Walkman's, Hotmail, North Star Takkies 23.04.2015

In a series of Interviews i did, the Russian Bear Hunter next caricatured Jonathan Liebesman, Holywood Director. You might recognise his most recent flik, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I called the United States and at the other end of the ‘dog n bone’, was Lily, PA  to Jonathan Liebesman, Hollywood Director and good guy with a good head of hair.

Those late Sunday afternoons when the stray boerie was left on the bbq and the sun was dipping beneath it’s clouded blanket, the carte blanche soundtrack beated a limp feeling in our hearts, there we were playing tennis-court cricket focused as the great Hansie. But tonight as I spoke over the crackled line to the States, I found out he wasn’t focused on the game, he was dreaming of making movies.

I grew up with Jono, we got dirty riding bikes in velds and playing hourless cricket, we drank grape Fanta, and swam till we turned to raisins. We lived through the lens of Steven Spielberg’s viewfinder. As we grew up, that lens found Jonathan and he sought it.

Jon races through his career like Eastwood hunting the Ugly on the moving set of a Western.
King David, AFDA ‘s South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, short film, agents ,LA Hollywood , Darkness Falls, popcorn coke and Box Office Number one.
Like John Wayne to wild horses, I reel him in. I need to pull him back to get where he was, where he is and where he is going.
At NYU in 2000, Jonathan reeled in the Student Short Film Award at the Austin Film Festival and the Hollywood Young Filmmaker Award at the Hollywood Festival. His adaptation of Roahl Dahl’s ‘Genesis and Catastrophe’ had quivered the nostril hairs of movie  agents in Tinsel Town.  No sooner had he picked up the award, the cameras for Darkness Falls were rolling and Jonathan and baseball cap were sat in the director’s chair.

As a young school going lad, Jon wanted to make movies that he wanted to see. He put all his efforts, concentration and focus in achieving this dream, of making  the silver screen his reality.

The film industry is a cage fight. As the director, you fight hard for what you envision, for what you hope millions will see.  Bidding for the opportunity to direct a movie is stripped of Hollywood glam and red carpets, it’s gladiators fighting  till the death for an opportunity to create, to turn picture boards into movie motion. To retain creative integrity the director sets out to compromise as little as possible. You’re chosen for your skill set, for your conviction, for believing in what you’re presenting and making them believe you are the best.

Jon defines his success as being able to do what he loves doing, being able to make a living creating movies.
Jonathans sensitivities  and humility transfer over the ether as he engages where he is currently. He acknowledges success; that it has come through a constant inner drive and determination. Realising that you’ve reached the pinnacle, remember to enjoy it, remember to appreciate it. That is success.

The industry is a scene from a mob movie, it’s tommy guns, black coats and sock daggers. Jonathan is dumbstruck by the lack of integrity, fidelity and trust that Hollywood’s film industry imbues. He holds dearly the importance of family, and the trust that comes with his familial relationship. He advises never to be surprised by anything and don’t take business too personally.

Every opportunity to direct a movie is seen as an achievement. Jonathan takes little for granted.

If he had to koki pen his highlights of his time in the hills of Hollywood, directing his favoured actors,  Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson, two actors that starred in his number one flik Schindler’s List would no doubt be the pinnacle.
Life isn’t that rosy when you receive a pasty review, however, when you’re in the field he so dearly devours, lowlights aren’t even worth while mentioning.

Extracting Excalibur from the rock is less difficult than following one’s passion. It’s seldom the practical option, however, whatever you do, find something within that which you are doing  that you love and indulge in it.

So the next time you’re at the cinema watching Battle LA, Texas Chain Saw Massacre:the Beginning or Wrath of The Titans hold fire for  the director’s credit for you’ll see a familiar name. Jonathan Liebesman.

Dairy Don't Do It, Eat Sorbet 09.02.2015

A while back I was taxi’ed through the grottiest areas of Lagos, Nigeria. Our client was researching beauty parlours in this more-24-hour-city-than-New York City. We hopped puddles of raw sewerage, sticking out like Tweety birds in a coal mine, as we peeked through windows of back door salons where Lagosian woman with technicolour nails, and fire red lipstick chatted as they were being plucked, pulled, painted and frizzed. But who cares, this isn’t about me, this is about Ian Fuhr.

Leaving university mid-degree to sing in cocktail bars floored his folks, but it was a passion and love for music that landed him at Gallo Records. After 18 months flipping through vinyl LP’s, he departed, leaving behind his first and only experience clocking time.

Fuhr’s sheltered Jewish upbringing dodging matzo balls didn’t exactly expose him to the realities of apartheid South Africa. It was only until he landed himself in a managing position at Kmart, a consumer goods company he and his brother established that he’d be touched by South Africa’s ills. He had his work cut out for him naively managing a compliment of staff who were expected to be productive and ethical, yet simultaneously suffering the dramas of a cruel regime. Launch, a learning curve.

Meanwhile, music in the racks of Kmart introduced Ian to two popular artists, Letta Mbulu and Caiphus Semenye. Cementing a relationship with these two exiled stars, he was granted the distribution rights of their tunes in South Africa. This led to Fuhr establishing a record label, Moonshine. Flogging the label in ‘85, he returned to Kmart.

On his return, using Kmart as a test tube for mending walls, he developed programmes to assist in bridging the disparities of the black staff within the work environment - promoting blacks into management was unique for the times. This experience heaved him in to creating a race relations company called Labour Link Consultancy. After a seven year itch, Ian returned to the newly named Super Mart, which the brothers Fuhr primed for disposal to Edcon in 2002/2003.

Super Mart was Ian’s springboard. He activated the opportunities presented to him. I don’t know what defines an entrepreneur but Ian’s case presents a study.
Not dictated to by degrees or predetermined paths, not straight-jacketed by the lure of loot nor the sniff of success, not afraid to fail, not afraid to explore Fuhr tried, that’s all he did, he tried. ‘Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.’
Relying on a pioneer’s recipe of intuition, courage and determination, following the paths which lead to other paths which lead to further paths, Ian created the doors to opportunity. For Ian, as an explorer, a pioneer there are no road maps, or evidence for the journeys he takes. A fighting entrepreneur paves the path, draws the map, engineers his/her own highway, his own trajectory through investigation, research and will.

Ian discusses intuition, for it hints that something is inherently right but there is no evidence to prove such; courage, for there will always be obstacles and challenges, and thirdly; determination, for, without it, you won’t be able to see your venture through to completion, this coupled with a naive confidence that it'll all be okay.

Drawing on his life’s experience, his relationships, his visions, his efforts and his intuition, he kick started his next adventure.
While laying on a massage table, chatting to the masseuse with an ear close to the ground, the opportunity presented itself.
Sorbet, not a two-scoop, but a chain of beauty stores.

 Telling me he’s not got the face for the cover of a magazine, at first he didn’t think beauty to be a great idea. But having the itch for diving into existing, established markets, to upset apple carts, Ian heeded to intuition, and the masseuses coaxing. Through investigation, he determined the fragmented industry had no multi-unit chain. This was his opening. And so with a lion’s courage and a dung beetles determination he leaned in. With sufficient cash from the Edcon deal he went on a buying rampage, picking up independent beauty salons, spinning pumpkins into chariots. And so Sorbet came to be.

As he’s grown up sprouting grey hairs, his success has been his contribution to the lives of others: what have I left behind, how have I touched the lives of others?. Sorbet has given Fuhr the opportunity to greet 1000’s of guests, to influence them positively, to turn them chipper. Today Sorbet numbers 117 stores and continues on the march.

I remember cruising down Grant Avenue in 2005, listening to Sheryl Crowe thinking a new ice cream store had arrived, alas. That year, 6 were launched. This this isn’t about me, this is Ian’s story.

Baking It Good 08.04.2015

This is a story not about the Russian Bear Hunter, but a girl baking it good.

While on my Wednesday run, in the dark of the morning, trying to keep up with my sibling, I heaved out that I’d just interviewed Linda Lipschitz. I managed to get out, on one breath, that she’s the softly spoken woman with the jet black hair who created Belles Patisserie. As we hurtled up Knox street, my lung in my throat, he said, ‘and, so, what did you learn?’ having quenched my dry lips with the lick of my tongue, I said that I was struck by how she’d created a business from nothing- no baking degree, limited business knowledge and years of focus elsewhere, yet ingrained with a desire for self actualisation, she created something alive. ‘Dude’, he said, ‘you’ve got to watch Ratatouille’.
And so in a messy dorm room in the Old City, I did. ‘Not everyone can become a great artist’, Ego, the food critic said, ‘but a great artist can come from anywhere’.

After 19 years as a speech therapist and an academic, enough was enough. She had pulled the plug on a career that lasted a generation, aching for a new lease on life and a whole lot of fun. She left the profession unable to define her future, unable to envision a path. She pondered, and she considered. Her continuous inquiry lasted five years speckled with the birth of two kids. The thought of being a stay-at-home mom did not bring fire to her spirit. And yet, in her, a passion for all things tasty, burned .

As a foodie with buds for pastries, no croissant on the Highveld could tickle her fancy. And so she decided to begin baking. She had a chef teach her how to bake thee croissant, and a host of other flacky, fluffy delights while all the time enjoying the creative process.
On a journey to America she came across the Red Velvet cake, as yet unseen in Johannesburg.
On return, on family vacation to the Cape she didn’t see the light of day until that velvet beamed a bright red. Sun up to sun down, she beat and mixed and tasted and swirled and licked and pondered and kneaded. She read and she investigated, she dabbled and she experimented. And finally she had it. The magnificent Red velvet.
‘I want to run a baking business’ , she said. Her husband wasn’t too enamoured and responded, ‘When you have some sales, call me’. And so she hired a chef and baked cupcakes and tarts and all things nice, and dropped taste boxes throughout the hinter land.

For Linda, it was important that the cakes didn’t just look good, but that they had one’s taste buds doing triple pirouettes.
The store, ‘Life’ loved her Red Velvet and another client, ordered ‘100 lemon meringues by Friday’. Her pastries had traction in the mouths of fans. She had started a business.
Linda, her daughter and a best friend baked from the kitchen, then the garage. And when the orders expanded she took on a pastry chef.

‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’
The time had arrived to call her husband who advised her. Linda knew nothing about business but surrounded herself with all the right people. She stresses the importance of a mentor, someone who can see the greater picture and assist in guidance.
As tough as it was, she realised it was time and necessary to relinquish some responsibility, continuing, though, to oversee everything but still driving creative decisions.

3 years ago her head chef departed, opening the door for her current French chef, and together they’ve opened up a store. From baking in her garage to her flagship in the Blubird Centre, to a factory employing 80 people, the screen play for a buoyant business has been written.

Every business has its difficulties-flexibility and the ability to adapt are imperative except when it comes to her cakes-clients demand the same tasting bite every time.

A book, ‘Creating something from nothing’, she read to her kids reads, ‘start small and dream big’. Just begin. Try new things, be innovative and have fun. We limit ourselves by our beliefs and what we’re expected to be. Don’t be afraid to start something in your study, in your bedroom, in your closet. Never follow the recipe. Remi didn’t.
‘Belle’ says the goal is imperative, however there is no ideal, no perfection. ‘Forget about time, one cannot put a time limit on the course of life. Live in the now.’

For Linda, success is personal success. It’s about being happy with your level of behaviour in everything you do, how your children mirror you as a mentsch, that makes you a success.

As I leave the country in pursuit of a vision, of clarity, I reflect on Linda’s journey. We have got to keep moving forward. Break the shackles of societal demands and pursue that which is burning inside of us.
See the world through Red velvet tinted goggles.