MACY: I remember I walked out of my trailer one time, ha...
...and I saw four guys walk out of a sound stage...
...and they were clearly Martians.
And they had white BVD T-shirts on...
...but from the waist down, they had green scales and sort of fish feet.
And so they flopped over to a rail...
...and they had scales on their head and sort of these weird noses.
And they all put a cigarette in their mouths, carefully...
...and sat there smoking, talking about their agents...
...in these fish feet with white BVD T-shirts.
And I thought, "I love this business."
Only at Warner Bros. are you gonna see that.
FREEMAN: It's a great studio.
If you just go back over the history of the films...
...that this studio has championed, has made...
...many of them are classics.
First time I came on the Warner Bros. lot was as a script reader.
I would come down, pick up my scripts or my novel to read over the weekend.
They'd give you a pass for a couple of hours.
I would walk around the backlot and check out some of the famous sets...
...and just absorb some of the great history...
...and dream about, you know, coming here one day to actually make my own films.
There is a respect that you have, that I have...
...when you walk into a place like this. Like, how can you take it for granted?
All the people who would love to be in your shoes, who'd love to be sitting here...
...or literally sitting here talking about this studio.
Being on this lot and looking around these streets and thinking:
"Wow, this is where they made those movies that I was in love with as a kid."
I came over here in the '50s. I was very impressed with the lot.
Its beautiful stages all had a lot of ivy growing on them.
And there was kind of a certain character to them that they didn't have across town.
When you come to the gate at Warner Bros., you feel like--
Now you're really where they make movies, real movies.
GILBERT: This is one of the biggest lots in Hollywood.
We have 110 acres on our main lot.
We have a ranch facility located five minutes from here...
...that's another 35 acres.
But the lot is rather densely packed. We have 35 sound stages, total...
...which is the most in any studio in Hollywood.
Thirty here on the main lot and five at the ranch.
About 35 acres of backlot, lots of office buildings.
It's a very densely packed 110 acres.
KAHN: Warner Bros. Studios is a studio that has a great story.
And the story does start with the four Warner brothers.
And a lot of people don't know that there were four Warner brothers...
...four actual brothers, that started this studio.
The brothers were Polish immigrants...
...that moved to the States in hopes of new opportunities and education.
The first thing they did when they got here was started getting into business.
The most inventive brother of them all was Sam Warner.
Sam had traveled by train to do other jobs...
...and in one of the jobs...
...he saw a movie being projected on the outside of a building.
And he thought, "What is that?"
And then when he talked to the guy who owned the projector...
...and found out what movies were, he thought:
"Maybe this is the business we should get into."
KAHN: The films that people were watching...
...were really more or less reality programming, I guess, if you will.
You know, there wasn't a plot, you know. We would see people dancing on camera...
...or maybe gathering by the train station.
These clips that would show people in everyday life.
But the American populace was just taken by this.
And the brothers saw this.
The family scrabbled together enough money to buy everything...
...including selling the family horse, and they bought this projector...
...and they traveled around from town to town.
When they ran out of films, they moved to the next town.
At that point in time, they also found other people who were showing films.
And they would buy those films.
And then they thought, "Maybe we should make films as well."
They did what a lot of other moviemakers did in the early days.
They moved west.
Harry was the one who kept reinvesting the money, kept making the money.
But is was Sam who really got the brothers to the next level at every point...
...I mean, until he passed away.
Meaning, he's the one who got the brothers into movies to begin with.
And he also is the one who convinced them that they should do sound films.
Going back to the best of my memory, it was 1925...
...when Western Electric and Vitaphone...
...had the technology that they were trying to convince studios to use.
Vitaphone was really, for all intents and purposes...
...a disk with a needle that was synchronized...
...to the belt drive of conventional soundless projectors in that era.
So they would put the needle on the start point on the album...
...they would put the film on the start point...
...and lock the two together, and off you go.
At the time, Sam Warner was very interested in this technology.
And worked off with his brother Harry...
...to convince him to use it on upcoming productions.
And ultimately, Harry was swayed to go along with it.
They went to production and they used it for musical pieces...
...on Don Juan, and then in 1927, The Jazz Singer...
...where a little bit of Al Jolson's voice was the spoken word.
[CHEERING]
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet.
Sam never lived to see his film sound come to life or fruition, really.
And Jack was the one that really pioneered it from there on.
As they started to procure theaters throughout the country...
...they were all equipped with this technology.
So it was driven by Jack at that point.
Jazz Singer was a huge hit...
...changed the movie industry forever, changed the Warner brothers forever.
With the money that they were making, they were able to buy theater chains.
They were able to buy First National Pictures...
...which was the premier silent movie company at that time.
And with First National, they acquired this lot.
I had an insight into Jack that most actors didn't have because I was a tennis player.
And every weekend, we had tennis at Jack's house.
And I came to know him, to feel what he was like underneath...
...and to be very sympathetic with him because of that...
...because of knowing him that well.
And I liked him very, very much.
I mean, he was very good to me while I was here.
I won't deny that he was ridiculous...
...and he thought he was Jack Benny and all of that.
That was not the real man.
He also had an ostensible contempt for actors.
I mean, he called the biggest stars, "Oh, that stupid son of a bitch."
You know, this, that. Like, I mean, hejust disrespect.
But I understood that too because he was awed by them.
From where he came, and to be their boss...
...and to be telling them what to do and everything like that...
...was not familiar ground for him.
Many years after I was here, they previewed a picture of Warren Beatty.
It took over Stage 1.
And there was a huge luncheon.
They invited all the old Warner stars from before that era.
Pat O'Brien and Robinson and those people.
And, of course, they all got up to speak and they all made hay out of Jack Warner.
They all, you know, told Warner jokes and made fun of him.
And he let himself in for that. I mean, he was wide-open.
But there wasn't a nice thing said about him.
Well, I had never met Bette Davis at that point...
...and I happened to be sitting at the table with her at this occasion.
And I liked her so much. I mean, I-- She was--
Well, who needs to say anything about Bette Davis?
Anyway, she got up and she said, ..Papa__..
She called him Papa.
After all of these slams and everything else, said, "Papa...
...you gave me my first chance in this business...
...and I've always loved you and I always will.
Thank you. God bless you."
And that was so stunning, you know, after the usual reception of Jack Warner.
But it was-- I've never gotten over it.
This was the rear entrance to the main administration building.
Barry Meyer's office. Jack Warner's old office is right upstairs.
It's where the senior management of the studio resides.
Headquarters of Warner Bros. right here.
This is called the Rose Garden.
It's quite a beautiful setting. It's very serene.
Roses in bloom, trees that are 90 years old.
It's quite a pretty setting.
Far into the lot, the arches are where the Wardrobe Department was.
Both floors were wardrobe storage.
The downstairs under the arch was a pass-through window...
...where they would have the sign, name of the movie...
...and actors would go up and have their wardrobe issued to them.
As far as the look, we have tried to preserve it.
The entry has been moderned up...
...but we tried to make it as consistent to the architecture of the time as possible...
...using metal doors and moldings to match the old ones.
We have some great artists here and great craftspeople.
You can't find these windows but our metal shop could certainly recreate them for us.
McGRORY: This is the Mill at Warner Bros. Studios.
The Mill was built around 1937.
It's about 120,000 square feet.
It's a fully self-contained construction environment where we build all the sets.
Design them, construct them, and then install them on the stages.
In the Mill we have-- We have paint...
...staff, metal, scenic arts, large-format printing...
...large sign tech, the Sign Department.
We also do electrical, plumbing, AC. It's all here in the Mill.
PIKE: This is the scenic art loft. It's the Scenic Art Department.
This has been here since 1937 when they built the Mill.
I've been here for 22 years and it hasn't changed in the time that I've been here.
And I've seen pictures of the room and it looks exactly the same.
Other than the guys wearing suits and ties painting, which is--
I can't even imagine doing.
We are the last and one of the biggest departments.
We have the most frame space and we're it.
We used to hand-paint all the billboards in front.
And it was done in oil paint, off a scaffolding.
It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work. It was actually a very physical job.
You know, oil paint is thick. It doesn't spread easily.
You literally, if you have, like, a sky blend and you have three color blues...
...you have to work that paint back and forth until it's smooth.
But I really enjoyed it.
And I did that, for, like, my first 1O or 12 years here, almost exclusively.
And then the digital age came and now we're printing them.
McGRORY: This is the VUTEk printer...
...one of the larger printers in the industry right now.
It's a 5-meter printer.
And we do all of our large-format printing on here.
We do billboards, backdrops, other scenic elements.
As you can see right now, we're doing one for one of our TV productions.
It's a day shot.
This is still the current technology we're using.
It's a really great workhorse printer for us.
On average, we can have about 200 to 300 people working in the Mill at any given time.
We're one of last studios to have all the services in-house.
Many of the studios have downsized and have gone and outsourced that.
Yes, I'm a third-generation Warner Bros. employee.
My grandfather was a cameraman for Jack Warner.
Then my father, he was in construction, dispatcher.
And then myself, I work in construction as well.
This is a wonderful place to work. They really do care about the employees.
You find people here that are on a day call. They're on a day call for almost 30 years.
So it's a great studio to work for.
Original sound stages were built in 1926.
And at that time they were Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Every time they built a new sound stage, they changed the numbers...
...keep could them in chronological order, zigging and zagging through the studios.
So Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 are now Stages 10, 11, 12 and 14.
No 13 because that's unlucky, so we jumped that one.
The first four stages were very big, because they were primarily for movies.
When television came around, they put walls between--
In the middle of the stages and turned them into two smaller stages...
...so that they could double up on the space for television.
But the walls are removable so they could take them down when need be...
...and turn it back into a big film stage.
Each one of the stages have a small tank that they can open up.
And you can either do water scenes in there or have staircases...
...going down from the original set.
So all the sound stages have those pits, they call them.
Stage 16, my favorite sound stage on the lot.
We call it the ocean with a roof. The whole floor is removable.
And then below that, it goes down about 25 feet.
It can hold 2 and half million gallons of water.
And in the movie Perfect Storm, that George Clooney did with Mark Wahlberg...
...the entire 72-foot fishing vessel was being tossed around...
...by the hurricane-force winds in that sound stage.
They had about 15-foot waves hitting that ship for about three months.
Built in 1935.
It was just a baby when a movie was being shot in there...
...called Cain and Mabel.
And Marion Davies was a very high-maintenance actress, shall we say?
She was convinced that the set that they were gonna build in there was too small.
Jack Warner suggested to William Randolph Hearst...
...that if Marion wanted the sound stage bigger--
Because Marion, at that time, was his girlfriend.
He said, "Well, you know, you could always pay for it and then we'd do it.
And Hearst said, "Yes." Now because of the shooting schedule...
...they didn't have time to do the normal thing, rip the roof off and build it up.
They did something that today you could never do because it's dangerous.
Literally surrounded the building with people...
...and they drilled holes into the base of the building.
In the foundation, they put steel plates.
And under the plates, they wedged hand jacks...
...like ajack of a car.
And they put big bass drummers on each corner of the building.
When those guys got a rhythm going on the drum...
...everybody at the jacks would crank the building up a couple of inches at a time.
About a foot off the ground, they put rail road tiles underneath.
They jacked it up another foot and they kept crisscrossing the rail road tiles.
In essence, making legs.
It kept raising the sound stage up and up and up to its current height...
...which is actually 65 feet in the air.
And Jack was a very happy man, because at that time...
...he had the largest sound stage in the world.
I've been a constant tenant for over 25 years.
I kind of moved down this kind of corridor to here.
Stories I was told-- Some I researched, some I was told.
The story was that William Randolph Hearst...
...at a company called Cosmopolitan Pictures...
...whose principal artist was Marion Davies.
And he had a big facility structure house, more or less, at MGM...
...that was her dressing room.
But it was where he would go when he was in town...
...where he had access to his vast publishing empire.
There's famous stories about a big luncheon for George Bernard Shaw.
There are pictures of everybody at this luncheon.
Apparently, there was a disagreement at some point...
...between Louis Mayer and William Randolph Hearst.
And the story was that Julia Morgan...
...who was his architect, who designed San Simeon for him...
...actually moved that building, that structure, in, like, two or three parts...
...to this site where we are right now.
It was a very elegant kind of, you know, Mediterranean structure.
And they used it for various things.
It was kind of a private home in the middle of the lot.
Well, the story that I also was told...
...is that when his deal finally ended here, Hearst moved that house again...
...to a site on Beverly Glen, which is in West Los Angeles.
When that building left here, there was kind of a field here.
At that time, Jack Warner was very infatuated with Frank Sinatra.
He had made a picture called Ocean's Eleven...
...which has gone on to live other lives as well.
And he really wanted him to be on the Warner lot.
And, actually, this building was built for him in the early '60s.
It had a very Asian style.
There was grass cloth on the walls, Frank's desk was right here.
Apparently out there is a rubber tree plant.
There's a song called "High Hopes" where they mention a rubber tree.
It's a rubber tree out there. And there was a piano here.
I mean, I've seen pictures of it when Frank had it, and he had it for about 1O years.
And this whole area was his--
It was called Artanis, which was "Sinatra" spelled backwards.
He left and First Artists was created.
The principals of that were Barbra Streisand...
...and Steve McQueen and Sidney Poitier.
It was put together by Freddie Fields at CMA...
...for all his big stars to have their own company.
And that was in here too for about 1O years.
And then when that dissolved, Spielberg moved in and he was here...
...through the big kind of run of his Warners pictures.
And then Dick Donner moved in. And when Dick Donner left, we moved in.
I feel I don't even know a time when I wasn't here but, of course, that's fantasy.
I've been here, on and off, since-- Really, since the late '70s.
Warner Bros. during World War ll was making war movies...
...or putting war elements into every film.
With Casablanca, the studio knew they had two things.
They knew they had Humphrey Bogart...
...who the studio realized was going to become a romantic star...
...and they knew they had something really special with Casablanca...
...because it was a war story without the combat.
What happens with an international mix of people...
...in a foreign country as the Nazis are closing in...
...and trying to take over the world.
And you had a hero who was a reluctant hero.
And you had a fallen woman who was the female romantic lead.
And you had the upstanding knight in shining armor...
...Paul Henreid in his white suit.
And you had an international mix of people...
...who were fighting the Nazis within Vichy France's Casablanca.
You can say Citizen Kane is a great movie, but this is the Hollywood movie.
Citizen Kane is an experimental film that just is crackerjack.
But Casablanca has all the elements of a Hollywood movie.
The big stars, the big music, the big sets...
...the big lighting, the big adventure, the big romance...
...all in one film, and all shot here at Warner Bros...
...except for a couple of quick shots at an airport.
RICCA: There've been a lot of very romantic movies shot on this lot...
...but probably this is the ultimate romantic movie, Casablanca.
This little storefront, which is now a bookstore right now...
...is the last standing set of Casablanca.
This is the actual set. It's the same one from 1942.
There's a very quick but memorable flashback scene in Casablanca...
...where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are seated right out here...
...at a little outdoor café in Paris.
And they're listening to the announcements of the soldiers coming closer to Paris.
It was shot right here. So this is the exact spot.
And we get people on the tour who just are in awe of this location...
...because it's still here after all those years.
Jack Warner got into television at the request of the president of ABC.
And what Jack thought was he would kind of do what Walt Disney did.
He would use television to promote his theatrical films.
He still wasn't convinced that the studio could make money off of television.
The first season was actually three television shows...
...based on Warner Bros. feature films.
One was Casablanca, the other was Kings Row.
So you had a major World War ll romantic film...
...and you had a major American soap opera.
How could these two fail?
And he threw a Western in as the third show...
...and it was called Cheyenne.
And Cheyenne was the one that took off.
The guy who had developed Cheyenne was a writer named Roy Huggins...
...and Roy had written a detective novel that had been published.
When they were looking for something different, he said:
"Well, I can give you a detective show."
And so 77 Sunset Strip became the second big genre...
...that Warners did in television.
ZIMBALIST: I didn't wanna do it.
I didn't wanna do a series, be in television. I'd done that in New York...
...and I came out here because I thought it was movies.
They showed me a little clause in my contract...
...that stipulated that I had to do television.
So I made this pilot, 77 Sunset Strip.
Everybody loved it, we loved it.
And it was an entrée to all kinds of situations and places and so forth.
It was a wonderful feeling to be in a show like that...
...that just made the world happy. And it did, you know.
Everybody was crazy about it and so were we.
One of the things that disenchanted Jack Warner about television...
...was in the '30s when Jimmy Cagney was upset with his contract...
...he had to fight Jimmy Cagney.
And when Bogart was fighting, he had to fight Bogart.
With the television stars...
...where some of them were being paid 75 dollars a week...
...all of a sudden, all the TV actors were coming at Jack Warner saying:
"We want a raise."
And so Jack was kind of losing interest in television...
...because all of a sudden, he wasn't fighting one war...
...he was fighting five or six wars.
And the other thing that happened, because they only had one customer, ABC...
...if ABC rejected a show, that was it, they were done.
And so when the ABC series started to die out...
...that was kind of the end of Warner Bros. in television.
James Dean was my idol.
I was 15 at that time and, you know, I was doing plays in high school...
...and I knew I was gonna pursue a career as soon as I got out of high school.
I had no intention of going to college and so be it.
Somebody told me about this young actor that had just come out in East of Eden.
I'd never heard of him and I went to see it.
I remember I went to the Saturday matinee...
...and I saw him and it was a double feature.
I couldn't tell you what the other film was, but I had no interest.
But I could hardly stand up.
I saw the film three times that day and I could not get over him.
I was just never the same. None of us were.
Even people that were not interested at all in acting...
...were affected by him, you know?
Boys and girls, rich and poor, black and white, old and young...
...everybody was just absolutely captivated by this extraordinary genius.
This young genius that was gone at age 24.
He changed everything about...
...what I had perceived an actor might do.
You know, film acting, what it was about, because he really transcended it.
It was about behavior.
He just absolutely mesmerized me and became my hero.
And I couldn't believe that he was already gone...
...as I was discovering him.
I worked on the pilot for Harry O with David Janssen.
And I worked with Sal Mineo.
He and I played villains together.
I drove him nuts, asking him to tell me about James Dean.
And he told me one story here that Dean was practicing his makeup for Giant.
And he came walking across the lot.
Sal told me he was going the other direction.
Old guy said, "How you doing, man?" Sal said, "I'm fine, how you doing?"
Then he heard this laugh and he turned around and it was James Dean.
He was in his older makeup for Giant.
And he'd fooled Sal Mineo.
And he and I worked on this pilot...
...and he finished earlier than I, a day earlier...
...and he came by just to say goodbye.
And I told him what a pleasure it was and I hoped that I hadn't bothered him...
...asking him so much about James Dean.
And he said, "No, no."
He said-- And you know what he said? "He'd have liked you."
And I broke into tears.
I thought, "Wow, Sal Mineo thinks that James Dean would have liked me."
I thought, "Okay."
ROTH: We know all about the legend of Warner Bros. animation.
We know the legend of Mel Blanc and these brilliant characters, these iconic characters.
We are well aware and are huge fans of the original Merrie Melodies.
And Looney Tunes, we are the gatekeepers of all the product...
...that originally came from that library of brilliant product.
GEER: Way back in the '30s, it was Merrie Melodies...
...and then they introduced Looney Tunes.
There was a man, Leon Schlesinger, who ran and owned Pacific Title.
And Schlesinger apparently was a pretty wealthy man.
And he'd helped finance Warners when they made The Jazz Singer.
They owed him one.
So he went back to Warner and said:
"Let us be your Animation Department."
So he had then brought three or four people from the old Disney crew.
Friz Freleng was one of them. Chuck Jones.
There was Bob Clampett, Tex Avery.
And these guys did all kinds of amazing things with animation...
...that hasn't been done since then, really.
And Avery said, "We're gonna make another rabbit, guys.
Draw me your picture of what the rabbit looks like."
So the different animators were drawing their idea...
...of what the rabbit should look like.
And there was a guy named Bugs Hardaway.
That was his nickname, was Bugs.
So as he was going out to lunch, he dropped his drawing on Avery's desk.
Bugs' rabbit.
That become Bugs Bunny.
Warner Bros. had been absolutely in the animation business...
...from the '30s all the way until the late '60s.
And then at that point, there was a rest. And it wasn't until 1980...
...where Warner Bros. Animation was restarted.
And what also happened is, as the Warner Bros. Studio grew...
...and the company grew, so did our library.
So when we started off with the Looney Tunes...
...eventually we were also able to add the Hanna-Barbera library...
...the MGM animation library and the DC Comic characters...
...to probably one of the largest animation libraries out there.
You can feel how many people came before us...
...that worked on these movies and cartoons.
And that we have the opportunity to be here in their footsteps is incredible.
ZIMBALIST: This studio was my home.
I loved it and I do still.
I mean, I don't come here anymore.
I'm a stranger. I don't know most of the buildings here.
But it was my home, and those days...
...when it was just Warner Bros., it was just Jack Warner.
See, I came to Warners right after the big rift with his brothers.
They collaborated, they hatched this plot...
...where everybody would sell his stock and then buy it back cheap.
Only trouble was, when the brothers came to buy it back...
...it was all in Jack's hands. And Jack kicked the brothers out.
Later when Seven Arts bought Warner Bros...
...they came to Jack Warner and said:
"We're going to give you $34 million for the studio...
...and you'll still have your office, you'll still run things, you'll be the boss.
We'll just be the owner, that's all."
The irony with Seven Arts is that Eliot Hyman had bought the rights...
...to Warner Bros. films for television.
And with the money that he made off of that...
...he then bought Warner Bros. in 1967.
So the irony is Jack sold the films to him...
...and then Jack ended up selling the studio to him.
Father and son team, Eliot and Ken Hyman, didn't stay at Warner Bros. that long.
I think their tenure here was only about 19 months.
Seven Arts were distributors. They hadn't been really producers.
They were a distribution company.
It was an odd period in time because Jack Warner's power base...
...was reasonably on the demise.
He was developing 1776, the musical, as a film...
...and I don't know the deal or the agreement.
But he was retained as the vice president of the company.
ZIMBALIST: Well, a few weeks after the thing...
...no piece of business passed his desk again.
He never saw anything.
And finally, they asked him to leave and he just got out.
RICCA: The backlot, it's 14 different sets right now.
It used to be much bigger, but some of the production offices...
...have taken over spots.
Well, we're here on New York Street and it can be any city really.
I've seen it transformed into London, into San Francisco.
But primarily, we see this as New York, sometimes Chicago.
A lot of the gangster movies were shot along here.
There was always somebody in a car, blowing out windows with a tommy gun.
The movie theater over here was in A Star Is Born with Judy Garland.
Opening scene of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?...
...with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, when they zoom in, that was here.
One of the biggest sci-fi movies of the '80s, Blade Runner...
...with Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah, they transformed this entire street...
...into futuristic Los Angeles.
Lots of neon and kiosks, and a very strange-looking world.
In 1952, the New York Street burned to the ground.
They took photos and film of the burnt sets...
...and they used them for stock footage.
We had two Western towns, but, you know, they just don't do Westerns anymore.
Those kind of fell by the wayside. Blazing Saddles used one of them.
And shows like Bonanza, Little House On The Prairie.
Then we also have ajungle set, which is just a bunch...
...of various trees and bushes and things, but it's a few acres.
This is the jungle and the jungle lagoon.
This lagoon can be filled for production.
It's filled right now, but we never leave it filled for safety reasons...
...and for bugs and things like that.
There's a production about to shoot in here, so they filled it up.
This entire area was planted and designed...
...for the movie Santiago with Alan Ladd.
It's been a lot of things. It was Central Park in The Omega Man...
...with Charlton Heston.
Pee-wee Herman swung across this on his bicycle in Pee-wees Big Adventure.
Probably the most famous thing to shoot here was just a few years ago.
It was lra's Roadside Diner in Million Dollar Baby...
...Clint Eastwood's film.
And this was the diner that they go to get the lemon pie.
Pretty pivotal scenes in there with the lemon pie...
...was all about the ending of the movie.
But I won't tell you if you haven't seen it.
We are on probably one of the famous streets at Warner Bros. studios.
This is Brownstone Street, or was Brownstone Street.
It's been renamed Ashley Boulevard for Ted Ashley.
It was one of the first streets built here on the lot.
So it dates back to a time before Warner Bros. even owned the lot.
It was First National Pictures back then.
This one right here, the basement apartment...
...was actually Audrey Hepburn's in the movie, Wait Until Dark.
A real scary, wonderful, popcorn movie.
Midwest Street has been around since the early '30s...
...used in countless television shows and movies.
The Music Man with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones.
Brilliant film.
East of Eden, James Dean.
Big veteran's parade that went around the town, that was in that.
Recently, we've had J. Edgar out there, Clint Eastwood's film.
There was a shootout on, like, the 4th of July, there.
The bunting was all over the building, so that looked just amazing.
This spot is a very popular area on the lot. It's called Hennesy Street.
It was named for the production designer, Dale Hennesy...
...who remodeled this in the early 1980s...
...for the Columbia Pictures' Annie, which shot here.
That right there, where it says "Arts and Crafts"...
...that was Miss Hannigan's orphanage.
Most recent movie to shoot here was J. Edgar.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood directing.
Here on the corner, that's a practical set.
Now, that one was used...
...in one of the funniest movies from the '80s, Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
And that was the pet store where Pee-wee saves all the animals from the fire...
...at the end of the movie.
This is the only studio that still has pretty much the same backlot...
...as it had from the early days.
All the other studios have changed, but we've pretty much stayed the same.
ROMANO: In 1969...
...Steve Ross, Kinney National Service...
...acquired Warner-Seven Arts and changed the name to Warner Communications.
And then in 1970, they installed Ted Ashley, Frank Wells...
...and John Calley as the new management of the company.
They decided to relocate the corporate offices from New York to the studio.
Steve Ross was a unique person.
He was sort of the godfather of the new Warner Bros.
He was a believer of the entertainment business.
He was also a believer in people.
SEMEL: I was working for Warner Bros.
I was their branch manager here in Los Angeles, first in Cleveland.
I got a call. The new boss, Steve Ross...
...would like to have me come over to the studio.
I came and as I entered...
...what ultimately turned out to be Bob and myself, our offices...
...there were beads on all of the doors.
They weren't doors actually, they were just beads.
And I could smell something like incense or something in the room.
And as I came in, the key executives, Steve Ross and Ted Ashley...
...they were all sitting on the floor on pillows in the office.
And I thought, and I've told this to Steve Ross in the past:
"It's time for me to get out of this company.
There's something wrong with these people from New York."
In fact, my job at that point was to oversee a movie...
...and that was Woodstock.
These guys were, like, living Woodstock.
I thought, "This could be a disaster for our company."
Needless to say, they were all brilliant.
They were very good executives and very nice people.
But it was a hard entry for me to think:
"My God, will this be my new bosses?"
I remember that we used to have three meetings a week in John's office.
These were three days where you took, you know...
...two to three hours a day out of your schedule to go to a staff meeting.
And no one ever missed that meeting...
...because they were the most compelling, humorous, funny meetings.
And it was the way the company was run, very collaboratively, everybody had a voice.
Even I, as a kind of a young, new business affairs executive. It was really terrific.
I have the highest regard for those guys. They were really, really pioneers...
...in the new iteration of Warner Bros. from the '70s on forward.
They were unique in the way they dealt with filmmakers.
And if you look at the history of the movies they made, they were special movies.
Some of them weren't as commercial as a Batman or a Lethal Weapon.
But they were really unique and they were really quality movies.
They were a great management team.
These were all unique, very bright people that Steve Ross picked.
I was a talent agent when I was a kid...
...for a very short time at MCA with Lew Wasserman.
And then I left there and I became a manager.
And a promoter. Music.
I became a film producer in late '60s, early '70s.
I made a film here, I think about 37, 38 years ago, called Oh, God!...
...with George Burns and John Denver and Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart.
It was a big hit. And that's how I ended up at Warners.
I was all pinching myself in those days, all the time...
...because the movie business was fun in those days...
...and the guys that were running it were Ted Ashley and Frank Wells.
Terry Semel was the head of Distribution or Marketing.
I don't remember what.
And they were all friends of mine. Guys I grew up with.
And it was-- It was fun.
The Oceans were great fun to make...
...because the guys are all close friends of mine.
They're like-- All like my kids. Not Pacino. He's like my father.
But the rest of them are like my kids, and they're all great guys.
And I-- I'm crazy about them. I'm crazy about Al as well.
Soderbergh is a wonderful director to work with.
And we had a terrific crew, great staff.
It was, you know, it was the same crew that- Throughout.
I worked with Frank, when the original was made, in the music world.
And I always thought that the film could be much better than the one that they made.
The were working at night and filming during the day.
They weren't paying really much attention to it. I got the rights.
When I came to Warners, it's the first thing I plucked out of the library.
And I kept it all those years and then I made it when the time was right.
I got a script and made it.
We had built a casino around the corner.
A whole casino. Looked just like Vegas.
We didn't-- We didn't leave anything out, actually.
We shot Ocean's Eleven in Vegas and it was very, very hard.
And the guys became such big stars after Ocean's Eleven...
...that it was impossible to shoot all of those people in one place.
Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt...
...and George Clooney and Matt Damon and Don Cheadle and so on.
Elliott Gould and Scotty Caan and so on.
It was impossible to shoot everybody in a casino...
...because they couldn't have gambling going on while we were there.
So we built our own.
Sinatra would have loved it. He would have been in it.
Clooney never would have had a job. Ha-ha-ha.
When I did The Exorcist here between '72 and the end of '73...
...it was a trio of guys who ran the studio.
Ted Ashley, Frank Wells and John Calley.
Ted Ashley made all the decisions. His word was final.
He decided to do The Exorcist. He decided to hire me to do it.
And then Frank Wells ran business affairs.
And John Calley, who was a really great executive...
...was my main contact here.
And John Calley would look at the dailies...
...and if the two executives above him were getting nervous...
...he would say, "No, this stuff is great. This is gonna work."
And he was extremely supportive of me.
And I must say that The Exorcist was totally experimental.
None of this stuff had been done before.
We never previewed The Exorcist.
That was a choice made by the management.
And I'm very glad they made it.
Because if we had previewed The Exorcist, I would still be cutting it now.
I didn't do the film as a horror film.
I realize that today, it's considered the number one horror film ever made...
...by most critics and most audiences.
The first choice by the heads of this studio...
...Ashley, Calley and Wells, was Audrey Hepburn.
And I thought that was a great idea.
I spoke to Audrey Hepburn, who lived in Italy.
I spoke to her by phone.
And she was then married to an Italian doctor...
...and living in Italy, and she didn't wanna leave Italy.
She wanted us to go there.
I didn't wanna shoot the film in Italy.
The next choice was Anne Bancroft.
I thought that was a great idea too.
She read the script and said, "Yes, I'd love to do this.
But I have to tell you, I just found out I'm pregnant.
Now, if you guys are willing to wait for a year, I'd love to do the film."
And, of course, I remember saying to her:
"Anne, I think when you have your child...
...you're not gonna wanna make a film for awhile...
...and certainly not The Exorcist."
The third choice was Jane Fonda...
...who read the script and called John Calley and said:
"Why would you wanna make a piece of capitalist rip-off bullshit like this?"
So she declined to make it.
Meanwhile, Ellen Burstyn had been calling me.
She said, "I'm destined to play this part. You believe in destiny, Mr. Friedkin?"
I said, "Yes, I do believe in destiny."
She had no leading roles as far as I knew...
...but she had been a Catholic...
...she knew a lot about the Church and its rituals.
I found her very bright and interesting.
And one day I went to Ted Ashley's office and I said:
"Ted, I think Ellen Burstyn would be great to play the lead in this film."
And Ted Ashley stood up behind his desk and he said:
"Bill, I have total faith that you'll do a great job on this movie.
But Ellen Burstyn will play this part over my dead body."
He said, "Do you--? Do you know what that means?"
And I said, "Well, I have some idea. Yeah, Ted."
He said, "Bill, let me show you something."
He lied down on the floor.
He said, "Come on over here and walk over my body."
I said, "Oh, Ted, please."
He said, "No. Come on. Walk over my body."
And so I stepped forward and I tried to step over his body...
...and he grabbed my leg.
And I had to hold on to his desk for support, and he said:
"That's what I will do if I'm dead and you cast Ellen Burstyn in this part."
A number of years later...
...he was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
He had retired from Warner Bros.
And I met him at the opening of--
I think it was the Temple of Dendur or some Egyptian room at the Met.
And I said, "Well, Ted, how do you feel about Burstyn in that part now?"
And he said, "if we had had Jane Fonda, we'd have done a billion dollars."
My name is Elaine Maser.
I'm the director of costumes at WB SF Costume Department.
In the building, we have different businesses.
We have the rental business.
We have a costume shop where we manufacture...
...and also alterations.
And then we also have designer suites and cages...
...for prep space for productions.
It's the largest of all the rental departments in the city.
One of the reasons is because of our relationships...
...with Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. features...
...that we have an arrangement with them...
...that we provide costumes at a reasonable rate for them.
And then all the assets come back to the studio at the end of wrap.
In the men's contemporary suits, just contemporary suits...
...there's close to 6000 of them.
Shoes are too numerous to mention.
Ties, there's thousands of contemporary ties.
I would say 4000 or more.
We have contemporary blouses, we have skirts, we have jackets, we have...
Anything that we would ever wear on a film or TV show, we have.
This dress is actually from The Music Man.
And the way we know that...
...is that there are little tags on the inside...
...that have the show numbers.
And we can look it up in our reference book and it'll tell us what the show is.
And from that, then we can go and get a DVD of it...
...and look and see who wore it.
What we do have upstairs in our shop is we have the original sewing machines.
Some of them are very, very old and dated, there's nothing better than them.
There's an old button hole machine they used to use for heavy, heavy overcoats.
And it's a fabulous machine.
The old Singer sewing machines are the best machines for chiffon.
And they have been in the shop probably since the '40s.
The tables we have, we have photographs from the '30s of the same tables.
We don't throw anything away. If it's useful for stock, we hang on to it.
Otherwise, we find the right places to send them.
What I've enjoyed the most is making films of something that doesn't exist in the world.
You can't go to a department store and purchase it.
And that's what the interesting thing is to do.
And I've had the pleasure on working on a few of those and for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. always had interesting people running it.
They never had assholes.
I mean, they always had guys who understood moviemaking.
Bob Dab; and Terry SemeL...
...who ran Warner Bros. for a hell of a long time...
...they worked together like clockwork.
The key is to have somebody...
...who really cares about movies if you're running a movie studio.
Well, when I came here, which was December 1st, 1980...
...Warner Bros. was a studio that had two television shows...
...and was making four or five movies a year.
We made up our minds that we couldn't survive...
...with just having a few movies a year and a few television series.
So we decided to really expand our film production.
We actually then started to move to go to 20, 25 pictures a year.
Each of the studios had announced they're cutting back on production.
They're gonna make fewer films in the next year or two ahead...
...and that was their mandate.
And we saw that as an opportunity to really take off.
MEYER: I had known Bob in his capacity at CBS.
And when Bob came to the company, and with Terry here...
...they formed a different kind of partnership.
And it really was also around the time...
...that our television activities began taking off.
And they really brought the company into this kind of newer, more modern age.
And especially in the television side with Bob.
It was a marked difference than it was before.
We built our television business to a certain level...
...but we really didn't take it to the next level...
...until we acquired Lorimar.
Because when we acquired Lorimar...
...we ended up getting not only good assets, meaning shows.
We ended up getting unbelievable people that worked at Lorimar.
That moved us to a different level as an entertainment company.
We ended up broadening our base...
...so we weren't just sitting there, praying that the next movie would work.
I know one time I called up-- Terry up and I had a sequel to a Dirty Harry.
And I had a project. I wanted to give it to him.
And he said, "Well, yeah, just go ahead."
And I said, "Well, don't you wanna read it?
Just in case, you know, I've lost my mind here."
"Yeah, okay, but I've gotta go to a basketball game that night."
So he went to the basketball game. We didn't hurry into it.
He kind of green-lit it before he really, really read it.
Which, it was flattering in a way because it shows a great deal of trust.
Steve Ross said all the time:
"Our biggest assets go home every night."
And basically what he said was, it's the people.
And that something that stuck with us and we believed in...
...and still believe in today, is the assets are the people that work here.
They make up the company. And in their own--
Everybody that works here is a part of what makes this studio work.
And I believe in that.
AYKROYD: First time I came to the Warners lot was shooting Spielberg's...
...magnificent comedy, 1941.
And I think it was my really-- My first exposure to a backlot.
I enjoyed this lot...
...because Clint Eastwood was here and that was exciting.
I remember he had a parking space.
One afternoon, we were all brought out to see the damage done...
...to the windshield of a car...
...belonging to a hapless driver who had parked in his space.
Clint kept a little bat.
If you parked in the space, everyone on the lot knew...
...you chanced getting a window knocked out.
Now, whether it was by Clint or someone else, I don't know...
...but we all came out to see the damage to this car that this guy had parked there.
EASTWOOD: When I first came over here...
...Frank Wells and John Calley had just taken over the studio.
They talked me into doing Dirty Harry and we had a good relationship on that film...
...and subsequent films of that nature.
I kept coming over here and doing films, but I never really moved here till 1976.
Frank always lured me over, said:
"The office is always there for you when you wanna come over."
And I finally-- In 1976, I had this project, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and I said:
"I've got this project. If you like it, I'll come over and I'll move in."
MEYER: Clint Eastwood started at Warner Bros...
...we often talk about this, the same year I did.
In 1971, he came over to do a Dirty Harry, and in 1971 I came over from ABC.
He's done 35 films in the interim.
I've had various executive jobs. There's a difference.
I don't think there's any relationship in Hollywood can compare...
...with Clint's relationship to Warner Bros.
Its longevity, its steadiness, its comfort, I think, is really unparalleled anywhere.
Clint Eastwood is an icon's icon.
In a world where there are movie stars and celebrity directors...
...powerful directors, powerful producers, I think he occupies unique space.
MEYER: He's a national treasure and he is a Warner Bros. icon.
I just hope he keeps making films for as long as he wants to.
As long as he wants to keep making films, we'll keep helping him.
They have a certain amount of trust in me managing their money on productions.
And picking projects that have a chance to do something.
Some of them do, some don't, but you...
I had pretty good odds going along.
COX: I've done about 30 films for Clint.
And I'm very fortunate that I have the job I have.
I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people in this town.
If you look at films we've done in the last 1O years...
...there is a passion within him...
...for these special scripts about special stories.
He does films about real people and real circumstances.
And that's what I think what makes his films so real to people...
...and the audience that sees it, because they can feel the emotion...
...that those people have.
FREEMAN: It was Mike Nichols who said:
"Once you've cast the movie, the director's job is done."
Clint operates on that premise.
Once he's hired his cast...
...his job as director in that sense is done.
After that, he's gonna be directing the movie, not the actors.
I just love that about him.
COX: When you read a script that Clint's gonna do...
...you see it one way. You're not inside Clint's mind...
...because he has such a great passion for doing films.
When he reads it, the reason he does a script, he envisions that script...
...and those characters doing certain things.
I remember Frank had only turned me down once on a project that I brought to him.
And it was a project called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
He said he didn't wanna-- Didn't wanna make it.
So I made it over at United Artists and the picture came out...
...and was received fairy well and so he was annoyed at himself.
I said, "You know, it's just all horse racing.
Not everybody's supposed to like the same thing."
Clint Eastwood is the gold standard for this business.
For how many films he's made, how many genres...
...what a gigantic impact, what a cultural impact.
And then what a great impact as a director.
How many other guys or women are there like him out there?
There aren't any really others like Clint.
There are some that come fairly close, but there's only one Clint Eastwood.
SEMEL: This, of course, is the Clint Eastwood Scoring Stage.
Well deserved because Clint became our permanent user of this sound stage.
Many of his movies have been brought into this facility, but the facility was old.
He would talk to us each time about...
...can we ever make it more modern and better and bring it up to date?
And we all thought, "Why not?"
They were gonna to tear it down or, actually, use the outside of the building...
...and build a bunch of dubbing stages on there.
Every musician in town was coming up to me and saying:
"Oh, you can't get rid of it. It's is one of the only last great stages in the business."
And I always had the great memories of that stage and we had good luck with it.
But they said it was gonna need a big redo.
All the equipment was antiquated.
So I went to Bob Daley.
I said, "Well, gee, this is gonna be the last stage of its kind."
And I gave him all the arguments.
And it was a year or two after that, Bob Daley without--
I didn't even know they were doing it.
He gave the order to go ahead and refurbish the stage.
One, he was surprised, which was great. And he didn't know we were doing it.
And secondly, when you talk about Hollywood...
...there is only one Clint Eastwood.
There is no other Clint Eastwood. There's no other person like him.
There's no other person who has been as loyal to one studio without a contract.
There's also no other person who's been as productive as he is.
One day, they called me and said:
"We want you to come down and see the new stage."
So I came down there, it had my name on it.
It was great. I said, "Gee, I didn't realize this delayed influence.
But it was-- It's fine by me." And I thought everybody'd be happy.
I told him if I'd have known that...
...I would have asked about other things and had my name on the tower.
But it didn't quite work out that way.
DONNER: Goonies was the first film we made on this lot.
Steven called me, Spielberg, and said:
"Hey, I'm developing a screenplay and I really think you'd be perfect for it.
I'd love to see if you would do it."
I read this screenplay and I just couldn't put it down.
I mean, I was jumping for joy.
It was funny, it was rich, it was warm.
It was very real. It was very Steven.
Steven has a phenomenal eye for casting and ear.
And we had a great time casting.
Phenomenal. These kids were just great.
And they were real. And they carried no burdens...
...except their own little personal ones which had nothing to do with showbiz.
I took it on, and not realizing what I was getting into.
It was insane.
I was in love with every one of the kids.
The way we're making movies today...
...if you have a pirate ship, you'll do it in a tank with some water...
...and have a big blue screen around it and--
Or green screen.
If you want the actors to be shocked...
...by the first appearance of a pirate ship, they will--
You'll work on them and work on them and work on them, and then they'll go:
"oh:-
And-- But they're looking at nothing. Maybe a small pirate ship.
If you're smart, you'll hold it up.
That's what they're supposed to be looking at.
Mike Riva, one of the brilliant, brilliant production designers of all times...
...built our pirate ship.
And it stood down at that end of the stage.
And it gradually started to open and the walls around it were a great cave.
And it stood in 3 feet, almost 4 feet of water.
Couldn't make it too deep because the kids would have drowned.
And they knew something was on the stage but I wouldn't let them see it.
And they were devious little buggers.
They tried everything.
They put on different costumes, believe it or not, and wardrobe...
...to try and walk onto the stage to see what was being built.
And all the security on the stage knew. They all had pictures of the kids.
Watch this group, keep your eye on-- I'm serious. I'd get calls.
"We caught one of your kids. We caught one of your kids."
So the day came.
And so we brought the kids in with blindfolds.
We brought them in the water...
...and had them face away from where the pirate ship was.
And I explained to them, "You're gonna turn and see something...
...and it's up to you. Whatever you react to, you react to."
We pulled their blindfolds off, pushed them underwater, rolled the cameras.
They came up and stood for a minute, looking where they had come down from.
They were good. They turned. They turned into the camera.
Every one of those faces told a story.
"I'm seeing this pirate ship, One-Eyed Willy, for the first time in my life...
...and it's the most awe-inspiring sight I've ever had."
It was magic. It was beautiful.
Try and do it today.
Can't have it. It doesn't exist.
It was real, and much reality is gone now with computers...
...and it's too bad.
But we had that great moment here on Stage 16 at Warner Bros...
...that can never be repeated.
I feel an excitement about being on a movie lot.
And this one I know more than any other lot in Hollywood.
From walking it, from traveling it on bike...
...from writing about it, and from, I hope, immortalizing it in some way.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure was a different, completely different film.
It wasn't about a bicycle, originally.
Phil Hartman, me, and a gentleman named Mike Varhol...
...were writing a movie that became Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
Every day we'd walk to the commissary, walk back and forth on the lot.
We were doing a lot of research because a big portion of Big Adventure...
...takes place on the Warner Bros. lot.
At one point, I said to two people...
...who were co-producing the movie and were also my managers:
"How do you get a bike? Everybody here has got a bike."
I mean, we were walking along and everybody was riding on bicycles.
I started complaining every day.
I would be like, you know, "I asked about a bike. How do you get a bike?"
And finally, I came back from lunch one day...
...and there was a 1947 restored Schwinn Racer...
...that they had bought for me, chained up to a post...
...that had my picture right in front of the bungalow that said:
"Parking for Pee-wee Herman only."
And I looked at it and went, "Oh, my God, we're writing the wrong movie."
And we, literally, we ran into the bungalow.
This is-- During this period, we pulled the paper out of the typewriter...
...and started typing, "His bike gets stolen."
I mean, it was a completely different movie.
It was so much fun shooting on this lot. We shot everywhere.
As you know, we shot all over this lot. Places that don't exist anymore.
Places we created for the movie that look like they had been here before.
And then we tried to utilize as much as we could use...
...everywhere in this whole lot.
I was trying to go for this look of, like...
...what I used to, when I was a kid, picture a Hollywood movie studio was like.
Where you walked onto the lot...
...and everywhere you looked was a movie star.
People were wearing their costumes everywhere.
And it was all-- You know, you'd see giant props.
We felt a great sense of pride that we were going to...
...make our movie take place on the Warner Bros. lot...
...and give new life to young people to know the Warner Bros. lot.
I mean, it sounds corny, but we took it very seriously...
...and we thought we were doing something really cool.
And we had a lot of fun, but we were very reverent about it.
GREENFIELD: We have just under 200,000 square feet in the facility.
And as far as items go, we have just under 200,000 as well.
Almost everything comes exclusively from our Warner Bros. shows and feature films...
...and all the past Warner Bros. shows and feature films.
When the department first started out...
...there was a bit of a lack of antiques in the Los Angeles area.
When doing a castle picture or period piece, you'd have to go to Europe and travel.
And it's rumored that there were three decorators on staff here at Warner Bros...
...and each would spend a particular...
...three-month time period in Europe, buying antiques.
They'd rotate and bring those items back into the house.
They'd be used on pictures. And, slowly, the stock built up...
...and they've put that position to rest, unfortunately.
Our chandelier and torchére section.
You're looking at one of a pair of Baccarat torchéres.
Probably the most valuable thing in the prop house.
Two schools of thought here.
One, folks say they're from Czar Nicholas of Russia.
The other is a casino built in '30s in Paris and went defunct.
We're not sure how we got them. Found in the basement a few years back.
They have been seen on-screen. See them in Omega Man.
See them in My Fair Lady.
It takes two gentlemen a week to take them apart and put together.
And that same time to get them back. We do not rent them out.
They're worth about $2 million for the pair. Maybe three, depending.
Everything here is samurai.
The samurais you see here were from the front part of Inception.
The opening sequence. You can see they're a little bit scorched.
When the dream collapses in Inception, the place catches on fire.
These were crushed underneath debris.
We've kind of pieced them back together. This collection is now available for rent.
We have been doing this for so long...
...we have one of the largest collections in Hollywood and most of the United States.
We have a smattering ofjust about anything you'd want.
From 1840s on up to current day.
Beetlejuice, I think one could...
...honestly say, without any reservations...
...is original.
Might be my favorite thing I've ever done.
It's a little art piece out of the creativity and the mind of Tim Burton.
He has such a great sense of humor, and he loves to laugh...
...and he just makes you feel good. He's inspiring.
You know, right away, you wanna do right for him.
I'd had met him three or four times and I knew that I liked the guy.
I just couldn't understand what the movie was.
And I think he may have started showing me sketches.
That was really more than intriguing. That was...
I felt, "Wow, this guy has got a great imagination."
This is a true artist I'm dealing with.
I liked the guy, but I couldn't get from him, really, very clearly, what exactly it was.
Finally, I remember us meeting one time in a Mexican restaurant...
...on Lincoln Avenue in Venice.
It wasn't too far from my house, and I said:
"Let's just go. You and I just go sit and talk for a minute."
He said a couple of things that gave me an idea.
He said a couple key things that I took home and said:
"Okay, let me run with that."
And then I just started inventing a walk and a voice and an attitude...
...and I had an idea about the teeth.
Well, I never rehearsed it. I just showed up on the set, thinking:
"Boy, I hope this works because there's no going back."
And the great thing about Tim was when he saw it...
...his eyesjust kind of lit up and we just kind of ran a scene.
And everything from then on was, "Yes, and..."
People forget about how good that cast is.
You know, Catherine O'Hara and Alec Baldwin...
...and Geena Davis and, you know, Glenn and all those--
I mean, just really, really, really talented group of folks and really well-cast.
And Bo, you know, his design was really, really extraordinary.
My husband's a production designer and he designed Beetlejuice.
What a great script for a production designer...
...because it's really about the sets.
The main conflict is the dead people hate how we redecorated their home.
That's-- It's all about that. And all the furniture...
What kind of character is this guy? All the furniture could hurt you.
Our dining room chairs were skinned rabbits pulled tightly.
Ha. The sculpture tried to kill me.
I wasn't necessarily sure that an audience would show up, but it kind of didn't matter.
I knew I enjoyed it. I knew that there was something that was really fun about it...
...that probably would translate to somebody.
They sent a trailer.
And I thought it was one of the greatest things I had ever seen.
I remember thinking, "Holy moly, I'd go see that movie in a heartbeat."
GIBSON: When you're working on a Donner film...
...he's got this sign above his door when you go in there:
"Leave your ego at the door."
When you engage in any kind of production where he was helming it...
...he left his stamp on it.
It was wide-open and there was no baloney.
He has an intrinsic kindness...
...although he's got rough edges and he plays some mean jokes.
He loves what he does and he conveys that to the people...
...and everyone has a good time.
Casting Mel and Danny was Warner Bros.
There was on this lot...
...one of the great casting directors of all time, lady named Marion Dougherty.
When I was doing Ladyhawke, she helped me a lot with the casting.
When time came to do Lethal Weapon...
...Marion came to me in my office and said:
"How about Mel Gibson?"
I said, "God, I tried to get him for Ladyhawke.
Do you think we can get him?" She says, "It's a telephone call."
We met in London.
It was a good meeting. I like him. We had a good laugh.
I guess when he had the Lethal script, he sort of remembered.
Sent the script, spoke on the phone.
He said he really liked it and we had some conversation.
As far as I was concerned, he was it. "We got him, Marion."
I said, "What about Roger?"
She said, "Well, here's the whole list." I said, "They're all great actors."
She said, "You know who would be great for this role?"
I says, "No." She says, "Danny Glover."
But I said, "Marion, what a great idea."
GIBSON: I'd met Danny at a Venice Film Festival...
...and we were on the way out.
Not like now, like, we're on the way out, but we were on the way out of Venice.
We bumped into each other, and I'd seen him in afew films...
...and I was a huge fan. I thought he was scary in Witness.
I'd seen The Color Purple.
I was like, "I've got to work with you, somehow, some way."
And he went, "Yeah." And he was like--
We were sort of like, I guess pissing in each others pockets in the airport.
I remember when Donner was talking about this.
He thought, "That's a great idea. Let's go for it."
It's the big guy and a little guy but the little guy's more crazy.
You know, it was funny.
A wonderful sense of humor.
These two were just instantly perfect, and they continued that way.
Usually, these kinds of characters had the two-dimensional aspect to them.
These guys did not.
So you apply that sort of action-film thing to characters...
...who are a little more fleshed out.
We'd done the third Lethal Weapon...
...and we had reached $700 billion or whatever it was it had--
It had made a fortune for the studio.
And Bob Daley called one day and he said:
"I want you to come over for lunch next week.
We're gonna have a little cake and celebrate your $100 trillion..."
I said, "Okay, great."
So I started to think about it and I said, "Jeez."
So I called Bob, and I said, "Bob, listen. Rene Russo was really active in this thing...
...and I think we should have her for lunch and it's important."
He said, "Okay."
I thought about it, said, "What about Jeff Boehm?
The writer who was responsible for this whole damn thing?"
Bob said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, all right, all right."
I said, "Well, Pesci is in town. Shouldn't we have Pesci? Make this real fun."
And by the time I was done, I had six or seven people.
And Bob was very abrupt with me.
And we were having lunch, that lunch was over...
...he said, "I wanna thank you all." "In the days preceding you...
...when Calley and Ted and everybody was here...
...they would have thrown a bunch of keys on the table and go outside...
...and pick your new Ferrari just to say thank you."
And Bob was bright red.
And he got up and he threw a bunch of keys on the table.
And I looked and I said, "Oh, my God. What have I done?"
He said, "Everybody, go out. Pick a key and go outside."
And outside were eight brand-new Range Rovers.
He thought he was getting away with four Range Rovers.
Instead, he had to truck them in from San Francisco.
It probably wouldn't be right to say that Morgan Freeman...
...is the best actor in the world.
And there are 7 billion people now in the world.
But he stands among those who would qualify for such a status.
He is an extraordinary actor...
...and he's as good a guy as he is an actor.
He's really a wonderful man.
At the time, based on the Stephen King novella...
"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption...
...from which we developed Shawshank...
...there was no thought that the character Red...
...as he was named in the book, would be an African-American.
I saw this film Morgan had done called Street Smart, an early film...
...where this guy who could be so emotionally powerful and compelling...
...also could be extremely tough.
FREEMAN: When I got the part, I got the book.
And I read the first paragraph and I put it down...
...because I wasn't gonna be able to play the book.
You know, Red was an Irish guy.
You know, it was too far away.
HORN: The fact that he did Shawshank, which has now become...
...I mean, it's on everybody's top 1O or 2O or 25 list.
We're very, very proud of this movie.
Now, over the years, the relationship with Morgan just deepened...
...and I just found myself really liking him, becoming friends with him.
And he brought a special thing to the films he did.
FREEMAN: I started working my voice...
...when I was doing The Electric Company.
But it never occurred to me...
...that there was anything special about it from the outside.
Straight from the inside, I'm just gonna listen to myself.
But this all started with Shawshank Redemption.
Narrating that story.
HORN: We had bought the rights to March of the Penguins...
...through Warner Independent, and it was in French.
We thought, what we need to do is to convert this to English...
...and we need to have a voice-over done by somebody.
And when anyone thinks of a voice-over for anything...
...they think of Morgan Freeman.
He was asked to do it and he said no.
And I called him and I said, "I need a favor."
And he just said, "You got it."
Alan called me and said:
"This is a great little documentary. I'm gonna send it to you."
It was the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen.
HORN: He came in and he did it.
One-take Morgan, you know. Two hours later, he was done with it.
And yet that resonant voice.
I told him, "When I can't sleep at night, if I have problems, you know...
...I just turn on one of the Morgan movies and I'm just fine. I'm just comfortable."
Because there's something soothing, comfortable about his voice...
...that I think everyone feels, which is why he's so popular.
My success with voice-overs, biggest surprise of my life.
[FREEMAN LAUGHS]
ROMANO: Television now is a huge piece of the Warner Bros. business.
We have a thriving, very strong television business.
When I came out here in 1970, we really had only one series, FBI.
And Warner Bros. Television, even as it grew...
...never really had that big a television presence.
We had Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a couple of TV series.
Warner Bros. actually became quite successful in the movie-of-the-week genre.
David Wolper came aboard Warner Bros. Television...
...and was one of the inventors...
...and if not, an expert in creating the miniseries...
...which also was a lot of television programming in that period of time.
The television business changed for Warner Bros...
...when we acquired Lorimar and brought in their television executives...
...their head of production, their syndication people.
The Warner Bros. Television operation really started to grow.
ROSENBLUM: We're still the leading supplier...
...of television programming across the television industry.
We produce for all the broadcast networks and most of the basic cable networks.
We have on the television side some of the best creative talent in the business...
...and they've been with us for years.
John Wells, for example, predates me here at Warner Bros.
Jerry Bruckheimer has been here 10-plus years.
J.J. Abrams is here now. Chuck Lorre has been here for a very long time.
The talent that comes here and works with our executives and this beautiful lot...
...and works with all of our executives around the world...
...knows that the culture at Warner Bros. Is one that nurtures creativity...
...it supports creativity, and it certainly rewards creativity...
...when the creativity is successful in our business, in the television business.
We have the best facilities. We have the largest and most beautiful lot.
Our stages are storied in their history.
To go to Stage 24 and to realize you're on the stage...
...in which Friends changed the course of history.
It's an extraordinary experience and feeling.
And that's kept alive by the people who are part of Warner Bros.
After ER finished its run here at Warner Bros...
...we converted those stages to live tape stages.
And Ellen has three of those stages now.
And it's a world-class production facility...
...for a Monday-through-Friday daytime talk show.
On the backlot, we also now have Conan O'Brien's show.
So the lot has evolved with the expansion of our business.
The let's not just being used anymore...
...for prime-time shows and for theatrical product.
We have first-run syndicated shows. We have basic cable shows.
And as our business expands, our use of the lot expands as well.
Probably one of the most successful series that we produced here in Warner Bros...
...in the last 13 years, and that's The West Wing.
That began when Aaron Sorkin...
...who had written a feature film called An American President...
...he wanted to tell more stories about the inner workings...
...of how the White House and the staff that serviced the president would work.
So he created this show.
He dared to be different. He dared to be alternative.
He dared to try something that had never worked in the history of television.
And the result was, not only one of the most successful series in history...
...but the most awarded series in television.
I kind of backed into The West Wing because I had done...
The American President with Aaron Sorkin.
We became friends and I became a fan of his as well.
Then a few years later, I got a call asking if I would be interested...
...in playing a part called The West Wing, and that I would play a president...
...but there was only a few scenes in the pilot...
...and that I would not be asked to do more...
...than maybe three or four episodes in the season.
I said, "Oh, that's grand."
The only requirement was that I couldn't play another president anywhere else...
...as long as that series was on the air. I said, "What are the chances?"
And so I signed on and I was happy as Larry.
And then just a few months after the pilot, or even less, it seemed...
...I got a call asking if I would be interested in being kind of more of a regular.
I never thought I'd be on television. People telling me this is political.
It's not gonna go, you'll probably do the pilot.
I wasn't very savvy about television shows. I still don't think I am.
I don't know how anybody figures what's gonna work.
The fact that it did, it kept surprising me.
I wasn't one-- And I never read the trades and read the ratings.
I didn't care any of that stuff. Somebody will tell me...
...when I have to stop showing up. I'm not gonna worry.
I'm just gonna show up, learn my lines.
But I secretly was crossing my fingers and hoping I wouldn't get that phone call.
I like working. I really like being part of a group of people...
...working on something as good as West Wing.
I was so proud. I never had an experience where I've worked that I wasn't proud of.
I imagine that would be hell. I would just have so many moments.
I just think how lucky I was. I'd smile. I'd feel happy that I was doing what I loved.
SHEEN: I had a ball here.
Seven of the best years of my life, working with some of the best people.
Not only that I had ever worked with, but that I had ever met.
When we started, President Clinton was in the White House.
And he was a great supporter. He loved the show.
He was aware of our progress and our administration.
But then he left office, and it got a little dicey...
...with the, ahem, next administration.
He was not such a big fan of the show, or me in it.
We were free, of course, to do things with a fictional White House...
...that the president could not do.
So we had the advantage of writers, and he had the disadvantage of history.
[LAUGHS]
I remember the casting process of Friends, for sure.
I remember coming here...
...and they were casting Friends and ER at the same time.
So I remember--
You know, you try to see who's reading for your part.
You just try to gauge-
And it was impossible because there were all these people for that hospital show.
I remember thinking, "Another medical show? Really?
All right. Well, good luck."
Um-- Ha, ha.
When I did the pilot for Friends, I had no clue...
...that it was gonna be a hit, get picked up. Nothing.
I met the other cast members at the table read.
When I got the part of Phoebe, I didn't-- No one was cast except David Schwimmer.
I think I was the second person cast.
I read the role of Chandler.
I pictured a snarky, gay guy.
And I didn't know how it could be anything other than that.
And then Matthew Perry, I meet him, and I thought, "Okay, well, he's not gay.
I wonder how this will...? Anyway, let's see."
And then he reads, and his sense of humor, his timing, his rhythm is so unique...
...and I was blown away.
That first season, the show hadn't aired yet...
...and Jimmy Burrows, he'd directed the first 12 episodes...
...and he decided that the six of us should go on a trip to Las Vegas together.
He got Warner Bros. to give us the Warner Bros. jet to use.
And he showed us the first episode after the pilot on the plane ride.
It was so thrilling. It was such a great idea.
And then he took us to dinner and he said:
"Pay attention right now, because this is the last time...
...that the six of you will be out in public and you won't be mobbed."
And everyone went, "Aah. Ah."
Chris Nolan is a unique individual, as well as an incredibly unique filmmaker.
He has such a singular vision...
...and such a notion of what the movie is...
...that we green-lit Batman Begins off of his pitch.
It had that clarity of vision. It had that sort of--
His ability to convey ultimately what the movie would be...
...without even having read a script.
To do that, you really have to have just an incredible sense of the material...
...and an incredible ability to communicate it.
I had never pitched projects, really, until Batman Begins.
The thing with Batman Begins is we had a strong concept...
...we had this little gap in movie history.
Batman had been addressed very, very successfully as a movie character...
...by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher and so forth.
But there was this funny little gap that no one had ever made the origin story.
No one has ever made the version of Batman...
...that equated with the version of Superman Dick Donner had made in the late '70s.
And so it was an easy pitch in a sense.
It was, let's put an extraordinary character in an ordinary world.
Not the stylized world that Tim Burton had so brilliantly put across...
...and a character who fit in that world.
More the Superman treatment Dick Donner had done. This sort of epic...
...populated with incredible actors doing supporting roles and so forth...
...and creating a sense of reality.
Shooting on real locations, that kind of thing...
...where Batman would become this extraordinary figure, walking on the street...
...and as surprising to the characters in the film as he should be to the audience.
Each film he makes is a step forward in terms of filmmaking for him.
They're bigger films, more challenging films...
...they're more complicated movies.
And he just keeps raising the bar for himself.
And for someone in my job, it's a real privilege to be around a guy like Chris...
...because everything he does is so spectacular.
And it's exciting to watch, it's exciting to be a part of.
It also challenges you to sort of raise your game and raise your bar...
...and try and step up to his level, which is really hard to do.
NOLAN: I first pitched the idea of Inception to the guys at Warners...
...right after I finished Insomnia.
But I felt...
...despite their enthusiasm for the broad concepts I pitched them...
...I said I wanted afilm about dreams and architecture...
...most of it's set in the first-class cabin of a 747.
I think that was the comprehensible part of the pitch.
They said, "Whatever you wanna do. We'll take a look at it."
I decided I wasn't really ready to write the script or I wasn't really ready to finish it.
And it took me really about 1O years to finish the thing.
And then we brought it to the guys at Warner Bros.
And we had them read it together very quickly...
...because we wanted to keep it secret and we were in a rush to get the film going...
...because I knew that I wanted to come back and do the sequel to The Dark Knight.
There's a handful of people like Chris.
He's just turned 40, and if you look at his body of work...
...I think for his age and his time, he's the guy, you know.
He is sort of the preeminent filmmaker, I think, of his generation.
You finish a film, then you sit and watch it with the audience...
...and then you start to know what it is you've done...
...where you're taking things and what questions you have left to answer.
And I always like to try and carry over...
...a set of questions from one film into the next.
It's a great feeling of pride when you pull in Gate 4 each day...
...and see behind you and to the right of you...
...and to the left of you postproduction facilities...
...supporting all different disciplines of sound.
We have 12 buildings on the lot dedicated to sound.
And also in the support of picture editorial and projection services.
We have 16 stages for mixing sound.
We call them rerecording stages.
We have five stages called ADR stages.
And it's automated dialogue replacement.
We have two Foley stages.
We have eight screening rooms for projecting film.
We have 125 sound editorial and design rooms...
...and another 120-odd picture editing rooms.
So that starts to give you a picture on the scope of the operation.
We're in Building 4, which is the headquarters...
...for Warner Bros. Post Production Services.
It's a large building, approximately 120,000 square feet...
...of sound- and picture-editing space.
So today, we're gonna give you a little look at the diversification...
...that our department's have been through, taking you into the audio underground.
This is one of our new dynamic audio underground mixing environments.
Come on in.
This is Brad. Brad's been mixing at the studio for many years.
He's working with Pro Tools based technology...
...where all the files are kept virtual.
Gives him a huge amount of flexibility when he's mixing.
I'm now gonna take you onto rerecording Stage 5.
This is one of our large theatrical stages.
It was built about 25 years ago and has been recently updated.
I'm just gonna give you a little look behind the scenes as we mix feature films.
At the console today is none other than Steve Maslow...
- Hello. -...himself. Ha-ha-ha.
MASLOW: Just trying to get this right.
Practice makes perfect here.
I very much enjoy doing postproduction at Warner Bros...
...because they have fantastic sound facilities...
...and these great dubbing stages with tremendous height.
So you could really move the air around the way you do in a very big cinema.
I get a tremendous charge, really, out of coming to work...
...to work on postproduction of the film at such a historic studio.
Just the sense of the place...
...and the great filmmakers who have preceded you here and everything.
It's very inspiring, really. And so it's something I've--
I've really enjoyed doing over the years.
MEYER: Harry Potter was one of the most brilliant literary properties to come along.
I mean, the most credit for Harry Potter has to go to Jo Rowling.
HORN: Jo Rowling is an extraordinary individual.
I mean, I think the world knows that by now.
She is extremely bright.
She has a wicked sense of humor.
She's very nice, she's very personable.
I think she knew that when we came to the subject of making Harry Potter...
...I think she looked at us very closely to see how faithful we would be...
...to the literary works which she created.
And what we said to her, "Our job was to translate Harry Potter...
...these instant classics, if you will, that she had created so beautifully...
...and translate them to film."
She had questions. I mean, she said, for example:
"Look, after you guys come out with this movie, the first Harry Potter movie...
...the world will know what Harry Potter looks like exactly.
Whereas with my books...
...each person can interpret for himself or herself...
...exactly what Harry Potter really looks like.
How tall is he, how curly is his hair...
...his eyes were supposed to be green and all that.
But now Harry Potter looks like Daniel Radcliffe."
And we consulted with her very, very frequently.
She was well aware of our commitment to her...
...and how thoroughly we had read her books.
Chris Columbus, when he first came on and directed the first two films...
...you have to give him a lot of credit for having cast the kids...
...that ultimately were the three main actors for all eight movies.
From there, each successive director, Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell...
...and ultimately David Yates, who directed the last four films...
...really delivered on what the key material was in the book.
Diane Nelson deserves a special place in this history of Harry Potter...
...because more than anyone at Warner Bros...
...she developed a personal relationship with Jo...
...that led directly to trust.
And trust was very important for Jo as we took these books...
...not just one book, but really all seven of them...
...and translated them to film.
Barry and Alan recognized that this was different...
...in that Jo Rowling was in the midst of creating something...
...that was so unprecedented. We had never seen anything like it.
So her involvement and our value of her instincts...
...about what the fans are gonna care about has proven to be really important.
Sequels have a way of often declining as you go down the road.
This is a franchise...
...where the sequels and the movies kept getting better and better and better.
I give a lot of that credit to my partner Alan Horn who had a lot to do with that...
...and was committed and focused to Harry Potter every step of the way.
And there's something in Harry Potter that resonated with people...
...regardless of the culture...
...or the geography of where they live, regardless of age.
It is the best example of storytelling, certainly our generation, has ever--
My generation has ever seen.
There's something really special there. It's hard to put your finger on it.
The first time I came onto this lot was probably 1991 or so.
I came out to L.A., I wanted to be an actor.
My agent finally set me up with the head of casting at Warner Bros.
My head spun with the possibilities...
...and the thrill of the prospect of doing a movie with Warner Bros.
I would not ever do a movie with Warner Bros...
...until 2009.
I was looking to do a movie after The Town...
...and Jeff Robinov sent me the script.
The script was incredible. They don't make movies like this anymore.
It had no business being as easy as it was to get ahold of and green-light...
...as a great piece of material as Argo was.
Very hard to do a period film in the sense that...
...it hampers you from just picking up the camera and shooting.
It surprised me how sort of confounding it would be.
You can't see this, can't see that. If you can, change sign, what's the sign gonna say.
How did it look and-- Just everything is done, like--
It's cars driving down the street, you know, that you sort of take for granted.
We shot a bunch of Argo on the lot.
Some on stages, the old-fashioned way, where you build the sound stage inside.
And the rest of it, we shot-- Because it was supposed to be on this lot in 1980...
...we shot over on one of those little New York Street areas.
We shot on...
Coming into the kind of executive parking lot...
...with these gates that open, and we tilted off to a water tower down to the car.
We shot a big helicopter shot of the whole studio.
Argo is basically a tour of Warner Bros.
I made sure to use every inch of this place as I could because it was so magical.
We're at the exterior of Building 38, which contains--
Houses the film archives for Warner Bros.
Film over the years deteriorates and needs to be stored under special conditions...
...as advised by the manufacturers of the film, Kodak and Fuji and others.
It needs to be stored in very chilled conditions...
...almost near freezing, and dehumidified.
It preserves the film and keeps it from turning yellow.
This is it.
Everything that's done out there results in this.
We're in the manufacturing business and what we produce is this.
This is what we make. This is Warner Bros.
This is-- This is the gold.
TSUJIHARA: The core business of creating great content...
...has remained constant from 1928 to today.
What's changed is the way we distribute it.
Whether it's television content or theatrical film content or video games.
The notion of trying to create incredibly compelling great content...
...has remained constant throughout.
What has changed probably in the last 1O or 15 years...
...has been the way that we get it to the consumer and get it to their home...
...or the way they experience it at the movie theater...
...has changed dramatically.
The theatergoing experience has changed.
Years ago, they were the big barns downtown...
...1000-seat theaters, some were air conditioned, some were not.
The amenities certainly were a minimum.
Today, they're destination centers.
You have multiplexes of 16 to 25 theaters with IMAX screens.
You have game rooms, you have reserve seating...
...you have valet parking, you have bars in some locations.
You have food service at your seat.
The moviegoing experience is definitely different than it was years ago.
In North America, there are about 43,000 screens.
They're about 13,000 of them that have capability now of playing 3D movies.
The marketing process has changed a bit over the years.
Now, there are certain things that stay the same.
Like television, for example.
It's still one of the number one place that people get their information...
...and are motivated to go see a film and trailers.
But what's changed is, all the different platforms that are out there...
...that don't necessarily supplant old marketing, but supplement it.
So you have to be everywhere now, and you have to be doing everything.
If you think about how the consumer accessed our movies 90 years ago...
...the only way they can enjoy our movies was from watching it at a movie theater.
Fast forward 90 years...
...you now have DVD players, you have Blu-ray players...
...you have over-the-top streaming services like Netflix.
You have basic cable channels, you have network channels.
You have all kinds of different ways for the consumer to access our movies.
So while the job of making compelling content...
...and incredibly incredible content hasn't changed...
...what's changed is the way we distribute it.
KROLL: In Korea, we were launching trailers on mobile phones.
And even though we were doing it, I remember thinking the time:
"Wow, crazy that we're spending all this time...
...mixing a trailer, making it beautiful.
Somebody's gonna watch it on a mobile phone, you know.
What a shame."
And now, of course, it's a primary way we distribute our materials.
Mobile, online.
All these devices, which, thank God, look beautiful.
But I think about that, that wasn't that long ago.
There's never been a better time to be in the production business...
...primarily as a result of these distribution platforms that are emerging.
When you look at Netflix, you look at Hulu, at Amazon, at Google...
...they are all buyers, both here domestically and around the world, for content.
When you have a business on the scale of our business...
...all of those new distribution platforms allow us to increase the value of that library.
So as we look out over the next five, 10, 15, 2O years...
...the production business is a great to be in...
...because of the expansion of these distribution opportunities for product.
You were locked down to either a movie theater or your home.
Now it's-- You can watch our movies anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
And I think that's the magic of it.
HORN: There's something very magical about this place.
There's a politeness, there's a courtesy, there's a friendliness...
...there's a family feeling that one feels...
...at the very first moment driving on the lot. It's really special.
Warner Bros. is different.
I think that we have a unique culture and a unique feeling.
If you ask anybody in the industry, they will they you.
The family that we have here is unique.
I've been on this lot for a very, very long time. I shot a lot of things on this lot.
When the guard at the gate sends you through without a ticket on your car...
...that's a good sign, you know.
Warner Bros. Studio is heaven for a producer and a director.
Everything is here.
You don't have to go anywhere to get anything...
...to make a picture at Warner Bros.
JANNEY: Coming to Warner Bros. every day, I knew how lucky I was.
And as time goes on, as more time goes since I've finished West Wing...
...I realize how lucky and extraordinary it was...
...that I got to have this experience here.
If Jack Warner were to be able to see this lot now, he'd be very impressed.
DALY: I root for Warner Bros. every day. I do.
-It's sort of in my blood. - Me too.
Wow, how fortunate all of us have been at Warner Bros...
...being able to be on this beautiful campus...
...with great facilities, with very smart people...
...and just a lovely place to work.
Working for Warner Bros. all this time, I don't know how you put that in words.
You could say it's an honor. It was a great opportunity.
But working for Warner Bros. Is just a lifetime dream.
The one thing that distinguishes one company from another company...
...whether it's in the physical facility or in the executive offices...
...are the people you're dealing with.
One of the things that distinguishes Warner Bros...
...is that everybody knows when they come here...
...they're dealing with people who enjoy their work...
...respect the work of the people they're dealing with...
...who have been here for a long time and understand well what they're doing.
That is the one distinguishing feature.
I think Warner Bros. has done such a phenomenal job...
...in entertaining people over the years...
...that not only do they deserve a documentary...
...they deserve two documentaries.
So I think you should follow up this one with a second one.
Ninety-one years.
I definitely get a strong sense of that amazing Warner Bros. history...
...which is why I like to make extra cash by giving tours after hours.
People are astounded by what's happened here.
By the way, I found a wig backstage.
I think it's Judy's wig from A Star is Born or a dust bunny.
Either way, it's old, and I am gonna get a bundle for it on eBay.
I have a few times had a problem getting on the lot because I forgot my ID at home.
But I just tell them I'm Jane Lynch or David Spade...
...and then they let me right in.
I'm really proud of the fact that I have a talk show here...
...on the Warner Bros. lot. Very, very proud.
And even more proud of the fact that I have a fantastic parking space.
And not only am I proud that I have a talk show here...
...I'm especially proud to be the first person to do it.
I feel like a pioneer.
Like the first person who walked on the moon...
...like Neil Diamond or Louis Armstrong.
I don't know his name. I didn't go to college.
You can do anything you set your mind to and you don't have to go to school.
You don't. Remember that, kids.
Happy anniversary.
[English - US - SDH]