Jaws had just come out in June 1975. By October, Spielberg was sitting in the audience at the very first SNL broadcast, knowing something generational was happening. After the show, John Belushi dragged him backstage to meet Dan Aykroyd, launching a lifelong love of stand-up and comedians.
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At 4:04 · chapter starts 2:45
Steven Spielberg's appearance on Good Hang is immediately warm and self-deprecating — he jokes he needs 'a few more hits' before he deserves a spot on the show. He tells the story of being in the audience at the very first SNL broadcast in October 1975, just months after Jaws had made him famous, and how Belushi dragged him backstage to meet Aykroyd. [1] — Steven Spielberg "Jaws had just come out in June 1975. By October, Spielberg was sitting in the audience at the very first SNL broadcast, knowing something g…" 04:04 He then describes the first time he met Colman Domingo: while casting a film about the creation of Porgy and Bess and searching for someone to play Todd Duncan, Domingo walked into the room and Spielberg immediately intended to cast him. The Porgy film was never made, but Spielberg remembered Domingo and later cast him as Private Greene in Lincoln.
Steven Spielberg was in the audience for the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1975, just months after Jaws had come out.
Spielberg invented a solution to nervous auditioners: invite everyone to cook together in a kitchen. Starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark, actors who came in covered in flour and fumbling with eggs instantly became their best, most relaxed selves.
Steven Spielberg devised a method of holding auditions in a kitchen while cooking together, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark, to put nervous actors at ease.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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