{"id":568,"date":"2009-06-05T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/?p=568"},"modified":"2009-06-04T21:05:22","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T02:05:22","slug":"blond-james-blond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/05\/blond-james-blond\/","title":{"rendered":"Blond. James Blond."},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Nelson<\/strong> learned the power of harnessing your unique talents in a music class in college,<\/a> and it has served him well. He barely passed the class\u2014appreciating Beethoven is harder when you don\u2019t have perfect pitch\u2014but now, as CEO of Providence Equity Partners<\/strong>, he is not only the richest man in Providence, he is the wealthiest man in the state. (It may be the smallest state in the Union, but there\u2019s still some Texas-size money in Rhode Island; Nelson is worth at least $2 billion.) PEP acquired the movie studio MGM<\/strong> a few years ago, and the big question, he told me, was \u201cWhat would we do with James Bond\u2014who will be the next Bond?\u201d MGM, along with a brother and sister who are the children of original producer Cubby Broccoli<\/strong>, owns the film rights to Ian Fleming<\/strong>\u2019s spy novels. At the time, producers were looking for a new actor to fill 007\u2019s dinner jacket, and many in the business felt that the Bond films were growing stale. Before they closed the MGM deal, Nelson insisted they meet with Barbara Broccoli<\/strong>. \u201cWe had key decisions to make and we needed to come to an agreement quickly,\u201d he said. One actor being seriously considered for the role was Daniel Craig<\/strong>, and early buzz on the choice was negative: he wasn\u2019t known as an action star; he wasn\u2019t suave or handsome enough\u2014worst of all, he was blond! Fortunately for him, and for Bond fans everywhere, Nelson remembered his Beethoven.
\n\u201cBarbara was like one of the kids in class with perfect pitch,\u201d he told me. So, trusting in her Golden Eye, as it were, for Bond, he left the decisions about the films to her. \u201cWe took a big risk,\u201d he said. Casino Royale<\/strong>,<\/em> a remake of one of the earliest Bond films with Craig as a darker, grittier 007, was a critical and commercial hit, and was widely credited with rejuvenating the franchise. \u201cI am here to say that we deserve none of the credit,\u201d Nelson told me. \u201cBarbara had the \u2018perfect pitch\u2019 for Bond. Recognizing and respecting those skills was a lesson learned in that first day of the Beethoven course.\u201d
\nIt can be hard to acknowledge what you can and can\u2019t do well and to focus on what you do best. Barbara Broccoli\u2019s perfect pitch is an instinctive sense of what makes the perfect Bond film; Jonathan Nelson\u2019s perfect pitch is recognizing the unique gifts of others and knowing how to turn those into profits. Even harder than accepting your weaknesses, though, is trusting your fate to someone else\u2019s talents. But if you can find partners whose perfect pitch harmonizes with yours and make that leap of faith, the payoff can be immense. After all, you only live twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Nelson<\/strong> learned the power of harnessing your unique talents in a music class in college,<\/a> and it has served him well. He barely passed the class\u2014appreciating Beethoven is harder when you don\u2019t have perfect pitch\u2014but now, as CEO of Providence Equity Partners<\/strong>, he is not only the richest man in Providence, he is the wealthiest man in the state. (It may be the smallest state in the Union, but there\u2019s still some Texas-size money in Rhode Island; Nelson is worth at least $2 billion.) PEP acquired the movie studio MGM<\/strong> a few years ago, and the big question, he told me, was \u201cWhat would we do with James Bond\u2014who will be the next Bond?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[191,153,157],"tags":[211,213,209,212,210,208,192,207,124,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}