Michael Mendelsohn: Interview. By Richard Schertzer.

I had the tremendous honor of interviewing the CEO of the production company Patriot Pictures, Michael Mendelsohn. He is responsible for financing movies like I am Michael, How the Gringo Stole Christmas, The Matrix and Romeo + Juliet. 

Richard: How did you get the job driving Johnny Carson as a high school student on a new learner’s permit?

Michael: I was working in tutoring learning handicapped kids and the teacher I worked for, her husband was a Harvard law graduate and i said that I was interested in law and she had me meet with her husband at this firm and the firm happened to be Bushkin, Coppleson, Gaines, Games and Wolf and Henry Buskin was Johnny Carson’s lawyer and I got a job.

I went in for a law clerk and I got a job as the mail boy and as a mail boy, you collect the coffee cups and you do the xeroxing and make deliveries and eventually, Johnny was in the office and he needed a quick ride to the studio, so his lawyer said, “Well, Mendelsohn’ll take you.” I had a Chevy Chevelle supersport. Gray with a black strip up the middle and he got in the car and we started driving from Century City to Burbank and he had his jokes with him and he decided to do his jokes in the car and he had gone through 40 jokes and I only liked these three. 

Richard:  What was the transition like going from working in the banking industry to working with Arnold Kopelson, the producer of Platoon?

Michael: Well I didn’t work in the banking industry before. I worked at it after. I first worked for Kopelson and Bushkin for four years through high school and college and then went to work for the Olympics in ‘84 and then I went to work for William Morris Agency in the mailroom in New York.

I went to a banking training program where I essentially adapted constructing lending in real estate to production lending for films. A lot of the same concepts were adapted from construction to production and that’s how the bank got into film financing. 

(Rest of interview is below) 

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