Podcast appearances and mentions of sam benjamin

SAM BENJAMIN is the son of a hairdresser and a forklift truck driver in Liverpool, England, Sam Benjamin is an actor, screenwriter and director. He won the BBC Sponsored ‘Best Script Talent' Award in 2016, wrote and stars in crime caper The Pay Day which is currently on Starz, and penned Roommate Regret a Lifetime Movie Network thriller. He's also known for his acting roles in Doctor Who and BBC's The War of the Worlds. His directorial debut Screwjob, a short that follows the struggles of a woman pro wrestler, gets it online on Vimeo. https://linktr.ee/sambenjaminnow  Connect with your host Kaia all Alexander: https://entertainmentbusinessleague.com/ https://twitter.com/thisiskaia  Produced by Stuart W. Volkow P.G.A. Get career training and a free ebook “How to Pitch Anything in 1 Min.” at www.EntertainmentBusinessLeague.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Multi-talented writer/actor/director Sam Benjamin talks about his latest writing project Roommate Regret for The Lifetime Movie Network. Sam shares his own bad tenant nightmares, reveals his musical ambitions portraying his rockstar creation Preston Black, plus many more fun stories from this Liverpool lad.

We're covering it all in this one: Six writing tips from Pilar's list, some talk of movies that got overlooked at the Oscars and a discussion of writer Sam Benjamin's new wrestling short film, Screwjob.

Giles Alderson chats with filmmakers Sam Bradford, Kyla Fyre and Sam Benjamin about their heist feature The Pay Day.They discuss going from short film to making your feature film debut as a team.-How music can be used as a unlocking mechanism to finding characters.-How they wrote The Pay Day, from structure to working as a trio-Parents going back to work and making it. Raising finance and speaking to investors.-The importance of clearances before shooting .-AND Having belief and why you should JUMP IN and get it made what ever obstacles get thrown at you.You can find The Pay Day on Amazon Prime, Sky, Apple and many other platforms.The Pay DayA broke and frustrated IT technician decides to embark on a one woman heist to steal valuable data worth millions on the black market.Directed by Sam BradfordProduced written and starring Kyla Frye & Sam BenjaminPATREONBig thank you to:Lee HutchingsMarli J MonroeKaren NewmanWant your name in the show notes or some great bonus material on filmmaking?Join our Patreon for bonus episodes, industry survival guides and feedback on your film projects! SUPPORT THE PODCASTCheck out our full episode archive at TheFilmmakersPodcast.com CREDITSThe Filmmakers Podcast is hosted, produced and written by Giles Alderson @gilesaldersonEdited by @tobiasveesSocial Media by Kalli Pasqualucci @kallieepMarketing Huw SiddleLogo and Banner Art by Lois Creative Theme Music by John J. Harvey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Benjamin is an award winning actor who stars in the British crime caper The Pay Day (2022) alongside Simon Callow. He's known for The War of the Worlds (2019) opposite Eleanor Tomlinson, and for guest turns in Doctor Who (2005) & Peaky Blinders (2013).His character in Netflix Lionsgate action movie I Am Vengeance: Retaliation (2020) received great notices, including a Variety review that calls for a spin-off movie following Sam's maverick minded black ops recruit 'Shapiro'. Sam is also the the leading man in BBC's Binge Watching (2019) playing ruthless lawman 'Constable Smith'.A recipient of New York and LA Film Awards, Sam also wrote and starred in The Few (2016) & Double Cross (2015) and has just completed his directorial debut with the pro wrestling drama short Screwjob.Born in Birkenhead, England, his sophomore screenwriting venture Double Cross (2015) also starring Kyla Frye (Edge of Tomorrow (2014)) made Official Selections at the British Urban Film Festival, Melanin Box Festival and SOUL Connect BFI Festival. In this critically acclaimed movie, Sam played the suave and cocky con artist 'George'. He won the 'Best Script Award' at the BBC sponsored British Urban Film Festival Awards 2016 for his original TV drama script Liverpool 81.An increasingly familiar face on prime-time TV, Sam also guest starred as the jaded and disillusioned soldier 'Private Reynolds' in hit BBC World War I drama The Crimson Field (2014). Facing certain death, we saw the courageous Reynolds march back into the trenches after a near fatal injury, resolute in his commitment to his country, and his seasoned army mentor, played by Lee Ingleby.Sam's first movie role was alongside Heroes (2006) star Jimmy Jean-Louis in the film Precipice (2010), which he landed the week he graduated from Drama Studio London, the prestigious acting school whose alumni include Academy Award Winner Forest Whitaker and Academy Award Nominee Emily WatsonBefore training as an actor, Sam became the first of his family to go to University. During received a BA Hons in History and Theatre from Reading University, where he was spotted by the National Student Drama Festival team and hand picked to join their Ensemble of 2005. Here he was taught Shakespeare and theatre ensemble skills under the tutelage of Patrick Stewart and John Britton.https://www.sambenjamin.com/https://www.instagram.com/sambenjaminnow/https://www.praxima.co.uk/the-pay-dayhttps://www.deluxeedition.showSupport our show:https://www.patreon.com/deluxeditionpodMERCH:https://whatamaneuver.net/collections/deluxe-editionCheck out our network at:https://www.deluxeeditionnetwork.comUse code DELUXE15 at checkout and grab some awesome granola:https://bearclawkitchen.com/?irgwc=1Follow Rayhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2Icote9QnVOVQ9QiWUcSQL?si=4e1b361875904e77&nd=1Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcKR-qeXy1KyPj3w4cxgOYw/joinSupport the showCheck out all of our previous shows at https://www.deluxeedition.show

Episode Notes S3E43 Join us as we dive into the mind of British Actor Sam Benjamin. He'll take us his journey from tending bars in England to the bright lights of Hollywood.. Sam Benjamin is a British actor and screenwriter best known for his appearance in the television series The Few., Peaky Blinders & Doctor Who. You can now watch the full video at https://www.stilltoking.com/season-3 Now you can send stars to the stars fb.com/stars This episode is sponsored by Deadly Grounds Coffee "Its good to get a little Deadly" https://deadlygroundscoffee.com ————————————————— Check out Toking with the Dead Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhL5FyW_j4 Check out Toking with the Dead Episode 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaUai58ua6o Buy awesome Merchandise! https://www.stilltoking.com/ https://teespring.com/stores/still-toking-with ————————————— Follow our guest https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3967981/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Benjamin https://twitter.com/sambenjaminnow https://www.instagram.com/sambenjaminnow/?hl=en ————————————————— Follow Still Toking With and their friends! https://smartpa.ge/5zv1 https://thedorkeningpodcastnetwork.com/ ————————————— Produced by Leo Pond and The Dorkening Podcast Network https://TheDorkening.com Facebook.com/TheDorkening Youtube.com/TheDorkening Twitter.com/TheDorkening Dead Dork Radio https://live365.com/station/Dead-Dork-Radio-a68071 Check out Green Matters: https://www.facebook.com/GreenMattersMiddleboro/ More about our guest Prior to finding work as an actor, Benjamin worked as a bartender in Birkenhead, England.[1] While taking a summer training class, he was taught Shakespeare by Patrick Stewart and went on to land a spot at Drama Studio London. He made his first appearance in an episode of the documentary Andy McNab's Tour of Duty before appearing in small roles on British television series, including Little Crackers and Old Jack's Boat. In 2016, he co-wrote, co-produced, and starred in the web series The Few, which is about working class Londoners who gained superpowers, with Sam Bradford, and made an appearance on Peaky Blinders. He also appeared in episodes of Doctor Who and The War of the Worlds. Although Benjamin only had a small role in the film Justice League (and by extension Zack Snyder's Justice League), fans speculated that Benjamin's character would make an appearance in future films in the series as Hal Jordan//Green Lantern, which Benjamin denied when Snyder's version of the film was released. In 2020, Benjamin played the role of "Shapiro" in I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, and Variety noted that "it's a pity the movie didn't make more of the chemistry generated between [Phoebe] Robinson-Galvin and Benjamin."

Sam Benjamin (Doctor Who, Peaky Blinders, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation), co-writer and star of The Payday joins host Robin Milling to talk about everything from his first love scene to Tom Cruise inspired action scenes. Lots of laughs with the quick-witted Merseyside-born actor who discusses his Bondian moves, collaborating with his bestie Kyla Frye, accents, Shakespeare lessons with Sir Patrick Stewart, his humble beginnings with Walt Disney World and much more

With his new movie, The Pay Day, right around the corner, Actor Sam Benjamin sits down with Taylor Murphy and discusses the film, his prior work on Peaky Blinders, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and his goal to still wear a Green Lantern ring in the future.

Christina and Demetrius Wren share their experiences from Atlanta's first State of the Industry held at Trilith Studios then interview actor/writer/producer Sam Benjamin about his latest film, The Pay Day, what life as an actor in Britain is like and how he got into screenwriting and producing.

As British writer Sam Benjamin discusses the release of his new film The Payday he's joined by Elizabeth McKenzie from Australia and Dawn Ius from Canada to discuss the challenges of writing in their home country, the lure of Los Angeles and the love of their genres. 

Sam Benjamin bears the torch of a fascinating culture: the Baghdadi Jewish community of India. He teaches the traditional Iraqi method for reading from the Torah, and works at the Sephardi Synagogue.

The guest on today's edition of The Unmade podcast is Luke Girgis, CEO of The Brag Media, which has quickly become the dominant publisher in the Australian music industry.He talks to Unmade's Tim Burrowes about how The Brag Media came about, why they eventually passed on buying Junkee, and how Variety will be the company's bridgehead into the screen industry.Transcript:Tim Burrowes:Welcome to unmade. I'm Tim Burrowes. My guest today is Luke Girgis, the CEO of Brag Media. Luke, welcome along. Now the reason for chatting this week is you've just picked up the Australian franchise of the very storied business title, Variety, and we will talk about that in a minute. But firstly, I'd love to just talk a bit about the story of Brag Media, because it feels like in a very short time, you've gone very fast. How do you tell the story so far?Luke Girgis:Well, before that, Tim, I just want to give you a bit of a credit for Unmade. How long have you been doing Unmade for?Tim Burrowes:Unmade, we started back in September, properly. So I guess that's about pretty much nine months.Luke Girgis:Crazy. I'm so impressed with how you've built it in nine months. It's actually incredible. It's the thing that I read every time it hits my inbox. So huge credit to you.Tim Burrowes:Ah, you're very kind. Thank you.Luke Girgis:Brag Media I started in 2017, and was actually an idea that I had when I worked at a record company because I saw how much money, how much of our marketing budget we were spending on publishers promoting records. And I thought, these publishers are kind of underperforming and I wonder how much it would cost to actually just buy them and run them ourselves, maybe turn them profitable and then have this asset that is profitable on its own. But it also allows us to market our artists through for free. And I kind of did some maths and we could buy one or two of them at kind of two years our marketing budget. And I thought, this feels like a no brainer. Maybe I'm stupid.Luke Girgis:So I put together a business plan, worked on it for about three months, took it to my boss. She told me to get fucked, and I did, and met my co-founder Sam Benjamin. We looked at a lot of things. We even looked at starting festivals, running management businesses, running a record label. We looked at a whole bunch of these things, but ultimately, we thought, we want to do it all. The Brag Media's mission is to be ubiquitous with Australian culture, be at the center of culture.Luke Girgis:So if we want to live to that mission, we need to do it all. We need to be running events. We need to be running record companies. We need to be managing talent. We need to be doing all these things. And if we have a thriving publishing business at the center of all of that, it's going to make all of those other plays a lot more fruitful. And that's what we started with. We started with the publishing business.Tim Burrowes:Now that's really interesting, because I presume from that, by coming at it from that direction, would be different to someone coming from a more traditional publishing background who would probably start with, okay, display advertising, what revenue can we bring from that? Paid audience, where can we bring from that? Whereas I presume you are thinking much more laterally around what people would loosely call content marketing budgets, and that sort of thing. So I imagine your kind of revenue streams probably look quite different to the traditional.Luke Girgis:Yeah. That's certainly what I've learned. I didn't kind of know that coming into it. When I first started, I remember day one, Poppy Reid, our editor in chief, I remember going, "Wait, what's the difference between editing and subediting?" I didn't know anything. And so we've built this what business, which appears to be, relatively speaking, super diversified in publishing and media, with it. And it's really defensible as well. I feel like it'd be very hard to come in and compete with what we've built.Luke Girgis:And yeah, we certainly survived COVID, which is a huge win, and even just surviving it's great, but we've actually grew 200% year on year in revenue. So that all seemed to have been possible because of maybe my ignorance in publishing. And I didn't go that traditional route, but it wasn't like ... I don't feel like a genius for it. I just didn't know any different.Tim Burrowes:Luke, honestly, when you try something new in publishing, not being aware that the world would consider it a bad idea is sometimes quite a big advantage, I know I've discovered in the past sometimes. So where are you at now in terms of scale? I know it's not the ultimate measure, particularly when you use freelancers, but what's your current kind of staff number, for instance?Luke Girgis:I think full time we have about 25, but a lot of casuals and a lot of freelancers. That's probably a question for Poppy Reid and Joel King, but yeah, it feels about 25, I think.Tim Burrowes:So I'm guessing you must have a turnover, what? Sort of four or five million or something like that?Luke Girgis:I don't know if Sam Benjamin, my co-founder wants me to disclose that, but it's well more than that. It's a lot more than that.Tim Burrowes:Right. Okay. Well, you can't blame me for having a little guess, as well.Luke Girgis:Oh, I would've had a swing too.Tim Burrowes:Okay. Well, let's talk about Variety, which is the latest member of the stable. And this is interesting, because Variety as we would think of it from the US, its sweet spot was of the screen industry and of Hollywood. So it's a sort of new, or at the very least kind of peripheral addition for you. Because up to now I guess your center spot, although general entertainment, has been around the music industry. So why does Variety make sense?Luke Girgis:So you are right on that. We're kind of famous for our music. That's how we started. But it's certainly not where we're at now. So we have a huge gaming network as well. The Variety launch makes sense when you understand that sort of mission statement to be ubiquitous with Australian culture. We want to be everywhere Australians' passion points are. We identified that music was the number one interest for Australians. So that's where we started. Also helps that I'm a music nut, and have been in the music industry for 15 years.Luke Girgis:But we started with music. That's what we're experts in. Then we've expanded out into gaming and we have a really strong gaming network with the acquisition of Epic Digital, and we've also got fashion now with HYPEBEAST. And so the next frontier is screen. It is film. And we've been wrapping Variety for about a year now, just monetizing the Australian traffic. You might need to fact check me on this. I've got to get the exact numbers, but it's about a million Australians already read Variety every month.Luke Girgis:I think it might be 800,000. Something like that. I should have checked before we got on this call, but a lot of Australians read it already. And we've seen a lot of success commercially with the Variety brand without us even publishing one story. So the adding Variety, adding screen to our stable, when you think about what our mission is and the commercial success we've already had with that brand, doesn't seem as left field as I think it's maybe internally as it might seem externally.Tim Burrowes:Yeah. And something I'd be interested to get your thoughts on is, when I think about the sector, I have slight post-traumatic stress disorder from earlier in my time when I was one of the owners of Mumbrella, we bought Encore, which was the Australian version of Variety, I suppose. So even back in the day, we actually wrecked Variety ourselves for a while, actually. So we were always glad when they did their Australian edition in the kind of US version of Hollywood. And we got to sell in all those full page ads for the Australian studios.Tim Burrowes:But something we found, and ... I look back now and I would describe the way we came to it slightly arrogant, that we felt we knew the communications industry quite well. And this felt like a bit of a parallel world, that we wrote about, certainly, on the screen content already. And I guess remember I got this sense that certainly the Australian screen industry was very, very clubby, and it felt like there was this real attitude of, well, who the hell are you? You've not been in the production sector for 20 years. So what are your kind of credentials for writing about and being of this world?Tim Burrowes:And it felt like we never actually got to a point where we were particularly accepted as of that industry. So I guess the question is, how are you thinking about breaking into that world?Luke Girgis:When was that? What year was all of that happening?Tim Burrowes:This would've been long before streaming. So you were talking, I'm going to guess about 2012, 2013, something like that, long enough ago that we were still in print.Luke Girgis:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the industry's changed a lot since then. It's only in terms of revenue, like 1.9 billion dollars in production in Australia last year. It's just insane. There's never been more money in Australia in this industry. Therefore, it's never been bigger. So potentially you might be right, that it is very clubby. The music industry is enormous here, and it is very clubby. But I think we're navigating that in two ways. One, we are ... I'm not going to be a Variety writer, I can promise you. We've got some real industry experts contributing and on staff.Luke Girgis:And Jake, our B2B trade editor, is editing Variety. And he's been a passionate fan of this brand for as long as I've known him, which is about a decade. He always talks about Variety and said one day he dreams to work with Variety. And it's just so happened that he is now. And that's exciting. So we have industry experts working on it, but the market is so different now, Tim. Back in the day, it was all very small industry in terms of market cap and revenue and all of that.Luke Girgis:So there is a lot more room for politics to disrupt things, but when there's so much money being put into an industry, and there are some great trade blogs out there and trade websites out there. But there's nothing as iconic and as widely respected as Variety in the Australian market right now. I mean, in the world, really. It's the most respected screen publication in the world. So to bring that to Australia, I think with where the industry is now, versus when you guys were representing it, we're just very fortunate of timing, I think, is the answer. And we're very excited about that.Tim Burrowes:And I suppose that's certainly true. If there's one story of the screen industry over the last, well, probably 30 or 40 years, has been, it feels like it's kind of feast or famine. There were some amazing tax breaks for the screen industry in the seventies. Right now, of course, we're in this kind of golden period of production funding because there's so much streaming investment going on at the moment, which feels like what's driving the screen sector.Tim Burrowes:Now that arguably over-investment in streaming is perhaps peaking now. Does the plan for Variety work as well with a smaller industry, if it turns out it is moving to the other side of the cycle?Luke Girgis:If it retracts, yeah. Look, the thing that we learned with launching music publications, and I think we're going to take a lot of lessons from that, is that if we were relying on the music industry to fund our music titles, we would've died like everybody else. And so, although it was true pre-COVID that 50% of our revenue came from the music industry, we have increased our revenue since then by over 200%, as I mentioned before. And now the revenue that comes from the music industry on our music titles represents less than 5%.Luke Girgis:And that was always our goal to get there. We were just trying to figure out how to achieve it, and we finally did. And I think that is the lens that we are looking at with Variety. We don't want to rely on the film industry or the screen industry to fund Variety. We want to focus on servicing it. Now, if revenue comes from that industry, fantastic. But that is not going to be how we live and die.Tim Burrowes:And I presume that will be some of the tap dance as well, is you refer to that maybe 800,000 number that you're getting in terms of visits. Now, clearly the industry itself isn't that big, which suggests quite a big consumer audience landing there because, hey, look, it's a world they're interested in as consumers. But presumably your sales model will be about having an audience of industry insiders, people working within the industry.Tim Burrowes:So how are you thinking about the sort of content you shoot for? Because presumably it'll be quite easy to just do, here's the latest trailer for the latest Marvel movies just dropped, and get some easy traffic. But that's not going to really garner you that audience of insiders. So how are you thinking about your focus on the editorial content?Luke Girgis:Yeah, so primarily, Variety's been around for 116 years servicing the screen industry and the professionals that live within it at the highest executive levels. So there is a certain type of content and certain level of detail and certain level of education and insight you need to provide to continue and engage those audience. And that is unwavering. But what I think has changed, and not changed actually, has been in addition to over the last maybe decade or so is that Variety has started engaging the most passionate and diehard film fans and bringing them into the tent as well.Luke Girgis:And then slowly turning sort of half interested film fans into diehard film fans. And so you have this highly passionate consumer audience, as well as the executive audience. And we do need to run ... that's not the same content obviously. But there is content, that you can run a piece of content that appeals to both audiences, but then you also need to run separate content lines that appeal to one and the other. And that's something that we are borrowing that strategy from the US to launch. And we will evolve that strategy as we get more data and more learnings for the Australian market.Tim Burrowes:And I take it that rather than just being fed by press releases, you'll look to break news. What sort of editorial resource are you putting behind that?Luke Girgis:I really wish Jake, our editor was on this call. So he's got the playbook. At a high level, we've got three incredible writers plus Jake on Variety, and a contributing team. So I don't know how big that contributing team is and what the details of it are. But there's a good team behind it and we're definitely going to launch with quality, not quantity. So you don't come to Variety for every time someone interesting kind of sneezes or whatever. That's not going to be our play. We're going to really launch with quality first, and then as we learn and as we grow, so will the volume of content that we produce.Tim Burrowes:And initially, it's digital, but there are plans for there to be a print edition as well.Luke Girgis:Absolutely, yeah. We've had a lot of success with the Rolling Stone print mag. So we are just going to take all the learnings from that.Tim Burrowes:And do you have a sense of how many editions a year you would hope to put out of the print version?Luke Girgis:Going to keep that sort of close to our chest for now, not because I want to keep things a secret, but we're still deciding. We will most likely do our first edition this year. So if you look at Rolling Stone, just a bit of a clue on how we're thinking about things, we do four issues a year with Rolling Stone, and one issue a year is our collector's edition. So first year, we did the 50 greatest Australian artists of all time. The second year, we did the 200 greatest albums of all time.Luke Girgis:Both of those issues outsold both in terms of advertisers and in terms of readers, and then new subscribers, I would say by a factor of five, at least. Again, I don't have the number on me, but it's just a massively out-sized return on those collector's editions. So it's that kind of learning and that kind of thinking that we're going to bring to Variety.Tim Burrowes:And it's worth mentioning that Rolling Stone and Variety have the same owner in the US, which is where you've done the franchise deal with.Luke Girgis:And that's why we have such confidence to keep investing with these guys, because they're in incredible. The PMC team in the US are an unbelievably professional and awesome team to work with. They are just so passionate about our success. So it's just so incredible. I've heard horror stories about JVing with international offices and licenses and whatever, and all those kind of different versions, many times. And I've just not experienced even a little bit of that with PMC. They're just an incredible company.Tim Burrowes:And what is this one? Is it a straight franchise arrangement or is it a JV?Luke Girgis:It's structured as a license, but a 30 year one. It's very long, with options to extend. So yeah, we're not going anywhere.Tim Burrowes:And you just share a portion of revenue, presumably, based on all of the activities of the brands?Luke Girgis:Yeah. So they have a bunch of obligations to us in terms of resource support, access, all of those things. And then we pay a percentage of our revenue back to them.Tim Burrowes:Which is a long time since I've done one of these deals. But back in the day, I seem to remember a number of like 8% or something. Is that still broadly the ballpark these conversations happen in?Luke Girgis:Yeah. The PMC NDA prevents me from confirming or denying, but I wouldn't say you are very far off, but yeah. I can't give you any extra in the comment.Tim Burrowes:And then a few other plans you've got include an awards, the Variety brand, and a power list as well.Luke Girgis:Yeah. Again, learning from what we are doing with Rolling Stone and our other brands, our events business is a meaningful part of our revenue growth. So we see the Variety brand as something that both consumers and trade are going to really resonate with. And that gives us a massive opportunity in events. And so we have a lot of plans for next year and over the next five years on how we're going to grow the Variety events business.Tim Burrowes:Now, you've mentioned a couple of times Poppy Reid, who leads the editorial output. I was watching a video stream she did a few weeks back for the Australian Institute of Music, where she talked about how you recruited her and how when you told her your plans for the company in the first place, she thought you were crazy. How did you change her mind?Luke Girgis:I don't know. I actually tried to talk her out of taking the job, to be honest. I was like, "Look, we might be bankrupt in six months. I don't know what I'm doing here." I was really nervous because ... it's very hard to get a senior journalist job in music. All she ever wanted to do in her life is write in music. And she had an incredible trade job. And I was like, "You're going to leave that security and come to me? I don't know what the hell I'm doing."Luke Girgis:But I think she is really driven by professional development and growth. And I think she felt like she sort of hit a ceiling where she was at, and she thought it was worth the risk to come over. I think, actually, I do know the answer. What she said to me was if I come over and we go bankrupt in six months, I will have learnt more in that six months than five more years where I am. She rolled the dice. I am so grateful she did. There's so much of this business that wouldn't exist without her. She runs the whole place. I'm just forever grateful that she took that chance, and how committed she is to the business.Tim Burrowes:Well, she also said in that chat that you want her to be the CEO. So what's the timeline for that?Luke Girgis:I wanted to give her the option. I don't know if she still has those kind of ambitions now. I think she's just really found her groove as an editor in chief, and I think she's also learned a lot of the b******t CEOs have to do, which she might not want to deal with. So I don't know. I guess that's an evolving thing. You have to ask her that, maybe in a different interview, but yeah. It's something that I was kicking around with her back in the day, for sure.Tim Burrowes:And you've obviously got your own appetite for entrepreneurialism beyond Brag Media as well, Lamp Post Capital. That's something else that you've done, which is a fund for making investments in startups. What's the model of Lamp Post?Luke Girgis:This is something I'm actually really excited about, and has a really interesting story. So our talent management division manages a creator by the name of Simone Giertz. She's based in LA. She's the largest female STEM creator on the planet. So she's got this enormous YouTube following. She's an inventor. She creates inventions and puts them on her channel, ends up on late shows, et cetera. A big fan of Simone is Alexis Ohanian, who is the Reddit founder. And he also happens to be married to Serena Williams, the tennis player.Luke Girgis:And when he was in Australia, I went down to Melbourne and had coffee with him, and was swapping notes about what he's doing and what I'm doing and all of that. And he had the idea of basically anchoring a fund that Simone and I would start. So he basically said, "Well, look, why don't you and Simone start a fund together? I will anchor it. I'll put in 500,000. You can make it a million dollar fund and raise another 500,000 on top of that, so it's a million dollar fund, and go out and see if you can find some incredible founders and support them to their success."Luke Girgis:Obviously, the appeal is that Simone, I mean, she's a genius. She's a lot smarter than me at a lot of things, both creatively, as well as in terms of all the inventions she does. In terms of products, she's amazing, but she also has this incredible creative brand. I always said if she wasn't a creator herself, she'd be an executive at a creative agency or something. So she's a genius in that sense. And then obviously I've got a lot of experience building businesses, and we have a really big media business here that could be very helpful to founders.Luke Girgis:So those two things combined, we go out and Simone and I try and find founders we love building incredible products that we think can go on to be icons of their industry, the Apple of whatever they're doing or the Tesla of whatever they're doing. And very early stage, pre-revenue, just building a product. Is there something here that could it be incredible? And if we both believe in it, then we'll bet on it. And we'll use our fund to invest in the company. It's not huge investments, so million dollar funds. Write checks of anything between 10 to 50,000.Luke Girgis:So it's not going to change anyone's life, but what we're saying is, "Hey, let us put a little bit of money in, and then also let us help you." And that's the value I think we can add. So it's more about the help we give than the money that we give. But-Tim Burrowes:And how many investments have you made so far?Luke Girgis:We have made three investments so far, two in the creator economy, one which is a company called Novel, whose slogan is, "The Shopify for NFT should just be on Shopify," and they've built a product to be able to just sell and create and buy NFTs in an incredibly user-friendly way. The other one is Fourthwall, which is like a Shopify competitor, but specifically built for creators. So Simone uses Fourthwall, because they're an unbelievable product. Herself and the biggest creators in the world use them.Luke Girgis:And then the last one is this company called Cana. I can explain it to you quickly, but you won't believe it. So everyone should just look it up. It is a drink printing machine that prints any drink you want in your kitchen with just putting in some water. It'll print beer, wine, coffee, juice, energy drinks. It is the most incredible futuristic thing I've ever seen. It will be bigger than the iPhone if they pull this off. And we've put a bet on that.Tim Burrowes:And these bets are not necessarily Australian companies. They could be global companies.Luke Girgis:Yeah. Those three are all American. Yeah.Tim Burrowes:Interesting. Do you see opportunities for investing within Australia?Luke Girgis:Absolutely. Yeah, I've been meeting with Australian founders, like all the time. We haven't made an investment yet, but I really want to, so if there's any Australian founders out there that send me an email, I'm very easy to find and I'd love to hear what you're working on.Tim Burrowes:And let's go back to Variety and Brag. And I suppose this as well, how do you think about managing conflict? And I suppose where I come at this from is, I presume that Variety must have some pretty strict rules given their own excellent editorial reputation. Yet the music industry sort of often feels the person who reps an artist might also have more fingers in the pie as well. So when you kind of think about that sort of pure editorial model of years gone by, is that just out of date now?Luke Girgis:Like I said, I'm very new to this industry. So I don't actually have much of a reference on what it was like back in the day. We have just come into it where we feel like there's a conflict. So we're managing Simone Giertz, and she's about to release a huge products line, product business. We take it to the editorial team. If it's something that they would write about, they write about it. If it's not, then we need to book a campaign. And so we book a campaign through the system like we would any other client. The record labels spend with us all the time to promote artists.Luke Girgis:So my brother has a record label. When he wants to run a campaign with us, he runs the campaign like everybody else. So that's the kind of way, I think people can overthink it. We just operate with our own stuff like we would anybody else. And we follow the editorial rules of whatever that publication is.Tim Burrowes:Understood. And where do you go from here? Is it more verticals within the wider entertainment vertical? Is it doing the same again in another country? What are you thinking about for the next stage of growth?Luke Girgis:The immediate next stage of growth is, if you go onto the Brag Media website, you'll see all the buckets in which we do work. And that is basically to fulfill our mission, to be ubiquitous with Australian culture. So what does that mean? That means where people are, if people go to events, we need to be doing events. So growing our events business is a big focus of ours. And it's something that we've had a lot of success with over the last year, growing our publishing business, continuing to grow the network. We now reach eight million Australians every month, which is 32% of the Australian population. How do we get to 50%?Luke Girgis:That is something that we're thinking about. We have a creative agency, we have a media agency where we help. When I say media agency, it's not to compete with the existing media agencies out there, but ... there's a lot of people that aren't Coca-Cola that need ... Like we are working with Send, for example, a grocery company, helping them. We help them with all their outdoor buying and all of that sort of stuff when they first launched, just because they're a startup and they needed another startup business to help them. And we had a lot of levers to pull. So we helped them there.Luke Girgis:And then we also are launching a consumer app to help people find gigs, go to gigs and make the live music industry a lot more prosperous coming out of COVID. So there's a lot of levers that we're pulling there, and that's our immediate growth. It's certainly not an international ambition yet.Tim Burrowes:And just touching on that sort of being of Australian culture, you were reported as one of the interested parties in Junkee, when that was for sale, when Ooh Media was selling that. Now, that went to the RACAT Group in the end. Did you come close to buying that, do you know?Luke Girgis:Yeah. Well look, depends on how you define close. We were one of the last couple, I think.Tim Burrowes:Yeah. I guess RACAT, in the end, it came out, they paid 2.5 million for it. I guess, was your bid anywhere near that?Luke Girgis:We had a seven figure bid, but I wouldn't say it was near that. But that's not to say it wasn't worth that. I think the Junkee brand's really good and we were really looking at it seriously, but there were a couple of things that prevented us from getting to that level, which I think it's worth that for sure. I think it's probably worth more than that, if I'm being honest. We didn't get up to that level because, as you saw, we announced two other acquisitions at the time. So there was an opportunity cost there and we thought we could get a faster growth out of the other two acquisitions than Junkee, and too, Junkee was sincerely very different to what we were currently doing.Luke Girgis:They do news. They do politics. We don't touch that. We touch, at the moment, we're all geared up for passion points, gaming, music, film. We're very deliberately not doing any hard news, any politics, any of that stuff. If we do touch it, it's because it intersects with an artist or a film star or whatever. So it was a huge deviation in our content focus. And we also had two other acquisitions that were distracting us at the time. So that explains, I think, why we didn't follow through there.Tim Burrowes:Well, Luke, best of luck with Variety, and thank you very much for your time.Luke Girgis:Thanks, Tim.Tim Burrowes:Today's podcast was produced with the support of Abe's Audio. More soon. Toodlepip.Speaker 4:Unmade.Speaker 5:Podcast edit by Abe's Audio.Audio production on Media Unmade was courtesy of Abe's Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers and sound design for corporate videos, digital content, commercials and podcasts.Message us: letters@unmade.media This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unmade.media/subscribe

On this episode of the According to Woods podcast, Adam Woods is joined by Sam Benjamin! Sam Benjamin is a British actor who's been feature in The Few, Peaky Blinders, Dr. Who and Justice League. Website: www.sambenjamin.com IMDB: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm3967981/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/sambenjaminnow?utm_medium=copy_link Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamBenjaminNow Tik Tok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8Wt51YJ/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/sambenjaminactor Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/320473597

Découvrez le travail de Nölwenn sur https://www.nolwennroberts.com et le Smimi & Nono Podcast : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC14cGPvjAAitBs9nfgCIAxQ Le podcast au format vidéo est disponible sur http://youtube.com/benjamincerbai et https://odysee.com/@benjamincerbai:f Callipeg, notre application d'animation 2D pour iPad, est disponible ici : https://apps.apple.com/app/callipeg/id1456172656

Actor, Sam Benjamin, joins the cast to finally open up about the internet rumors, artwork, fan speculations that many have been waiting to know. Is Sam Benjamin Green Lantern? Download Vero today for free from the Apple App Store & Google Play Market.  The long awaited film, Zack Snyder's Justice League, arrives exclusively HBO Max March 18, 2021. Support #AFSP and donate as much as you can today. Every little bit helps to save a life at American Foundation For Suicide Prevention #USUNITED Support for the LightCast was brought to you by MANSCAPED "Your Balls Will Thank You". Save 20% OFF and FREE shipping using the code: FOOTSIES at checkout.  Merch Store is NOW OPEN: LIGHTCAST MERCH STORE  Watch the VIDEO portion of this show on our YouTube. 

#ZackSnydersJusticeLeague #DCEUNews #LightCastPodcast Tonight's Show is Brought to you by Bonks Bar, We'll be hosting Matt and Taylor from @Lightcast to talk about some controversy surrounding their upcoming interview with Sam Benjamin, The Future of the DCEU, #ZackSnydersJusticeLeague and More! you won't want to miss it. Become a Supporter for Our Show, With Small Monthly Contributions of 99 Cents/$4.99/or $9.99 Per month, help us reach our goals, Each Supporter will Be Automatically Entered into our "Patron Corner" & receive Gifts, Special Content Curated for you, & so much more! https://anchor.fm/popculturecorner20/support Get your POP! Culture Corner Merch At our OFFICIAL ONLINE STORE, Use Promo Code POP920 for the month of February to get 15% off your whole order: https://teespring.com/stores/pop-culture-corner-store POP! Is raising money for Michele Roberts Breast Cancer(Medical Bills). Click to Donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/michele-roberts-breast-cancermedical-bills?sharetype=teams&member=7206212&rcid=r01-160841343698-814de7d6079448f3&pc=tw_co_campmgmt_w&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet Listen to the Podcast on Spotify or any major podcast platform: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Yq6Iceyh7o24DG8tq4kvO Follow Us on Social Media; Follow Us On Twitter: https://twitter.com/POP_Culture2020 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pop.culturecorner/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pop_culturecorner2020/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popculturecorner20/message

Noah war nicht nur mein erstes Vorbild in der Fotografie, sondern ist neben seinen krassen Fotoskills auch ein mega sympatischer und lustiger Mensch. Zusammen reden wir über seinen Weg zur Fotografie und in die Selbstständigkeit. Wir tauschen uns über Sport und Crossfit aus und er beantwortet mir ein paar Seriöse und auch randome Fragen. Schaut unbedingt bei Ihm vorbei und lasst ihm ein Follow da. https://www.instagram.com/noahsambenjamin/ Crossfit: https://www.instagram.com/crossfitschorndorf/ Meine Empfehlung der Woche, ist der Hausfrauen Podcast. Warum und wieso erfahrt ihr am Ende der Folge. https://www.instagram.com/realhausfrauen/ Folge mir gerne auf Instagram, um nichts mehr zu verpassen: https://www.instagram.com/paulipaulinski_fotografie Wenn du ein Fotoshooting willst, kannst du mir auch ganz unverbindlich schreiben ;) Intromusik: MEMO - Stillnotyourfriend https://open.spotify.com/track/6XLIFBnwksEGb1MROIWJUg?si=0YQfkV78TvuUGa_m-ZUe1w Outromusik: Creamy Yellow - Hydro https://open.spotify.com/track/0Aj4O1v3Ed1rbc6n2f7Ls2?si=lktn14B7SX2C2Rox5-JnJw --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kameras--kaviar/message

PODCAST ALERT! On this episode of the podcast we are joined by the cast of Ross' film I Am Vengeance: Retaliation which is release in the UK on Monday 13th July. Phoebe Robinson-Galvin, Mark Griffin, Sam Benjamin & Jessica Jane Stafford join us as we talk about teh last film we saw as well as finding out their favourite action films. Hosted by Award winning filmmaker Ross Boyask and blogger/writer/failed former filmmaker Phil Hobden. Discussed: The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Last Christmas, Primal Fear, Once Upon A Time In America, Primal Fear, Total Recall, Timecop, Enter The Dragon, Iron Man, Showdown, Showdown in Little Tokyo, The Raid, Kill Bill, Robocop, Die Hard, Starship Trooper, Tomb Raider, True Lies, Face/Off, Flashpoint, SPL, Rambo: First Blood, First Blood, The Terminator, Commando, Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drify, Mission Impossible, I Am Vengeance Retaliation For more on Ross Boyask search @RossBoyask on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Also check out @EvoFilmsUK online. For more on Phil Hobden check out www.philhobden.co.uk , Twitter (@PhilQuickReview) and Instagram (RossAndPhilTalkMovies) Podcast available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, GooglePlay, Anchor and here at www.philsquickreview.co.uk #RossAndPhil #RossAndPhilTalkMovies #MoviePodcasts #Podcasts #wittertainment

Actor/Director/Writer and hater of domino masks Sam Benjamin is back to tell us about his plans for the future of his superhero web series "The Few". The conversation also takes us to the upcoming Joker film and a few other places. Watch "The Few" Series one here Support "The Few" on IndieGoGo here

We welcome back Sam Benjamin as he kicks off crowdfunding for his British superhero web series The Few.

Jeremy talks to Sam Benjamin an actor-director and producer from the UK. They discuss, Peter Capaldi, Patrick Stewart, acting as a career choice, and producing a web series.. then they get nerdy about pro wrestling. SAM BENJAMIN Credits include Doctor Who, Justice League, Peaky Blinders Sam writes and stars in Amazon Prime short Double Cross watch here Also, check out "the Few" on Youtube.com/thefew

Our Nerk hosts chat with British actor Sam Benjamin about Doctor Who, his web series The Few, Justice League and more Nerk things. Do you know how he developed his taste for comic books? He told us that! Come find out and Nerk away!

Episode Six of the WrestleStar Podcast. Lifelong Wrestling fans Sam Benjamin & Robin Owen continue their journey into the history of WCW as they review Starrcade 1988: True Gritt. No question about it. No doubt about it. Find us on Twitter - @WrestleStarPod

I sat down with my good friend Sam Benjamin this past week. We talk about art, moviepass and much more.

What do pro-wrestling and good screenwriting have in common? Writer, actor and wrestling fan Sam Benjamin explains it to you.

AFTERBUZZ TV - AfterBuzz TV's Spotlight On edition, is a long form interview series featuring actors discussing their roles and shows as well as their thoughts, passions and journeys. In this episode host Yael Tygiel interviews Sam Benjamin. RSS Feed: http://www.afterbuzztv.com/aftershows/afterbuzz-tvs-spotlight-on/feed/ ABOUT TANNA FREDERICK: Tanna Frederick was born on August 11, 1979 in Mason City, Iowa, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Queen of the Lot (2010), Just 45 Minutes from Broadway (2012) and Hollywood Dreams (2006). Follow us on http://www.Twitter.com/AfterBuzzTV "Like" Us on http://www.Facebook.com/AfterBuzzTV Buy Merch at http://shop.spreadshirt.com/AfterbuzzTV/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Segment 1: Executive Producer Will Packer known for films like Straight Outta Compton and Ride Along is producing the new reimagined Roots miniseries. He discusses the series and why Alex Haley's story is just important today as it was over 30 years ago. Co-hosted by: Joelle, Caron, and Kristin Edited by: Jamie Broadnax Segment 2: Sam Benjamin talks about his career as an actor, writer, and producer. As well as his role on the BBC Netflix show Peaky Blinders. Hosted by Caron Edited by: John Bauer Segment 3: We chat about everything related to the performance sport of wrestling from our fave WWF/WCW/WWE wrestlers of all time and we reminisce what got us into it. This was a topic sent over by fan demand! Co-hosts: Kristin and Anique Edited by: John Bauer Music by: Sammus and Shubzilla

Emily interviews formerporn director Sam Benjamin talks about his new book American Gangbang: A Love Story. He describes what’s its like sleeping with porn stars, directing amateur porn, and the golden shower rule. Also, if he directed Emily’s dream porno it would involve a cop.