12:00 AM, April 30 2013 Exclusive: The Making of Brad Pitt’s World War Z, from Stunning Budget Overages and a Reshot Ending to Lots of On-Set Drama By SASCON Brad Pitt on the cover of Vanity Fair's June 2013 issue. (Click to enlarge.) SEE Two Decades of Brad Pitt in Vanity Fair “He took me through how excited he was when he read the book, what was exciting for him, the geopolitical aspect of it,” screenwriter Damon Lindelof tells Vanity Fair contributor Laura M. Holson in the June issue of Vanity Fair of meeting Brad Pitt to discuss the star’s troubled zombie project, World War Z. Lindelof says Pitt explained, “‘But when we started working on the script, a lot of that stuff had to fall away for the story to come together. We started shooting the thing before we locked down how it was going to end up, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.’” The actor asked him to watch an edit, and told him, “The thing we really need right now is someone who is not burdened by all the history that this thing is inheriting, who can see what we’ve got and tell us how to get to where we need to get.” Lindelof tells Holson the ending was abrupt and incoherent, but more importantly they were missing a large chunk of footage. In her revealing report, Holson also speaks to director Marc Forster and Paramount executives Marc Evans and Adam Goodman about the many problems that plagued the set—which included re-writing and reshooting 40 minutes of the film to find a coherent ending—and, most astonishingly, how the budget ballooned to around $200 million. While closing down the production in Malta, for instance, the wrap-up crew found a stack of purchase orders related to the cast and extras that had been casually tossed into a desk drawer and forgotten; the amount totaled in the millions of dollars. Marc Evans, president of production at Paramount, was shocked. He calls the overages an “unthinkable action” which needed to be addressed immediately. “It was literally insane. Adam [Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group] and I believed we’d gotten out of Malta good, and I found out we weren’t. That is a nightmare.” When it came time to watch the director’s cut, Holson reports, the room was silent. “It was, like, Wow. The ending of our movie doesn’t work,” says Evans. “I believed in that moment we needed to reshoot the movie.” After 10 minutes of polite discussion, everyone left. “We were going to have long, significant discussions to fix this,” he recalls thinking. “I said to them, There are two roads to go down here,” says Lindelof. “Is there material that can be written to make that stuff work better? To have it make sense? To have it have emotional stakes? And plot logic and all that? And Road Two, which I think is the long-shot road, is that everything changes after Brad leaves Israel.” That meant throwing out the entire Russian battle scene—or about 12 minutes of footage—and crafting a new ending. “I didn’t think anyone was going to say, ‘Let’s throw it out and try something else,’ ” Lindelof recalls. “So when I gave them those two roads and they sounded more interested in Road B”—which meant shooting an additional 30 to 40 minutes of the movie—“I was like, ‘To be honest with you, good luck selling that to Paramount.’ ”

It doesn't have to mean going out and starting your own business. Think of it in terms of owning your career path and professional development While I realize we cannot all be entrepreneurial in the sense that we can't all start our own companies, I believe we can all be entrepreneurial in terms of how we approach our own careers. This column will include a few suggestions for demonstrating the entrepreneurial spirit that we can all implement: Love what you do Years of hard work (which generally precedes success) don't seem so hard if you are doing what you love. My mentor, Dr. Paul Hersey, upon receiving an honorary doctorate, shared one of his secrets for success with graduating students. He beamed at the hundreds of young people in the audience and said: "Looking back on my career, I don't feel like I have ever worked a day in my life. If you really love what you are doing, it all seems like fun!" Finding what you love to do may take some effort, but it is worth it. Be curious One of the greatest entrepreneurs I have ever known is Mr. G.M. Rao. He is the founder of GMR Infrastructure, which is now a large infrastructure company in India. When I asked his colleagues what Mr. Rao was doing right, they all marveled at his constant curiosity. One commented that "he travels through life, constantly observing. He makes notes on all kinds of potential opportunities, which most people might not even notice. He doesn't just observe—he acts! He immediately follows up with messages to staff that say, 'please check this out.' While many of his observations do not turn into business opportunities, some do. This is one of the reasons that he is so successful." Find your own market niche In the same way that successful entrepreneurs provide innovative solutions to market opportunities, you can work to develop a special competency that differentiates you from everyone else. Be creative. Look for market needs that everyone else may not have considered. Anyone can do what everyone else is doing. Great entrepreneurs provide products and services that are better or different than what everyone else is doing. You can also do this at your present job: What should be done that isn't?

*word of the day* hellion n. a disorderly, troublesome, rowdy, or mischievous person. Harness Your Entrepreneurial Spirit “ Don't play what's there, play what's not there. ” – Miles Davis Recently, a friend asked me, "What do you love about entrepreneurs?" I think what I enjoy the most is the *spirit* of entrepreneurship. I define this spirit as one of risk taking, innovation, and pushing the limits of what's known and understood. Entrepreneurs dream up visions. And when they make these visions real, they create value - financial, social or cultural. Entrepreneurs view change as a force of possibility rather than as a creator of problems. To paraphrase Miles Davis, entrepreneurs play what's not there. The Entrepreneurship Center at the Miami University of Ohio speaks to this spirit: "Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying, developing, and bringing a vision to life. The vision may be an innovative idea, an opportunity, or simply a better way of doing something. The end result of this process is the creation of a new venture, formed under conditions of risk and considerable uncertainty." Throughout my coaching experience, I've noticed a particular mindset that helps to form the foundation from which this entrepreneurial spirit emerges. One way of describing this mindset is internal focus. Internal focus means that what goes on inside of your head and your heart greatly effects what happens for you in the outside world. It's often not the external trappings - the MBA or the business seminars - that make or break an entrepreneur. It's the internal focus of believing in yourself, listening to your intuition and tuning into your emotions that allows the entrepreneurial spirit of dreaming BIG to spring forth. By managing fear so that it doesn't become an obstacle, you are able to harness opportunity. Self-trust is paramount for risk-taking. Here are some questions for you to ponder: Where do you focus your thoughts? Are your choices based on fear? Are they based on possibility? A client described a situation to me in which she understood the difference between making fear-based choices and choices based on self-trust. An aspiring entrepreneur, she felt caught between remaining at her day job and leaping into fulltime entrepreneurship. Through reflecting and listening to her intuition, she became clear that the only thing keeping her chained to her day job was fear. She also recognized that by taking the risk to leave her job, she actually had a greater chance of entrepreneurial success. Her new business required the full weight of her attention and resources. And over time, she realized that the decisions she made based on her intuition and self-trust were the ones that led her business down a successful and rewarding path. A healthy entrepreneurial spirit requires trust in yourself and your intuition, an ability to make clear choices, a flare for mobilizing resources, and a capacity to move beyond obstacles created by fear. Connect with your entrepreneurial spirit and see where it leads you.