After eBay, Skoll bids to do good through socially conscious films
Jeffrey Skoll seems nice. Like the billionaire next door. He may be the fifth-richest Canadian, but his hair looks like it was cut while he had a bowl on his head. He has the smart shirt, the cool shoes, but Skoll is still a nerd. He may be the latest movie mogul to have Paris Hilton's private cell number, but he confesses that celebrities make him cringe.
On a recent sunny morning, Skoll, 40, is talking about his childhood and, without apparent irony, his dreams for a better tomorrow. The boyish former president of
In the past few months, Skoll's $100 million company, Participant Productions, has financially backed ''North Country," with Charlize Theron as a sexually harassed single mom and mine worker; ''Good Night, and Good Luck," with David Strathairn as newsman Edward R. Murrow standing up to redbaiting bully Senator Joseph McCarthy; and ''Syriana," with George Clooney as a rogue CIA operative in a corrupt shadowland where American power dips its talons into Middle East oil.
For a seasoned producer, this would be a hot hand. For a novice, it is a remarkable entry. ''North Country" and ''Syriana" got two Oscar nominations each, while ''Good Night" picked up six, including best picture, actor, director, and original screenplay.
''He seems to be moving in a very purposeful way. He has the resources and he is resourceful. He has the means and the madness. And I give him high marks," says Peter Guber, co-host of ''Sunday Morning Shootout," the AMC talk show on Hollywood, who produced his own slate of socially conscious movies (''Gorillas in the Mist," ''Missing").
Skoll also financed the distribution of ''Murderball," the Oscar-nominated documentary about wheelchair rugby players, and the PBS television series ''New
''He's backing movies that are very smart, very creative, and not just empty calories," Guber says. ''But the question is, what happens when he has his flops?
''Because failure is the inevitable cul-de-sac on the road to success in this town."
One of the first uses of film was as a propaganda tool. There have been plenty of ''message movies" (''To Kill a Mockingbird," ''The China Syndrome"). What is unique about Skoll is his plan to deal only in socially transformative fare.
''If I came into this business to make money, that would be the wrong reason," he says.
''For me, the premise was to create a media company in the public benefit. As a philanthropist, I give away a lot of money every year," says Skoll, who endowed his eponymous foundation with $300 million.
''Yet I thought there was a higher leverage to come in and create movies and TV shows that were actually able to do some good in the world," he says. ''Whether they make money or not is not my biggest concern. I hope they do. It shows they're commercially viable and the model is sustainable and people are seeing them. But at the end of the day, social good is our primary metric."
Why is he doing this?
Skoll goes back to the beginning. ''As a teenager I read a lot of books," he says. ''Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do something about them. But I didn't think it was the best way to make a living. So I had to get to a point where I was financially independent enough to write these stories, and lo and behold, eBay came along, and I got more financial independence than I could have dreamed of."
Like $5 billion worth of independence.
''But I was so busy, I didn't have time to write . . . then a light bulb went off and I realized I could actually hire writers . . . then another light bulb went off and I realized better than just writing stories, get them out to people in a big way, through movies, which was something nobody was doing, so in January 2004 I started Participant Productions."
The company does not just finance movies, it also backs social-action campaigns tied to its movies and forms partnerships with advocacy groups. For ''North Country," it worked with Ms. Magazine, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the Family Violence Prevention Fund and offered downloadable information kits about sexual harassment and a hot line. They urged audience members to contact Congress to support the Violence Against Women Act, which was up for renewal in October -- and the reason they released ''North Country" at that time. (President Bush signed the bill this month.)
But how can one measure a film's impact? ''We try to measure what we can," Skoll says. ''On the websites -- the number of visitors, number of e-mails, number of pages. How many kits [are downloaded]."
Skoll says it's too early to know how effective the campaigns are.
Says Skoll: ''This is our first slate of films. The company is young." And though he has high hopes for the Web, he thinks the movies are the most important agent for change.
He denies that his aims are partisan. ''We're not political," says Skoll, a Canadian citizen who holds a green card to live and work in the United States. He says he has not given much money to either party.
''My views tend to be centrist," Skoll says. ''I'm not a big fan of George W., but my politics tend to be more Republican than not. But it depends.
''It goes back to when I was a kid," he says. ''Looking at these big trends around the world. And these are really bad problems. And if people don't get involved, they are going to get worse. The reason this company exists is to bring these problems to people's attention and get them to figure out what the solution is."
