i did end up getting the job after a lot of um convincing of the i went in with a very aggressive um uh game plan because i really thought that ordinarily i think i would have just i would have trusted my own uh presentation but in this case i knew i was going in with the less experience right and so i really um fought hard for the job and i i i almost instructed them to call hill street blues because i thought that was my only chance i didn't know if i'd get a good enough recommendation from hill street blues but i thought i've got no shot unless if the people at hill street blues say to them you've got to hire this kid and then i found out later that who one of the producers that they had talked to had in fact said you'd be making a huge mistake if you don't give this kid a shot um so that was that worked out really wonderfully that i did end up getting the job on the color purple and i've pretty much worked for steven as an assistant director and then as a producer or now we have a production deal at his studio dreamworks ever since pretty much so it turned out to be quite the good move as i was hoping that it would be that's still quite a steep climb i mean he's already spielberg and you're the dga trainee right and that's still the slot that you had on the color purple yes so but i'm assuming that you're what you from what you've said that this leads to this leads to this leads to this so what what happened next in your career or or tell us a little about the color purple because that was a movie that i think everyone you know loved and remembered and was so moved by i mean the story is so extraordinary well and it had a has a very important excited historic feel as it was happening because the the novel had been such a sensation and the fact that stephen was doing it had gotten a lot of attention it also had gotten a lot of criticism because a lot of african-americans felt why is this white jewish guy directing our story and stephen was so sensitive and um cognizant of that and really didn't have an answer to that or want to other than to say i'm an artist and i love this story and i i hope that if you entrust me with this project you won't be disappointed um which most people weren't you know again when it came out it had some fans and some foes but for the most part people loved the movie and were moved by it and certainly i was i just it's i just love the film um but working on it was an incredible experience and my i was i really felt like that i my goal was to just do my job and to do it as well as possible i didn't want to try and get stephen's attention i knew that that as the trainee there were five my he wasn't my boss you know uh other than three times removed i reported to so many other layers and so i really went in with the idea of i'm gonna work hard and you know do a great job for the assistant directors and that was my goal and then it ended up that that he ended up noticing me and and and i actually um had i love kids and i've i always have and there were a whole bunch there was a group of about 50 or 60 african-american kids who were the extras on the movie and they were the kids and brothers and sisters of all the main characters and so they were on the film a lot and these kids were mostly poor rural kids from south north carolina and they're plucked out of school and suddenly they're on a steven spielberg movie and this is after e.t this is after raiders of the lost ark so he's as steven spielberg at that point as he is today pretty much right and so i just felt like it was a really um potentially could be a really scary um unusual experience for these kids and i really thought this was an area where i could help to really learn their names and get to know them and make them feel at home and be there be their sort of chaperone which was crazy because they also you know they were crazy these kids there would be 50 of them and by the afternoon when their sugar highs they were just running around so so i and i just sort of and the ads were happy to have someone be in charge of these kids of course um and steven noticed actually and there was a time where um a couple weeks into the shoot in in north carolina where he wanted b camera to go off and shoot some shots of the of the kids and he pointed at me he's like who's that guy over there he's really i've seen him he's good with the kids send him off with that camera which was basically directing the kids which was highly unusual at an orthodox for a dda trainee but you know steven had noticed that that i was good with kids and so so it ended up being a uh the start of a of a beautiful relationship to quote the cliche and once you do that too i mean it's they're not going to take that camera out of your hands again eventually that would be the hope you would be you would be hooked yes so how do you then proceed i mean you know you get three months you say as a as a trainee and then they can send you to something else but there must be when you say the beginning of a beautiful relationship there sounds like there must have been more well the color purple ended and then as a as a trainee you were assigned so you just sort of went wherever they told you to go but i actually uh again luckily got back got assigned to amazing stories which was an amblin production although i didn't have much contact with steven there and then a movie called batteries not included which was another amblin production and um that was by the same producing team frank marshall and kathy kennedy who would produce color purple who are now two of my very best friends and i'm the godfather to their daughter and so that a whole beautiful relationship has grown out of that but initially it started as i was a trainee and they were the producers right and jerry molin who was the production manager on the color purple um who was also on batteries not included and so i was the um trainee on batteries not included and graduated my days and they kept me on as a second assistant director on battery's not included then there was a period of um a couple of years where stephen and kathy and frank were out of the country they did the second raiders empire the sun and the third raiders and on those movies they were hiring second assistant directors from wherever they were so there was no jobs available for me at that point even if i could have gotten them so i was off working i did a variety of um second ag jobs on all different films mostly forgettable movies the couch trip the boost cocoon the return the sequel to cocoon satisfaction which was julia roberts first movie notable only for that um and then um i heard that spielberg was getting ready to direct always and it was going to be back in the country again and so i called up kathy and frank and jerry and i said you know you've gotta please let me be the second assistant director and always and so i went in and i interviewed on that and um got that job and then that sort of that really started the string of a bunch of movies in a row that i did for them i was the second assistant on always and then um frank and kathy always um and continued to this day they always believed in me and always wanted me to keep pushing myself and trying new stuff the next position and right after all way always wasn't even over and frank came to me and said i'm getting ready direct to direct arachnophobia which was going to be his first directing movie and i want you to be my first assistant director and i said to him okay that's the worst idea you've ever had first of all i don't even have enough days as a second to be a first second of all i've never first before and you've never directed before you need a really experienced first id and he said oh don't be such a wuss you're gonna be my first ad and so he actually we we actually i ended up i got hired on another show just to get my enough days as a second so that i could be eligible to be his first and i was his first on arachnophobia and which worked out wonderfully and we had a great time and thank god i didn't listen to myself and i let him say no i'm sure you can handle it and after arachnophobia stephen was getting ready to do hook which was going to be a huge production budgetarily and physically it was one of the largest movies steven had done at that point and kathy and frank and jerry mullen of course were like bruce cohen as your first ad and steven felt and rightly so he said no way this kid he's still a kid he's only first in one movie i'm about to do the largest movie of my career get me the guy who's done all of morton's car says movies get me the guy who's done 10 of brian de palma's movies you know he was interviewing all these firsts get all the big first ids of the day and after every interview kathy and frank and jerry would say where's going you should give the kid a chance and he finally i do believe that they annoyed him into hiring me um and that was a long about a one and a half year process from the time i first started till the time we finished and it had its very difficult moments but for the most part um steven and i had just an incredible experience you get it's a very intimate relationship between the first ad and the director and especially the way stephen works because stephen likes demands he wants the first assistant director at his side for the second he gets there to the second he leaves i mean he literally would yell i'd take one step away and he'd get back here i'm like stephen i have to talk you know and but people learned you know they were they knew if you want me you've got to come to where i am because if i lose physical contact with steven spielberg yes so i can't no i can't come over to talk to you now what year are we in now this is 1990. so um you must be pretty out open about uh about being gay something very clear to everybody in the company no actually um what had happened with that was i was out in college and then i came out to la and in my mind so in my mind i'm an out gay man you know that's not changing but then how to translate that into a work experience is a whole nother question and that's a question that every gay and lesbian person struggles with and it gets a little easier just because it's a much more of a topic of discussion these days but it's always something to be reckoned with and each person has their very individual journey and in my case at that point in the 80s people weren't out in hollywood right there was no discussion of it on the set there was no discussion of sexuality on the sat it just wasn't done and people weren't out and so i had a bit of a bifurcated slightly bifurcated life i was out in my social life my friends knew i was out some people on the set would know i was out anyone that i got friendly with who would be part of my social circle would know but i wasn't out at work no one was i mean it almost in a strange way it would have almost have been inappropriate there was just no forum in at that time to be out of work it didn't it didn't exist as a something that there was yet really um and um when i um after hook kathy and frank were on the la i should say that on the last day of hook right as we finished shooting steven turned to me and said you don't have to first ad anymore you can produce now which is pretty extraordinary because i had only first did two movies but hook had been a long haul and we had worked very hard and he felt that i had earned my stripes and i actually kidded him i said well i said yeah stephen it's a good thing because we were supposed to shoot for 45 days and we shot for 80 and we were supposed to spend 40 million dollars and we spent 80 million dollars no one would ever hire me to be a first ad again which he left and thought that was funny but um so but but kathy and frank were going off to do a live which was frank's next movie as a director his second movie after acnophobia and so they asked me to come along come on board as the co-producer and to produce the movie with kathy and robert watts was another producer so i was up in uh the canadian rockies on location in a very remote on top of a mountain doing a live and jerry molin called from amblin and said steven would like you to come back and produce be a producer on staff at amblin and this was kathy and frank and steven had broken up at that point and kathy and frank had gone off to form their own company and stephen was at amblin so i think part of it was he was feeling like everyone was leaving him and i was up with kathy and frank and he really wanted me to come back and and work for him and so i said to jerry i said well i'm so honored and you know i'm up in canada in the rockies uh producing a movie but as soon as i the movie wraps in like two months you know and i get back to los angeles the first thing i'll do is go to code and to meet steven and i went to tell kathy kennedy and i was a little hesit i was sensitive just because i didn't know how she'd feel about me even entertaining the idea of leaving them and going back to work for stephen and i told kathy what had happened and she said bruce and i thought okay here it comes i go what she goes no no no no i believe that windows of opportunity open and then they close so you are not waiting two months what you're doing is you're getting on a plane tomorrow you're flying to los angeles you're meeting with stephen tomorrow because we may be your best friends and you may love working for us but he's steven spielberg and he wants to talk to you and you go talk to him and i'll cover for you and do your job and you go to los angeles so great that's clearly yeah that's a mensch for you totally so that night though i realized that uh i got this sinking feeling in my stomach i was like oh my god because i thought i've got to come out to stephen because i thought and i had actually um i had quit i'd literally i'd come out to kathy and frank like the week before and with them which was sort of i had felt bad about and it was a little sad i think was a product of the times too as i explained to them because they were angry they were like that you hadn't told them before they're like why haven't you told us this you know we're and and i said i have no excuse but the closest i can come is that i sort of missed the window in there at one moment i was a trainee pitcher and you were these famous successful producers and the next moment we were collaborators and best friends and somewhere on that journey was the right time for me to tell you and i just missed it you know i didn't do it i was and scared and you know unsure and for all the reasons that these things are hard so they were angry at me they're like well that's ridiculous you know and which was of course nice that's a great response to get when people are right of course or they either say oh i'm so angry you didn't tell me before or i've been waiting you know i mean we've just been waiting outside the closet door exactly who didn't know and and i even at that time which was sort of my that was a lesson i've learned that i've talked to a lot of people about a lot of gay people out since i was like well you're my best friends you were so why didn't you ask me why didn't you say anything and they said it was not our place exactly we would never presume to bring that up with you and i've told a lot of my gay friends that since and because i think that's true i've said you can't on anybody to come to you with it because they if they really love you they're going to feel like it is that's such a personal private matter they're not going to broach it you've got to take it to them right so a week later i realized i've got to come out to stephen because i also felt with this newfound not that there was any doubt but i had been so warmly received from kathy and frank if i'm going to leave these people that i love that are true friends of mine that know who i am accept me on every level and i could absolutely work for kathy kennedy and frank marshall for the rest of my life and have an amazing career i mean you look at the films they've produced since then the sixth sense and they just this summer alone they did signs and the bourne identity and they have seabiscuit coming up i mean their work's just been magnificent so clearly i wasn't wrong and feeling that way if i'm going to leave them and risk going back to work for stephen i need him to know who i am exactly and so i went to tell kathy and she thought that was she did not think that was a good idea she said you know that's such a huge risk and you know it's it's blurring the line from personal to professional and what if steven doesn't react well i you know i don't know what his reaction will be i don't know whether he knows gay people or whether anyone has ever had this discussion with him before and i said well kathy that's that's why i have to do it you know if he has a problem with it then i need to know that because then i can't go work for him so this was a big you know i'm coming a long way fast for someone who hadn't been out of work three weeks before but the as the circumstances um you know they were when the circumstances are dealt you you have to deal with them and hope well i also think when you when you come out to people who mean something to you and often we come out to people that we are pretty sure are going to say oh i already knew or that's fine um it somehow almost makes it difficult not to come out to the next person the next person and just be out at work and out with your family and as difficult as it is when you're open with someone it does make you realize how much fuller you are when you're completely sort of unified absolutely as a person so i i totally understand it but it's interesting to me you have used the word risk twice that it was a big risk and i think um you you may or may not have been right how did it go well it went wonderfully and actually the the night the morning before i went in to talk to stephen i did realize that i laughed because i thought you you bruce have such a blessed life leave it up to you to be the person who here you've had this whole struggle of well how do i come out at work you know how what is even the process of coming out in hollywood well you go tell stephen spielberg and then you've done it and i and i laughed to myself because i thought if steven spielberg's okay with me being gay then i'm out in hollywood i don't really give up flying what anyone else thinks you know he's my boss he's my mentor he's my idol he's steven spielberg i'm doing it all at once i've got a simple plan so um i went in and talked with him and we had had a we had a wonderful talk even before that he was just saying the most beautiful lovely complimentary things about me and his vision for me and why he wanted me to come back and work for him and that basically that he would want to work with me to achieve my dreams and to make sure that i get to have the career that i could dream of having which he has done and has uh delivered on in in in spades um so at the end of the whole conversation which which was good because it was upping the stakes because i was wanting this more and more and more of course you know if there had been any doubt and there was some doubt because of this whole issue i didn't know what i was going to decide going into the meeting at this point you know pack my bags and get me back to los angeles although of course i was gonna finish live but i said well there's one more thing that i need to tell you and he said what is that and i said well i'm i'm gay and he said what could that possibly have to do with this discussion that we're having here and i said okay well that's the perfect thing to say out of your mouth i completely agree with you however it's a part of who i am and if i'm going to come work for you i would only do it if i'm giving you a hundred and thirty percent of me every aspect of myself and in order for me to do that be gay is part of that and you're gonna get you get that along with everything else so if i'm gonna if we're gonna have this relationship it's just something that i need you to know he said bruce i'm i'm mr leftist jewish liberal from day one and i said you know yes i of course i'm aware of that and he said no listen i am so honored that you told me and i loved that you told me but it and it completely makes no difference to me whatsoever um which of course it is great because he he's been on such a wonderful journey too of you know cut to 10 years later he's in business with david geffen and melissa etheridge is his best friend and he's took the courageous stand against the boy scouts which had such fantastic impact because it was a huge media story because he of course had been on the board of directors and had been an eagle scout and had done all this boy scout stuff and said i'm not doing anything more until you change your policy he's actually getting the human rights campaign award at the national dinner in september which i'm something i'm so proud about and so he he also has had this great journey of of uh from someone who just had had never been asked to have an opinion on the subject before to someone who is uh you know just a tremendous advocate of of gay rights and the gay community well he was also doing his own kind of identity stuff too i mean i remember the stories around schindler's list and how personal that was to him in a way that must have made you feel i don't know i'm only assuming that you know wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to to do a film that was about gay people and um and i know actually you did do a film well not that we're comparing it to schindler's list i know that you never would because you know that not that your film wasn't a masterpiece but that that was a masterpiece it was a masterpiece schindler's list for me is it's number one on my list of the greatest films of all time when anyone asks me what's your favorite movie ever it's it's easy for me no movie has come close to um putting me through the emotional experience that i went through seeing that film um i saw it four times in the theater within the first couple of weeks of it coming out because he i he had i he had invited me to a screening before it came out and then i went to several of the premieres and i really had to see it a couple times i'm actually i'm so glad i didn't see it for the first time at premiere because the first time i saw it i was like just a complete complete round sorry people can weep at these things yes it's hard the second time i saw it was in washington dc with the president clinton and hillary sitting two rows in front of me and i would have not i'm glad i didn't have to weep quite as hard that time but when um after uh so after i came out to stephen and decided to go work for him and that it worked out great with kathy and frank too because the the next thing that stephen was planning to do was the flintstones and he asked kathy to produce it um even though she wasn't working there anymore and she was actually the executive producer and they asked me to produce it which was again a huge opportunity i mean it was ridiculous that was going to be my first movie that i'm producing on my own and they had me produce the flintstones and um which turned out to be a huge hit and was a fantastic experience and um we were we were towards the end of shooting and stephen had been uh shooting schindler's list in poland while we were making the flintstones and he wanted to stay involved he wanted to he would ask us to brian levant the director and i he would ask us to call him and uh in the middle of the night where he was and it was daytime and you know let him know casting and sets and what was going on with the movie and and i early on in that process once he arrived in poland i asked him i said stephen you're there filming schindler's list are you sure you want to be talking about the flintstones and he said bruce you know my days it is so grueling and so harrowing here that i'm happy to talk about the flintstones for a few minutes when i get home and i said okay we'll keep calling you so when he got back um he came to the set and actually they needed to do some they needed to do some reshoots how bizarre and ironic life can be they needed to do some auschwitz reshoots and they needed a um just sort of a bunker area and the um the uh the we were shooting the flintstones in this huge mine out in the valley and he they came out and they're like you know what we could build auschwitz here so they came out to do their scout to do schindler's list and and stephen had this big grin on his face and he handed me the script and i said what's this and he said this is your next movie that you're going to produce i bought it today as a spec script and wait until you read this and it was to wong fu thanks for everything julie newmar and i was couldn't i was so overblown by the idea that i would get to make him a gay themed movie so early in my career i that had been a dream and i had seen the as you said not to compare them but i had seen the journey stephen had gone on and how long it had taken him to get a chance to do schindler's list which was such a personal movie to him and looking at him and his that arc for him i just assumed that it would be many many many many more years until i would get a chance to make a gay themed film and i'd always sort of assumed it'd be something that i have to find and convince someone to make and so when he handed me to one foo i was just couldn't even believe it um and so i was that was just such a treat and a thrill to get to make that movie and that was a that was also a seminal sort of stop on my gay activism journey because we really brought a lot of change and a lot of love to a lot of people's lives throughout that film and the things that would happen around people seeing that movie and straight people seeing that movie and and because the the i think it it it hits that fine line purposely perfectly of not ever crossing over into prosthetizing but pretty damn close i mean the the film is hitting you over the head with the message which is its theme of tolerance and of love and of acceptance and um in i think a really beautiful and powerful way well i i'm afraid we're going to run out of time before we get to talk about american beauty sufficiently and president clinton which you said you wanted to come back to so let's sort of fast forward in a way to american beauty because i know people are fascinated by the film it was not a spielberg film it was your independent production company it was we we had i had partnered up with my producing partner dan jenks at that point and we had formed the jinx cohen company and several months after we had opened our doors as the jinx cohen company the script of american beauty had come into us as a spec script which means that the writer writes it on their own has not gotten any money for it it's not attached to any studio and then they send it to producers and producers take it out to studios and i felt i read it and thought it was the best script i'd ever read and i was really curious as to what dan had thought because dan's background had been script development and he had run two other producers production companies so he had been in the business of reading scripts developing scripts and producing scripts for 10 to 15 years whereas i had come more from production as we've talked about so he had probably read 10 to 15 times more scripts than i had over the hall so when he came in the next morning and said that it was the best script he'd ever read i knew that we really had something and we had it only for dreamworks all different producers were taking it to all different places we had no official association with dreamworks at that point we were our own production company now as a result of american beauty we have a first look production deal at dreamworks back home but um at that time we didn't but the agent knew of my association with steven and our ties with dreamworks and so we had dreamworks as a territory for american beauty and we took it to glenn williamson who was our executive there and he loved it and he gave it to bob cooper who was head of physical production at the time had a production and he loved it and he gave it to steven spielberg and he loved it and so stephen really said oh my god this movie is amazing we need to get this and we need to to make it right away and actually um alan ball of course the brilliant writer of american beauty he wanted to he was getting all these offers from all these different places although dreamworks was the only major studio interested um the other places were like fox searchlight and demand um not to mention but um artisan and a couple other of those types of companies and he wanted to meet all the different producers because before he decided who was going to produce his movie he wanted to meet them and he wanted to meet the production entities that were interested so we came in to a meeting at amblin which was still the headquarters of dreamworks and it was the first time we'd met alan and we told him what a brilliant beautiful script it was and we met in we went in and met with bob cooper and glenn williamson and um had a great meeting with them and after the meeting was over we were standing outside of amblin and we had heard in the meeting we didn't know stephen had read it but bob cooper started talking about stephen and how much he loved the script which was news to us exciting news to us and we were standing outside amblin and we were dan and i were trying to give just a little more sales push for ourselves and to tell alan how we work and why we should be the ones to produce the movie and what a great place dreamworks is and why that would be the right decision he was very hesitant to make it at a big studio because he thought that big students would try and make him change it and water it down and water it down very edgy film and you know who knows exactly what they might ask so we're talking alan and dan nudges me and i look up and steven's walking out the door of amblin and so i i'm hoping that bob cooper that it was a gamble because god knows if steven really had read it if he really had liked it if he'd know what the hell i was talking about and this was impromptu he wasn't expecting this i said he has hypers i go stephen this is alan ball he wrote american beauty the script you read last night trying to just give him as much line as i could and stephen looked at alan and said oh my god and he then talked for 20 minutes about lines of dialogue scenes characters casting in that time in saying amongst everything else brilliant he said don't change a word make this right away you should leave it exactly the way it is and it was really a thrill for me because dan i had met stephen just once or twice um over the couple months since we've been partners but had never really spent any quality time with him and alan had never met him before and stephen when he's in love with something is and often steven's completely magical and when he's the looks on their faces hearing him talk about american beauty was just a sight to behold and so when that we sort of figured we were going to get the movie at that point and that allen would decide to go with us and with dreamworks well clearly you did but um just because as i said i don't want to run out of time before we talk about the other stuff but i have to say i mean what does it feel like to hear your name read and you i hear you go from a script that you believe in to one that you you know work so hard to realize see that it's brilliantly realized see that it gets nominated and there you are up on the stage with you know with oscar what did it feel like it the well seeing as how it had been my dream since i was eight years old i i did feel like i was on such a high on the whole through the whole process and just from from the getting nominated on those six weeks i was just living in such joy and love and trying to just give back as much as i could because i just felt so blessed to have been a part of this film and to be a part of this incredible event and um i am thrilled to say that it was the most present i've ever been in my life ever a lot of people talk about how they don't remember a thing right but i didn't want that to be me and it wasn't i mean i remember every second of that whole evening and it's a it's um indescribably um nerve-wracking i mean you you don't know if if your name is red am i going to have a stroke am i going to projectile vomit am i going to faint am i going to black out and forget my speech or am i going to get up and get on that podium and be able to deliver the speech and you truly don't know the answer to that question having never experienced it before and that's what made it's like this roller coaster ride where at the you just get pushed off the edge and sort of hope for the best but we actually did a really nice job with our speech and didn't forget it and and um um the last thing that i said in my speech was to receive this incredible honor from the academy for a movie that we all feel so blessed to be a part of is truly the thrill of a lifetime and so even as above and beyond how spectacular it would ever be to win an academy award for any movie under any circumstances to win one for a movie that we were so proud of and that had we had had so much joy making and poured so much love in and had gotten such a great response i mean by that point we had you know a worldwide it had brought something out in people and so that made it even that just made it heaven on earth that that we were getting honored for a film that really had people loved and had had changed the way people looked at things well sitting in front of my television set and knowing how active you've been in the community and how supportive you have been of all of you know the issues not just for the gay and lesbian community though most often but really you know how much you care i can't even tell you how proud it made me feel and i think you know everyone who knows you bruce and it was uh it's a it's an experience of a lifetime to watch a friend get an oscar i mean this is nothing that happens very often to people maybe a lot in the industry but you know um and of course the worst thing about this show is that the whole hour's gone by and there's like 30 seconds remaining and it's only enough time for me to tell you i'm not only am i proud of you but certainly the community is proud of you to go from you know thinking about that dream to realizing it mostly through what you consider luck and what others would consider a lot of hard work and devotion and i'm very grateful you were my guest on the show and i'm very grateful that all of you joined us and i think as bruce cohen has taught us if you start out with a dream you should just get used to it [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you