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PeopleTranscript
00:00Everybody has their own path, of course not.
00:07My 1974 Evander Child's High, there we go.
00:12My 1974 Evander Child's High School yearbook read,
00:17Matt Lichtenberg, Ambition Dentist, and here we are.
00:29Fast forward to 1980 at the wise old age of 22,
00:35I packed up my Ford Granada and I headed west.
00:40I'd grown up in New York, but watched enough Beverly
00:43Hillbillies, Dragnet, and Barbara Eden in a bikini
00:46to know California was the place for me.
00:50It was fantastic and just as expected.
00:53Sunburned and sold on California,
00:55I returned to New York, and by the chance
00:57the next day ran into my child friend, Paul Provenza,
01:02who had too just returned from California.
01:05And there and then we decided to ditch
01:07the subways and yellow snow for sun-kissed beaches and show
01:11business.
01:13Paul was a working stand-up, and the comedy scene in LA
01:17was raging.
01:19I was wearing a three-piece suit,
01:20working at Pricewaterhouse by day,
01:23hanging out with comics at the improv,
01:25and laughing until my eyes bled at night.
01:29It was way too much fun, and it didn't take long for me
01:31to realize I needed a job where I could ditch the suit
01:34and work around funny people.
01:38Soon thereafter, I left Pricewaterhouse
01:39and went to work for Jess Morgan,
01:41a formative business management firm founded in 1967.
01:47I'd hit the lottery.
01:48I loved what I did.
01:50I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
01:52And after a few years at Jess Morgan,
01:54decided it was time to try this myself.
01:57At all of 26 years old, with a $10,000 City National Bank
02:01credit line, I was handwriting checks
02:04at an office above the Pep Boys on 7th Street in Santa Monica.
02:10My first clients co-owned the improv with Bud Friedman,
02:14and the improv quickly became my personal client recruiting
02:17substation.
02:19Comics were road warriors and desperately
02:21needed to tend to their business affairs.
02:24I was right there, lying in wait at the corner
02:27table at the improv.
02:31Larry became a client early on, and it boggles my mind
02:35to think we've been working together for 40 years.
02:39I'm going to repeat what Larry just said.
02:40He'd often say, Matty, I'm never going
02:43to succeed in this business.
02:44You don't need to keep me on, and I understand
02:47if you want to let me go.
02:49And my response was always the same.
02:51Comics think you're funny.
02:53I think you're funny.
02:54I'm not going anywhere.
02:56And that's true, because every time I saw Larry
02:58at the improv in New York, all the comics
03:01would come to the back.
03:02People would sit there in silence, and they would laugh,
03:05and Larry would kill.
03:06And I knew there was something there.
03:10So when asked by Variety if I'd be interested in receiving
03:15the award, at first I thought, wow, how cool.
03:18And then I thought about it and how pretty much it
03:21encapsulates everything I don't like to do.
03:25I don't like wearing a suit.
03:27I don't like being the center of attention.
03:30I don't like public speaking.
03:32I don't like eating breakfast.
03:35And I really don't like asking my clients to do me a favor.
03:40I try and never ask my clients do me a favor,
03:44except, of course, Larry, who has now clocked in two
03:49bar mitzvah videos and sacrificed a choice early
03:58morning Riviera tea time to do this for me.
04:03Two bar mitzvahs for Asher and Maxime, and now this.
04:07I owe you, Larry.
04:09I'll never do this to you again, Larry.
04:12I love you, Larry.
04:16So here we are, a room full of seemingly smart people.
04:20And I ask myself, what differentiates smart people
04:23from successful people?
04:25Successful people know that to succeed,
04:27you need to surround yourselves with smart people.
04:31As business managers, we wake up every day seated at a table
04:35at a high stakes poker game.
04:37We're all in betting everything we have that we
04:41and everyone who works for us do everything right that day,
04:45that no mistakes are made.
04:46And God forbid a mistake happens, it's small,
04:49and it can be easily fixed.
04:52The stakes are our reputation and livelihood.
04:54And if you lose, it could change the orbit of your career
04:58and everything you've worked for.
05:03There's a lot of pressure to bear every day.
05:05And the reason I share this award with everyone
05:07in this room who works beside me is because
05:11of this onerous profession.
05:15I consider myself beyond blessed to have a job that I love.
05:18Clients who I appreciate and value what I do for them,
05:22listen to and respect my opinion,
05:23and most importantly, are incredibly genuine, nice people.
05:28I am blessed.
05:30I'd first like to thank my brilliant, methodical,
05:33and inspiring partners, John, Mark, and Chuck,
05:37Executives Mark C. right here, and the superhuman employees
05:41at level four who are without a doubt, in my opinion,
05:44among the best in the business.
05:46My wife, Masha, and two wonderful children,
05:49Asher and Maxime, who no matter how shitty my mood,
05:54love and support me day in and day out.
05:58And thanks to D. Lawrence and the show business
06:01sleuths at Daily Variety, Kelly Coffee, Steve Shapiro,
06:05Lisa Torben, and everyone at the best bank a business manager could
06:09ever ask for at Citi National Bank.
06:12And a special thanks to my awesome assistant, Rita, who protects
06:17and shields me from the psychopaths like nobody else can.
06:24And my brother from another mother, Paul Ta, who's here, there,
06:31who's with me in the swamps, by my side, on the front lines every day.
06:36I'm going to close with an excerpt from the first draft of my speech,
06:39which I had written by chat GPT.
06:45So I typed in the following, write a five minute, funny and poignant
06:50thank you speech for a business manager who
06:52works with actors and comics, just named business manager of the year
06:56by the Daily Variety newspaper.
06:59And I got the following, thank you, thank you, everyone.
07:06Wow, what an honor.
07:08And from the Daily Variety, no less, I mean,
07:11that's basically the Oscars of the spreadsheet, right?
07:17I feel like I've become a professional tightrope walker,
07:20balancing my client's finances while they're
07:23balancing on an inflatable pool flamingo in Ibiza.
07:29To my clients, who couldn't be here tonight, well, actually they could,
07:33but most of them are halfway across the world living out of a suitcase.
07:37Thank you for trusting me with your dreams and your credit card bills.
07:42The entertainment industry is a wild, unpredictable ride.
07:46But thanks to you all, I get a front seat every day.
07:50And I get to experience the thrill of every $15,000 floral arrangement,
07:55every impulse buy sports car, and every private island rental.
08:00Really, you keep me on my toes and on the couch with my psychiatrist.
08:05Of course, I couldn't have gotten here alone.
08:08I owe so much to my team.
08:10They're the ones who make sure I look like I know exactly what I'm doing
08:13and who catch my typos before the clients do.
08:16To my colleagues who have spent hours untangling expenses and more than once
08:21rescuing me from tax code-induced coma, thank you.
08:25Your support is priceless, even though I'm pretty sure some of you
08:28may be forwarding my calls to each other when you see my number.
08:33And I have to give a shout out to my family, because they put up with the fact
08:37that I'm always just wrapping up one more thing on the phone.
08:40And thank you especially for not holding it against me
08:43that every Hanukkah, I show up with financial projections instead of gifts.
08:47I'm here every Tuesday.
08:51Thank you, Deli Variety.
08:52Thank you, City National Bank.
08:53Thank you, Venable.
08:54Thank you, Larry.
08:56Thank you, everyone.
08:57Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.