This transcript was exported on Jul 13, 2020 - view latest version here. John Boccacino: Hello, and welcome back to the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast. My name is John Boccacino, the communication specialist in Syracuse University's Office of Alumni Engagement. I'm also a 2003 graduate of the SI New House School of Public Communications, with a degree in broadcast journalism. I am so glad you found our podcast. From an early age, Doug Robinson envisioned a career in the entertainment industry, preferably as a producer. After graduating with degrees in marketing management and television radio and film from Syracuse University, Robinson set about accomplishing his career goals, but it was not easy. Robinson worked his way up from the Creative Artists Agency mailroom to become an agent, and eventually he was a partner and cofounder of the talent division at Endeavor Talent Agency. There, he represented talent like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Will Smith, Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes and Ashton Kutcher. After these successes, Robinson reinvented himself as a television producer, and his executive producer credits include Rules of Engagement, The Goldbergs, and Schooled. Robinson's latest television project, For Life, is a fictionalized legal drama telling the story of a prisoner who becomes a lawyer and fights to overturn his life sentence for a crime he did not commit. Late last summer, we caught up with Robinson in his Los Angeles office on the Sony Picture Studios lot to discuss how he went from the mailroom to a career as a decorated Hollywood agent and producer. We also discussed how Syracuse University taught Robinson to create his own personal narrative, and why he chose to help start the Syracuse University Los Angeles semester program. Great to have you here on the podcast. I want to take you back a little bit through a time machine. If you could give our listeners some insight into your background and why you chose Syracuse, why was that the school you chose to attend? Doug Robinson: The real reason? Sure. Because I desperately wanted to go to Penn State where my mother had gone, and they told me at the time that I would've had to start school in June, right after I graduated high school to get an English class out of the way. And I wasn't prepared to do that. And then I went and looked at Syracuse, and a friend of mine who was a few years older from where I grew up took me around and I had a great time with him, and thought this would be a great place to go to school. John Boccacino: You combined two degrees, a marketing management degree out of Whitman and television radio film out of New House. What were your aspirations for yourself as a student? Why did you choose those two degrees to kind of blend together? Doug Robinson: Well, I wouldn't say it was my aspirations as a student. It was more of what my professional aspirations were going to be. And I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to work in the entertainment industry. And in the back of my Doug Robinson Cuse Conversation Podcast (Completed 07/13/20) Page 1 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jul 13, 2020 - view latest version here. head, although I probably didn't know exactly what it was, I was like, I'm going to be a producer. But I knew that in producing, you had to have a business background. And I honestly didn't get into New House out of high school. I can't even remember if I applied, but I know when I went, I was only in management. And then when I went to school, you needed a 3.75 and an A and a B in a New House class in order to get into New House. And I had the grades and I thought, why not get two degrees if I could, one that would give me a business background, which I knew would always be useful, and one that would give me an area of expertise that I wanted to point towards my professional career. John Boccacino: I'm glad you brought up the experience of transferring in to New House after you had already been a student at Syracuse. What lesson did that teach you about any sort of work ethic or drive, having that carrot of wanting to get into New House, and you had to apply once you're on campus, right? How did that influence you? Doug Robinson: It gave me a goal, and it gave me a numerical goal. You must hit a 3.75, and you must have an A and a B. So I was going to get a 3.75, and an A and a B. And that's what I did, because I wanted that New House degree. So I've always been goal oriented. Even in my career, it's all about what's next, and that started when I was at Syracuse. And the fact that there was a quantitative measure of what got you in gave me a goal that I could hit. John Boccacino: We're talking here with Doug Robinson, a media executive and producer. When you talk about your career, you mentioned you always wanted to work in entertainment. What was it about that arena that really appealed to you? Doug Robinson: Well, more than anything else, I was a fan. And when I sit with students, the question that I'll ask them, there are a lot of people who want to get into entertainment because they think it's glamorous, or they think that they want to live in Los Angeles and make movies. But I was a fan of the product. I love movies. I love TV shows. I love pop culture. Those are the things that excited me growing up. And when I actually learned you could make a living and there was a business that allowed you to do this, that's where I wanted to be. John Boccacino: How did you go about embarking on this career? Doug Robinson: Two weeks after I graduated from Syracuse, I started in the mail room at CAA. And for people who don't know what the mail room is, the mail room is really a training program to become an agent. And if you look through the history of Hollywood, so many people have started in the William Morris mail room, in the CAA mail room, agents, producers, managers, lawyers. It is ground zero and the best place to get your foot in the door, and get the best well rounded education in the entertainment industry. It's grad school. And that's where I was lucky enough to go. John Boccacino: What was that experience like starting off at the very beginning, very entry level, especially now looking back where you are at the accolades you've had, the success you've had? It must have been a little bit humbling coming out here and starting at Doug Robinson Cuse Conversation Podcast (Completed 07/13/20) Page 2 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Jul 13, 2020 - view latest version here. that level. Doug Robinson: Well, that's the word, is that it's literally the most humbling experience of your life. I grew up in a house where I didn't make my bed. Or maybe I did, but I didn't do it well. And when you're in the mail room, you have to do whatever is asked of you. So I would be up at five in the morning, I lived an hour away from the office and you had to pick up bagels. And then somebody told you clean a spot off the carpet. You literally had to get on your hands and knees and clean the spot off the carpet. Whatever was asked of you is what you had to do. And there was nothing that was really mentally stimulating. You weren't changing anything. You weren't solving any problems. You weren't dealing with any issues. You were doing what was ever asked you. And the only way to get through the mountain was with a good attitude and work hard, and then absorb whatever information you can. So back in those days, you literally had to stand over a script, over a copy machine and copy a script, physically copy it. Now you push a button to email to somebody as a PDF. So if I was copying the same script 30 times that they were doing as a submission, I would take the script home and I would read it. There was a client list and I didn't know who all the clients were, so I would take the client list home and I'd familiarize myself with all the clients. And if I didn't know their work, I would go out and watch their work, whether it was a movie or TV show. And I'd go to the video store, this is really sounding archaic. And I'd go rent a movie and watch a movie of a client whose work I didn't know. So any education you were going to get was because you put in the extra time to get that education yourself. John Boccacino: How, then, did you go from being the mailroom assistant? I've heard that you landed a job as an agent fairly quickly after making good impressions, but how do you go from having that hunger and that drive to actually getting into the profession as an agent? Doug Robinson: You become an assistant.