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Let’s Make Sick Kids Happy – a conversation with Peter Samuelson
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Film producer Peter Samuelson recounts the story behind the founding and growth of The Starlight Children’s Foundation, and the First Star charity.
When Hollywood film producer Peter Samuelson received a telephone call from his cousin, the actress Emma Samms he did not expect to be setting up The Starlight Children’s Foundation.
Even if you have never heard the name, you will know what Starlight does. It is the charity that makes the dreams of seriously sick children come true.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Peter recounts that phone call, and describes to host Michael Millward the meetings with Steven Spielberg and then General Norman Schwarzkopf that resulted in a Foundation that has raised and spent over a billion dollars on making sick kids happy.
Peter describes his negotiation with Steven Spielberg and the management lessons he learnt from General Schwarzkopf.
By any measure this is an inspirational story told in an entertaining way.
Read more about the founding of Starlight, and the other charities that Peter has founded in his book Finding Happy.
Peter also talks about First Star and the support it provides to children who are growing up in care to create better life chances.
Watch Michael in The Magician.
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Buy Finding Happy from Amazon or Bookshop.org
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Transcript
Introduction to The Independent Minds
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process so easy.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Meet Peter Samuelson: Film Producer & Charity Founder
00:00:31
Speaker
I am Michael Millward. As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, I am talking to film producer Peter Samuelson, founder of FilmComedia.com and charity founder about setting up charities, including First Star and Starlight Foundation. During a career that spans decades, Peter has worked on films, well, let's start at the beginning, Le Mans, which starred Steve McQueen.
00:01:02
Speaker
Others like Wilde, which starred Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde. He was involved in Spotlight, a film that changed the way in which child abuse is viewed, and is currently working on 1660 Vine, which looks at the challenging choices of influencer culture.
00:01:19
Speaker
Peter is based in Hollywood. I have been to Hollywood. If I get the chance to go again, i will utilize my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club so that I can pay trade prices on my flights, hotels, trains, package holidays, and so many other travel-related purchases.
Innovating in Charity: Starlight Children's Foundation
00:01:35
Speaker
I have included a link in the description that will take you to the Ultimate Travel Club, and it has a built-in discount on membership fees, so you can also travel at trade prices.
00:01:46
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Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to. liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:56
Speaker
And also worth sharing with your friends, family and work colleagues as well. Hello to Mr. Peter Samuelson. Welcome to the Independent Minds. Happy to spend this time with you. Thank you very much. I know today is an important day for you. So happy birthday. Well, thank you so much. Please could we start by just explaining a little bit about the charities because there's been more than one that you have set up during the course of your career. I started with the Starlight Children's Foundation and then Steven Spielberg and I began Starbright World. So Starlight, Starbright.
00:02:34
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The third one where we work with kids in care, foster kids, is called First Star. So my thought was originally that I would work my way through the children's rhyme, Starlight, Starbright, First Star I See Tonight. But then after First Star, I wanted to do something to help unhoused people and I invented a single user portable homeless shelter and got a patent on it I couldn't fit it into the children's rhyme so it became EDAR e d a r everyone deserves a roof EDAR.org and so on there are seven non-profits I do think that being a film producer
00:03:18
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What you learn by trial and error over time and get pattern recognition is how to entrepreneur in all its ramifications.
00:03:31
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What are we trying to accomplish? What is our mission? Who do we need on the crew to execute on it? Where will the money come from? How much money do we need? What's the schedule? How will it be distributed? How do we measure whether it's any good? Did we pilot it? And now we're going to replicate and on and on and on. These are all...
00:03:53
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producer skills on a film. What happened to me is that a long time ago, four decades ago, I was already in Hollywood and my young cousin, the actress, Emma Sam, was still in the UK. Emma went in costume with the cast of a film called Arabian Adventure to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and made nice with the kids in the ward.
00:04:23
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Emma sort of befriended a little boy, roughly 10 years old, Sean Honorati. I remember her phoning me and saying, i seem to have invited him to come to Los Angeles, but he's seriously ill and I'm not quite sure how to pull it off and What do you think I should do? And I said, well, you have to go and talk to the doctor and find out whether he can be transported. And you have to go and talk to the mom and
Global Impact of Starlight
00:04:49
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find out if she wants it to happen. And then I guess we'll have to think of the logistics
00:04:55
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of how to take a very seriously ill, a terminally ill child 5,600 miles from London to Los Angeles. But if you've told him that you're going to do it, you have to do it and I'll help you. The mum, Brenda and Emma,
00:05:11
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and little Sean came to LA, all moved into my apartment, couldn't put him in a hotel. For two weeks, we did all the stuff that you probably are not supposed to do with a very seriously ill child.
00:05:24
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Everybody had a most extraordinary, life-changing, enjoyable time. His mom saw her terminally ill son enjoying himself and she had that to remember him by when he passed away a few months later emma and i felt you know we had done something spectacularly successful one of the things that producers do is we're very good at calling meetings and crewing a meeting what do i need to start a charity Well, I need a lawyer. you always need one of them. i need yeah I need a publicist. I need a graphic designer.
00:05:59
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I need someone who has relationships in hospitals and so on and so forth. And I called that meeting and I just stood at the end of the table and I said, this is what we've just done.
00:06:10
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And my thought is we should form a charity and do it a few times a year. Let's just make seriously ill children happy. That'll be our mission. Nothing more complicated than that. And every everyone said yes.
00:06:24
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The lawyer said, what do you want to call it? And I said, oh, well, that's interesting. I haven't given it any thought. What do we want to call it? There was a very beautiful accountant And I had had one date with her and I knew I needed an accountant. I phoned her up and said, remember me, I'm so sorry that I didn't call. I've been so busy and, you know, all BS. And I said, I hope you don't hate me.
00:06:49
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Will you please come to this meeting? Because I need an accountant. And she did. And when the lawyer said, what do you want to call it? The accountant said, you know that children's rhyme, Starlight, Star, Bright, First I See Tonight? I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight. Why don't we call it, she said, the Starlight Children's Foundation.
00:07:08
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Cut to the chase. That was meeting number one, if you like. In its 41 years of life, starlight in all the countries, Australia, Canada, US, UK, we have raised and spent to about $1.2 billion billion dollars We've helped hundreds of thousands of seriously ill kids and their mums and dads. We've expanded laterally into all sorts of amazing things that mitigate pain or create joy and happiness or heal fractured families where they have a seriously ill kid. Yes. So that's starlight. It's all started with ah ah the impact that one child had on your cousin Emma Sands and has now grown to that sort of level. There's been all sorts of people involved as well. Congratulations. Well, thank you.
00:08:06
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It's formed the inspiration for other
First Star Charity and Challenges in Child Care
00:08:09
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work as well. So there are seven of these charities. And the other one, First Star, is particularly poignant for me as a as an ah HR professional. Because you're improving through First Star the life chances of people who are growing up in care.
00:08:25
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And that means that they are more likely to be able to find successful careers and build happy lives for themselves. So with First Star, tell me a little bit more about what that does. In 1999, with Starlight, I had managed to get Steven Spielberg to become chairman, and I got Norman Schwarzkopf to come in as fundraising chair.
00:08:50
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And i mean, we were really on a roll and have remained on a roll ever since. and I realized I think I could do something different, but with the same skill set.
00:09:01
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Somebody gave me two documents, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is a UN convention that's been signed by roughly 175 countries. There's nothing in it that you wouldn't like. What it says is children children should have a name.
00:09:20
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They shouldn't have to join the army until they turn 18. They're entitled to healthcare. They're entitled to education and so on and so forth.
00:09:30
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I discovered in the appendix in the back that 174, I think it was, countries had ratified this thing, but the United States had not.
00:09:44
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Then I read another document, which was an analysis ranking call it the first world, the developed nations, I think there were about 23 of them back then, ranked by the welfare of their children.
00:09:58
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The United States was dead last, and the United Kingdom was one from last. And I thought, wow, this is just absurd.
00:10:09
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why i don't know any British or American people who hate children. And then you see poking into it with more. Always I do so much research.
00:10:20
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The United States spends more money than anybody else on the welfare of children. So how can it be so terrible? And i started honing in on children in care.
00:10:34
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So there's 100,000 of them in the UK. There's 500,000 in the United States and in ratio to population in Canada and Australia, New Zealand so forth, South Africa.
00:10:46
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I thought, well, what can be done? These kids, the stats are appalling. Not only that there's a lot of kids in care, and why are they there? Well, because they were abused or neglected and the authorities investigated the complaint.
00:11:01
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And if they discovered that, yes, this is an intolerably dangerous situation for this child and very negative, they remove the child from that family and they place the child with strangers where they remain until their 18th birthday, hopefully not being remolested or reneglected. Mostly they get it right. Sometimes they get it wrong.
00:11:24
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But then pretty much always on the 18th birthday, they're cast out. Here's your wheelie bin bag to put your stuff in. You're being moved to a new foster home. You know, we we have kids who've been in 25 homes in four years. And then on your 18th birthday, you get another one of the the rubbish bags, the trash bags.
00:11:47
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Put your stuff in and have a nice life and maybe send us a postcard. You know, you're on your own. Well, I don' know about you, but I don't know any child of 18 who can take care of themselves.
Finding Happiness: A Book for Young Adults
00:11:59
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This is why we have families. And the work of a family doesn't stop with crossing your kid over the road to make sure that they're safe. You have to, you know, be there for It's a lifetime commitment, isn't it, being a parent? so I said, all right, what am I going to do?
00:12:15
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What is the baby step that will lead to macro change? And I decided we have to get the education right. We have to get the life skills teaching right. And we have to create surrogate family for kids who don't have any that's any good.
00:12:34
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So I thought, well, how am I gonna do that?
The Power of Volunteering: Personal Stories
00:12:37
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And I took myself off and met with the chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA. To this day, Gene Block thinks I met with him because I thought it was a wonderful university, which it was and is. Actually, it was because it was about 600 yards up the road and I knew the parking would be difficult. so I thought, well, at least if I start with UCLA, they'll probably say no. But as with getting films financed and getting films cast, you have to go to 20 people who say no. And then eventually somebody says yes. It's that saying, isn't it? That if you're saying if you're talking to someone who who who gives you an answer to your question is no, you're actually talking to the wrong person. Well, or you need to ask them the second time, yes addressing what it was that concerned them the first. and And, you know, this is very important and it's in the book because a young person can get demoralized so easily and you've got to give them enough self-esteem to think that if they've had several unsuccessful experiences, job interviews it's a process it's not you know a rifle shot it's a shotgun and you've you've got to put yourself out there and just keep applying and eventually you will get a wonderful job you you have to take risks you you can't just sit cross-legged in the middle of a dark envelope clutching your pencil
00:14:05
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You have to poke with the pencil. And sure, if you poke, eventually you'll go through the envelope and you'll say, oh, I guess I'll never be a concert pianist. However, then you have the privilege because you are the only author of the rest of your life. You can poke in a different direction and you can find the career that will make you happy. I believe Those of us who work in industry, those of us who have a sophisticated profession, we know stuff.
00:14:37
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In my view, someone who is an adult and has made some success in their career, what you can do to enhance greatly your happiness, to find happy,
00:14:53
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is Get out of your zone and use your toolkit, your skill set. Go help someone else. The world is full of charities.
00:15:03
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Go knock on the door of the one that you find really intriguing and they're interested in what you're interested in, whether it's taking care of animals or it's climate change or social justice or whatever it is.
00:15:19
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Go and offer to help. Watch how fast you're in there having a cup of tea and they're finding how you can fit into the organization. And you will find that you meet a better class of person. Sure, you can do whatever they need you to do. You can lick postage stamps.
00:15:36
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But what really is the leverage is to take your skill set, which you've spent years getting right in your profession, go and do it for a charity. And you'll find, raise your hand in a meeting and say, well, have we thought of X?
00:15:50
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Because you you've thought of it. They'll make you the vice president of X in about five minutes. And away you go. And away you go. So the book, Finding Happy, it's an audio book. It's a paperback. It's an e-book. It's about to be a manga comic book.
00:16:09
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Although it's for young adults, Gen Z, 15 to 25, that's the core. There really is stuff in it for... any Anyone of any age who feels as though there's a sort of nagging feeling that they've gotten to a certain age, but they haven't found their path to happiness yet. I'll give you one example. If you want to find love,
00:16:33
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Seriously, you're going to find love by flipping left and right on an app. You know full well that isn't what that person looks like because they've used AI to doll themselves up.
00:16:46
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So you might be quite shocked by who pitches up for the cup of coffee or what you're going to go to a bar and you having had too many drinks are going to chat up someone one who's had too many drinks.
00:16:59
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What will that look like in the morning? You know, the better way of finding friendship, companionship and ultimately love and even a life partner is go volunteer at a charity. And someone with a common interest. It's a common interest. It's a good starting point. And interest in ah in a charitable subject is a good place to start. And it's how I met my wife. Cool. Because I told you that it was the accountant who thought of the name for the charity. That was our second date. We had more dates.
00:17:32
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We fell in love. We got married. We have four kids. We have three grandkids. We have a very happy family. right I met her because I volunteered next to her. Yes, it's brilliant.
Collaborations with Steven Spielberg
00:17:43
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Other people that you've been volunteering alongside, there are people like Steven Spielberg and Norman Schwarzkopf, who is the general in charge of Operation Desert Storm. yeah ah yeah You have these people's telephone numbers. How did you you make a telephone call to someone like Steven Spielberg?
00:18:01
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Well, you build a wall one brick at a time. Yes. I met the producer of the Star Wars films, Kathy Kennedy, but I met her before her stint on Star Wars when she was working with Steven Spielberg. And she said, you should come and talk about seriously ill kids with Steven because I think he might have really good ideas.
00:18:24
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So I pitch up at his office and his second assistant says to me, don't give him the brochure, leave that with me and you'll have 20 minutes max. And he's got an ambassador coming on the hour and be, please be focused and good luck.
00:18:41
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and I'm propelled into the inner office, and there is a man who looks identical to Steven Spielberg, because, of course, it is Steven Spielberg.
00:18:52
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And i'm I'm pitching away, talking about Serious Little Kids, and I think we could make IP, we could make you know film, television, short form, long form, whatever.
00:19:05
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I think we could make video games to entertain Serious Little Kids and so on and so forth. And he's eating it up and he's giving as good as he's taking. And I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, i don't know what happened to the ambassador, but I've been in here an hour now.
00:19:20
Speaker
Oh, look, I've been in here an hour and 30 minutes. Oh, look, coming up to two hours now. And eventually he said, this is amazing. Let's do it. What do you want me to do? And I said, well, you be the chairman.
00:19:33
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and we'll build out the board. And he said, if I'm going to be the chairman, I should give money, shouldn't i And I said, well, that would be wonderful. And he said, well, how much do you think I should give? And I said, i'm God didn't put me on the earth to tell Steven Spielberg how to be generous. Why don't you give something moderately painful?
00:19:53
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And he said, no, give me a number. And I said, I'm not going to give you a number, Steven. you You should think of the number yourself. He said, well, then you can't leave. We're going to be here all night. And I said, okay, I'll give you a number. And I have no idea where the number came from, but I sort of heard my voice saying to him, two and a half million dollars.
00:20:16
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And I heard, i saw his mouth say, okay, I'll do it. And I kind of stumbled out of his office And I hid behind a tree and I called by then she was my wife, Sarah, the accountant. right And I said, I've just had over two hours with Steven Spielberg.
00:20:40
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He's going to be the chairman. And he says he's going to donate two and a half million dollars. But I think I may be hallucinating. And she said, tell me exactly where you are.
00:20:52
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You're not safe to drive. Park the car. I'm coming to get you. And she did. And I left my car there overnight in the Amblin parking lot up on the Universal lot.
00:21:05
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And that was the beginning, the real catalyst to making a success. Now, the problem with Stephen was once he became the chairman,
00:21:16
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No one wanted to meet with me anymore because I wasn't him. But he is actually quite shy and he didn't want to ask people for money. So I went and met with him and I said, you know, we have a serious problem here, which is even with your very generous gift and other very generous gifts, we're going to run out of money. We have to raise a lot more money.
00:21:41
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And you don't want to do the asks. They don't want me to meet with them because they say, what am I, chopped liver? or I'm not good enough to meet with the chairman, Steven Spielberg. Of course I am. So it's not working on fundraising.
00:21:55
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And I think we need another person. We need a third wheel. not to fall over. And he said, well, like who? And I said, well, we need someone, let's define them. We need someone very brave who has great kind of moxie and will just steam in and tell people what to do and what we need. And they'll all salute and say, yes. And he said, well, like who?
00:22:20
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And I said, well, who won the Gulf War? Colin Powell is one. And the other, the taller one, is Norman Schwarzkopf. He won the Gulf War. He was the senior general.
00:22:33
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So Stephen said, well, how do we get him? I don't know him. Do you know him? I said, I don't know him at all. But why don't we write him a letter? I'll write it. You sign it. And let's ask him to meet with me.
00:22:45
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So we sent off this letter, a phone call came in to me and it was his number two who said, yes, the general will be happy to meet with you. If you would like to come to Tampa, he'll meet with you. So I flew to Tampa.
Strategic Insights from General Schwarzkopf
00:23:00
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get in the lift, the elevator in this high rise and halfway up to the penthouse where he had his office, it just stopped in between floors and a voice in the wall said, may I know who you are?
00:23:15
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And I said, yes, it's Peter Samuelson to meet the general. And he said, hold up your driver's license, please. to the little hole on the wall. And I did. And he said, welcome.
00:23:26
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And the lift lurched upwards to the top floor and the doors opened. And I went into the general's office. I was led in. Well, the first thing is he was so, he passed, unfortunately, but he was so in his prime. He was so tall and so sort of imposing that you could clearly see could have won a war all on his own.
00:23:49
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On his desk, he had the biggest gun I had ever seen, like a sort of revolver, which was about two feet long with a big barrel.
00:24:01
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And, you know, normal person couldn't have even lifted it up. It was like a two handed job. And I said, oh, my goodness, is that because of terrorists?
00:24:12
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And he said, no, journalists. And so I'm pitching away. saying, well, what we what we do in this charity, we bring together three groups of experts who would never otherwise meet.
00:24:27
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And we sort of yank them together. First group of experts, people in hospitals, oncologists, pediatricians, hospital administrators, child psychologists and psychiatrists and so forth.
00:24:43
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The second group is, you know, the Silicon Valley people, software, hardware, long lines, last mile, and all of that technological wonderment. And the third group is our industry, Stephen, producer, director, writer, actor, actress, director.
00:25:01
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And we stand in the middle and we tell them what our mission is. We're going to mitigate pain by distractive therapy and we're going to make kids happy.
00:25:13
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And General Schwarzkopf said, Samuelson, what do you know about the United States Army? And I said, honestly, sir, you could safely assume nothing at all.
00:25:25
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And he said, well, when you join the Army, you don't just get a rank. you get a specialty. You're a rifleman, you're a cook, you're a driver, whatever the hell you are, and it's a pin that goes on your collar.
00:25:41
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And it doesn't matter how much we promote you, you always keep your specialty. He says, unless you're a very, very rare, fine leader, And then we make you a general.
00:25:55
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And when you get your general stars, we take away your specialist's pin because you're no longer a specialist, you're a general.
00:26:06
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And I sat there like feeling like a complete idiot, a twit. I thought that is why they're called generals because over thousands of years of having wars and battles,
00:26:20
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If you put a specialist in charge, everyone will die. If you want to actually win the war or the battle, you have to have someone whose specialty is being a generalist and focusing on the mission. And I thought to myself, oh,
00:26:40
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That's my skillset. I'm the general of a film. I don't know how to be a cinematographer. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to write the script. I know how to hire those people.
00:26:55
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and keep them focused on mission and cooperating with each other. And we stick to the script, we stick to the budget, we speak we stick to the mission, we make it a huge success, we measure the outcome, we think about making a sequel and everything that goes into it.
00:27:16
Speaker
And that's what I learned from General Schwarzkopf in that charity. And there's more information about that story in your book, Finding Happy, which is available from all great booksellers. you know Peter, thank
Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:27:31
Speaker
you very much. really do appreciate your time today. It's very interesting and I wish you continued success with all of the not-for-profits and charities that you've set up. But for today, thank you very much. really do appreciate it.
00:27:44
Speaker
I appreciate the time. Thank you. Book is an e-book and an audio book. and It's all sorts. all All sorts. Have it in whatever format you like for anyone who wants to find their happiness. That's great. Thank you very much. I'm happy. and We'll speak again soon, I hope.
00:28:01
Speaker
Thank you very much for today. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida, and this episode of The Independent Minds has featured Peter Samuelson. You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description.
00:28:17
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Peter and I have enjoyed making it, so please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:28:32
Speaker
You'll probably also want to share it with friends, family and work colleagues. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.