Programming note: The weekly Modus newsletter will resume on Friday, January 3. Don't miss that issue; I interviewed a founder who thinks family offices will be among his startup's power users.
As kids in Northeast Ohio, my sisters and I would wake up at a cruel hour on Christmas morning, open presents waiting under a tree, and then promptly head to my grandparents’ home in a suburb of Cleveland.
Many others did the same thing. The Tarantino house was modest, but a large room added to the back meant it was the only one that could host 30 people — almost enough to consume the volume of food Italians prepare for a holiday. For that reason, it became an annual gathering place where everyone was welcomed, even the most distant cousins (actual or otherwise) and friends.
Interviewing party attendees and capturing what that house was like every Christmas would be hugely entertaining. And if you wanted the final product to look and feel like a well-produced Netflix documentary, there’s a company that specializes in exactly that.
In 2010, Jamie Yuenger, a former producer at NPR affiliate WNYC, founded StoryKeep to produce private films and podcasts for families. Since then, the company has worked on a wide variety of more than 100 projects.
“Books and writing have such a great place, and I think they serve certain goals really well in a different way and maybe better than film does. But I think if you're trying to capture the essence of a living person, film pretty much can't be beaten… You need to see the person, you need to hear their voice, you need to see their gestures. You need to see them in a scene, in a moment,” Yuenger told Modus in an interview.
However, a person is not necessarily the focus of a project. StoryKeep is increasingly telling the tale of a place rather than an individual or family business. The reason is intuitive: Places are more unifying.
“I think more and more families, especially wealthy families, have a place where everyone can gather, and that place is really important, the actual physical place and what it represents,” Yuenger said. “It's much more intentional. A dozen of the families that we've worked with, we've heard very directly that they have purchased properties, or built homes, or whatever, for the absolute intended purpose that their entire family can come there and gather.”
The first place a StoryKeep project ever focused on was a lodge on an 800-acre property in Canada. It had the same caretaker for 60 years named Angus, a nearly omniscient observer. No one was better suited to explain the property’s meaningfulness to its owners than the man who watched them grow up there. “He was kind of the personification, in a sense, of this place. And he had a lot of history that he could share, and then the other family members sort of came in and out of the piece talking about him and also the place,” Yuenger said.
Most families don’t know exactly what they want a project to accomplish or what its focus should be. To help potential clients figure that out, StoryKeep begins a discovery and development process familiar to showrunners or documentarians but usually foreign to those outside the film or radio industries. This process often entails roughly 20 hours of conversations to identify potential storytellers and locations.
Once a treatment (a summary of a project’s concept) is approved, Yuenger and her team make all the necessary travel arrangements and prepare the people who will be in front of the camera. For some people, this is exciting, intimidating or both.
“When you go back, and you talk about your memories and stories, it is a very emotional process. It's cathartic and it's also tiring emotionally. We tell people: don't plan to just go from your day of filming then out and have dinner with friends that night,” Yuenger said. StoryKeep recommends that interviewees block time to decompress after a conversation.
A professional production means commensurate costs, which is why most of StoryKeep’s clients are ultrawealthy, and it is often engaged with their family offices. Depending on the number of subjects, locations, recording days, the nature and amount of editing and other factors, projects often cost between $95,000 and $275,000. The production company has done projects as small as $25,000 and some as large as $500,000 that take more than a year and involve as many as 30 film professionals.
Several families have hired StoryKeep more than once. One family wanted a film about a residence, then asked the company to produce films about their art collection and an individual member. StoryKeep hopes its relationships with families will transcend and bridge generations together, whether through private podcasts or projects focused on a lodge.
It was impossible not to think of some of my own places writing this newsletter.
My grandparents died many years ago, and their home — the central meeting place for the Tarantinos — was sold. Others have just as generously hosted, but they have more limited space and family members are more scattered. Having a dozen people in one place for a holiday is rare now.
This time of year, I inevitably remember those big Christmas Day gatherings and the excitement and ruckus during the zenith of the parties. But I spend the most time thinking about the moments after the crowd thinned when just a handful of us were crammed into the kitchen banquette, playing cards into the night.
Even in an era when every phone can take a photo or video, I understand why someone would spend $500,000 to preserve places and moments in the best way possible. I’d pay anything to watch one of those card games today.
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Other News
- What CTA opinion and order will be in your stockings above the fireplace next week? No one knows!
On December 17, a district court judge denied a Justice Department motion and said a national block on the Corporate Transparency Act would stand while the law is litigated. (This was the same judge who granted the nationwide injunction, so little surprise there.) The faceoff in court probably won’t happen until well into 2025, so the government has also asked the circuit court where it filed an appeal to weigh in on the block before December 27 — five days before the compliance deadline.
At this point, family offices were either prepared to comply with the CTA or not (and willing to pay steep daily fines). This is all about sharing beneficial ownership information with the government. Even if they are prepared, family offices aren’t sharing information until they absolutely have to.
FWIW, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board thinks the Supreme Court should weigh in on the CTA and argues that Congress should use this time window to eliminate it entirely. - Speaking of BOI…FinCEN has issued a warning that scammers are using its insignia and impersonating the bureau’s employees to try and get beneficial ownership information from people.
- Kimberly Sheehy has returned to Fidelity Investments and will once again lead the Communities Center of Excellence, including the Forge Community, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
- That last phone call with someone from your alma mater about putting your name on another building — did it seem a little odd? Maybe it was a virtual engagement officer.
- If there’s a clash at the family holiday party and your patriarch or matriarch starts a wine-fueled selfie video declaring changes to their estate, don’t worry; that doesn’t count as a will. But if they start firing off text messages, grab that phone!
- A 7-Eleven Heir’s $50 Billion Fight to Keep the Company in the Family
- The Search for van Gogh’s Lost Masterpiece
- This “60 Minutes” interview with Hermès artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas has some great soundbites, such as: “Expensive is a product which is not delivering what it’s supposed to deliver, but you’ve paid quite a large amount of money for it, and then it betrays you.”
Jobs
- B1 Capital Partners, a Chicago-area family office that manages over $10 billion in assets globally (much of it invested in hedge funds, private equity, and by way of co-investments and directly in companies), is looking for a senior investment analyst or associate.
- Capital Allocators — the popular podcast that has branched into newsletters, events, and advisory services — is looking for a head of business development.
Where I’ll be…
- In Calgary this coming week. While there, I have plans to visit one of the most dangerous places on earth: a kaitenzushi, where Japanese dishes and Sapporos travel on demand directly to your table by conveyor belt. The phrase, “Okay, just one more!” is never used more carelessly than when you’re at a kaitenzushi.
- Back to New York and relaxing. Maybe a morning at the AIRE Ancient Baths, then a walk to the Marlton Hotel for a coffee by the fireplace.
- New York, where I’m based, for NYE and through all of January. Email me, let’s meet up!
Housekeeping:
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