What inspired you to launch Forby Entertainment Partners?
I started working on film and TV shoots in New York City during college. My first boss, an executive producer, recommended Edward Jay Epstein’s book, The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies. It was an eye-opening glimpse under the hood of an industry I love. Coupled with my time on movie sets and in production offices, I saw the industry’s huge potential for innovation.

During business school, I also noted that some entertainment had a ‘negativity bias.’ Our world has enough video content, culled from real world events, on that end of the spectrum. Audiences exchange precious time off from long jobs to engage with entertainment. I feel the stories they turn to should inspire them, uplift them, and at least, do what the category name says: entertain them.

What are your short-term goals for the company?
We’ve developed a number of great projects, roughly 25 between television and movies, that I’d like to get made in the next few years.

If forced to pick one of each:

-A period television series set in Paris that weaves back and forth between the Lost Generation and the Beat Generation. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Anaïs Nin, Richard Wright…Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs…think Downton Abbey meets Call My Agent.

-A family movie about the world of dreams, set on Earth and on a distant magical planet inhabited by the dream weavers…think Monsters Inc. meets Inside Out.”

What are your long-term goals?
I want Forby to make movies that draw people back to theaters. Ultimately, there will be a resurgence in moviegoing. The stat from the 1950s (when 80% of Americans went to the movies at least weekly) might not be realistic nowadays due to the incursion of new demands on people’s time, but I do believe the human spirit loves two things: entertainment and communal experiences. I love that the word “entertainment” comes from an Old French verb, entretenir, meaning “to hold together.”

What’s been the most enjoyable part of launching the company? What’s been the most challenging part?
It’s been a joy to chart the direction of a new commercial venture. Starting from the business equivalent of tabula rasa has been extremely invigorating. Some would say launching an entertainment production company months before a global pandemic upends the industry is less than ideal. But there were actually many silver linings. Among the biggest was the extended time I was lucky to spend on Zoom with industry leaders over those years.

What’s a typical day like for you at Forby Entertainment?
It varies greatly. Always a mixture of creative and business, the alchemy that led me to business school. A few constants:

-I write every day, on a number of different projects at different stages of completion. I’ll write three to five pages finishing a screenplay, then move to a TV show outline, hop on Zoom with a cowriter to plot out act II of a different screenplay.

-I wake up early and listen to a podcast during a morning walk, either industry-oriented, like Matt Belloni’s The Town or Kim Masters’s The Business, or focused on content, like Sean Fennessy & Amanda Dobbins’s The Big Picture or The A24 Podcast.

-I watch something over breakfast and lunch, at least.”

Can you tell us more about your process—how you get the ideas, what your goals are for each script, etc.?
It’s pretty freeform. Luckily I haven’t faced a shortage of ideas yet—quite the opposite! I’m often dismayed that I won't be able to write every story for which I have a neat idea nor make every movie for which I have a grabbing logline.

I’m constantly writing down little pieces of ideas and great dialogue, things inspired by what I overhear on the street…an amusing phrase, a twist on a play on words. I’ll jot down interesting paradoxes or characters to possibly explore on the page. This weekend I saw two street musicians playing their instruments while reclined on benches in Central Park. Into my head popped The Apathetic Busker. It went right into the pinned Snippets note on my iPhone.

I think along the dimension of “what if” pretty naturally, and I like to engage that thinking and let my mind wander freely. The children’s franchise about the world of dreams sprung from a random text from my brother, Rob (MBA 2014), to my family text chain that there are a trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy alone. This staggering fact marinated in the mysterious subconscious and prompted a sketch, which bloomed into a children’s book that various industry executives found intriguing. The novel and screenplay followed.

How is Forby Entertainment different from other production companies and how do you see this as a competitive advantage?
Having a business background means we begin with the end in mind. Each project originates with thinking as to marketing, partners, audience, and possible revenue streams already baked into the project. This makes us different. We don’t have to shoehorn a finished movie or TV show into a strategy. The strategy is there from the very beginning, and it informs the development of the project. This has been tremendous fun for me…the story idea for one of our most exciting children’s projects came from watching media M&A news on Squawk Box at the gym.

We’re also nimble. When [Professor] Len Schlesinger, [Senior Lecturer] Christina Wing, and I planned out the production company I wanted to launch, it was important to me from the outset, given the unpredictability of the industry, to be lean and mean. That’s proved essential. A lesser run rate with fewer expenses means we can weather challenges like the pandemic, or this year’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that have affected the industry and effectively frozen most of its activity. Larger companies can’t ride out the storm without cuts to budget and staff.

How do you use what you learned at HBS in this work?
Each film and television project is a puzzle that gives shape to the freeform creative process I mentioned earlier. Here’s what I mean by puzzle: I wrote poetry growing up. I felt that the strict rules dictated by archaic forms of poetry, this many syllables, or this rhyme scheme, gave welcome shape to my creativity, shrinking the daunting world of possibilities for each word or line.

Now, I’ve subbed in film and television projects for poetry. And I’ve subbed in strategic thinking, honed by HBS, for poetic form. In effect, I’ll create a business plan for each movie and television project. I’ll analyze the companies and outlets, create a “go to market” plan. On the revenue side, I’ll think, what commercial IP products could a project generate? It's a hybrid business-creative Mad Libs I love.

What was your favorite class at HBS?
A three-way tie between Arts & Cultural Entrepreneurship, Brand Strategy, and The Moral Leader.

Arts & Cultural Entrepreneurship explores the tension between culture and commerce. I loved studying how other industries and art forms strive to address the needs of both “creatives” and “suits.” Brand Strategy was eye-opening, as I watched many of the same storytelling techniques the entertainment industry employs put to use in brand building to market and sell products. The Moral Leader uses great literature to teach great leadership, a dream of a class for this English major. We studied how great leaders—fictional characters as well as history’s heroes and antiheroes—use rhetoric to influence people.”

What was your favorite case?
Another three-way tie between Jean-Claude Biver, Discovery Health, and 12 Angry Men.

First, Jean-Claude Biver’s uncompromising excellence, commitment to his impressive vision, and devotion to his fastidious work was inspiring. I strive to bring the same dedication to my work in entertainment as he did to his work in watches.

Next, Discovery, a South African health care company, incentivizes healthy behavioral change that leads to fewer claims and lower premiums for customers as the company's cost to serve them decreases, too. It's an inspiring example of creating shared value, when a company addresses social needs in a profitable way. While corporate social responsibility is often written off as a cost center, shared value instead creates new business opportunities by improving profitability and strengthening competitive positioning. Magical!

Last, I’ve always found Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men a near perfect movie, and I smiled as soon as I saw it on the syllabus. HBS’s use of the film to study group decision-making was brilliant. Writer Reginald Rose’s jury room is a microcosm of society.

What did you like to do when you were not studying?
First year, I’d see movies at the AMC on the Common or the ICON theater (sadly now shuttered) in the Seaport any chance I got.

Second year, I had less free time for moviegoing. Aside from founding Forby, I cowrote with Senior Lecturer Mark Kramer the HBS case on social impact film and television production company Participant Media (Spotlight, Green Book). Then, since I’d worked for film executive producers and directors before school, I was asked to produce the HBS Show (the full-length musical theater production that spoofs the business school experience.) It was a jam-packed year and I loved every minute of it.”

What advice do you have for current students who hope to launch their own companies?
Read widely, both about your own industry and others. You’ll want to stay current on your own, of course, but reading about other seemingly unrelated industries is extremely valuable for two reasons. First, you might spot, far down the track, socioeconomic factors that will somehow influence your own industry. Second, learning how other industries are meeting today’s challenges can inspire inventive thinking.

There’s simply no better time to launch a company than with the invaluable, comprehensive support of this school…proceed with excitement and energy! Remember that every big company started once upon a time with a single person, a daydream, and a piece of paper.

Can you finish this sentence, “Great storytelling is…”
A simple equation that’s more innate than people realize.

Anyone who’s read a bedtime story aloud to little ones knows how to keep an audience captive. The first page we have a sweet start with exciting action in a familiar world, then we modulate our voice as we build tension with the hook. Then the world is thrown upside down with a twist. We lean in, read with sound effects and tickles as we turn the pages, resolving the twist until BAM!—the last page, our big finish.

Then a favorite quote from the fictionalized version of screenwriting guru Robert McKee, played brilliantly by Brian Cox, in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, “I'll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit.”

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