FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
December 20, 2005
Mark Cuban: He's everywhere
At Dallas Mavericks basketball games, team owner Mark Cuban sometimes attracts attention with his histrionics.
But in the movie business, he's attracting a very different (and more positive) kind of attention: he's one of the few people willing to experiment with new ways of releasing and distributing films. (I had the chance to talk with him in person twice earlier this year, and wrote about his vision for the future of cinema in the December issue of Fast Company.)
This month, his idea about "Collapsing the Distribution Window" was also cited by the New York Times Sunday Magazine as one of the year's most notable ideas...
The Times also wrote a more critical piece focusing on Cuban's plans for rolling out digital projectors at his chain of Landmark Theatres, titled, "Is Mark Cuban Missing the Big Picture?" (The author's criticisms were mostly off-base, in my opinion.)
So Cuban fired back with an entry on his own blog, asking, "NY Times Sunday Business or Bloggers. Who Has Higher Standards?" (He also posted the transcript of his e-mail interview with columnist Randall Stross.)
Since the Fast Company feature about Cuban and his business partner Todd Wagner is still behind the subscriber wall, I wanted to post two things from my reporting: one a transcript of my first interview with Cuban, and the other an audio recording from the second. (The latter includes most of our conversation, except for five or so minutes after the recorder was shut off.) Conversation #1 took place in July, and the second happened in October.
In both, I think you can get a good sense for just how many different experiments he and Wagner intend to try. Suffice to say: more than just about anyone else in Hollywood.
Posted by Scott Kirsner at December 20, 2005 9:47 PM | Category: entertainment |
3 Comments
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Cuban is a mad sciencist like Jim Cramer. Both have a passion for their dreams the money to chase it. I wish him the best of luck and hope his HD channel goes far beyond the excellence he has already made. Cuban has many critics that hate his success, but haters just sit on the sidelines and ever play the big game.
Dustin Wish
CEO -- MajorTires.com
Hats of to Cuban. As a Dallas resident, I see his impact our community. He is a risk taker. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't. But that has not deterred his passion to try new things. I wonder about the net worth of his critics compared to his...hmmmm.
He is the sort of person that I certainly hope to cross paths, projects and passions with someday; after the success of his current ventures, of course.
Domino Ireland [creative]
Imagiro Projects