Jon Sanborn: No doubt, no doubt. The next bell weather is going to be enhanced television. Frankly though, I'm not necessarily for publishing initially in the interactive form. I'd rather come in the television door, and then use our current expertise to exploit any interactive crossover stuff. I think that the rule of the technologist is about to end. It's going to be media companies and companies that have existing brands, that are going to be setting the pace for the next period, at least a year.

NBC's buying into Snap is a good example. The minute the three or so NBC execs were appointed as the rulers of Snap, C-Net's stock went up through the roof. Because it's a venerable institution, it's a company that knows how to sell media, and knows how to sell properties. And, you look at the portals out there, which is the brand new definition of how content is being managed, "content aggravation," you look at the way that's now being done, and they're nothing more than Reader's Digest's. They're indexes to already existing material. I can't see my place as an artist and as a storyteller in that world right now.

I've actually had conversations with several of these big portals about personality and about branding, and what constitutes brand identity in the context of the internet. People will watch NBC because of the shows, not because of the peacock, and a network is defined by what it commissions. Yet there's still not a recognition of the role of content in the internet. This is partly because it's a new medium, but it's also partly because it has to do with chaos, and managing chaos is basically a no win situation for somebody like me. It's not what I do. I want more chaos.

Interviewer: You have been very successful communicating pitches for your work. What advice do you have about that process?

Jon Sanborn: The most successful pitches that we've ever done, in situations where they are going to make a commitment right there on the spot, usually we've had more than paper. Usually, we've had something slightly more concrete, and slightly more tangible than pieces of paper.

The standard rule of thumb in pitching is that you want to give the people you are pitching to every reason to say yes, and no reasons to say no. They have to have confidence in what you are doing. They have to have confidence in you. They have to look at you and say, "I know exactly who this is and what this is." And, the great example is, we built those prototypes for Berkeley. Berkeley didn't have a clue as to what to do with them, and if you look at Berkeley, it's turned into a one product company with "You Don't Know Jack." And, no matter what we did, we couldn't figure out how to develop the project with them. They were not people with a vision.

I took those same prototypes to MGM, and, literally, in a matter of 45 minutes had an option deal because the properties were there. And then, when we showed the two things to Microsoft, and they were in a buying mood, they said, "Well, we already have a bunch of comedies, so we'll take the rock and roll one." But, if the circumstance had been slightly different, they would have snapped up both of them, because they were attractive and they communicated.

And that level of communication, other than paper, is extremely important, because then we took one of those self same prototypes and spun it into a TV series. And the executives at Comedy Central pointed at the computer screen, and said, "Can the TV show look like this?" And we said, "Yes, of course it can." Just the still version of what we would do with moving pictures.

Some people are really good at the pitch, but to me it's a combination of 1) being able to be very clear about what the idea is, 2) how it's going to be executed, that they have to have confidence that you can execute it, and 3) the ancillary media always seems to help, particularly in the interactive world.

Interviewer: Our book is about an environment where people's critical self awareness--what do I do and what do I do really well--combined with a little bit of a sense of life history- what in my life has created the values that I hold dear&emdash;hooks into the corporate mission or corporate brand identity with whom you are professionally associated. How well you tell your own story in relationship to corporate identity and corporate brand will match how successful you will be in trying to convince other people, but we think how successful you'll be in the corporate situation in general.

Jon Sanborn: Yes, but, ultimately, this is the up side and down side for branding. Brand is only as good as what the market will pay for it. In our example above, we argued n the Internet business right now, they not valuing content per se. For an individual that has not established themselves, they may find that in a given market, it doesn't matter what the quality of work, or quality of story they have, it may only have to do with who they have known or worked with that is a pre-existing, established entity.

I do not want the Internet to end up being a phonebook, which it could well be with Salon and the New York Times, and both on-line and off-line media simply replicating what already exists in the physical world, and adding dollops of community and commerce. Buy my t-shirt. Watch my movie trailer. Read about this celebrity. It may end up being that way, because it may end up being more of a monologue communications tool than a dialog communications tool.

And it may cleave down the middle, where the dialog aspect of things takes on a life of its own, which is, to a certain extent, unmanageable, which is what everyone calls community now. And the commerce aspect of things may just simply be off by its own, as the value added. Commerce can be a value added to content, or content can be a value added to commerce, but neither of those has to do with what I want to do. And neither of those addresses the future of interactive story telling right now. That could change.

Interviewer: If there was an ideal situation for your work, where would you have it go, and then where do you think it's going?

Jon Sanborn: Oh God. Don't tell anybody, I almost don't care anymore, because I'm 42 and I've got a baby.

Interviewer: I hear you.

Jon Sanborn: For the last three years, I thought that Michael and I were putting ourselves in a unique position of being the only ones out there in the field who could do X. Or not the only ones, but one of few. Some of the best, right? Well, it turns out that nobody really gives a shit right now, and the feedback to me is, "I don't give a shit." For the first five months of this year, I was running Planet Hollywood On-line, and it was an ideal gig for me. They were paying me good money, and I was working at home. And then, because Planet Hollywood, the parent company, was fucked up, the whole thing collapsed. We were on the Internet for 2 1/2 months, and it got shut down because of money, and because Planet Hollywood didn't get what we were doing, and declined to invest in it. Well, what does that say? And we weren't doing groundbreaking stuff, but the parent company just said, "I can't say where this is going."And, it wasn't my fault, it was management's fault, but it was a business decision.

Interviewer: There's no question to me that because of the overhype of the Web, somebody had to pay for it.

Jon Sanborn: Many people are paying for it. And the whole roll up strategy of media companies, small media companies, basically work &endash;for-higher entities consolidating right now shows you the dearth, not only of talent and assets that are out there, but just the confusion of who are the players. And what is being played here? And if I was ten years younger, I would probably be in the middle of that and I would align myself with yet another emerging entity, but right now I have two choices. With my skill set, I either get a job with Snap or Excite or somebody, and I play editor or creative director, or I take my skills and I go back into the traditional market that can pay me well for making people laugh or making people cry.

Interviewer: I understand. So I'm still going to force you to speculate.