Neil Friedman’s Path to Founding Jewish Streamer ChaiFlicks Was Born From ‘Learning Something New’
Neil Friedman didn’t come to found ChaiFlicks “by accident.”
Though the streaming service devoted to curating Jewish and Israeli content launched in 2020, Friedman’s interest in its subject matter started back when he was in college where he focused on film and ethnicity. It was only by constantly challenging himself and ignoring typical career paths that he was able to turn his passionate interest into a business endeavor, Friedman told TheWrap for this week’s Office with a View.
Friedman has walked many paths throughout his career. After graduating law school, he worked as a corporate lawyer on Park Avenue “for a couple years” before moving to the famed entertainment firm Frankfurt Garbus Kurnit Klein and Selz (now known as Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz). That led to a bout running business affairs for the home video company Vestron, followed by stints as the vice president of New Line Cinema, vice president of business affairs for Columbia Pictures, president and C.O.O. of the Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation and co-chair of the independent feature division for William Morris Agency.
It’s the sort of entertainment career some executives would dream about. But for Friedman, it wasn’t quite right.
After working for William Morris, Friedman asked himself one key question: Do you stay on the expected career path or do you try to be your own boss? It was the latter option that intrigued him most.
The decision to strike out on his own led to Friedman founding the film distribution company Menemsha Films and later the streaming service ChaiFlicks. After decades of working for other people, Friedman was able to make his own calls and curate the sort of content he was most interested in seeing. What started as a way to challenge himself and pursue his college passions turned into a film distributor that has released over 250 movies “exclusively” about Jewish and Israeli subject matters, as well as a streaming service that now has over 1800 hours of programming and is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.
What’s his secret? “The idea of trying to learn and grow and evolve as a human being, that’s who I am and that’s what drove me to run my own company,” Friedman said.
With these sorts of stories, there’s typically a moment when you can either continue down an expected path or take a chance on yourself. What was that moment for you?
I think it was 1997. I was 44 years old. I had run other people’s companies. I had been COO and vice president and really ran the day-to-day operations and worked for a big agency, so I had both of those experiences. The decision after William Morris was do you go and continue to work for other people, or do you decide this is the time that you really want to work for yourself and try to be your own boss? That’s not an easy decision. I made that decision to start Menemsha and I never looked back.
That experience in working specifically with Jewish and Israeli-themed films for that period of 12 to 15 years gave me the confidence that I could do this Jewish streaming service that I saw an opportunity for.
What would you say is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I have to give my German Jewish grandfather credit for that. He had this expression he gave me in his later years. He would always say to me, “Use your bean.” I share that with my daughter. Obviously, “bean” is your brain… That’s the probably the greatest advice I ever received, which is always to think and use what you have.
Can you walk me through your emotional journey of stepping out on your own? Did you ever have a moment where you questioned this might not be the right call?
What drove me is always doing something where I’m learning something new. What always worked for me is getting into a new area where I’m growing, and that had to be something that we’re I was running my own company. Working for somebody else, obviously, is great. But you’re not the ultimate decisionmaker. The idea of trying to learn and grow and evolve as a human being, that’s who I am and that’s what drove me to run my own company. That’s a 24 hour, seven day a week challenge with all its benefits and all its detriments. But I had no other choice.
Really, this is who I was, sort of a workaholic, I guess you’d say. But it’s not only about the work. It’s all always about learning. The William Morris experience was a big change for me because that was the first time I really got into the creative side of things as opposed to the business. I never expected that I would really cross all the way over to the creative side. But through my tenure at William Morris, reading scripts and making decisions about material, that really brought me full circle to thinking that I had legal, business and creative capabilities to be able to my to run my own company.
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