The Genius of Gigi

The indie dramedy Landline, which made a big splash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is now in theaters and a sleeper summer hit. The TV series about Albert Einstein, Genius, on the National Geographic Channel, just scored 10 Emmy nods. And the last year’s Oscar darling, the modern western Hell or High Water, is still in heavy DVD rotation. What do they all have in common? Gigi Pritzker.

The Academy Award-nominated producer is a triple threat. She’s the founder of her own film and television production company, OddLot Entertainment, which produced 2010’s Rabbit Hole and 2011’s Drive (as well as the projects mentioned above). She is also the co-founder of an immersive media content start-up that produces and distributes feature-length VR experiences. When she’s not driving innovative products in television, virtual reality, and film industries, she’s making her mark on Broadway, producing stage musicals such as Million Dollar Quartet.

Gigi may have made her name in Hollywood but she is still a Chicagoan at heart, splitting her time between the cities. The entertainment company she co-founded, Madison Wells Media, is named in honor of her great-grandfather, who came to the Chicago as a child and worked as a paperboy at the corner of Madison and Wells Streets in the heart of downtown. 

Brad recently had the pleasure of talking to Gigi for his podcast, The Upside. They discussed the creative process, her pursuit of business disruption, Einstein, and the story of a prescient anthropology professor who changed her life.

Here are three of our favorite takeaways from their discussion, edited for length and clarity:

Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done, if you come up with a better way. 

“What we’re doing at Madison Wells is definitely different than what a lot of people are doing, in that we are, by design, creating from the ground up a media company that shares, that is collaborative across platforms, and that is really putting storytellers at the center of what we do. Versus, the traditional studio. They are silos. At any of the major studios, even if you want to collaborate with consumer products or with one of the other divisions, it’s very difficult because of the way they’re structured. We are adding to what exists, which is a film business, a nascent television business, a theater business. We are adding to that virtual reality universe and new media. You can call them verticals. And their goal is to build the TV and film businesses in such a way, with filmmakers and creatives at the center of it, but have equal collaborators in our live theater business, in virtual reality, in world-building universe.”

Don’t be afraid of walking away from a project, if it’s failing. Fail fast, pivot, and then create something better.

“Genius was a five-year journey—with a lot of failure. We thought of it as a movie five years ago and got a screenwriter. And through no fault of that person's, ended up with a screenplay where we went, this isn't terribly exciting. So, we tried again, got another screenwriter. Did it again. And, we made a little progress. But do you want to walk that walk when the basis isn't really what you want? The answer is no. You’ve got to trust your gut. So, then we thought, ‘Well, let's look at it differently.’ And by then, the good news is, enough time has lapsed that, in fact, the film world is kind of different and not as strong as the TV world. And so it became this episodic for television, as opposed to a two-hour three-act structure, which is impossible to cram that man's life into. That unlocked a whole different world.”

Find your own unique purpose and forge your own path.

“I started out of college a small production company making corporate films. They weren't called branded entertainment then or sponsored content, which is all very lofty. Back then, they were called corporate films and they were kind of icky. And after a couple years, the company made a bunch of money, it was very successful. My father, who I adored, came to New York and said, this is awesome. ‘You did a great job. You should come run Waterfront Sports for Hyatt.’ And I went, what? And he said, ‘Yeah. That's what you should do now. Because you proved that you understand how to build a business.’ And I was like, ‘No, but this is what I want to do. And it was funny, because from his perspective, as a serial entrepreneur and a business person, it didn't matter what the thing was. It was the building of the business that was interesting. And to me, I now understood that the thing of storytelling was what was interesting to me.”