The Show That Never Happened

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0:00:12 Life is funny. I think we all know that. And it’s unpredictable, but just how unpredictable?
0:00:17 Once in a while, something happens that is so outlandish that you never even considered it
0:00:23 possible. Nasim Talib calls this a black swan event. In my case, I’m going to call it,
0:00:29 actually, I don’t know what to call it yet. Maybe you can help me name it. Let me explain.
0:00:35 Last Thursday, on February 13th, we were scheduled to do a live Freakonomics radio show
0:00:42 at the Wilshire E. Bell Theater in Los Angeles. Now, a live show for us is both rare and atypical,
0:00:48 because the episodes we put out here every week are very much not live. They are the product of
0:00:53 many hours of research and recorded interviews and editing and mixing and so on. And that’s the way
0:00:58 we like it. That’s the kind of show I like to make. But every now and again, we decide to put on a
0:01:04 live show in a theater with an audience and we record that show to make a podcast episode for
0:01:09 later. It’s not going to have the depth or the flow of a regular episode, but there is something
0:01:14 thrilling about the live setting. The interviews that you’re not really sure where they’re going to go,
0:01:20 the response from the audience that you can’t predict, and of course, any number of strange
0:01:24 things that might happen when you try to do something that resembles show business.
0:01:29 Coming into this LA show, we felt pretty good. We had two excellent guests lined up,
0:01:35 Ari Emanuel, the Super Agent and CEO of Endeavor, who was also the model for Ari Gold from the TV
0:01:41 show Entourage. And we had the award-winning filmmaker, RJ Cutler, who got his start on the
0:01:45 Clinton campaign documentary, The War Room, and who’s been making excellent documentaries ever
0:01:51 since, including a recent one about Martha Stewart. We also had Luis Guerra, who composes and performs
0:01:56 a lot of the music you hear on this show. He had put together a live band for the evening,
0:02:02 which I was definitely looking forward to. I love Luis and his music, and he has a network of
0:02:09 musicians that is amazing. Now, I’m not going to say the mood before the show was buoyant exactly.
0:02:15 Los Angeles had, of course, been hit by those terrible fatal wildfires, and now it was cold
0:02:21 and raining hard. When I got to the theater around 4 p.m. for soundcheck, the wind was whipping.
0:02:28 It felt like a monsoon outside. Plus, there are jitters, always, with a live show. But we were
0:02:34 excited, and we were excited to have a sellout crowd. The soundcheck went fine, and then I rehearsed
0:02:42 some cues with the band. They sounded great, no problems whatsoever. I started my final prep,
0:02:47 which mostly consists of sitting somewhere alone, going over my notes. For a show like this,
0:02:53 I write a short monologue. In this case, it was about how LA and New York may look like such
0:02:58 different places, but how they have a lot in common. They’re both places where people come to
0:03:03 invent themselves or reinvent themselves. I always think the great line from E.B. White,
0:03:08 “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” I would argue the
0:03:15 same is very much true for Los Angeles. I’m going over my monologue notes, going over my notes for
0:03:22 the Ari and RJ interviews, and then Ari arrives early. He is always early. I recently heard a
0:03:26 story about a Zoom meeting that someone had with him that was supposed to start at 2.30.
0:03:34 By the time they joined at 2.30, Ari had come and gone. The meeting was over. For tonight,
0:03:39 he had promised us 40 minutes on stage, but with a heart out, he had a plane waiting to
0:03:44 take him to New York for the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary celebrations. So anyway,
0:03:50 Ari gets to the theater early. He’s backstage. He is incredibly fun and interesting to talk to,
0:03:56 a total live wire. It is true that some people are intimidated by him. He was recently voted the
0:04:04 most feared agent in Hollywood. Big surprise. Anyway, then RJ Cutler shows up. Totally different
0:04:10 energy from Ari, less ratatap, but obviously lovely. The two of them are getting along nicely,
0:04:18 which is not a bad thing for me. So I’m feeling good. Then I notice something strange. The theater
0:04:23 is quiet. By now, the doors should be open. The audience should be settling in.
0:04:28 Our pre-show playlist should be playing. I’d put this one together myself. There was some
0:04:34 Thelonious Monks and Arcade Fire, a piece from Handel’s Messiah, long story,
0:04:41 and also some music specific to tonight’s guests. For RJ, we’re playing Young Gravies Martha Stewart
0:04:47 and Ocean Eyes by Billy Eilish. RJ made a great film about Billy called The World a Little Blurry.
0:04:53 And for Ari, we’re playing Superhero by Jane’s Addiction. That was the theme song from Entourage.
0:04:59 At least we’re supposed to be playing all those songs. Instead, there is no sound coming out of
0:05:03 the speakers. And then when I look out from behind the curtain, I see there are no people in the
0:05:11 seats either. So what’s happening? It turns out that the theater’s PA system had crashed. We had
0:05:17 been told earlier that it was a new system, state of the art, but, well, I don’t know what happened.
0:05:22 The next hour was pretty chaotic. The microphones aren’t working, speakers aren’t working,
0:05:28 keyboard player can’t get any sound out of his keyboard setup. There’s a grand piano backstage.
0:05:32 We start trying to wheel it out onto the stage, but it’s missing a wheel, so that doesn’t work.
0:05:39 Meanwhile, Ari Emanuel, the most famous agent in show business, is waiting backstage.
0:05:44 What the f*** are these people doing? He’s saying. We’re getting close to showtime.
0:05:49 The theater is still empty. It turns out they didn’t want to let anyone in while they’re trying
0:05:55 to fix the PA system. As I later learned, some ticket holders were left standing outside
0:06:02 in the cold rain. Finally, they opened the doors, and people started filling the seats.
0:06:08 We still didn’t have a PA system. At some point, I take the stage to speak with the crowd, and
0:06:13 people see me. They start clapping. They think the show is starting, and I announce as loudly as
0:06:19 I can that no, the show is not starting yet. We don’t have a sound system. And then I ask people
0:06:24 in the back rows of the balcony, if they can hear me without mics, and they shout, “Yes,
0:06:30 they can.” So that’s a good sign. I mean, these old theaters were built before amplification,
0:06:36 so maybe we can pull it off without mics. Ari, meanwhile, is getting even ansier backstage.
0:06:39 He says, “Let’s just f***ing do it without mics. I can f***ing shout.”
0:06:46 So that’s the new plan. We’re going to do the show as best as we can without a PA system.
0:06:53 The band is getting ready, still no mics, still no keyboards, and I have no idea if the video clips
0:06:58 we had planned to play during the show were going to work. And then suddenly, the system
0:07:05 starts working again, at least partially. By now, it’s way past the scheduled start time. So
0:07:12 we hustle up, we wish each other good luck, and we start the show. The monologue goes pretty well.
0:07:18 And then I introduce Ari. He comes out, and we have a pretty sassy conversation. Covers everything
0:07:27 from Donald Trump to Elon Musk to open AI to the Blake Lively Justin Baldoni mess and a lot more.
0:07:35 He stays for nearly an hour. He’s a real pro and a good sport. And then I do a quick AMA and ask
0:07:40 me anything with a member of the audience named Christina. She asks me how I came up with the
0:07:48 sign off for this show. Take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. It is a question I
0:07:54 wasn’t expecting, and I tear up as I tell the story because I started using that sign off pretty
0:08:00 early in the pandemic. My wife had been very sick with COVID, and we hadn’t been sure that she would
0:08:06 recover. But she did, and that line just came to me like when you’re writing a line to a song,
0:08:14 and it stuck. After the AMA, we bring out RJ Cutler, and he’s just great thoughtful and
0:08:19 personal. He’s telling great stories about himself and all the people he is embedded himself with
0:08:26 over the years. We play some clips from his films, and even that works out okay. So I finish up with
0:08:32 RJ. We say some thank yous, and then we say good night. The audience claps. They seem to enjoy it,
0:08:36 although I couldn’t really tell how good the show was. Live shows are always a bit of a blur,
0:08:42 but this one even more so because of the circumstances. It struck me as a bit of a miracle
0:08:47 that the show ended up happening at all. So we hang out for a little bit more at the theater,
0:08:53 and then we go to a little after party. Mostly friends and family, maybe 40, 50 folks,
0:09:00 including my daughter who just moved to LA last year after college. Honestly, she was a big reason
0:09:05 I wanted to do a show out here in the first place. So we’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re
0:09:12 laughing now about how close we came to having no show at all. And that’s when our excellent
0:09:17 editor, Ellen Frankman, comes up to me with a look on her face that I couldn’t quite figure out.
0:09:24 In retrospect, she looked really ill. She was shaky, her face was pale. So I ask her what’s wrong,
0:09:31 and she tells me that in addition to the audio failures we had earlier, there was
0:09:40 another even bigger failure. The show had not been recorded. She says, and I didn’t understand. I
0:09:47 asked her to repeat herself. She said they didn’t record the show. And I still didn’t quite understand.
0:09:54 I mean, I’ve been recording stuff for many years now. I was a musician and I used to work in all
0:10:00 kinds of studios. I was a reporter and used to record all kinds of interviews. I’ve been doing
0:10:06 this show now for 15 years. We’ve recorded thousands of studio and live interviews,
0:10:12 many other things. And not once have the people responsible for recording just failed to record it.
0:10:19 But tonight, that’s apparently what happened. I am pretty sure we did do a live show with Ari
0:10:24 Manuel and RJ Cutler and Luis Guerra’s band and Christina from the audience. But there’s no
0:10:32 recording of it. So I’m not really sure. The next several hours were even more of a blur than the
0:10:37 hour before the show. We thought about trying to partner with RJ Cutler to make a forensic
0:10:44 documentary of the show, trying to recreate it as best as we could. Some friends who had been in
0:10:49 the audience had already started sending in bits of video and audio they had recorded. At least
0:10:56 one journalist had recorded the entire Ari Emmanuel interview, but it’s iPhone on the lap
0:11:05 quality, not radio quality. So we ditched that recreation idea. For some reason, I wasn’t angry.
0:11:12 I was just flabbergasted. It was a new feeling, a new experience. I woke up the next morning,
0:11:18 still more confused than anything. I went out to Brentwood to have breakfast with my daughter.
0:11:26 We saw Don Cheadle, whom I recognized, and Tom Holland, whom I didn’t. A friend dropped by,
0:11:31 a college friend of my daughter. He grew up in LA and he still lives there. He’s one of the people
0:11:38 who had sent us some audio files when he heard about our recording catastrophe. He’s a really
0:11:44 nice kid and the three of us had a nice breakfast. I asked him how his work was going and also where
0:11:50 he’s living now. He grew up in Pacific Palisades and his family’s house burned to the ground last
0:11:56 month. When we said goodbye to him after breakfast, he was shivering outside in a t-shirt. He hadn’t
0:12:03 even been able to get a new coat yet. As a writer, I’ve always been petrified about losing
0:12:09 anything I’ve written. I panic if the computer glitches and I lose even a sentence or two.
0:12:17 And now here, we had lost an entire show. But how does losing a show compare to losing your
0:12:24 childhood home? Thousands of homes burned to the ground during those LA fires. At least 29 people
0:12:30 died. It’ll cost billions of dollars to replace what can be replaced and a lot of it can’t. So
0:12:38 I guess I’m the lucky one. I thought back to this passage from a book called Genius and Anxiety,
0:12:45 How Jews Changed the World, 1847 and 1947 by Norman Lebrecht. The passage goes like this.
0:12:54 Moses said the law is everything. Jesus said love is everything. Marx said money is everything.
0:13:04 Freud said sex is everything. And Einstein said everything is relative. To the 900 people who
0:13:10 came out to our show that rainy night, thank you. It’s nice to know there were some witnesses.
0:13:16 And to everyone else who will never hear the show that never happened, well,
0:13:28 take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too.
0:13:40 The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.
0:13:45 Stitcher.
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