Johnson '90, Kosove '92 hit their target with Alcon

Andrew Kosove '92 walks intently into a small conference room with windows overlooking the bustling traffic of Los Angeles's Santa Monica Boulevard. A few minutes later, Kosove is followed by his friend and business partner Broderick Johnson '90, who strolls casually into the room.

Together, the two men founded and operate Alcon Entertainment, a movie production studio and entertainment company.

Their morning will be occupied viewing television ads for their upcoming movie "Insomnia" and finalizing details for the film's West coast premiere later that evening.

Starring Academy Award winners Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank and directed by Christopher Nolan of "Memento" fame, "Insomnia" promises to be Alcon's biggest hit yet.

In many ways, the two men are complete opposites. Johnson is a toweringly tall African American with a booming voice and a jovial personality. He is dressed casually in white chinos and a black long-sleeved knit top.

Kosove is white and considerably shorter than Johnson. He is dressed in slacks and a blue button-down shirt, open at the neck. Although he is friendly as well, Kosove's manner is more direct than Johnson's and he lacks the carefree air of his partner.

Kosove is somewhat vague in his account of first meeting Johnson while they were both undergrads at Princeton.

"We just sat at a table one day and hit it off," he said.

Although the men are different in appearances and personalities, they do share two facets of their lives.

Enthusiasm for athletics is one. In college, their friendship grew while playing together on an intramural basketball team. In a sign of good things to come, the team went on that year to win the New Jersey State Intramural Basketball Championship.

Both also share a strong background in economics, which prepared them for the financial side of movie making. At the University, Johnson was an economics major and Kosove majored in political economy.

Kosove's interest in the movie business developed rather casually during his junior year. He had read an article about an amateur basketball player and gangster Richard "Peewee" Kirkland.

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He thought the man's life would make for an interesting movie and, on a whim, tried to obtain the movie rights for the story of Kirkland's life.

Johnson, two years ahead of Kosove in college, had already graduated and gone to work for Solomon Brothers, but he and Kosove had kept in touch.

Soon, the two began working on the Kirkland project.

"I was starting to teach myself this business before I even graduated," Kosove said.

"I was really intrigued with the idea of the two of us building a company," Johnson said. "I think the thing I liked most about what I perceived the movie business to be at the time was the ability to combine the financial aspects of what I was already doing with what I envisioned the creative side to be."

Although the Kirkland movie fell apart due largely to the double-dealing of what Kosove called a "nefarious producer," Kosove said the experience was a valuable one.

"Sometimes being naive is bad and sometimes being naive is good," he said. "If you're the type of person, and I think Broderick and I are, where you are so focused and so determined to set out to accomplish your goals that getting knocked on your ass doesn't deter you, then being naive can be a good thing."

Now, with five years of professional experience and four production credits including "My Dog Skip" and "Dude, Where's My Car" under his belt, Johnson recognizes that his initial notions about the movie business were rather romantic.

"I don't believe we really had an idea of how difficult it was to do what we set out to do," Johnson said.

"And we've done it," Kosove added quickly.

"We've now done it," Johnson agreed.

Entering the business proved rough for Kosove and Johnson when they first moved out West. They shared a room in a guesthouse and survived with a little financial assistance from Kosove's mother.

"You have these time limits in your head like, 'Well, if I don't make it by next year this time, I'm going to go back and get a job,'" Johnson explained.

In struggling to establish himself in the industry, Johnson exceeded his time limits and set new ones.

Johnson's and Kosove's fate changed for the better when they met Federal Express founder and owner Fred Smith in what Kosove elusively described as a complicated coincidence.

Smith was looking to get into the film business and he liked Johnson's and Kosove's ideas. He gave them the financial backing they needed to establish a production company and became their business partner.

Jokingly acknowledging that Smith is a Yale graduate, a weakness they are willing to overlook, Johnson and Kosove praise Fred Smith for his brilliant ideas and managing strategies.

"I get a lot of inspiration from Fred Smith," Johnson said. "He is, from my perspective, the perfect business partner."

He especially admires that Smith has achieved success in an honorable way, without "stepping on a bunch of people."

"Being a movie producer is really a lot about being a manager. You're a facilitator and you're a manager," said Johnson.

The men founded Alcon in January 1997.

Kosove explains that, because of the dot.com boom and the glut of internet companies taking most of the good names, he and Johnson had trouble naming their nascent company.

"Finally, one night at ten o'clock at night, we went over to Barnes & Noble bookstore and went into the Greek literature section," he said. "We pulled out a book and we found the most obscure Greek hero we could find. He was a guy named Alcon who was a companion of Hercules . . . an archer who never missed his target."

For the first nine months of Alcon's existence, Kosove and Johnson worked out of their apartment on Westwood Boulevard, saving money while they cultivated relationships in the industry.

Later, after renting office space on a month-to-month basis, Alcon moved into its current headquarters on South Santa Monica.

Johnson later elaborated on the often mysterious role the producer plays in making a movie.

"The producer brings the material together with the director together with the actors and then ultimately the financing. He then manages those groups of people as they make the movie," he said.

Kosove expands on Johnson's description of the producer's job.

"I would say that you're doing three things: you're facilitating, you're managing and you're dealing with diplomacy."

Kosove and Johnson emphasize the importance of simplicity in the model of their company.

"What we try to do in order to bring some simplicity to what is a complex process is to identify what fundamental aspects there are of making movies that you have to get right in order for the projects to succeed. And we try to focus on those fundamentals every time," said Kosove.

Having a good screenplay and choosing a good director are the two most important of these fundamentals, according to Kosove.

While some Hollywood figures view the entertainment industry as vital to people's lives, Kosove and Johnson appear realistic about Hollywood's role.

"Giving people a quality entertainment experience is not the most important thing to do in the world," Kosove said. "It's not curing cancer, it's not solving world problems, but it is an important thing to do because relaxing and enjoying yourself is an important part of life."

As a mini production studio, Alcon finances its own operation and production costs and retains all the rights to and assets from its movies.

This unique approach to film production has been very successful for Alcon. The company has a deal with Warner Brothers to distribute its movies, but Alcon retains all the profits.

"When the movie is profitable, we make a bunch of money," Kosove said.

Despite his and Kosove's success, Johnson is not ready to concede that he has "made it."

"I still think we're trying to make it," he said. "We made it such that, yes, we're in the game, but I actually want to win the game."

"The problem is that we're also owners of an entertainment company that we're trying to build," Johnson added. "And it's a young company that is still striving to make it both in track record and financially," Johnson said.

"Young companies are like babies," Kosove said. "They're beautiful, great things but you are always worried about them getting sick."

Kosove attributed much of his and Johnson's success to the analytical way of thinking they learned at Princeton.

He and Johnson tried to develop a profound understanding of the mechanics of the film industry, on a creative, economic and management level. They learned how the business works.

"The most important thing you can get out of a college education is to learn how to think and to be analytical and problem solve," Kosove said.

"When you're young, one of the things you'll find is that nobody tends to give information, or certainly power or authority, over for free," Kosove said. "You got to go out there and you got to be dogged and you got to be determined. And that you can learn at Princeton."

Kosove and Johnson said they are completely devoted to Alcon.

"We work a huge amount at our company. This is our family, it's our life," Kosove said. He estimates that he and Johnson work about 65 hours per week when they are not in production and significantly longer hours when they are in production.

Kosove and Johnson currently have several projects at varying stages of development.

Johnson said he is especially excited about Alcon's production of a film based on Rick Murdock's and David Fisher's book, "Patient Number One" — the true story of former CellPro CEO Rick Murdock's physical battle against lymphoma and his concurrent and interrelated legal battle against the drug company Baxter Healthcare.

"It is a fascinating, true story," Johnson said. "We're developing a feature film version of it and it's hopefully our 'Beautiful Mind.' "

Their new film "Insomnia" hits theaters nationwide May 24. Kosove and Johnson said they expect the film to be well-received by both critics and audiences.

"Our ultimate goal is to have a diversified entertainment company that not only does film but television and music and maybe even talent management of sorts," Johnson said.

"But right now, although our focus is feature films, we are planning to get into television," he said. "I think it's our next tier of what we hope to expand into."