How Did I Get Here?

David Linde

Chief executive officer, Participant Media
from
  • Education
  • South Eugene High School, Eugene, Ore., class of 1978
  • Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.
  • Work Experience
  • 1984
    Staffer, Hans Linde for Oregon Supreme Court
  • 1984–88
    Paralegal, Paramount Pictures
  • 1988–91
    Assistant, co-head of international department, Fox Lorber Associates
  • 1991–97
    Vice president, co-head of acquisitions, executive VP for international sales, Miramax International
  • 1997–2002
    Founder, partner, Good Machine International
  • 2002–06
    Co-founder, co-president, Focus Features
  • 2006–09
    Co-chairman, Universal Pictures
  • 2010–15
    Founder, CEO, Lava Bear Films
  • 2015–Present
    CEO, Participant Media
  • Life Lessons
  • “Give yourself time, and you’ll find the answer.”
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  • “Build perspective through experiences.”
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  • “You can only understand somebody if you understand their culture and where they’re from.”
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  • “My father was an academic. As a faculty brat, I cut my teeth on campus cinema retrospectives: Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, everything.”
  • Clockwise from top left: Linde, producer Jim Booth, director Peter Jackson, and producer Hanno Huth, just before Miramax released Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, 1994
  • “In the ’80s, you could actually get tickets to the New York Film Festival. Jim Jarmusch, the Coen brothers, Pedro Almodóvar—I was completely taken with global independent filmmaking.”
  • With Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass at the Bourne Ultimatum Los Angeles premiere, 2007
  • “I wanted to go back to owning my own company and creating movies. Five of our international distribution partners were young acquisitions guys I met selling at Fox Lorber.”
  • “We had three Oscar-nominated films this year: Spotlight, Bridge of Spies, and The Look of Silence. I’m here to support the filmmakers who are making great art that works commercially and impacts the people who see the movies.”
  • “I didn’t graduate—I fell in love and followed my girlfriend to New York.”
  • “This was my father’s campaign. It’s where I got my first taste of selling, and how I got into business. He won.”
  • At the Venice Film Festival with (from left) producer Trea Hoving and novelists Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt, 1996
  • “I sold weird, hyperindependent TV shows and features. I sold one to Miramax, and Harvey Weinstein called me up one day and said, ‘Are you interested in the acquisitions job here?’ ”
  • “We bought The Pianist. Everybody said, ‘Well, that’s nice. You bought that nice movie about the Holocaust,’ and nine months later we won three Oscars and Adrien Brody was on every newspaper cover kissing [presenter] Halle Berry.”