I’d like to introduce to you a new friend of mine, Matt Wallerstein, I met him at a dinner in LA, we hit it off right away, respect. This week, my interview with him makes me ask you the following question:
Can you have both? Or do both, in this case? Maybe a day job to pay the bills and a passion project on the side. This week’s guest, Matt Wallerstein, Esq, is a lawyer during the day and a musician at night, and I find how he does both inspiring to a more fulfilling life for those of us who want more than our day job provides, without plowing into the burnout that simply having 2 jobs would lead to.
This week we cover:
*Why Matt is lawyer by day, musician by night.
*How your day job and passion project can synergistically balance each other
*That Matt wrote, directed and starred in his own Indie Movie in law school.
*How to play the law school game
*Matt describes the unique musical creative he shares with his band partner
*What 2 things entertainment law contracts all come down to…(I’ll give you a hint, money and …)
*How Netflix has changed the world Matt practices law in
Show Notes
- [1:30] Our guest today is Matt Wallerstein, an entertainment lawyer, and a musician. Matt and Larry met at the meeting of the master’s dinner. He participated in one of the branches and now working at the bar for fun.
- [2:50] Matt represents writers, producers, directors, and actors in the entertainment law side and on the music side, he plays keys, singing and songwriting project called Kingdoms. He also does some solos and a project called Vanity Shades which is also the name of his Instagram account. Matt makes time for both music and law. He always finds time for the things he has a passion for. When he finishes a day as an entertainment lawyer, he goes to the studio with his bandmates and has a wonderful creative session that allows him to both decompress from entertainment law stuff and have a beautiful creative outlet.
- [7:07] Matt's creative path was always been there when he was at school at USC. He was a screenwriter and he was represented by one of the biggest talent agencies in town, CAA. It helps him in scripts, putting actors and directors and everyone in place. With that, he thought that he was going to be a writer. Matt went to GW in DC and in his first semester, the 9/11 attack happened. He did not come home after that but he was a freshman across a country from his home, Los Angeles.
- [9:20] Matt said that we are sincere when he saw the Notre Dame football on our Instagram. Matt was a USC hater, he saw three Heisman trophy winners: Carson Palmer, Reggie Bush, and Matt Leinart.
- [11:15] Matt was an American literature major which was not his emphasis. He went to entertainment law because his dad was also an entertainment lawyer for over forty years. When Matt was a club promoter and going every night, he feels he is not positively channeling his energy. It was fun, but he thinks that it is a social life masquerading as a job so he takes all spare time to write more screenplay. He was about ready to produce and direct an act when his parents called him one day to send him to law school.
- [14:10] Matt was in entertainment for ten years now. He went to law school at the age of 22 and finish at 25. The movie project he and his group made was called the Diet Life and he thinks he has the only copy of the movie. The movie has won the 2009 Bel Air Film Festival.
- [16:44] Matt did not find it difficult to make the movie while he was in law school. He felt that it was very natural. He was the trainer guy and co-directed the movie with his friend. He said that in law school, your entire grade is mostly weighted towards the finals. In the two hours test at finals, he figures it out and studies two weeks before the finals and passed.
- [19:50] Matt said that the law school is just general knowledge and once you start in your field that’s when you gain the actual expertise.
- [22:00] Matt’s moment was when he woke up one morning and got a message from his friend inviting him to play the keyboard at their band called Pierce The Arrow. They will open up for Martha Davis and The Motels at Lake Arrowhead and he accepted it.
- [24:00] That week when he accepted his friend's offer, he went to the place every night to learn all the songs. He performed before but never played piano in front of many people and suddenly he was asking to play in front of thousands of people. Also, the Vanderpump rules are going to shoot and he has only one-week preparations. This laid the foundation for the two-person project he was doing right now.
- [27:03] Matt and one of his friends Brayden went to the manager’s place before the show. They experienced a foggy, crazy winding path and all his nervousness was gone and he felt the show was going to be a breeze.
- [30:00] The anticipation is so intense before the show but once Matt steps on stage, hearing all the applause, the preparations he made and the nervousness went away. Larry is impressed that Matt is very calm in that situation.
- [32:40] After the show, Matt did not realize at first that this is a thing for him and it took a bit longer before his idea to catalyze that he should be the one writing songs and having more ownership over the project.
- [34:30] After the show, the producers of Vanderpump rules an American reality television series says it was a very cool segment and wants to make it on a larger scale. Matt has a house at Westwood and they decided that they were going to throw an enormous Memorial Day party at his place.
- [37:00] After the party at Matt’s place, they went almost completely on-hold because they didn’t know what their next step. After a few months, Matt and Brayden decided that they did not necessarily want the politics of being involved in a reality show. They want a band that has many parts and that’s when they broke off and form their two-piece band.
- [39:23] Matt feels awkward when they broke off from the Pierce The Arrow band because he was the new member and he takes as their vocalist. The reality tv show didn’t help because all the footage at the party never aired which part of the reason there was a band problem.
- [41:30] Matt did not know how good he had it with Brayden until they had a little rift three years ago. He tried collaborating with other people and he realized that it was not working as he experienced with the five-piece band.
- [45:30] They need to come up with a name for their project and they were debating over “Infinity Pool” and “Kingdoms”. They mutually decided to pick “Kingdoms” because it was easier to say and grander and has some staying power.
- [47:55] Matt’s favorite song that they released last month was Senses by Kingdoms. Their next show might be coming in early 2020. We can follow their band at Kingdoms Universe on Instagram and we can follow Matt at Vanity Shades on Instagram.
- [50:00] Matt did not want to let go of being an entertainment lawyer. He just loves the intellectual side and problem-solving part of his law job. He feels that it was so interpersonal as figuring out creative solutions to business problems. Entertainment law is a very small subset of law and practically only exists in Los Angeles and a little bit in New York. The focus of Matt’s firm was television and films and mainly the core has been the writer, executive, producer in televisions and sometimes actors and actresses. Matt can relate to them for being a musician himself.
- [53:00] Matt said that the two most emotional issues in any deal that he does for someone, are the money and the credit. So if the money is not there the credit becomes the utmost importance. The highest level of a producer on the television show is the executive producer, but the highest level of a producer in a movie is produced by or the producer's credit.
- [54:34] Matt talks about how Netflix set off a domino effect because almost all the big studios gave their content as an extra monetary source and now used their content to build up their platform and make their originals. So now the big studios will release their streaming services.
- [57:00] Matt talks about the buyers especially the tech companies. The entertainment is not their core business. In making deals with them, there is a little bit of learning curve because they did not know the custom and practice in the entertainment industries. Matt finds it very difficult because there are more deals to be made.
