Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel E Catullo III.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in a small town in NJ (Scotch Plains) in a middle-class family. No one I knew was in the entertainment business. My Father worked for AT&T and my Mother was a school teacher. I was always obsessed with music and knew that one day I wanted to be in the business somehow. Ideally as a drummer (I have played drums since I was four years old), but anything would be ok with me. As long as I could make a living off being around music I would be happy. My first real job in the industry was being a stagehand at The Meadowlands in NJ and Madison Square Garden in NYC. I worked there doing any grunt work I could get from unloading trucks to helping set up instruments. Anything. That was 1988-1990. When I went to college at West Virginia University in 1990, I actually continued to work there, often driving 7 hours home just to work a big show like U2 and then all the way back to West Virginia. It was crazy.
I originally was supposed to play football at West Virginia, but shortly after getting there, a knee injury prevented that from becoming my destiny there. I used that as my excuse to start my own business while also being a full-time student. I bought a bar and grill in college called “The Sunnyside Grill”. It was a dive bar that had cheap beer, great french fries and live music. It was there that I really developed my passion for promoting. We had lots of bands and I loved every minute of it.
After college, I decided to go on the road with bands. I worked in nearly every role – from Stage Hand to Lighting Tech to Drum Tech to Production Manager and eventually I was a Tour Manager. I worked for bands such as Live, Frank Sinatra, U2, Metallica, Guns N Roses, etc. I traveled all over the world. It was an amazing time in my life. I learned a lot and made a ton of connections.
In 1997 I decided to settle down and I moved to CA full time. It was then that I bought a theater in Ventura, CA with a movie producer friend of mine. That was my first major business. Owning the theater was one of the hardest things ever for me. We completely underestimated the build out costs and how hard it was to operate something like that. We ended up losing our butts on it, but I learned so much and my passion for music only got stronger. I also got to work with some really cool bands during my time there… In late 1999 I ended up moving into the film world, with a production company I started with my same partner of the theatre, Glenis Gross. Our original idea was to make low budget feature films and then license them to places like HBO or Cinemax.
Shortly after we started that company, called Coming Home Productions, I started to notice that long form music videos (concerts) were getting traction and that DVD’s were starting to gain momentum at retail. In 2000 I suggested to my partners that we should go into Music DVD’s as I felt that the business was going to start blowing up. Boy was I right. When we first started doing this, it was unheard of for a Music DVD to sell 5000 copies. VHS tapes were still being sold. I saw a big gap and an open hole. A real opportunity to get access to huge bands and also own content with them. I went into to all the major labels to form partnerships to fund and produce live DVD’s for their artists. The deal I wanted was that if I funded these shoots (average cost was $1 million), that I wanted to own the copyrights and the right to do partnerships directly with the bands (most of my deals in my career have been structured as 50/50 partnerships).
Nearly every label did that deal with me and thought I was crazy. Within two years we were selling millions of DVD’s. Our “Rush in Rio” DVD alone sold over 2 million copies. Coming Home ended up becoming one the largest independent producers of live concert product in the 2000’s. During a ten year period, I worked with hundreds of artists ranging from Dave Matthews Band to Rush to Usher to Etta James to Godsmack to Black Eyed Peas to Justin Timberlake to Beyonce to Nickelback. I won over 100 awards and we even had multiple Grammy nominations during this time. I also started a record label, a management company, a restaurant and owned one of the nicest recording studios in Los Angeles with Sully from Godsmack- Spiral (eventually we changed the name to Serenity). It was the best time of my life, but I still felt a bit hollow. Something was missing in my career
In late 2009, I decided to take a break from music and also move out of Los Angeles. The pressure of all the crazy businesses I started was getting to me and I needed a break from it all. I moved my family to Laguna Beach and started a new company that was smaller and more focused called DC3 Music Group. DC3 eventually morphed into a new, innovative company called the “City Drive Group”, Initially, we did mostly music projects, but we eventually moved into documentaries, as we had an urge to tell stories and bring meaningful topics to people’s attention.
The first documentary I was involved with as an Executive Producer and distributor was “The Square”. The film was directed by Jehane Noujaim, who is brilliant and went on to be nominated for an Academy Award in 2014. In 2013 the film won a TON of film festivals including Sundance, Toronto and dozens of others. It also won 3 Emmy Awards. It was quite the ride and further cemented my love for documentaries. The next film I was involved with won Sundance again! This film was called “Alive Inside” and once again I was an Executive Producer and one of the distributors. This film was beyond memorable to me, as it is about Alzheimers and my Grandmother had recently passed away from the disease, so it affected me in a big way.
In late 2014, I started to develop a show that I originally had an idea for way back in 2000 about musicians traveling to iconic locations for shows. Kind of like “Music in High Places” meets “Great Performances” meets “In Concert”. I wanted to incorporate some of what I learned from these amazing documentary filmmakers into my world- MUSIC. We forged full steam ahead and started developing the show. It was originally called “New York Live in Concert” and was a show solely based in NYC where we would do live shows at NYC Landmarks. It was hosted by Matt Pinfield (of MTV fame and one of my best friends) and Kayla Riley from Sirius/XM. We shot a pilot with the band Chvrches in Grand Central Terminal on Veterans Day 2015. It was epic. We completely shut down and emptied out Grand Central for 8 hours. The 2nd most traveled place in NYC where over 500,000 people a day go through, we emptied!
Shortly after that shoot, we started aggressively shopping the series and eventually revamped it as “Landmarks Live in Concert” with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith as the host. We signed artists such as Alicia Keys, Andrea Bocelli, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Andrea Bocelli and many others to be on the show! I was over the moon and felt like I finally had my dream job!
To my shock, no one was interested in music or the series initially. Despite factual data and trends showing that music viewership on platforms like YouTube were way up and continuing to grow, every TV network we went to told us the same thing “Music doesn’t perform well” and “Not interested”. It was beyond discouraging. But being the research junkie that I am and also being a stubborn NJ Italian guy, I refused to give up. Over the next two years, we went out and raised over $12 million and put our money where our mouth is. We produced an entire Season of “Landmarks Live in Concert” and aired on PBS for a full season to great reviews and viewership.
“Landmarks” has been one of the most gratifying things I have ever done. As Creator/ Director and Executive Producer of the Series, we have done some amazing and groundbreaking shows under the series, including:
Foo Fighters at the Acropolis
Andrea Bocelli at the Palazzo Vecchio
Brad Paisley Live from WVU
Alicia Keys in NYC from a Circle Line Boat to the Apollo Theater
Kings of Leon in Memphis
kd lang in San Antonio, TX at the Majestic
Black Eyed Peas in London at Royal Albert Hall
Projects of Rage in NJ at the Stone Pony
We also won a bunch of awards for Season One of Landmarks including 7 Tellys and 2 AVA Digital Awards. It was an amazing accomplishment to be a disrupter in the TV space and prove all the buyers and executives wrong. A Music Show CAN work! Due to the success and buzz from Season 1, we now have over 65 major Artists interested in being our show! Its a pretty cool feeling.
Now we recently signed a deal for a Season 2 of Landmarks and have partnered with Lionsgate to co-produce the show and bring it to a larger platform, with even more ambitious locations and ideas. Season 2 will be bigger and better than Season 1 and will have a new look and an even more aggressive creative around it.
Our company now has staff and offices- Los Angeles, Orange County, New York and Stockholm. We recently expanded into festivals (we produced the video content and live broadcast of KAABOO and Life is Beautiful Festivals last year), scripted series (we just shot our first pilot for a new comedy series) and branded content. We have three new documentaries in the works as the actual production company, including one on Hazing a colleges and one in the sports genre. 2020 is looking to be a big year for our company and we are trying to become of the most innovative content companies out there, with multiple divisions and dozens of strategic partnerships in place.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Absolutely NOT! Being in the entertainment business, especially as a CEO or business owner is not for the faint of heart. I have been through TONS of ups and downs. You need to have patience and need to be insanely committed. Being aggressive and having a “no holds barred” approached at business doesn’t hurt either. Unfortunately, my career has had some failures and some periods where it wasn’t fun, but thats the price you pay for being an entrepreneur. However, it is because of some of those failures and learning from mistakes of the past that I have the tools to guide me through very rough waters sometimes. When you fall, you must pick yourself back up and stand tall again. Learn from your mistakes. Learn to say sorry and try to become a better businessman and person from them. Don’t let anyone knock you down or stop you from pursuing something you believe in. And yes, no matter how big you get, you will always have rough waters. In fact, I think that things can be harder sometimes as you get successful. It is a very cut-throat business and success brings out haters. I have had my fair share of drama in my career. No one is free of drama or issues, but when you believe in something and are committed, you just keep going. When I look back on the amazing body of work I have and all that I have done over the past 30 years, it is overwhelming sometimes. I have been blessed to have traveled the world and to be able to collaborate with some amazing people.
City Drive Studios – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
City Drive Studios is a content company with office sin LA, Orange County, Stockholm and NYC. We specialize in music and documentary content and act as a “Studio” where we usually fund, produce and distribute our content. Around 25% of our annual business is done on a “work-for-hire” basis where we get hired by a 3rd party to produce content for them. 75% of our business are proprietary projects like our TV series “Landmarks Live in Concert” where we actually fund and produce the content. Retaining some or all ownership in what we create is key for us and we believe essential to survive in the future. We are also one of the only companies in our field who actually is a one stop shop. We can literally handle everything from event planning to talent buying to physical production to post-production to distribution. We also can bring in brand partnerships and sponsors. That is what makes City Drive unique and makes us drastically different from our competitors.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I define success by being happy. If you are truly happy and you smile everyday, then you are successful. Waking up and jumping out of bed to get to work asap and being happy it is a Monday is what defines success to me. When your job feels like a vacation and you feel fulfilled in every part of your life, is a clear definition of a successful person. When money doesn’t matter anymore and you do it for the love of it, then you are clearly successful too.
At this point in my life, I am only surrounding myself with passionate people who smile everyday. I will only work with artists I respect and feel a connection to. Life is too short to deal with drama or negativity.
Contact Info:
- Website: citydrivestudios.com
- Phone: 310 360 3770
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: dc3director
- Facebook: facebook.com/danielecatulloiii
- Twitter: dc3director
- Other: danielecatulloiii.com
Image Credit:
Chris Bradshaw for the Alicia Keys and Foo Fighters photos
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