Two weeks later, the General towered across his epic-sized desk. Lying on it was the biggest gun I had ever seen – a revolver for sure, but four times larger than any I’d previously encountered. I enquired whether it was for security, Saddam’s assassins presumably still being a threat, as suggested by his elevator, which had trapped and vetted me before letting me out on his floor. “No,” said General Schwarzkopf, “The pistol is for dealing with journalists.”

I launched into my pitch: seriously ill teenagers in hospitals around the world would select an avatar (ET was reserved for Steven) and then walk it around one of our 3D ‘worlds’… This was before the computer mouse, so one ‘walked’ the avatar using the arrow keys… a zigzag trajectory in right angles, more like Etch-a-Sketch, but one that seemed to work in our prototypes. I explained we were assembling experts who would never otherwise work together: directors, writers and programmers inventing  alongside pediatricians, psychiatrists, oncologists and hospital administrators.  I explained that we were the generalists, surrounded by experts and constantly yanking them back to the center of our mission. 

 “Young man”, asked General Schwarzkopf, “what do you know about the U.S. Army?” “Very little, Sir” I replied. “Well,” he went on, “when you join the Army, you receive not just a rank, but also a specialty: you are a rifleman or a cook, a driver or a mechanic. However much you are promoted over the years, you keep your specialty. It’s a pin on your shoulder. It’s what you do for us. And then there is that special day, if you are the best of the best. If you are a leader. If you are the smartest. The day the U.S. Army makes you a General. And in the ceremony when you get your stars, they take away your specialty because you are no longer a specialist. You are a leader. You are the General.”

This was a jaw dropping moment for me. I realized for the very first time that there was a reason why Generals are given that title. They are the generalists who lead the specialists. Without them, the specialists would muck it up and everyone would get killed by the enemy. You had to have generalists to lead the experts, otherwise you’d veer off mission, lose your battles, your war and your lives.

This revelation from General Schwarzkopf changed my professional life; my epiphany was realizing as a film producer I was the generalist who keeps a hundred specialists focused on mission, on strategy, on the goal: delivering an excellent product on time and on budget. Nobody else on set thinks only that way. I realized because of Norman that I could make a material difference in the world using skills I had already developed. The subsequent charities I founded, www.firststar.org and www.edar.org address tremendously complicated issues, child abuse and neglect, and homelessness, and they also harness armies of specialists. But at the top, leadership has to point our multiple specialists towards core goals, and then keep them there: lead, follow, or get out of the way!

General Schwarzkopf signed up to become Capital Campaign Chairman for Starbright World. We raised our $50 million in cash and in-kind: Coca-Cola, Intel, Sprint, Knowledge Adventures, Vulcan and others saluted the Starbright flag held aloft by General Schwarzkopf on behalf of special children. I sat next to him as one by one he told corporate CEO’s, “here’s what we need you to do. Now.” And they all said yes and did it. Remarkable and inspiring, leadership from the front.

David Haspel had the genius idea to publish a fairy tale book to benefit Starbright World, with each Chapter written by a different celebrity. It was Stormin’ Norman who led the charge. For our book The Emperor's New Clothes, Steven wrote as The Honest Boy, Robin Williams as the Jester, Calvin Klein as the Emperor’s Underpants…  You can guess who wrote as our General, and then barnstormed all over network television. We raised over a million dollars for our seriously ill kids’ network. 

In June of 1995 that Steven Spielberg, General Schwarzkopf and I pressed a big green button on stage at Digital World, turning on Starbright World for kids in hospital beds around the country. They moved their avatars, saw each other in video conferences, spoke, made friends and found love, validation and comfort. Research showed that as their spirits soared, their t-cell counts rose too, and they often did better physically. Starbright World has never been turned off since, and our closed, supervised and protected network still links ill teenagers across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the U.S. Starbright World is moderated 24/7 by trained teams in the United States and Australia. When the three of us pressed that button in 1995, Mark Zuckerberg was just eleven years old.

Norman Schwarzkopf won a war for us, and he delivered peace to children in crisis. Through initiatives like Starbright World, forever a part of Starlight Children’s Foundation, he demonstrated how great leadership is crucial to fixing our world. I shall miss him very much: he taught me that really and truly, “A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to hold the hand of a child in need.” I’ve been following in his very large footsteps ever since.

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