From Mistakes To Meaning – Michael Lynton

A seat where he could watch the circus with detachment while still participating when so inclined. He focused on activities where he knew that his success was of his own making, not the product of his pedigree—each week fighting his way up or falling down the tennis ladder. Starting at an early age, David preferred activities—such as tennis—that didn’t depend on the approval or acquiescence of others. He developed a strongly held schema about the importance of proving himself without the help of others and avoiding the temptation to pay too close attention to what others thought.

That schema got reinforced during his first exposure to Hollywood. The summer after his sophomore year, a family friend introduced him to Robert Evans, the legendary producer, who made iconic movies such as The Godfather and Love Story. David drove out to LA hoping to have Evans get him a job as a production assistant on a movie set.

He went into Evans’s Mussolini-like office at Paramount. Surrounded by all the trappings of an imperial executive, Evans skipped the pleasantries: “What do you want to do?” “I want to be a writer.” “Then why do you want to be a production assistant on a set? What do you think you’re going to do?” “I don’t know, I’ll be on the set.

I’ll see how movies are made.” Evans shouted back at him, “No, you won’t! You won’t see anything about how movies are made. You’ll just get coffee for people. What are you going to learn from that? You want to be a writer? Go home and write.” To his credit, David did exactly what Evans proposed. After college and a brief sojourn on the corporate side of the movie business in Los Angeles and New York, he quit and moved to Miami, a city with virtually no production infrastructure and with a wildly different culture from Hollywood’s.

Why Miami?

First published in the United States by Avid Reader Press An imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC First published in the UK in 2026 by Blink Publishing An imprint of Bonnier Books UK 5th Floor, HYLO, 105 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8LZ Copyright © Michael Lynton and Joshua L. Steiner, 2026 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The right of Michael Lynton and Joshua L. Steiner to be identified as Authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78870-994-1 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78870-995-8 eBook ISBN: 978-1-78870-996-5 Also available as an audiobook 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Interior design by Lewelin Polanco The authorised representative in the EEA is Bonnier Books UK (Ireland) Limited.

Registered office address: Block B, The Crescent Building Northwood, Santry Dublin 9, D09 C6X8 Ireland [email protected] www.bonnierbooks.co.uk OceanofPDF.com For Antoinette and Jamie OceanofPDF.com Contents PART 1: What Have We Done? 1. It’s Time 2. Know Thy Schema 3. The Velvet Rope 4. The Polar Bear PART 2: You’re Not Alone 5. The Life Cycle of Mistakes 6. The Front Row 7. The Lunch Box 8. The Big Year 9. Traffic Stop 10. Three’s Company 11. To Elle and Back 12. It’s Not Having What You Want; It’s Wanting What You Have 13.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man 14. If You Break It, You Own It 15. Running Man PART 3: Onward Through Openness 16. How to Talk About Mistakes 17. How to Make Fewer Mistakes 18. The Water Is Lovely Acknowledgments Notes OceanofPDF.com PART 1 What Have We Done? OceanofPDF.com L 1 It’s Time ate one night in 2015, Michael called Josh in a panic. Months earlier, the North Korean government had hacked Sony Entertainment, shutting down its operations and leaking company secrets.

As CEO, Michael had been spending twenty-hour days reassuring colleagues, answering questions from the Tokyo headquarters, and trying to get help from the FBI as he managed one of the worst corporate IT crises in history. WikiLeaks had taken thousands of Sony documents, posted them online, and created a search function that allowed reporters to find the gossip that Sony executives had unwisely committed to writing. Story after story appeared about salaries, movie budgets, and casting decisions, along with deeply troubling comments about race and gender.

Through the WikiLeaks search function, reporters discovered that Michael had used his corporate email for personal matters as well. Suddenly, the crisis became intimate; the world could find sensitive information about Michael’s family—including his children.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 6a56f1309cabf2d4
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,663,321 bytes (1.586 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781788709941, 9781788709958, 9781788709965
• Pages: 212
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 360.49 minutes
• Total Words: 72,098
• Total Characters: 429,175
• Average Words per Page: 340.08
• Average Characters per Page: 2024.41

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