Lawrence E. Bridges T'79
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"One side of the brain doesn't win over the other."
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Lights, Camera ... Business!
Chalk one up for guerrilla marketing. When Larry Bridges was looking for a way to distribute 12—an independent feature film that he wrote, directed, and produced over a period of as many years (starting in 1989)—he came up with an "on-the-wall" solution. On weekends in Los Angeles and other cities, his film—a modern-day parable about Greek gods in southern California—is surreptitiously projected onto the sides of buildings whose locations are disclosed beforehand on the website www.12.org. Moviegoers watch as though at a drivein theater, with the audio track provided by a low-level FM broadcast within a radius of a few hundred feet.
This innovative strategy garnered media attention in the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and other publications and helped Bridges get his film screened at independent- film festivals, where it has won several awards.
"If you have an artistic side, the key is not to postpone," says Bridges by way of advice to other MBAs who may be looking to loosen their collars. "You have to compartmentalize." It also helps to have a day job in a related field. As the founder and president of Red Car, Inc.—an advertising, editing, and design firm that has grown to 80 employees and offices in half a dozen cities—Bridges has access to film-production equipment, actors, and a crew.
Bridges first became interested in the movie business after college, when he worked as a production assistant on the set of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974). Feeling that he still needed to complete his education, however, he came to Tuck, where he particularly enjoyed the entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and other innovative courses taught by the likes of James Brian Quinn, Gert Assmus, and Colin Blaydon. "Waking up refreshed" is how Bridges felt after completing his MBA. "Tuck gave me the courage and wisdom to start my own business."
Bridges returned to California, where he developed a film-editing service, working solo in a garage with borrowed machines. Film editing is the "secret sauce" of a TV commercial, says Bridges. After the usual hard slog of a startup company, he saw his efforts rewarded in 1984 when he edited Michael Jackson's music video "Beat It." His firm soon experienced explosive growth as he worked on critically acclaimed television ads for Honda (using "Walk on the Wild Side" with singer Lou Reed), Lee Jeans, and others. "I invented a new way of editing," says Bridges, discussing his edgy style infl uenced by New Wave filmmaking. Recently, Bridges put his avant-garde imprint on a National Endowment for the Arts promotional video about Shakespeare, in which actors such as Tom Hanks and William Shatner as well as noncelebrities discuss how their lives have been transformed by the Bard. "I was filming these stars in a room with just one regular overhead lightbulb," says Bridges, something few directors would dare to do.
Although his company does not recruit MBAs, Bridges maintains close ties to the Tuck community and is always willing to talk with Tuck students about entrepreneurship and creative pursuits. "One side of the brain doesn't win over the other," he concludes.
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