Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What is a great story to you? What does that mean? [00:00:00] S1: I think it's a character starting at an extreme point, going to an extreme point that they cannot consciously imagine at the beginning, but somehow, deep down, know that this is where they need to go. And then situations arranged in such a way that the original intent faces bigger and bigger versions of a barrier that is then resolved at the very end. To some degree, most characters that you meet are either underdogs trying to rise, or kings or queens who are falling. The biggest people in the world believe they're the underdog because we are again locked into this subjective experience of the world and we are wanting beings. [00:00:00] S0: Why is that such an appealing story? Why is the underdog that succeeds so universally enjoyable? Is it because everyone views themselves as one? [00:00:00] S1: You get access to people when they recognize themselves in what it is you're saying it's the human desire to overcome our wretched state, which is this kick in the gut phrase I always love. And it's, humans are gods who shit. And I think it has to do with this capable being on this planet that has to die, and that sends all these things are questions of death.
· Wolfgang Hammer, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: You get access to people when they recognize themselves in what it is you're saying it's the human desire to overcome our wretched state, which is this kick in the gut phrase I always love. And it's, humans are gods who shit. And I think it has to do with this capable being on this planet that has to die, and that sends all these things are questions of death. [00:00:00] S0: I'd love you to evaluate my distillation of great story, ask you what's missing in the elements that, as I've thought, I know you were coming to see me. So I was thinking about this a lot, and I was trying to give myself only three common traits or something just to keep it simple. And the things I came up with were originality, which we talked a little bit about in terms of dominant worldview versus how you think the world should be, hardship, and ultimately transformation. As I think about my favorite stories, or if I think about the own best versions of my story that I've lived because I know it intimately, those three elements have been present and or dominant in what I view as great stories. Where do you agree and disagree with those elements? I'm curious.
· Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S1: I think hardship as the barrier to be overcome is the foundational element of any narrative. I find it very interesting in general that when you look at the history of storytelling, how the archetype, if you will, the paradigm of what a story is, is someone actively overcoming obstacles to achieve something. I guess somehow this must correspond to how collectively you see this in Chinese mythology, you see it in Indian mythology. You overcome through activity, through intentional action. Big or small doesn't mean it can just be very, very small. So I think that's probably as a foundational piece, the overcoming of obstacles, which then becomes in and of itself the reason for doing it. There is no journey to go on without an obstacle. So in that sense, I think it's essential originality. I have this specific view. I think very often successful people. I just heard an interview with a brilliant designer, and he talked about originality and how it's so important. And it felt like a status game that people play that when they do something great, that somehow it was entirely original so as to aggrandize their achievement. And it's entirely possible that they felt that this was the case. I think very often it's much more derivative. And I think we should be much kinder to the notion of derivative. And I think we should understand perhaps that originality is just another form of derivation, except it's one that perhaps hasn't been done quite in this way before. Everything's been said, everything we've just said on this conversation, and this conversation has been said before in some way by someone at some point. It just wasn't maybe heard, or it wasn't said in the right way that one specific person could hear it. I think originality is in the same way.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Maybe to redefine originality, then maybe originality is the wrong word, and instead it's a novel revelation of some constant truth or something like that. Like a new way to show people an old thing. And so what about transformation? [00:00:00] S1: Transformation is interesting because in the Greek poetic sense, it would be a transformation. It would be the emergence of a new insight, a new power, which then creates a new kind of version of yourself or of the hero self. And then lately I've also added maybe in my mind, this idea of the transcendental insight as enough. James Joyce was all about this, the Joycean epiphany, the moment where the character accesses a universal truth, a transcendental truth about the world, just for a brief moment, and that's the end of it. So even just the recognition, oh, this is how the way things really are, maybe that's enough to. [00:00:00] S0: What have you learned about status and the role that status plays in human behavior? And, yeah, just more broadly, I know this is a topic that you've thought a lot about. Teach us about status a bit.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What have you learned about status and the role that status plays in human behavior? And, yeah, just more broadly, I know this is a topic that you've thought a lot about. Teach us about status a bit. [00:00:00] S1: I think everything is about status. Every scene is about status. Every scene is about a power differential. It's what we find relentlessly fascinating. Every interaction is about status. There's a sort of story about. I think it was a British actor who knew absolutely everyone in English society and for some reason was unsuccessful at getting what they wanted. And he said when he overplayed his status, he would be hated. When he underplayed his status, he wouldn't get what he wanted. Everyone liked him, but he wouldn't get what he wanted. When he matched status, he would get whatever he asked for. [00:00:00] S0: How do you define it? What is it? [00:00:00] S1: It's a sense of accepted superiority vis a vis another, whether it's physical, societal, or moral. [00:00:00] S0: What about just on the very basic level of the thing you're doing and why?
· Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S1: I'm building a film studio from scratch. Mitch Lasky is my chairman, and a16z is my investor, including Mitch. Mitch Lasky is a former partner at Benchmark and comes from the video game world. And Marc Andreessen is obviously a great lover of cinema and has seen absolutely everything. And the quest is twofold. Trying to make movies in a very traditional sense that, at least for me personally, have an aspiration towards some kind of epiphany or some kind of transcendental insight, even if it's very brief, or maybe show some kind of transformation possible around these philosophical principles. And then there are two sort of technical components to it. One, being is in how we make things. And again, I very much believe that the nature of artistic expression is in the human and the human intent. But technology can help. Filmmaking is inherently a technological endeavor because you're representing the world via cameras. You're staging events to make them look as if they were real, but they're obviously not. So in that sense, technologically mediated and always has been. The third endeavor is going to be around distribution, but marginally, and we're all three very interested in whether something can be done on the edges that espouses this 80-20 philosophy of, well, it's going to be very much a movie company. It is very much a movie company, but maybe has a couple of points in the dominant worldview that it perhaps doesn't quite believe and wants to substitute something else for it.