Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (2022) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[soda can opens]
[liquid pours]
[upbeat music plays]
[Todd] Okay, buddy.
- [John] Here we go.
- [Todd] How about a high five?
- [John] High five?
- [Todd] Come on, motherfucker!
[upbeat music continues]
Wow!
[John] There's reasons
why you go to beautiful places,
and why people go climb mountains.
I think, for most of us,
a real key part of that
is being with people you like.
Whoo!
[John] When Todd and I first met,
what really brought us together
was doing exactly this.
And that shared drive
to go out to beautiful places,
it's an extension of that.
[Todd] It's a reuniting of great friends,
and it's a challenge
that we both said,
"Okay, let's do this thing."
Awesome job, guys.
Whoo!
[man] Welcome to Mount Vinson.
It's indescribable. I-I don't think
there are any words other than
Holy shit, we're in Antarctica. My man!
Had it not been for the whole Pepsi case,
would we be here?
Maybe we would've been here sooner.
Maybe we would have never been here,
but we're here now
and that's what matters.
I think you could say
that the whole Pepsi story
was another mountain
we were trying to climb.
[wind gusting]
Reminds me of the good old days.
Dragging Todd up a mountain.
[upbeat music playing]
[John] Todd, we're starting
to get a little cold. Right?
[upbeat music continues]
[John] For $700,008.50,
you could legally own a Harrier Jet.
[Todd] There was five boxes to check.
The T-shirt, the backpack, this and that.
I did not see a box for Harrier Jet.
But we did draw a box in,
and we checked it,
and we wrote next to it, "Harrier Jet."
We included shipping and handling.
Pretty good deal, delivering a Harrier Jet
to your door for ten dollars.
I was seeing this as an opportunity
to get a jet, to create a business.
It was a big dream,
and perhaps an unrealistic one.
It was definitely an all-consuming dream.
[Todd] He was so excited.
It was all of his Christmases come true,
you know.
"I found this guy."
"He's a buddy of mine.
He wrote the check."
"This could be my big, you know, break."
You know, "I-I win a Harrier jet!"
Ah, yeah ♪
[John] In the Pepsi Points catalog,
there was an address for a PO box
in Young America, Minnesota.
Young America, Minnesota
is the fulfillment house
for a lot of these different competitions,
whether it's Camel Bucks,
the Marlboro Man,
or Pepsi Points.
[Todd] I said to myself,
"When I write this check,
there's gonna be some guy
in the fulfillment office."
You know, "One T-shirt, George."
"Okay, Joe, one T-shirt."
"One leather jacket." "Okay, one leather"
"One Harrier Jet, Joe."
"What?"
[John] You can't afford
to have the check get lost in the mail.
So I'm like, "How about this, Todd?"
"I will come down to Miami,
I'll get the check,
then I'll fly it back up to Minnesota."
Todd said, "All right, but we're gonna
send a paralegal with ya
to keep an eye on ya." [laughs]
I'm all excited.
We get there on a Friday afternoon,
stay in Minneapolis
at a little Holiday Inn,
and wake up the next morning,
we drive to Young America.
[upbeat music plays]
[John] We get to the address
and it's a US post office.
You would have thought, after going
through all this planning process,
that, one time,
it might have crossed through my head
that the post office
wasn't open on a Saturday. [laughs]
Nobody's working behind the counter.
But there's that slot.
The woman who was
a paralegal I was with was like,
"Well, gotta put it in the slot."
I was like, "Oh my God. Are we really
gonna put a check for $700,008.50
into a slot in Young America, Minnesota?"
[tense music plays]
[John] Then I heard somebody working
in the back of the post office.
I go up and knock on the door,
and a guy answers the door,
and I'm like, "I need to get this envelope
into this PO box."
Guy probably looks at it
and he's like, "Oh, some kid
really wants his leather jacket."
[laughs]
After leaving and dropping the check off,
you know, my imagination
was pinging all over the place.
And I thought, like, eventually,
this has to make it back to headquarters.
Once it falls on somebody's desk,
I had to imagine somebody
was looking for somebody else to blame.
[tense music playing]
I'm like, "Whose desk does that fall on?"
[tense music fades]
[Michael] The day I heard
about John Leonard claiming the jet.
[scoffs] I hear it from The Wolf.
We used to call him Mr. Wolf,
from the movie Pulp Fiction.
The guy who could fix everything.
What made this
really so out of the ordinary
was how preposterous it was.
I remember my assistant saying,
"Hey, Brian's on the phone,"
so I pick up the phone, and it's Swette.
He says
Somebody sent us a check
for $700,000 for the Harrier Jet.
So I was like, "What?"
What?
Let's Let's just
[tense music plays]
smell them a little bit.
Taste the effervescence.
At the time,
I thought he was pulling my leg.
I was like, "Okay, come on.
You gotta be kidding."
Okay, and when you're doing tasting,
you try to You try to clear the palate.
Pepsi.
- [tense music continues]
- [bell dings]
- [yells]
- [bell dings]
[Jeff] Horror!
[man] You're fired.
Sorry, Pepsi.
Pepsi.
Once a Cola Warrior,
always a Cola Warrior.
I knew what I needed to do, which is
immediately go to in-house counsel.
I want it to go away.
I don't want it intruding on my work,
because we had to win the Cola Wars.
We needed to win the Cola Wars.
And out of nowhere, we got this kid.
[Brian] I mean,
I think he saw a clever opening.
You give him a little credit for that,
but it's clearly a joke.
[Michael] Did he really want it?
Or did he want some sort of settlement
in so many millions of dollars?
There was no doubt in my mind
that this was a money-grab opportunity.
No one wanted to even entertain it,
because all we would be doing
was encouraging the next person.
[Michael] When something
like this happens,
people come out of the woodwork.
Then it kind of shifts to the lawyers.
At that point,
when the lawyers get involved,
I mean, you have to take it
with some seriousness.
But I don't think anybody was
overly concerned about it.
[John] From the minute that
that check was dropped off,
talk about being on pins and needles.
Time was going by, nothing came,
but I'd met the company's challenge.
They said this, they're gonna do it.
We know of an ancient radiation ♪
[Todd] I was waiting, and I was anxious
to see, okay, what's the reply?
This is the first,
I don't wanna say salvo,
but we hit the ball over the net,
now it's your turn to hit the ball back.
Waiting for you to hit the ball back.
[John] Todd would call me,
"Heard anything yet?"
I'm like, "No, I haven't heard anything."
I go back to college, back to work,
race home,
check the mailbox,
go ask my mom, "Has anybody called?"
And it was a bit of torture.
Like, "Man, something has to happen."
Then you start thinking,
"Man, did the envelope
get stuck someplace?"
"Did it fall between a crack?"
Everything was going through my mind.
[Jeff] Someone, and it might
have been Michael, said,
"Hey, why don't we keep the $700,000
and we'll send him the model
from the commercial?"
Which I thought was kind of a cool idea.
They could've done something like that,
and our next step would've been,
"That's not a Harrier Jet."
Because it didn't say,
"Mock-up: 7 million points."
It said, "Harrier Jet: 7 million points."
And then, one day,
a letter comes in the mail.
[suspenseful music playing]
[John] We got this anticipation.
And you're like, "Is this an invitation
to something good? Is it a blow-off?"
It was kinda cool.
But you're kinda closing your eyes
as you open the envelope.
Kinda wondering what's
gonna jump out at ya.
It was exciting. I thought,
"Wow, we've hit the big time." [laughs]
[suspenseful music continues]
But I was very nervous.
What a dream
to be riding in that Harrier Jet.
I couldn't wait for the first ride.
[suspenseful music fades]
[John] "Thanks for the effort.
Ha ha ha. It was meant to be a joke."
"For your troubles,
here's coupons for two cases of Pepsi."
[suspenseful music playing]
[Todd] Pepsi decided
not to cash the check.
They sent it back
with a "Dear John letter," quote-unquote.
We were just along the lines of,
"Yeah, right."
"I don't think so."
[John] It was kind of
a jackass move blow-off.
"Oh, here's two cases of Pepsi
for your trouble."
After you raise $700,000? Like, come on.
The nature in which it was so dismissed
kinda was like,
"All right,
if that's how you want to play this"
You know, "Let's go."
I was pissed off,
but I'll tell you one thing,
our next step,
it had to be absolutely perfect.
These guys are sophisticated.
These guys are smart.
They have the best representation.
Here's this 20-year-old kid,
he's kind of like bumping around.
And here's myself, and we're
We got nothing on these guys when
it comes to fighting in a legal court.
The only thing we have is one thing.
The commercial.
[Michael] Hey, guys.
Hey, guys. Hey, Aggie.
I loved working on Pepsi.
I loved being
the creative director in the '90s.
[Oprah] What I want to know is
how do you get a bear
to dance to the Village People?
I work with a partner named Don,
and we sit there and just back and forth
I'm trying to get where you have to be
to say, "Hey, I know! Adolescent bears!"
You gotta be banging your head
against the wall and
- [Oprah] Pressure? Under pressure.
- Yeah.
[Michael] It's not easy
to do a Pepsi commercial.
There's no health benefit.
There's nothing other than good taste.
[tense music playing]
Okay, who's first?
[crowd clamoring]
[Michael] But there's
a whole lot of money to be made
in selling caramel-colored sugar water.
[tense music continues]
[Michael] So coming up with a clever ad
year after year,
it's difficult.
I don't think people have any idea
how much time and effort
goes into a 60 or 30-second commercial.
I was on the front lines on Pepsi
commercials for nearly 20 years.
I wanted to write a book,
What I Did During the Cola Wars.
[Cindy] It was Coke versus Pepsi,
and that was a big thing,
and so to really be recruited
by either side was a big deal, you know?
And those were your only two choices.
Like we didn't even know
we could drink water back then, you know?
[upbeat music playing]
BBDO stands for
Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn.
It's one of the preeminent,
if not the most preeminent,
advertising agencies in the world.
[Brian] You know, if you go back
to the famous series Mad Men,
the guys that founded
BBDO were right out of that.
[Jeff] The whole Mad Men thing
of people getting plastered midday
and not being able to function,
that was a foreign concept.
It It Not too far away.
They had a bar at BBDO.
[Jeff] The pressure on Pepsi advertising
was never-ending.
There were all-nighters for months on end.
No vacations, no weekends.
But people would have cut off a limb
to be able to come over
and work on the Pepsi business,
because it was in the news
and it was exciting.
[Michael] Out of my entire career,
we've done all this wonderful stuff,
but if you Google
[chuckles]
you know, what I've done,
the thing that comes up
is the Harrier Jet commercial.
[Jeff] Brian says, "We're gonna take
a bunch of the money
and shift it towards this
never-been-done-before promotion
where we're gonna give away
gear and merchandise
in exchange for drinking a lot of Pepsi."
We knew we had to show
the stuff that was in this catalog.
I have to say it,
the catalog looks pretty good.
This couldn't be a typical promotion ad
where you just showed the catalog
and extolled the virtues of the program.
[man] And so, what's first?
What do you do?
Go into the office [laughs]
With Don.
Don Schneider, my partner.
Lock the door.
Blank sheet of paper.
And we're thinking,
"How do we make the catalog exciting?"
We knew we needed
some sort of surprise ending
that would be funny.
So I recalled, just out of the blue,
that when I was a kid,
around Christmastime,
Neiman Marcus, which then was a huge
department store in Dallas, Texas
And the catalogs they would send out
for Christmas were spectacular.
Crazy, crazy stuff. Page after page.
But they had this one thing
that I was always amazed by,
and it was called the Fantasy Present.
And it was on the last page
of the catalog.
And the Fantasy Present
was a gift that even a Texas millionaire
would have a hard time affording.
It was outrageous,
it was priced beyond control.
The one I recalled was they offered
a two-man submersible submarine.
I mean, who is gonna buy
a two-man submarine?
I talked about the submarine,
and I think Don said,
"Well, what if it was,
like, a-a Harrier Jet?"
This is about how much
I know about a Harrier Jet.
[dramatic music playing]
I pick that one.
Hi, I'm Jenna Dolan.
I'm the first woman to fly the Harrier
operationally and in combat.
The Harrier is a fixed-wing aircraft
that can hover,
take off, and land vertically.
This airplane can actually fly backwards,
so it has the maneuverability
of a helicopter.
Awesome, huh? [laughs]
So this is a totally different way
of controlling an aircraft.
Sort of like
balancing a ball on the top of a pen.
So let's just say
that you could get into the aircraft
not having ever been a pilot before.
As we're maneuvering the aircraft,
we're actually pulling up to eight Gs.
If you're not familiar with that,
you can actually black out.
And from there
obviously, if you're
in the airplane by yourself,
then, you know, you're gonna
hit the ground, uh, if you don't wake
Yeah, that's terrible.
I don't want to talk about that. [laughs]
I said, "Great, they nailed it."
They figured out a way to take
an ordinary collect-and-redeem promotion
and make it a lot of fun.
This was the first board
that Don put together
that we were gonna present to the client.
We decided to open up on, like, just
the every-town, white picket fence house.
We would bring up type,
and we thought, "Let's do it
like The Hunt for Red October."
[imitates mechanical typing]
"Monday morning, 7:58 a.m."
And then we would cut to our hero.
And there he is,
he's put on his Pepsi T-shirt and then
[imitates mechanical typing]
leather jacket.
[imitates mechanical typing] Shades.
[imitates mechanical typing]
We cut to three kids
sitting outside the school,
and all of a sudden,
a shadow comes over them,
and you hear this roaring noise.
Papers are flying off kids' desks,
and there's just havoc.
Bicycles blow away.
And you go, "What the heck is this?"
Harrier fighter.
[Jeff] And, of course,
when we presented it,
it was met with a terrific,
positive reaction.
We said, "We gotta do this."
[imitates mechanical typing]
I think the Harrier Jet
was out of the public domain
as part of True Lies.
You're fired.
[upbeat orchestral music plays]
That's funny. That's really
That's good. That's a good hook.
Now, if you look at the hero,
he doesn't look like Central Casting.
And that was so on purpose.
We said, "We want the kid that's gonna
get the jet to fly to school,
we want him to be a character."
"We want him to have personality."
"We want a guy like the kid
that played the catcher in The Sandlot."
Play ball!
He's a good guy.
He's a little chunky.
He doesn't get the cheerleaders,
but he's gonna get the Pepsi Harrier Jet.
This is gonna be funny as hell,
uh, people are gonna love it,
and how quickly can we do it?
We basically bet the ranch.
We took every penny
that we had for that summer
and put it behind this commercial
and this idea.
One change. I think it was Brian's change.
"We can't cast that kid."
Yeah, of course,
you're gonna debate casting, right?
We wanted the underdog.
He was our hero, our kid,
our character
in the David and Goliath story.
And really, if you think about it,
most kids look like this.
They don't look like Rob Lowe.
The kid we cast was good,
but he wasn't funny.
He just wasn't funny. It was just
Made the spot a little straighter.
He was a character that you would
not quite see in a Top Gun movie,
but just, you know, a tad below that.
He was a cool kid.
[Michael] It's a funnier commercial
with the kid.
That's funny. I think that's funnier,
but it didn't happen.
We finished the commercial
and it went on air.
Let it fly, so to speak.
And it flew.
The shit flew. [chuckles]
Oh, did it fly.
[suspenseful music plays]
I gotta believe
that in Pepsi's wildest dreams,
they didn't think
there was a world in which
these two people would come together.
[tense music playing]
[Todd] You know, look,
in any adventure that you go through,
you prepare yourself to the utmost.
[tense music continues]
We're ready to rock and roll here.
So if you're gonna go climbing,
you make sure
you're in top physical condition.
Go with people that are as experienced
or more experienced than you are.
I think we're gonna have some hard days,
and, uh, some cold days,
maybe some windy days.
The risks here are
you can get frostbitten,
you can get hurt on the ice.
As we get higher up,
you can get altitude sickness.
Same thing with Pepsi.
Going up against a big corporation,
that is dangerous, you know.
[John] From a legal aspect,
we were outgunned.
It was at that time
that we knew we had to find counsel.
We'd never given
any thought to a legal battle.
I knew nothing about that sort of stuff.
I said, "I want to bring this
to somebody to get an opinion."
And I had an attorney
I'd worked with in Miami,
he had a boutique firm down there.
"Maybe he's just crazy enough
to do this too."
"Let me see what Larry thinks,
and I'll get back to you."
- Larry Schantz.
- Larry Schantz.
[man] Larry Schantz, take one.
[upbeat music plays]
They say, "You want to solve a problem,
go see Schantz."
[laughs]
'Cause I I don't take no.
I never take no for an answer.
[upbeat music continues]
I choose this one.
Coke.
- [bell dings]
- [laughs]
Todd Hoffman, he was a businessman,
had various interests,
and I actually became his lawyer.
And through the legal relationship,
we became quite good friends.
["Bailamos" playing]
[Larry] The mid-'90s, he had the same
joie de vivre for life like I did.
I see the world as pink,
no matter what the problems are,
and no matter how old I am,
I'm ready to rock and roll,
no matter what.
And Todd was a very adventurous guy.
So we went out together.
Of course, at that stage, Todd was single.
["Bailamos" continues]
[music stops]
[Todd] I said, "Hey, Larry,
I have a crazy thing I want to show you,"
and he said, "Sure, Todd."
[John] First time I met Larry,
the first thing that comes to mind
is Vinny Gambini
from My Cousin Vinny.
Brought the commercial down,
they gathered some attorneys
and some pretty highbrow
curriculum vitaes on these guys, you know.
Stanford and Columbia Law
and stuff like that.
The commercial plays, and it stops,
and a couple of lawyers go,
"Could you play that again?"
They play it again.
And, "Can you play it again?"
[rewinds]
Same thing as what I saw.
And, okay, they're done playing it,
the lights go up
and the lawyers start
having a discussion about the ad.
And some of the lawyers go,
"I don't think that's an offer,"
and the others, "Of course it's an offer!
Look at what they said."
"Don't you know, rule number 15.547
in Brown versus such as such"
It's like, "That constitutes an offer,"
and they start arguing away.
A couple said, you know,
"You're whistling Dixie."
"It's a pipe dream."
But there it was.
The ad is so clear-cut.
Seven million points,
Harrier Jet, right? You saw it.
And there's no disclaimer.
"Gee," I said to myself, "They're giving
away a Harrier Jet for a goddamn Pepsi?"
Sure beats the bus.
So, you know, obviously we didn't give up.
We draft a letter,
send the letter back to say,
"Hey, you made the offer."
"Your offer was accepted.
You gotta deliver on your offer."
"Per your video, we are requesting
that you deliver us the Harrier Jet,
and we met all your requirements."
"This isn't a joke.
We'd like you to perform on your offer."
Uh, "You have the funds.
The funds are real."
"Act accordingly."
From that time on,
we are all in reactionary mode.
It turned into this kind of volleying.
[tense music playing]
Things were not happening in real time.
It wasn't like, we hit the ball, they hit
it back, we hit the ball and they
Might be, we hit the ball,
three weeks later, they hit the ball back.
Time is their friend.
If they can make it last
for three years, five years,
they have lawyers
that'll work forever for 'em.
[tense music continues]
[John] After this went on for some time,
I came back to my parents' house
and my mom said
that some guy from The Wall Street Journal
had called looking for me.
I called the number and he said,
"Are you the John Leonard
that Pepsi just sued today
in Federal District Court in New York?"
And I said, "What? Pepsi sued me?"
[man] Why would Pepsi sue you?
I had no idea.
In my wildest dreams,
I never fathomed
that I'd be sued by Pepsi.
[Todd] Pepsi is headquartered in New York,
so they argued that if they did a lawsuit
it would be in New York.
They sued me because they were
trying to get the right venue
that was favorable to them.
And I think, looking back on it now,
it was a brilliant move. Right?
"Let's get these guys running."
"Let's get 'em hiding.
Let's get 'em to back off or whatever."
Best defense is good offense,
and they went on the offense.
[Todd] I was surprised
that they initiated a lawsuit, frankly.
If anything, I thought
there would have been a phone call
or there would have been,
"Can we sit down and talk with you guys
and see if you're real,
if you're not real,
if you really believe this ad,
or you didn't?" Or whatever.
We just filled out their instruction book
and they followed it up by suing us.
[man shouts]
[John] Then, for the next few days, I had
some guy chasing me trying to serve me.
[laughing]
Oh, jeez, yeah.
That was a cat-and-mouse thing.
I'd never been served for anything,
but I just figured it wasn't a good thing.
[laughs]
It was stressful.
In fact, I even thought
helicopters were flying above.
And, uh, never had
helicopters circling before.
I avoid the guy for some reason,
and eventually, they just left the papers
on the steps of my parents' house.
[suspenseful music playing]
My thought was,
"Okay, well, here it comes."
"This is what I was getting ready for."
"This is what I was nervous about."
When you say
you're gonna poke the beehive,
don't be surprised
when the bees start chasin' you around.
Once the legal system starts its wheels,
that's where it goes.
So Pepsi files a lawsuit against me.
Their main argument
was that it was illegal
for someone to actually buy a Harrier Jet.
And for any offer to be legitimate,
it has to be legal.
Then I'm like, "All right,
so what are we supposed to do?"
[suspenseful music continues]
If you expect the rules to be,
"Oh, this is gonna be some
perfect even-Steven thing,"
it isn't gonna be even-Steven.
But you can fight. You can always fight.
You can always try.
You can lose, you can win.
But if you don't fight, you already lost.
So you fight.
They sued me. We need to sue them.
[dramatic music playing]
[Larry] Lawyers are necessary evils.
When you need them, they're very good.
If you're serious, you do have to sue
to set the stage that we meant business.
[John] So Todd, Larry, and I,
we're like, "Well, I guess we gotta
force them to deliver the jet."
And now we had a lawsuit
of me as the plaintiff,
and then me as the defendant.
I remember that he was
thinking of doing it
and I said, "You're going to sue Pepsi?"
That's what it is.
He said, "They're not telling the truth."
Okay, here we go.
You know, this is Once again, here we go.
There were several "here we go" moments.
The Pepsi lawyers, the BBDO lawyers,
the insurance company lawyers,
everyone is then involved.
So it became a long, drawn-out process.
I'm praying that it disappears.
I want Pepsi to settle with him
and get it over with.
I think you're breaking away
[Michael] We've gotta perform,
and we can't be performing
if we're involved in a legal case
over a commercial we wrote.
But it doesn't go away.
And then, um [chuckles]
that's when this whole thing changed.
I remember,
Jeff got into the office around 7 a.m.
I'd get in around As a creative guy,
I'd get in around 10:30.
That's the law of advertising.
I get my coffee, put it down.
My assistant says,
"Michael, it's Mordos on the phone."
"Good morning, Mr. Wolf, what's going on?"
[indistinct speech]
"They want me to what?"
[indistinct speech]
"When did they want this done?"
- [indistinct speech]
- "Yesterday."
[Todd] They changed the ad.
The second iteration of the ad
went from 7 million points
to 700 million.
[John] Which would be $70 million.
And, of course, by anybody's math,
that's a bad deal, right?
That ran for a short time and then
Again, "Good morning, Mr. Wolf."
- [indistinct speech]
- "Good morning, Mick."
- [indistinct speech]
- "They want me to what?"
The last iteration of the ad
was 700 million,
and then, in parentheses, "Just kidding."
Wait, you want me to say you can get
a Harrier Jet for 700 million points,
which is completely unattainable,
and you want us to tell people,
"By the way, we're just kidding here."
[Todd] I said to myself,
"This is definitely a case."
They were admitting
that they were wrong each time.
They were admitting it was an offer.
"We're so scared it's an offer,
we have to keep changing it
till it's out of somebody's reach."
It was in no way, shape, or form
an admission
that we had done anything wrong.
But it was, "Hey, okay,
even if there's one lunatic out there
that thinks this is real,
let's put 'just kidding' in parentheses."
[man] Some people looked at that moment
as an admission of guilt.
Yeah.
Did you see it that way at all?
Hell, yeah.
It was an admission of guilt.
"We're just kidding."
We didn't want to do it,
because it's sort of like telling a joke
and then saying, "Now it's time to laugh,"
in parentheses.
We were dumbing down the ad.
[Todd] And the next thing we knew,
Pepsi's lawyers call us
into a settlement conference.
We were thinking,
"They realize they made a mistake."
They're really on the run right now.
They're sweating it out."
[John] Pepsi and their counsel
had invited us to New York.
It was termed a settlement conference.
I was like, "Heck, sounds good."
[percussive music playing]
[John] I go up to Sears.
Go big on the nicest Van Heusen suit
that money could buy.
125 bucks.
Hi, Mom.
[John] Came with a super sharp tie.
Johnny's going to New York
with a nice suit. [laughs]
[funky music continues]
[John] It was exciting.
No idea what's gonna happen.
Todd, Larry fly up from Miami.
We go to the law offices.
We're like the Bad News Bears.
We got Larry Schantz. He's a lawyer
that specializes in asset protection.
We got a 20-year-old guy
with the idea, from Seattle.
Somehow, he's got this crazy friend,
an adventurer-business guy,
from South Florida.
[percussive music continues]
[Larry] They probably thought
we were a bunch of schmucks coming in.
"Who are these idiots?"
[John] We were amateurs, right?
And they were
the corporate law professionals.
[music stops]
They started asking, "So, you know,
what do you really want? Ha ha."
We're like, "What do you mean?
We want the jet."
"I know you want the
What do you really want?"
I was pretty clear what I want.
I said, "I want what you offered."
"Oh, I know, but, you know
You know, we know"
That kind of smarmy shit
that I don't like.
[Larry] They said,
"You really believe we meant this?"
I said, "Yeah.
Here's your video, here's what you said."
"Here's exactly
what your instructions were,
and here's what we did."
We didn't put you in this situation.
You put yourself in this situation.
They said, "Harrier Jet,
it's used for military purposes."
I was like, "What's the purpose of that
smarmy little smirk on your face?"
I said, "I think it's false advertising,
and as a result,
you need to pony up." [chuckles]
We go back and forth for a while.
And, uh, lo and behold,
they allude to the fact
that maybe there's something we can do
to work out in settling it.
[tense music playing]
[Todd] So then Then they say, "Well,
maybe we would, uh,
be willing to offer you some money."
So we said, "You know,
we're open for resolution. Talk to us."
You know, like,
"Tell me your dollar amount."
So they wrote down something.
They've offered
three quarters of a million dollars,
possibly could go up to a million bucks.
[tense music plays]
[John] Not chump change.
We figured they were nervous about it
or they wouldn't offer that kind of money.
That number surprises me.
Honest to God, I swear, I have no
I don't know about that.
I don't remember that.
A million seems really high.
I I I If that happened,
it was to avoid the legal expenses.
[Larry] If they lost,
publicity they don't need.
Remember, they're not number one.
Our attorney said, "Why don't
you and John go outside and discuss it."
"Come back and tell us what you think."
[John] I distinctly remember
Todd and I were standing over by a window.
Todd's like,
"This is something that's here now,
and you could potentially
do something with this."
"This won't change my life.
It could change your life financially."
[John] He wanted me to be aware
of the potential consequences
of walking away.
"Whatever you want to do,
I'm a million percent supportive of you."
"I want you to win."
"If this is winning for you, great."
"If something else
is winning for you, great."
[John] Larry, on the other hand, was like,
"This is a good amount of money."
[suspenseful music playing]
[Larry] I said, "You know, Todd,
we have nothing really invested in it
except your time and our legal work."
And it would not be a bad day's pay.
If I was advising the young man
[chuckles]I would say,
"Take the cash."
I would have said, "Take it."
[man] You'd have said, "Take the money"?
I would haven.
[Michael] But let's face it,
he's got investors other than him.
And then pay taxes on that?
I don't think
the million-dollar split was enough.
And so at this point, it was simply
trying to get what was seemingly fair.
I was putting together the math on this.
The jet is worth $32 million,
and they're offering essentially a 30th?
Frankly, this million-dollar number,
to me, was like lowballing.
I do a lot of business deals,
I don't have a problem
making decisions like that.
But with this, it was just like,
"No, this is his deal."
I promised him from the beginning,
John's gonna make these decisions.
[suspenseful music plays]
[John] Todd's like, "What do you think?"
I'm like, "I want the jet."
[funky music playing]
[Todd] I said, "You're sure
that's what you wanna do?"
He said, "Yes, that's what I wanna do."
[Larry] I felt that we should have
negotiated a little bit more,
but it was not in the cards.
Now there was a time ♪
[Larry] Todd said,
"I'm respecting his decision."
[Todd] And we went back in,
all the attorneys are sitting there,
and they're looking at me,
because I'm supposedly
the mature one in the group.
And, uh, they go, "So?"
And I go, "Johnny wants the jet."
And they all go like this.
How you like me now ♪
- The air went out of everything.
- How you like me now ♪
"What the heck is this kid doing?"
Like [groans]
[laughs]
That was the moment, because I think they
thought, really, this was about money.
But it wasn't for the money.
[music fades]
- I was like, "What do I have to lose?"
- He wanted that jet.
I want the jet.
You gotta be kidding.
And nothing was gonna stop him
from getting that jet.
We were a bit outgunned,
and it seemed we needed
to shake things up.
[dramatic music playing]
We needed to bring on somebody
that could go toe-to-toe with Pepsi.
An aggressive guy
trying to get somewhere too.
And, uh, it was another, uh,
member of the Bad News Bears.
[dramatic music continues]
- Your friend is a thug.
- Well, thank you.
[reporter] Michael Avenatti's brash,
take-no-prisoners tactics
have helped expose President Trump's
hush money payment
to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Plot twist.
- Mike Avenetti.
- Michael Avenatti.
- Well, I knew him as Mike Avaretti.
- Avenetti.
He has a lot of ideas
in what he brings to the table.
You can read all about him.
Just Google his name.
[reporter] Michael Avenatti,
the audacious lawyer who became
Up until this time, things were exciting
but they weren't crazy.
And this is when
things really started to change.
[Todd] I was like,
"Johnny, I ain't going to prison
and you ain't going to prison
for this Harrier Jet."
To me, I was going down
trying to slay some dragons.
Let's get the kid the jet.
[tense music plays]