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Speaker 1: Good everyone, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is Scott Neison. Scott at one stage had an amazing job. He was the president of twentieth century Fox International and all the glitz and glamor that goes with that job. But he was came to Australia as a six year old immigrant from Scotland, settled in elizabeth wasn't particularly great at school, but left school early, got a job as a projectionist at one of the movie theaters, We're Drivings, and amazingly worked his way up to that position. But then in a moment of epiphany when he was visiting Cambodia, he gave it all away, gave it all away and established a charity called Cambodian Children's Fund. Now I've said that rather quickly. It happened obviously with a lot more detail and thought than that. But Scott joins us. Scott Nisan, welcome to the program.
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Speaker 2: Great, thank you, thank you for that great introduction.
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Speaker 1: So from where are we speaking to you.
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Speaker 3: I'm at my home right now. I'm in non Pen, Cambodia, working from home today. Yeah, I've been here, been in Cambodian now for twenty years.
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Speaker 1: In which times you've established and reinforced and growing that charity called the Cambodian Children's Fund. How many kids do you look after right now?
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Speaker 2: In education?
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Speaker 3: We have about one eight hundred past we have kindergarten, special needs, a nursery for the little east who've got problems at home. But yes, this going so well now it's started from a very small beginning.
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Speaker 1: Well, there's so much there to talk about. We'll get to that, but I'm still intrigued by this young Scottish immigrant settling Elizabeth. Can you take us back to those days?
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Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, well my parents I was born in Scotland, my parents when my father in particular really wanted to have a better life for us and it was in a cold, damp and while of unemployment, so we did the immigration thing back then.
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Speaker 2: Go stretching back to the mid thick these the.
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Speaker 3: Australian government was looking for workers pay the affairs over so it was ten pounds for the family. He put us on a fabulous cruise ship to come to Australia to get a job. So my dad got a job of what was then called the Weapons Research Establishment, I think it's Department of Defense now and he got the job there. We got a house in Elizabeth North, which was the government housing scheme, and that's what it all began.
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Speaker 1: You weren't great at school? There was there an issue there? Or were you just like every other kid who doesn't like school?
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Speaker 3: No, you know, I never really enjoyed it, but I was a very good student up to a point. I was always one of the A students up till about year ten or so, and then it started to fold it.
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Speaker 2: I'm told now.
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Speaker 3: By the people that know these things that it's basically a form of ADHD. I couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate, and apparently in cruise way through to about year nine or so, because it's pretty obvious stuff, you don't have to focus too much. But years ten, eleven, twelve, you're looking at formulas, equations and you have to pay attention, and that's when it's doudged How died to unravel?
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Speaker 1: For me? Was it? What was the life like for a little Scottish immigrant kids?
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Speaker 3: I mean it was great there because it was it was wide open spaces, it was warm weather. I had really good friends, you know, we would hang out. There's many great adventures to be had. Playing in the local creek and riding bicycles up fast distances to the local national park, and it was it was really nice place to be.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: But school got hard for you and you did you leave or were you expelled or what?
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Speaker 3: Actually, the first time the teachers that it wasn't much point me staying there. I went out and got a job I was doing, working milking cows, and then I went back to school, and then I realized I just didn't want to didn't want to be there.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: So the first time I was after suggested I leave.
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Speaker 3: The second time it was entirely my own choice and I had actually got a job, so that was a big impetus.
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Speaker 1: For me just go back to the milking cows part. How did that happen?
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Speaker 3: Awful? My parents. My parents were determined I was going to I was going to work at something I hated so much that I'd want to stay in school. It was miserable too, really miserable, and it didn't last very long. That was down in MIDINDI I think it was down in milking news cows. And it was a big, big, big operation as well. So yeah, that got me. That put me back in school temporarily.
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Speaker 1: No you got a job, So you weren't You weren't at idol, you got a job straight away?
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Speaker 3: No, no, I went, I had had implied I had applied for the doll and of course you had to go on job interviews. The first day, the first interviewer, I got the job, so it.
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Speaker 2: Was never never applicable. Yeah, the government were great.
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Speaker 3: The first job, which was the group was called Clifford Theaters back then cliff Theater Circuit and it was driving theaters and cinemas, a couple of small cinemas mainly driving in the country, and they were hiring. They set up the job in Sorry, the government, Commonwealth government set up a job interview on my very first day and I got the job and it was great. I love working there.
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Speaker 1: So you're working as a projectionist? Did I? Did?
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Speaker 2: I read in the office?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, working in the office most of the day as an assistant there and runner and then in the evening so I would work as a projectionists to make some extra cash.
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Speaker 1: What sort of what sort of training did you have for that?
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Speaker 3: Oh well, I'm sorry, I was an assistant projectionist. Not no training at all. Back then, the guys with the projectionists. They were very talented. They had to get through all sorts of courses, including a fire fire wall thing, and my job was just to flip the reels over when it was filmed. You'd remember back in the days when you had to change reels every twenty minutes and then you need to see the burn up in the top right, and that was a big job, was switching those reels.
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Speaker 1: I suppose you've got a chance to love the movies or embrace the movies.
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Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it. Actually, it's my first real interest, real interest in the films. I'd like you to go and see them. But it was really good to see this bast ray of films, good and bad. Of course, the driving movies are pretty bad, most of them.
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Speaker 1: There not an ourday.
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, they'll have a few few good films, a lot of you know, sex films, of course, and then the rest was just dismal.
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Speaker 2: It was pretty dismal stuff.
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Speaker 1: A little bit sad though the drivings have gone.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. I had some great times at the drive and I guess we all did. It was the thing to do. They just couldn't survive in the revenue, just wasn't there.
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Speaker 1: So you go from being an assistant projectionist, this young assistant projectionist. What's your first promotion?
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Speaker 3: Well, when the when the drive in theaters started to close down and the clip the theaters was owned by Grady Union and Gray Union decided they would run it from their main office, and so they closed the office and I was offered a job into Sydney working alongside John Flits, a fabulous guy, and I was He was the head of programming, Good Grading Union. I was his I was the number two guy there.
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Speaker 1: Now there was a true Your dad wasn't happy about you moving to Sydney.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, he was. He was a bit worried about you know, it was a big city. I'd grown up in Elizabeth and he thought that Sydney would even be alive basically. And but you know, we drove across together. I couldn't afford to fly, so I put my possessions in the trunk of my car, on the boot of the car, and it was you know, it wasn't much. It was a very big stereo system and a pair of jeens, I think, and he and I drove over together. What year was that, That was nineteen eighty five.
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Speaker 1: So how's how's how does the city like Sydney hit a young fellow from Adelaide in nineteen eighty five?
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Speaker 3: You know, my brother lived there already and I stay on the floor at his place and it was it was really great. It was good.
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Speaker 2: Heways had an eye o me and it was fascinating. Experience was a whole different thing.
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Speaker 1: So what was your role?
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Speaker 3: I was the assistant program programming manager, so you know, getting the movies into the cinemas, negotiating with the film distributors, studios, and that was basically it. And my boss did all the hard work.
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Speaker 1: So but you must have shown some special Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I know, I hate that. I don't know what was being that way.
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Speaker 3: I don't know. I really don't know. I was just doing my thing. After two year as Quite Cinemas, that took me away to run their film buying programming department. So that was the first big jumps I was there, and yeah, just moved on. I don't know what it was, honestly to this day, and I'm not trying to be you know mo just about it.
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Speaker 2: I just don't quite get it.
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Speaker 3: Every time someone did come and stay, why didn't you come and work here, and I kept on saying.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you know, we're all really good jobs.
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Speaker 3: I've always been very lucky to get in with good people, good businesses at a time.
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Speaker 1: So at that time in Sydney, what was your big triumph for there? Was there a big hit movie that you were responsible for?
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Speaker 3: It was I can't really take credit for. Yeah, Crocodile Dundee was a big one.
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Speaker 2: That was a big one.
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Speaker 3: Made me look like a genius.
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Speaker 1: Could you predict the success of that?
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Speaker 3: Of course we all could know. I'm joking everyone. Everyone was sort of saying no one knew, really, I mean, no one knew would be such a huge success.
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Speaker 2: It ran for two years.
00:10:00
Speaker 1: Scott Neeson, the founder of the Cambodian Children's Fund, is my guest. It's an amazing journey. Stay tuned. We'll talk about it a bit more after the break back shortly, Welcome back to conversations. We're speaking with Scott Neeson.
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Speaker 3: Now.
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Speaker 1: Scott's in Non Pen in Cambodia, where he founded the Cambodian Children's Fund. But the journey to get there is incredible, as we spoke about earlier, as a young kid comes out from Scotland, settlers in Elizabeth Leave School, gets a job as an assistant projectionist that in the movie Theater, goes to Sydney working for Holts and obviously make an impression. Did you expect to be offered a job in America?
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Speaker 2: No, not at all. No, I was working for Hoots.
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Speaker 3: They moved me to run distribution production for Holts, and then twentieth Century Fox and Columbia TriStar they got together. They met a three way operation, three way joint venture, and I was managing that. I was the boss there for a few years, and Fox in particular really like what I was doing. All the films were being big hits, and which is hardly mind doing. You know, you get good films, everyone's going to come out. But then they offered me a job in the US, and that was where made the move in ninety three.
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Speaker 1: You say that so casually, so modestly.
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Speaker 3: I think if I could explain it, I would. But honestly, I have been a lot of being very lucky too. I know if people like to say, well, the hard I work, the luckier I get. But there is luck involved being the right place at the right time and everything else. That certainly played a part in it.
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Speaker 1: I imagine that will to be just so glamorous, even in Sydney. We'll get to we'll get to America, as we suggested. But even in Sydney, mixing with big stars, big Australian movie stars.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, a few back, and there was not a lot of production. That was mainly the distribution of overseas film. There were a few times. Yeah, got to meet Paul Hogan, which was a big deal for me, with a really big deal. Yeah, And occasionally that have American actors come out as well, so I got to meet with them.
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Speaker 1: So obviously I'm going to say what was he like?
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Speaker 3: It's exactly what you see. He's always very down to earth, good guy and when the first premiere was on, he was outside having a beer outside, didn't sit through the bill.
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Speaker 2: He was a really good guy.
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Speaker 1: So you're off to American and I know, I understand your dad wasn't happy about that aither.
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, again, I think you're very concerned that I've been coming back, that it was a tough, cutthroat environment and once again i'd probably come back and have to find another job. And he's very concerned about that too. So flew to La and and you know, rented a place there thinking I was going to get kicked out. After about six months or so, opened and then realized that there was only there was the accent and everything else wasn't working.
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Speaker 2: You know, it worked out really well, worked terrifically.
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Speaker 3: Well. My boss that brought me in was it was crazy as a bad Water senior. He was a streamer and ea gether. But you know, he took to me and we worked really well together. And the studio for anyone that could work with him, must be okay. So they brought me over there. What was his name, Water Senor. I arrived in Los Angeles and after in my second month there, there was a big upheaval at the studio. He got fired and the new bosses came in. So it was very stressful at the time for me. And then my third month he had the big La earthquake. So I was ready to come home and away. It was pretty.
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Speaker 1: Bad, but you stayed and stayed.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and worked up from there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Is it as glamorous as we imagine it to be with the moon stars and the and the openings.
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Speaker 3: And well, I want to more than the senior ranks, it is, Yeah, And being head of International meant going to all the festival festivals and the Calm Film Festival, Balloon ven As Film Festival, these really great places, and dealing with most of the actors. I was responsible for making sure that they were okay doing the film, helping with publicity, being on set reading them early on. So yeah, it was and not to mension, you know. The obviously the financial and the lifestyle I had.
00:14:25
Speaker 1: Because of that described the lifestyle well.
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Speaker 3: When I was Resident of International, I mean I was getting I thought they were crazy paying that much money.
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Speaker 2: They were paying me a lot of money, and the job was a lot.
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Speaker 3: Of travel overseas, supervising international officers and productions and stuff. But it was you know that always fly. It was in my contract to five first class. Had a beautiful house in the hills of Brentwood, had Cindy Crawford on one side and Warner's Production had on the other, huge mortgage, and had a boat in the harbor, several cars or suv all those sort of things, and it was really good because the movie premiers and everything else. It was a very nice life.
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Speaker 1: Would you befriend the stars, Yeah?
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Speaker 3: I did. Actually I had a friend who find a few back then. Some of them kept in touch with there's some really good people finding up. It was mainly the big male actors. I got any, especially.
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Speaker 1: Well with your name, of a few.
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Speaker 3: I really enjoyed working with Mel Gibson. It was on Braveheart. Of course he was on the wagon and he had his own jets that would fly from city to city premiers doing publicity, and yeah, it was so much fun. As soon as the jet took up, you'd bring out the card table and we play. We'd played poker until near touchdown. He'd always clean up the table. It was a smart cookie.
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Speaker 1: What sort of stakes you're talking?
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Speaker 3: Oh, no, you know, a few dollars here and there. I think maybe a dollar or five dollars. Maybe none of us were going to lose their money to melt. He had enough as it was.
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Speaker 1: Did you deliberately do that? No?
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Speaker 3: And I was trying to get my money back on and it was very clear there were no Once that plane took up, it was just us.
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Speaker 2: There was no hierarchy at all. Every man for himself.
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Speaker 1: Did really where you would fly to Europe to just have lunch with Georgia Omarny That.
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Speaker 2: No, well, he.
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Speaker 3: Honestly, mel was having lunch as Georgia money and I tagged along get some free clothes. So yeah, he was having lunch and I flew in to join the lunch, leave again from from Milan for the rest of the trip with him.
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Speaker 1: You're talking about some of those great movies Brave Heart, Titanic, Star Wars, x Men, the movies that you were helped to promote. What about the ones that didn't work.
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Speaker 3: Were probably releasing maybe forty fifty films a year, so over the tenure I do five hundred films would have worked on and worked with so many.
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Speaker 2: You know, some were stinkers.
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Speaker 3: They were just really just worse stinkcause how they turned out and people wouldn't even remember them today. And then there were those that were really good films but didn't have trouble finding audiences. And of course then the ones that really did work worked very well, like in the smaller films, like the film Monty was a big film. It was a very inexpensive film. It did great round the world, and again that was because of the film. I mean people that thought loved to tell their friends. But in the case of the Titanic, Braveheart, took some good marketing to get the thing going, which was my specialty.
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Speaker 1: You're over there in LA and the epicenter of movie production and movie promotion. How is Australian? How was the Australian industry? You viewed from there?
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Speaker 3: They dynamics. It made some very very commercial films, some really good films, not just not proper doi old undeas but intelligent films, good independent films, and had a really very good reputation over there. There's all a bit of a scramble to pick up U Australian films get first look at it, and of course films like Shine. Scott Hicks's film really made a new ground there. That was quite the legend back in my day in Los Angeles.
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Speaker 2: Scott Scott had.
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Speaker 3: All sorts of trouble with everybody wanted to pick up the film, including Funny enough, back then Scott had sold it to Focused Speetures, part of Paramount and Harvey Weinstein, who was furious. He wanted it for himself and he was taking in this. He caused the scene he was going on at Scott. He was trying to get Scott to travel with him, give him his private jet, and none of that worked and hard, made a big scene that made the newspapers.
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Speaker 2: He was burst into a.
00:19:00
Speaker 3: From I think of the Can't Film Festival and berated the guy from Focused Films and was let out of the let out of the restaurant, and it was a whole thing.
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Speaker 2: Scott can told the story better than I can.
00:19:13
Speaker 1: Well, I think Harvey's found a few.
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Speaker 3: Loudly.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: Now, look, we're going to take a break. We've talked about the glamour side, and there's so much more. I just from a boy voyeuristic point of view, we want to know more about that. But the real story is this moment in time, the sliding doors moment in time where you give it all away to establish the Cambodian Children's Fund. And we'll talk about that when we come back. Scott Neeson is my guest. Folks back shortly, Welcome back to Conversations. If you've just tuned in, we're speaking with Scott Nisson. Now, Scott's an Adelaide boy. While he came from Scotland, originally settling elizabeth when he was six, worked his way up through the movie industry to be president of the twentieth century Fox International. With this an amazingly glamorous lifestyle in l where he's living next all the Sydney Crawford best mates with all mates with Mel Gibson. Before we get onto your church, I want to know about the last I mean, the girlfriends that you must have had and the yeah and the like.
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Speaker 3: We Yeah, I had many, well I had some of them. The most beautiful girlfriends, I mean, really is something mostly for models or backgrounds and modeling actresses. And yeah, I mean that were an assistant projectionist and Elizabeth. It was a it was a big deal for me. I mean it was it was so easy to meet women, and especially when I was traveling different countries and in Los Angeles, of course, it's very much focused on the film business and relationships there. So I like to think it was me, but I think being president of Box International might have helped a bit.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: You never settled down, No, well.
00:20:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, back in Los Angeles again, I was. I was a single guy from Elizabeth, and I was had a house those I was traveling many many months of the year, traving first class and dating some really beautiful women. So no, no, there was no at that stage. No, And you know I had really was where I was very aware that my friends in Los Angeles who had gotten married in more than eighty percent of the case, that would end badly after two or three years. I saw some really good friends who'd worked hard, loose everything, moving into tiny apartments and their partner would keep the house. So yeah, that was a full consideration. I just couldn't get any point. I was having a great time.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: So you go on this journey. I sense it was a spiritual journey. You're going to Cambodia to visit some of the the holy sites there. Can you just can you walk us through you You've had this great job, this great life in La then something clicks in Cambodia. Didn't inspire you to give it all away.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: When I was leaving Fox, i'd finished my contract there.
00:22:05
Speaker 3: I was starting a new job at Sony Pictures, like I needed more money, but I decided I wan to take a break in between the two studios because I was pretty much burnt out between jet lag and finishing up at Fox. It was a lot the plan whilst see all the bigger Buddhist monuments throughout the throughout the region. Yeah, there's borro of a door in Indonesia, and of course in Cambodia designed for what up in seam Reupe. And so when I was in Nonpan, I met a couple of guys, one local and a bloat from Gotland who'd set up his own charity, and that kind of intrigued me. The plan when I was to start donating to one of the charities there one that would help children get them to school. But where I was the certainly on the touristy areas, we're all just shamed. So I got rich quite a number of times, and I asked him, I trusted him implicitly, is there any place where I know the money will get to the kids. I know it will get them into school and there's no real backup. And they gave me an address, they didn't say what it was and ended up being this massive garbage done the municipal landfill of Mpan and it was huge and stinky and hot, and because of the post war issues with the Cambodia, of course kids have been left there, abandoned there often some have made their own way there and some are even living on the landfill. But they had no parents. So the scavenger bit finding bottles, plastics, metals basically go to sleep right there on the landfill, and that was just appalling. I mean, you haven't said anything like it. I think one thy five hundred kids, some very very young, and that was very hard to take in.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: You feel guilty about that?
00:23:56
Speaker 3: No, I felt I could help. Yeah, I think a lot of us we don't so much feel guilt, We just feel helpless. And I think I was in a lattic category because again I didn't see any personal responsibility per se. You know what really got to me was that I was on the landfill and these kids were just terrible state, and I was expecting them to come up and start asking me for money. This girl, and I didn't know it was a boy or a girl because they covered in all their clothes. There's no place to leave them, and the heat on the garbage unp is like nothing else in this world. This girl came up and she said to me, which is can you get me into school? And all of a sudden, I was trying to be stoic. I can't say no to that, you know, it's just such a touching and compelling question to ask. So it was a friend who was also translating for me, and I trusted him, went down to the outskirts, met with the mother. She had a mother there, and rented.
00:24:56
Speaker 2: This single room. It was in the great room, but had wanting water.
00:25:02
Speaker 3: Fifteen dollars a month, and I raised so when I went back to Los Angeles, I would send money to my friend. He would pay the rent for them, deliver the food, and then check to ensure the girl was saying in school. And he wasn't that difficult to me. If you break it down into the different issues within that, it was remarkably easy. And the little sister was very, very sick. I believe it was typhoid, and got her into a hospital. That was the first thing, was the kids asking to study. I'd never come across that. I thought it was this huge, impractable problem that was beyond me, you know. For me and I had these prejudices about big charities, especially international charities, and you wouldn't know where your money's going. People were paying themselves big money to run a charity. I felt like it wasn't my responsibility. I was paying a lot of taxes and the government to look after it. And the other one, the other prejudice was that even if I gave away all my money everything over half of what I was learning. So I still switch on the TV and see these poor, poor kids in poverty in war torn areas. When this child is standing in front of you and asked, only asked to go to school, I mean, it is my responsibility. I can do something about it. And I knew where my money would be going. It was going to go direct. So that was the second thing that really struck me. It probably struck me the most was that I could actually help. I'd always thought it was way too complex and for all the ways talked about was the largest international charities. But I went back to my hotel and it really struck me that I had changed this one girl's life completely and that she was going to be going to school, her sister was going to get well, I'm not quite sure.
00:27:00
Speaker 2: There's something about it.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: I found really compelling.
00:27:05
Speaker 1: So you go back to well, did you sell your house and all your contents at the house.
00:27:09
Speaker 3: And basically yes, Well, by the time I left at the end of the at the end of my time off, I started getting these kids off what was happening regularly. So the plan was to go back to Los Angeles and start my job at Sony pictures and spend money across the Cambodia to help get more kids off of there. But a part of me really wanted to stay continue doing this. I was kind of burnt out on the film business. But it was really energizing, as a real sense of joy when you'd see these kids come off that first bill. By the way, she graduated with a degree in economics and finance. Actually, most of the kids that came off the landfill back then, I've already completed their education. It was exhilarating. It felt like I was doing something meaningful as opposed to marketing movies. Back I made a pledge to make. The pledge was that I spent twenty six years in the film business at that point, and I wasn't going to do anything rash. So I would wait twelve months to steve it would stick, and so I went back to Los Angeles. It was miserable that first meeting to start talking about the test results on a film or the test results on TV advertisements, and dealing with actors who were just so crazy on their demands. It just didn't quite I just couldn't sit in. So I started the process of spelling.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: Scott Neisan is my guest. So much more to come though back after the break. Scott Neisan is my guest on conversations. A boy from Adelaide who left school at an early age, made his way all up the chain to the in the movie industry, the president of twentieth Century Fox International. But he takes a holiday and he goes on the spiritual journey to Cambodia and is overwhelmed by the predicament of some of the kids there who live on this rubbish dump, this big rubbish dump, and sees that he can actually make a difference. Why that's as a couple of other kids. Then goes back to Hollywood and he's discharged increasingly gives it all the way as as simple as that, Scott. You sold your house, sold on your positions, and then went back to cambode Is it as simple as that?
00:29:24
Speaker 3: Yeah? Basically yes it was. I went as I said, I had a stage to myself, but I wouldn't make a rash decision in twelve months, and I stayed in my job for twelve months. But I was sort of cheating to myself by selling stuff off things by peace and finding a new home for my dogs and if the boat, everything has start to be sold off piece by piece. And to make it even more obvious, I would spend but maybe five or six days up to a week every month in Cambodia continuing the path, And honestly, it really would keep me awake at night just knowing kids were there, and other kids I'd seen but didn't have time to talk to they were still there. When I was gallivanting around the world with actors and driving, you know, driving a Portra and Los Angeles, that it didn't feel right.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: It felt like a tell me about the tell me at the moment you're standing of this massive rubbish tip when you get this phone call from an actor complaining about the most petty things, can you explain that to us?
00:30:24
Speaker 3: Well, there was a very big actor back then, earning goodness, more than twenty million dollars of film and said hactor was doing work for us, he was going to do publicity, and he flew to Tokyo on a private jet with some real rap bag friends. I mean, seriously, I met him there. I mean he got settled in and was meeting the depressed. So I hopped on a plane down to Cambodia as one does. Went break to the land threw as one does. And when I got there was a lovely old granny who recently passed away. She would help me out. She'd identify kids that were in a specific danger, and she was especially excited. And she took me to the perna of the rubbish tip and there was three young kids there that were very sick. They'd been left there. No one quite knew where they came from. And everyone looked at me, and it just resolved it, because you know, I would fix things. And I was mortified.
00:31:23
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know about hospitals. I'm not a father.
00:31:26
Speaker 3: And in all this stress, my phone rang and my office in Los Angeles patched me through to the actor in Tokyo and his agent in Los Angeles, and he was really angry. He was refusing to get on his private jet and apparently what happened with that team in Japan had put the wrong stuff on the plane. It was even more trivial than just the food. It was the games that he liked to play, and Sony was slupert and PlayStation all his games excellot, I mean seriously, and he was carrying on like a buddy, headless Chiken. Yes, yes, And I was standing there and what really hit me was he paused for a moment. He got a little apologetic, and he said to me, you know it's got I'm already angry with, but you know, my life wasn't meant to be this difficult. And he was serious, he was genuine, and that there was a bitturning moment for me. And it wasn't because it was absurd. I wasn't angry at all, but everyone was telling me I was crazy to leave that lifestyle and all that I did. Not to mention this huge salary, It all star doesn't make sense. At that point. It was like some of them above us sending me a signal, who have vindicated all my decisions. Between between these people and working with the kiss left on this garbage dump, it all makes sense, and it made it easier for me.
00:32:52
Speaker 1: Who was the actor?
00:32:53
Speaker 3: I can't say. I've already been told not to the diptoe too close.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: It was a clue.
00:33:02
Speaker 3: The last time I did that, there came these Reddit posts and subgrade it's all trying to guess who it was. I was told actually a proceedure caution. At that point, I went back there and that was when I intended to resign, but they had a contract that was rm PLAD and it took a few months of negotiations to get out of the contract. I think because no one had Sony films, LEDA was going to a garbage They threw I was going to Paramount Studios because they were trying to recruit. No one believed it, so it was a bit difficult getting out of the contract. So they did in December two thousand and four, and a week later I was in Cambodia, moved there.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: I sold everything off. It was a long process of spelling.
00:33:42
Speaker 1: And you suck it all into your facilities in nine PM.
00:33:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, piece by piece. Yeah, you know. The great business plan I put together, I think at that stage had at twenty five kids that were some were in residential care because they had no parents, very high risk. And my plan was that bring in eighty six children was the plan. And with that I would never have to establish a charity and never have to us other people's money, eighty six kids to sell in my house in Brentwood and everything else. I could fund it almost in perpetuity, and so that sounded like a great financial plan. The problem was that. You know when I went down to this garbage dump and there was child eighty seven and a kid had come up, you know, a child had come up me ten years old and say can you get me into school? I had no ability to say no. So eighty six became one hundred, and then two hundred. The first four years we doubled in five and that the woman was running it, a really remarkable Cambodian woman would come in my office every two weeks, wave my arms and say no more kids, no more kids.
00:34:53
Speaker 2: So we had to get another building and it grew from there.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: So do you do you house the children as well as educate.
00:34:59
Speaker 3: The And yes, if the kids do not have families, we have foster family throughout. There's no residential care, but those who've been through a views for abandoned or the parents who died will find good foster families. We're built very very inexpensive housing, built five hundred and something home so the grandmothers will live there and take on three or four foster kids and they're really great.
00:35:28
Speaker 1: Did you say you've built five hundred homes.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: It's over five hundred in the area and another one hundred outside. But these are inexpensive homes are compared to the landfill that like mansions, but there's little gated communities. The houses cost about two and a half thousand each. They also have running water, private bathrooms, bit of landscaping in the very very safe and so that was all the costs were from a Vancouver company build housing, who've funded all of this. But you get a mostly grandmothers and they were really good, you know, because of Cambodia's history today all the almost every parent was a survivor of Paul Park, the roof days, and they've got their own they've got their own pressing issues with mental health, you know, post traumatic stress. But the grandmothers of courso they grew up in a different time and a good time, so they're the best ones to teach that not to get in the tangent. I'm a big believer that child development requires people who do storytelling need to tell stories about roots and origins and values and superstitions, traditions. I think that's a far better way for a child to develop than social media. And so the grandmothers are encouraged to do that.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: So how many children are in your care now?
00:36:53
Speaker 3: In the foster care programs about one hundred and eighty I believe, but one hundred and eighty it does vary. And of course special needs kids, they've been abandoned a lot of cases the parents and the mothers don't believe they can cope and so they leave them. Sometimes medical clinic or a little three wheeler cook will arrive with the baby on board. So we have the special needs programs. Yeah, and they're all in foster families too.
00:37:19
Speaker 1: I've seen vision the kids who all dressed up nice in their school uniforms and their packs. And is that the sort of standards that you establish and set.
00:37:29
Speaker 3: Of Yeah, I mean they love having a uniform. They haven't had new clothes. The big thrill for me to this day aren't given up to twenty years is I'm out in this The areas the villages for want of better were outside of the landfill. They're just on the Perwitter. The landfill closed, but the people there still go out mostly in the evening scavenging in the nearby suburbs. They go into the city. Pullinger can't behind them, so they're still whijority is still doing that for a living. But I'll go in the evenings and in every another child would come up and say, can you get me into school? Even now I take I was for the record in my notes, I was to take a photo and I've got this roally fabulous collection of the photos of the child when I first encountered them, to see them out being in clean, happy because they get to go to school, they get a meal, clean clothes, and the other thing which the kids didn't count. As we start to pick up the problems a child had with family. A lot of cases they had to look after younger siblings. So we have a we have a thriving kindergarten program, and that have to take care of grandparents who are very sick, and we have a medical clinic. Now we have the granting program to take care of those. There was about half a dozen of these fundamental burdens what I would call the adult burdens that the child was caring and so they are happy, happiest clams. They wanted to get into school and we can grant them that. Then the wishes were all there.
00:39:04
Speaker 1: You did establish the child protection unit because there's so much abusive kids over there.
00:39:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the abuse I thing everywhere. I'm not sure cambody has got a higher rate, so we do that falls under Cambodian Children's FUNT. I didn't so much establish it. There's a very good friend, former detective in Australia, worked for the Interopol, or the regional version of Interpol in Cambodia.
00:39:34
Speaker 2: I found it really hard knowing that the majority.
00:39:37
Speaker 3: Of cases, the serious child abuse cases were never going to court for a whole variety of reasons. And he had a plan that would work with the Cambodian National Police and we do the training, all the capacity building, and when there was an investigation, Gym and this team would go out there and try and train the local cops how to fill in reports, how to a witness statements, use of forensics, fingerprinting, luminol, occasionally DNA, and it's worked. Wonders close to ninety percent now end up in convictions. You know, I can't get too close. I find it just so sad. There's a lot of murders, attempt at murders, aggravated great those sort of things, and it's yeah, it's up. GYM runs it and I can't add any value. If you do it, now you go, you will get to jail for a long time. The Cambodian government's been really supportive. They've never interfered in the case. Even when it's someone that's wealthy or very powerful, they've never stepped in. So I try and look at philosophically as I can't stop the crimes from happening, but the impunity has gone and if you do it regardless, you will go to jail and chat with here and no picnic.
00:40:49
Speaker 1: Scob come to the end. I've got two more questions, Yes, which might be important to you. How are you funded and what help do you need?
00:41:00
Speaker 3: We are it's all private donations. The way we're structured. It's difficult to go for these big grants because they're very limiting. They have to.
00:41:10
Speaker 2: They're very restricted on where the money goes.
00:41:12
Speaker 3: We like to work community and families and try and push us much onto the community, and the grants are both limiting and constant reporting. So it's all private, private funding. Some family foundations, the little Bit one for us as the child sponsorship program. I started that It wasn't so much about the money, but I was, yeah, these kids are very dynamic, great kids, and I wanted my friends in Los Angeles have direct communication through email and I realized that had a lot of money, so we charged for it too, quite a bit of money that they have to write, the sponsors have to write, and they have video phone calls. And it grew from there, so we went from that to one thousand, five hundred child sponsors vonsoring a child each and that's a good way to get funding and that's a good base. But otherwise I'm on the road maybe three months of the year. This year is a big year, is twenty years since I moved here, so it's a big push. And I'm coming to Adelaide in September. I want. I want to see my old mates and have a bit of a celebration and hopefully raise some money too.
00:42:17
Speaker 1: And the best way people on access is your website.
00:42:20
Speaker 2: There's a website Cambodian Children's Sun dot org.
00:42:24
Speaker 1: That's an amazing story. I feel inadequate, but well done.
00:42:28
Speaker 3: Honestly, I feel so lucky to feel very fortunate to have had all these fabulous times. I'm looking to get a place back in Adelaida. I was there recently this on my old mates. I was fabulous. I really love that place. I loved them botanic gardens and the fabulous coffee shops on the East End side of the East Terrace area.
00:42:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to flow it down. I'm not a young man anymore.
00:42:50
Speaker 1: It looked pretty good. Still got out there.
00:42:52
Speaker 3: Yeah that's real.
00:42:55
Speaker 1: Well done, Scott, great chat. Thank you.
00:42:57
Speaker 3: Thanks.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: Scott Newson was my guest for the creative The Cambodian Children's Fun. But go and look at the website you'll be impressed. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Good everyone, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is Scott Neison. Scott at one stage had an amazing job. He was the president of twentieth century Fox International and all the glitz and glamor that goes with that job. But he was came to Australia as a six year old immigrant from Scotland, settled in elizabeth wasn't particularly great at school, but left school early, got a job as a projectionist at one of the movie theaters, We're Drivings, and amazingly worked his way up to that position. But then in a moment of epiphany when he was visiting Cambodia, he gave it all away, gave it all away and established a charity called Cambodian Children's Fund. Now I've said that rather quickly. It happened obviously with a lot more detail and thought than that. But Scott joins us. Scott Nisan, welcome to the program.
00:00:51
Speaker 2: Great, thank you, thank you for that great introduction.
00:00:54
Speaker 1: So from where are we speaking to you.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: I'm at my home right now. I'm in non Pen, Cambodia, working from home today. Yeah, I've been here, been in Cambodian now for twenty years.
00:01:06
Speaker 1: In which times you've established and reinforced and growing that charity called the Cambodian Children's Fund. How many kids do you look after right now?
00:01:15
Speaker 2: In education?
00:01:16
Speaker 3: We have about one eight hundred past we have kindergarten, special needs, a nursery for the little east who've got problems at home. But yes, this going so well now it's started from a very small beginning.
00:01:31
Speaker 1: Well, there's so much there to talk about. We'll get to that, but I'm still intrigued by this young Scottish immigrant settling Elizabeth. Can you take us back to those days?
00:01:42
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, well my parents I was born in Scotland, my parents when my father in particular really wanted to have a better life for us and it was in a cold, damp and while of unemployment, so we did the immigration thing back then.
00:01:57
Speaker 2: Go stretching back to the mid thick these the.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: Australian government was looking for workers pay the affairs over so it was ten pounds for the family. He put us on a fabulous cruise ship to come to Australia to get a job. So my dad got a job of what was then called the Weapons Research Establishment, I think it's Department of Defense now and he got the job there. We got a house in Elizabeth North, which was the government housing scheme, and that's what it all began.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: You weren't great at school? There was there an issue there? Or were you just like every other kid who doesn't like school?
00:02:36
Speaker 3: No, you know, I never really enjoyed it, but I was a very good student up to a point. I was always one of the A students up till about year ten or so, and then it started to fold it.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: I'm told now.
00:02:49
Speaker 3: By the people that know these things that it's basically a form of ADHD. I couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate, and apparently in cruise way through to about year nine or so, because it's pretty obvious stuff, you don't have to focus too much. But years ten, eleven, twelve, you're looking at formulas, equations and you have to pay attention, and that's when it's doudged How died to unravel?
00:03:15
Speaker 1: For me? Was it? What was the life like for a little Scottish immigrant kids?
00:03:20
Speaker 3: I mean it was great there because it was it was wide open spaces, it was warm weather. I had really good friends, you know, we would hang out. There's many great adventures to be had. Playing in the local creek and riding bicycles up fast distances to the local national park, and it was it was really nice place to be.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: But school got hard for you and you did you leave or were you expelled or what?
00:03:49
Speaker 3: Actually, the first time the teachers that it wasn't much point me staying there. I went out and got a job I was doing, working milking cows, and then I went back to school, and then I realized I just didn't want to didn't want to be there.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: So the first time I was after suggested I leave.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: The second time it was entirely my own choice and I had actually got a job, so that was a big impetus.
00:04:12
Speaker 1: For me just go back to the milking cows part. How did that happen?
00:04:18
Speaker 3: Awful? My parents. My parents were determined I was going to I was going to work at something I hated so much that I'd want to stay in school. It was miserable too, really miserable, and it didn't last very long. That was down in MIDINDI I think it was down in milking news cows. And it was a big, big, big operation as well. So yeah, that got me. That put me back in school temporarily.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: No you got a job, So you weren't You weren't at idol, you got a job straight away?
00:04:50
Speaker 3: No, no, I went, I had had implied I had applied for the doll and of course you had to go on job interviews. The first day, the first interviewer, I got the job, so it.
00:05:04
Speaker 2: Was never never applicable. Yeah, the government were great.
00:05:08
Speaker 3: The first job, which was the group was called Clifford Theaters back then cliff Theater Circuit and it was driving theaters and cinemas, a couple of small cinemas mainly driving in the country, and they were hiring. They set up the job in Sorry, the government, Commonwealth government set up a job interview on my very first day and I got the job and it was great. I love working there.
00:05:32
Speaker 1: So you're working as a projectionist? Did I? Did?
00:05:34
Speaker 2: I read in the office?
00:05:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, working in the office most of the day as an assistant there and runner and then in the evening so I would work as a projectionists to make some extra cash.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: What sort of what sort of training did you have for that?
00:05:47
Speaker 3: Oh well, I'm sorry, I was an assistant projectionist. Not no training at all. Back then, the guys with the projectionists. They were very talented. They had to get through all sorts of courses, including a fire fire wall thing, and my job was just to flip the reels over when it was filmed. You'd remember back in the days when you had to change reels every twenty minutes and then you need to see the burn up in the top right, and that was a big job, was switching those reels.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: I suppose you've got a chance to love the movies or embrace the movies.
00:06:20
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it. Actually, it's my first real interest, real interest in the films. I'd like you to go and see them. But it was really good to see this bast ray of films, good and bad. Of course, the driving movies are pretty bad, most of them.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: There not an ourday.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, they'll have a few few good films, a lot of you know, sex films, of course, and then the rest was just dismal.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: It was pretty dismal stuff.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: A little bit sad though the drivings have gone.
00:06:51
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had some great times at the drive and I guess we all did. It was the thing to do. They just couldn't survive in the revenue, just wasn't there.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: So you go from being an assistant projectionist, this young assistant projectionist. What's your first promotion?
00:07:09
Speaker 3: Well, when the when the drive in theaters started to close down and the clip the theaters was owned by Grady Union and Gray Union decided they would run it from their main office, and so they closed the office and I was offered a job into Sydney working alongside John Flits, a fabulous guy, and I was He was the head of programming, Good Grading Union. I was his I was the number two guy there.
00:07:38
Speaker 1: Now there was a true Your dad wasn't happy about you moving to Sydney.
00:07:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was. He was a bit worried about you know, it was a big city. I'd grown up in Elizabeth and he thought that Sydney would even be alive basically. And but you know, we drove across together. I couldn't afford to fly, so I put my possessions in the trunk of my car, on the boot of the car, and it was you know, it wasn't much. It was a very big stereo system and a pair of jeens, I think, and he and I drove over together. What year was that, That was nineteen eighty five.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: So how's how's how does the city like Sydney hit a young fellow from Adelaide in nineteen eighty five?
00:08:17
Speaker 3: You know, my brother lived there already and I stay on the floor at his place and it was it was really great. It was good.
00:08:24
Speaker 2: Heways had an eye o me and it was fascinating. Experience was a whole different thing.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: So what was your role?
00:08:31
Speaker 3: I was the assistant program programming manager, so you know, getting the movies into the cinemas, negotiating with the film distributors, studios, and that was basically it. And my boss did all the hard work.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: So but you must have shown some special Yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker 2: I know, I hate that. I don't know what was being that way.
00:08:54
Speaker 3: I don't know. I really don't know. I was just doing my thing. After two year as Quite Cinemas, that took me away to run their film buying programming department. So that was the first big jumps I was there, and yeah, just moved on. I don't know what it was, honestly to this day, and I'm not trying to be you know mo just about it.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: I just don't quite get it.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: Every time someone did come and stay, why didn't you come and work here, and I kept on saying.
00:09:22
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you know, we're all really good jobs.
00:09:27
Speaker 3: I've always been very lucky to get in with good people, good businesses at a time.
00:09:32
Speaker 1: So at that time in Sydney, what was your big triumph for there? Was there a big hit movie that you were responsible for?
00:09:39
Speaker 3: It was I can't really take credit for. Yeah, Crocodile Dundee was a big one.
00:09:44
Speaker 2: That was a big one.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: Made me look like a genius.
00:09:48
Speaker 1: Could you predict the success of that?
00:09:50
Speaker 3: Of course we all could know. I'm joking everyone. Everyone was sort of saying no one knew, really, I mean, no one knew would be such a huge success.
00:09:58
Speaker 2: It ran for two years.
00:10:00
Speaker 1: Scott Neeson, the founder of the Cambodian Children's Fund, is my guest. It's an amazing journey. Stay tuned. We'll talk about it a bit more after the break back shortly, Welcome back to conversations. We're speaking with Scott Neeson.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: Now.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: Scott's in Non Pen in Cambodia, where he founded the Cambodian Children's Fund. But the journey to get there is incredible, as we spoke about earlier, as a young kid comes out from Scotland, settlers in Elizabeth Leave School, gets a job as an assistant projectionist that in the movie Theater, goes to Sydney working for Holts and obviously make an impression. Did you expect to be offered a job in America?
00:10:45
Speaker 2: No, not at all. No, I was working for Hoots.
00:10:48
Speaker 3: They moved me to run distribution production for Holts, and then twentieth Century Fox and Columbia TriStar they got together. They met a three way operation, three way joint venture, and I was managing that. I was the boss there for a few years, and Fox in particular really like what I was doing. All the films were being big hits, and which is hardly mind doing. You know, you get good films, everyone's going to come out. But then they offered me a job in the US, and that was where made the move in ninety three.
00:11:23
Speaker 1: You say that so casually, so modestly.
00:11:27
Speaker 3: I think if I could explain it, I would. But honestly, I have been a lot of being very lucky too. I know if people like to say, well, the hard I work, the luckier I get. But there is luck involved being the right place at the right time and everything else. That certainly played a part in it.
00:11:43
Speaker 1: I imagine that will to be just so glamorous, even in Sydney. We'll get to we'll get to America, as we suggested. But even in Sydney, mixing with big stars, big Australian movie stars.
00:11:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, a few back, and there was not a lot of production. That was mainly the distribution of overseas film. There were a few times. Yeah, got to meet Paul Hogan, which was a big deal for me, with a really big deal. Yeah, And occasionally that have American actors come out as well, so I got to meet with them.
00:12:15
Speaker 1: So obviously I'm going to say what was he like?
00:12:18
Speaker 3: It's exactly what you see. He's always very down to earth, good guy and when the first premiere was on, he was outside having a beer outside, didn't sit through the bill.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: He was a really good guy.
00:12:28
Speaker 1: So you're off to American and I know, I understand your dad wasn't happy about that aither.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, again, I think you're very concerned that I've been coming back, that it was a tough, cutthroat environment and once again i'd probably come back and have to find another job. And he's very concerned about that too. So flew to La and and you know, rented a place there thinking I was going to get kicked out. After about six months or so, opened and then realized that there was only there was the accent and everything else wasn't working.
00:13:00
Speaker 2: You know, it worked out really well, worked terrifically.
00:13:02
Speaker 3: Well. My boss that brought me in was it was crazy as a bad Water senior. He was a streamer and ea gether. But you know, he took to me and we worked really well together. And the studio for anyone that could work with him, must be okay. So they brought me over there. What was his name, Water Senor. I arrived in Los Angeles and after in my second month there, there was a big upheaval at the studio. He got fired and the new bosses came in. So it was very stressful at the time for me. And then my third month he had the big La earthquake. So I was ready to come home and away. It was pretty.
00:13:41
Speaker 1: Bad, but you stayed and stayed.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and worked up from there.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: Is it as glamorous as we imagine it to be with the moon stars and the and the openings.
00:13:53
Speaker 3: And well, I want to more than the senior ranks, it is, Yeah, And being head of International meant going to all the festival festivals and the Calm Film Festival, Balloon ven As Film Festival, these really great places, and dealing with most of the actors. I was responsible for making sure that they were okay doing the film, helping with publicity, being on set reading them early on. So yeah, it was and not to mension, you know. The obviously the financial and the lifestyle I had.
00:14:25
Speaker 1: Because of that described the lifestyle well.
00:14:29
Speaker 3: When I was Resident of International, I mean I was getting I thought they were crazy paying that much money.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: They were paying me a lot of money, and the job was a lot.
00:14:40
Speaker 3: Of travel overseas, supervising international officers and productions and stuff. But it was you know that always fly. It was in my contract to five first class. Had a beautiful house in the hills of Brentwood, had Cindy Crawford on one side and Warner's Production had on the other, huge mortgage, and had a boat in the harbor, several cars or suv all those sort of things, and it was really good because the movie premiers and everything else. It was a very nice life.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: Would you befriend the stars, Yeah?
00:15:18
Speaker 3: I did. Actually I had a friend who find a few back then. Some of them kept in touch with there's some really good people finding up. It was mainly the big male actors. I got any, especially.
00:15:31
Speaker 1: Well with your name, of a few.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed working with Mel Gibson. It was on Braveheart. Of course he was on the wagon and he had his own jets that would fly from city to city premiers doing publicity, and yeah, it was so much fun. As soon as the jet took up, you'd bring out the card table and we play. We'd played poker until near touchdown. He'd always clean up the table. It was a smart cookie.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: What sort of stakes you're talking?
00:16:03
Speaker 3: Oh, no, you know, a few dollars here and there. I think maybe a dollar or five dollars. Maybe none of us were going to lose their money to melt. He had enough as it was.
00:16:15
Speaker 1: Did you deliberately do that? No?
00:16:17
Speaker 3: And I was trying to get my money back on and it was very clear there were no Once that plane took up, it was just us.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: There was no hierarchy at all. Every man for himself.
00:16:26
Speaker 1: Did really where you would fly to Europe to just have lunch with Georgia Omarny That.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: No, well, he.
00:16:34
Speaker 3: Honestly, mel was having lunch as Georgia money and I tagged along get some free clothes. So yeah, he was having lunch and I flew in to join the lunch, leave again from from Milan for the rest of the trip with him.
00:16:50
Speaker 1: You're talking about some of those great movies Brave Heart, Titanic, Star Wars, x Men, the movies that you were helped to promote. What about the ones that didn't work.
00:17:00
Speaker 3: Were probably releasing maybe forty fifty films a year, so over the tenure I do five hundred films would have worked on and worked with so many.
00:17:13
Speaker 2: You know, some were stinkers.
00:17:14
Speaker 3: They were just really just worse stinkcause how they turned out and people wouldn't even remember them today. And then there were those that were really good films but didn't have trouble finding audiences. And of course then the ones that really did work worked very well, like in the smaller films, like the film Monty was a big film. It was a very inexpensive film. It did great round the world, and again that was because of the film. I mean people that thought loved to tell their friends. But in the case of the Titanic, Braveheart, took some good marketing to get the thing going, which was my specialty.
00:17:48
Speaker 1: You're over there in LA and the epicenter of movie production and movie promotion. How is Australian? How was the Australian industry? You viewed from there?
00:17:58
Speaker 3: They dynamics. It made some very very commercial films, some really good films, not just not proper doi old undeas but intelligent films, good independent films, and had a really very good reputation over there. There's all a bit of a scramble to pick up U Australian films get first look at it, and of course films like Shine. Scott Hicks's film really made a new ground there. That was quite the legend back in my day in Los Angeles.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Scott Scott had.
00:18:29
Speaker 3: All sorts of trouble with everybody wanted to pick up the film, including Funny enough, back then Scott had sold it to Focused Speetures, part of Paramount and Harvey Weinstein, who was furious. He wanted it for himself and he was taking in this. He caused the scene he was going on at Scott. He was trying to get Scott to travel with him, give him his private jet, and none of that worked and hard, made a big scene that made the newspapers.
00:18:58
Speaker 2: He was burst into a.
00:19:00
Speaker 3: From I think of the Can't Film Festival and berated the guy from Focused Films and was let out of the let out of the restaurant, and it was a whole thing.
00:19:10
Speaker 2: Scott can told the story better than I can.
00:19:13
Speaker 1: Well, I think Harvey's found a few.
00:19:18
Speaker 3: Loudly.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: Now, look, we're going to take a break. We've talked about the glamour side, and there's so much more. I just from a boy voyeuristic point of view, we want to know more about that. But the real story is this moment in time, the sliding doors moment in time where you give it all away to establish the Cambodian Children's Fund. And we'll talk about that when we come back. Scott Neeson is my guest. Folks back shortly, Welcome back to Conversations. If you've just tuned in, we're speaking with Scott Nisson. Now, Scott's an Adelaide boy. While he came from Scotland, originally settling elizabeth when he was six, worked his way up through the movie industry to be president of the twentieth century Fox International. With this an amazingly glamorous lifestyle in l where he's living next all the Sydney Crawford best mates with all mates with Mel Gibson. Before we get onto your church, I want to know about the last I mean, the girlfriends that you must have had and the yeah and the like.
00:20:14
Speaker 3: We Yeah, I had many, well I had some of them. The most beautiful girlfriends, I mean, really is something mostly for models or backgrounds and modeling actresses. And yeah, I mean that were an assistant projectionist and Elizabeth. It was a it was a big deal for me. I mean it was it was so easy to meet women, and especially when I was traveling different countries and in Los Angeles, of course, it's very much focused on the film business and relationships there. So I like to think it was me, but I think being president of Box International might have helped a bit.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: You never settled down, No, well.
00:20:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, back in Los Angeles again, I was. I was a single guy from Elizabeth, and I was had a house those I was traveling many many months of the year, traving first class and dating some really beautiful women. So no, no, there was no at that stage. No, And you know I had really was where I was very aware that my friends in Los Angeles who had gotten married in more than eighty percent of the case, that would end badly after two or three years. I saw some really good friends who'd worked hard, loose everything, moving into tiny apartments and their partner would keep the house. So yeah, that was a full consideration. I just couldn't get any point. I was having a great time.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: So you go on this journey. I sense it was a spiritual journey. You're going to Cambodia to visit some of the the holy sites there. Can you just can you walk us through you You've had this great job, this great life in La then something clicks in Cambodia. Didn't inspire you to give it all away.
00:22:02
Speaker 2: When I was leaving Fox, i'd finished my contract there.
00:22:05
Speaker 3: I was starting a new job at Sony Pictures, like I needed more money, but I decided I wan to take a break in between the two studios because I was pretty much burnt out between jet lag and finishing up at Fox. It was a lot the plan whilst see all the bigger Buddhist monuments throughout the throughout the region. Yeah, there's borro of a door in Indonesia, and of course in Cambodia designed for what up in seam Reupe. And so when I was in Nonpan, I met a couple of guys, one local and a bloat from Gotland who'd set up his own charity, and that kind of intrigued me. The plan when I was to start donating to one of the charities there one that would help children get them to school. But where I was the certainly on the touristy areas, we're all just shamed. So I got rich quite a number of times, and I asked him, I trusted him implicitly, is there any place where I know the money will get to the kids. I know it will get them into school and there's no real backup. And they gave me an address, they didn't say what it was and ended up being this massive garbage done the municipal landfill of Mpan and it was huge and stinky and hot, and because of the post war issues with the Cambodia, of course kids have been left there, abandoned there often some have made their own way there and some are even living on the landfill. But they had no parents. So the scavenger bit finding bottles, plastics, metals basically go to sleep right there on the landfill, and that was just appalling. I mean, you haven't said anything like it. I think one thy five hundred kids, some very very young, and that was very hard to take in.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: You feel guilty about that?
00:23:56
Speaker 3: No, I felt I could help. Yeah, I think a lot of us we don't so much feel guilt, We just feel helpless. And I think I was in a lattic category because again I didn't see any personal responsibility per se. You know what really got to me was that I was on the landfill and these kids were just terrible state, and I was expecting them to come up and start asking me for money. This girl, and I didn't know it was a boy or a girl because they covered in all their clothes. There's no place to leave them, and the heat on the garbage unp is like nothing else in this world. This girl came up and she said to me, which is can you get me into school? And all of a sudden, I was trying to be stoic. I can't say no to that, you know, it's just such a touching and compelling question to ask. So it was a friend who was also translating for me, and I trusted him, went down to the outskirts, met with the mother. She had a mother there, and rented.
00:24:56
Speaker 2: This single room. It was in the great room, but had wanting water.
00:25:02
Speaker 3: Fifteen dollars a month, and I raised so when I went back to Los Angeles, I would send money to my friend. He would pay the rent for them, deliver the food, and then check to ensure the girl was saying in school. And he wasn't that difficult to me. If you break it down into the different issues within that, it was remarkably easy. And the little sister was very, very sick. I believe it was typhoid, and got her into a hospital. That was the first thing, was the kids asking to study. I'd never come across that. I thought it was this huge, impractable problem that was beyond me, you know. For me and I had these prejudices about big charities, especially international charities, and you wouldn't know where your money's going. People were paying themselves big money to run a charity. I felt like it wasn't my responsibility. I was paying a lot of taxes and the government to look after it. And the other one, the other prejudice was that even if I gave away all my money everything over half of what I was learning. So I still switch on the TV and see these poor, poor kids in poverty in war torn areas. When this child is standing in front of you and asked, only asked to go to school, I mean, it is my responsibility. I can do something about it. And I knew where my money would be going. It was going to go direct. So that was the second thing that really struck me. It probably struck me the most was that I could actually help. I'd always thought it was way too complex and for all the ways talked about was the largest international charities. But I went back to my hotel and it really struck me that I had changed this one girl's life completely and that she was going to be going to school, her sister was going to get well, I'm not quite sure.
00:27:00
Speaker 2: There's something about it.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: I found really compelling.
00:27:05
Speaker 1: So you go back to well, did you sell your house and all your contents at the house.
00:27:09
Speaker 3: And basically yes, Well, by the time I left at the end of the at the end of my time off, I started getting these kids off what was happening regularly. So the plan was to go back to Los Angeles and start my job at Sony pictures and spend money across the Cambodia to help get more kids off of there. But a part of me really wanted to stay continue doing this. I was kind of burnt out on the film business. But it was really energizing, as a real sense of joy when you'd see these kids come off that first bill. By the way, she graduated with a degree in economics and finance. Actually, most of the kids that came off the landfill back then, I've already completed their education. It was exhilarating. It felt like I was doing something meaningful as opposed to marketing movies. Back I made a pledge to make. The pledge was that I spent twenty six years in the film business at that point, and I wasn't going to do anything rash. So I would wait twelve months to steve it would stick, and so I went back to Los Angeles. It was miserable that first meeting to start talking about the test results on a film or the test results on TV advertisements, and dealing with actors who were just so crazy on their demands. It just didn't quite I just couldn't sit in. So I started the process of spelling.
00:28:37
Speaker 1: Scott Neisan is my guest. So much more to come though back after the break. Scott Neisan is my guest on conversations. A boy from Adelaide who left school at an early age, made his way all up the chain to the in the movie industry, the president of twentieth Century Fox International. But he takes a holiday and he goes on the spiritual journey to Cambodia and is overwhelmed by the predicament of some of the kids there who live on this rubbish dump, this big rubbish dump, and sees that he can actually make a difference. Why that's as a couple of other kids. Then goes back to Hollywood and he's discharged increasingly gives it all the way as as simple as that, Scott. You sold your house, sold on your positions, and then went back to cambode Is it as simple as that?
00:29:24
Speaker 3: Yeah? Basically yes it was. I went as I said, I had a stage to myself, but I wouldn't make a rash decision in twelve months, and I stayed in my job for twelve months. But I was sort of cheating to myself by selling stuff off things by peace and finding a new home for my dogs and if the boat, everything has start to be sold off piece by piece. And to make it even more obvious, I would spend but maybe five or six days up to a week every month in Cambodia continuing the path, And honestly, it really would keep me awake at night just knowing kids were there, and other kids I'd seen but didn't have time to talk to they were still there. When I was gallivanting around the world with actors and driving, you know, driving a Portra and Los Angeles, that it didn't feel right.
00:30:12
Speaker 1: It felt like a tell me about the tell me at the moment you're standing of this massive rubbish tip when you get this phone call from an actor complaining about the most petty things, can you explain that to us?
00:30:24
Speaker 3: Well, there was a very big actor back then, earning goodness, more than twenty million dollars of film and said hactor was doing work for us, he was going to do publicity, and he flew to Tokyo on a private jet with some real rap bag friends. I mean, seriously, I met him there. I mean he got settled in and was meeting the depressed. So I hopped on a plane down to Cambodia as one does. Went break to the land threw as one does. And when I got there was a lovely old granny who recently passed away. She would help me out. She'd identify kids that were in a specific danger, and she was especially excited. And she took me to the perna of the rubbish tip and there was three young kids there that were very sick. They'd been left there. No one quite knew where they came from. And everyone looked at me, and it just resolved it, because you know, I would fix things. And I was mortified.
00:31:23
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know about hospitals. I'm not a father.
00:31:26
Speaker 3: And in all this stress, my phone rang and my office in Los Angeles patched me through to the actor in Tokyo and his agent in Los Angeles, and he was really angry. He was refusing to get on his private jet and apparently what happened with that team in Japan had put the wrong stuff on the plane. It was even more trivial than just the food. It was the games that he liked to play, and Sony was slupert and PlayStation all his games excellot, I mean seriously, and he was carrying on like a buddy, headless Chiken. Yes, yes, And I was standing there and what really hit me was he paused for a moment. He got a little apologetic, and he said to me, you know it's got I'm already angry with, but you know, my life wasn't meant to be this difficult. And he was serious, he was genuine, and that there was a bitturning moment for me. And it wasn't because it was absurd. I wasn't angry at all, but everyone was telling me I was crazy to leave that lifestyle and all that I did. Not to mention this huge salary, It all star doesn't make sense. At that point. It was like some of them above us sending me a signal, who have vindicated all my decisions. Between between these people and working with the kiss left on this garbage dump, it all makes sense, and it made it easier for me.
00:32:52
Speaker 1: Who was the actor?
00:32:53
Speaker 3: I can't say. I've already been told not to the diptoe too close.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: It was a clue.
00:33:02
Speaker 3: The last time I did that, there came these Reddit posts and subgrade it's all trying to guess who it was. I was told actually a proceedure caution. At that point, I went back there and that was when I intended to resign, but they had a contract that was rm PLAD and it took a few months of negotiations to get out of the contract. I think because no one had Sony films, LEDA was going to a garbage They threw I was going to Paramount Studios because they were trying to recruit. No one believed it, so it was a bit difficult getting out of the contract. So they did in December two thousand and four, and a week later I was in Cambodia, moved there.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: I sold everything off. It was a long process of spelling.
00:33:42
Speaker 1: And you suck it all into your facilities in nine PM.
00:33:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, piece by piece. Yeah, you know. The great business plan I put together, I think at that stage had at twenty five kids that were some were in residential care because they had no parents, very high risk. And my plan was that bring in eighty six children was the plan. And with that I would never have to establish a charity and never have to us other people's money, eighty six kids to sell in my house in Brentwood and everything else. I could fund it almost in perpetuity, and so that sounded like a great financial plan. The problem was that. You know when I went down to this garbage dump and there was child eighty seven and a kid had come up, you know, a child had come up me ten years old and say can you get me into school? I had no ability to say no. So eighty six became one hundred, and then two hundred. The first four years we doubled in five and that the woman was running it, a really remarkable Cambodian woman would come in my office every two weeks, wave my arms and say no more kids, no more kids.
00:34:53
Speaker 2: So we had to get another building and it grew from there.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: So do you do you house the children as well as educate.
00:34:59
Speaker 3: The And yes, if the kids do not have families, we have foster family throughout. There's no residential care, but those who've been through a views for abandoned or the parents who died will find good foster families. We're built very very inexpensive housing, built five hundred and something home so the grandmothers will live there and take on three or four foster kids and they're really great.
00:35:28
Speaker 1: Did you say you've built five hundred homes.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: It's over five hundred in the area and another one hundred outside. But these are inexpensive homes are compared to the landfill that like mansions, but there's little gated communities. The houses cost about two and a half thousand each. They also have running water, private bathrooms, bit of landscaping in the very very safe and so that was all the costs were from a Vancouver company build housing, who've funded all of this. But you get a mostly grandmothers and they were really good, you know, because of Cambodia's history today all the almost every parent was a survivor of Paul Park, the roof days, and they've got their own they've got their own pressing issues with mental health, you know, post traumatic stress. But the grandmothers of courso they grew up in a different time and a good time, so they're the best ones to teach that not to get in the tangent. I'm a big believer that child development requires people who do storytelling need to tell stories about roots and origins and values and superstitions, traditions. I think that's a far better way for a child to develop than social media. And so the grandmothers are encouraged to do that.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: So how many children are in your care now?
00:36:53
Speaker 3: In the foster care programs about one hundred and eighty I believe, but one hundred and eighty it does vary. And of course special needs kids, they've been abandoned a lot of cases the parents and the mothers don't believe they can cope and so they leave them. Sometimes medical clinic or a little three wheeler cook will arrive with the baby on board. So we have the special needs programs. Yeah, and they're all in foster families too.
00:37:19
Speaker 1: I've seen vision the kids who all dressed up nice in their school uniforms and their packs. And is that the sort of standards that you establish and set.
00:37:29
Speaker 3: Of Yeah, I mean they love having a uniform. They haven't had new clothes. The big thrill for me to this day aren't given up to twenty years is I'm out in this The areas the villages for want of better were outside of the landfill. They're just on the Perwitter. The landfill closed, but the people there still go out mostly in the evening scavenging in the nearby suburbs. They go into the city. Pullinger can't behind them, so they're still whijority is still doing that for a living. But I'll go in the evenings and in every another child would come up and say, can you get me into school? Even now I take I was for the record in my notes, I was to take a photo and I've got this roally fabulous collection of the photos of the child when I first encountered them, to see them out being in clean, happy because they get to go to school, they get a meal, clean clothes, and the other thing which the kids didn't count. As we start to pick up the problems a child had with family. A lot of cases they had to look after younger siblings. So we have a we have a thriving kindergarten program, and that have to take care of grandparents who are very sick, and we have a medical clinic. Now we have the granting program to take care of those. There was about half a dozen of these fundamental burdens what I would call the adult burdens that the child was caring and so they are happy, happiest clams. They wanted to get into school and we can grant them that. Then the wishes were all there.
00:39:04
Speaker 1: You did establish the child protection unit because there's so much abusive kids over there.
00:39:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the abuse I thing everywhere. I'm not sure cambody has got a higher rate, so we do that falls under Cambodian Children's FUNT. I didn't so much establish it. There's a very good friend, former detective in Australia, worked for the Interopol, or the regional version of Interpol in Cambodia.
00:39:34
Speaker 2: I found it really hard knowing that the majority.
00:39:37
Speaker 3: Of cases, the serious child abuse cases were never going to court for a whole variety of reasons. And he had a plan that would work with the Cambodian National Police and we do the training, all the capacity building, and when there was an investigation, Gym and this team would go out there and try and train the local cops how to fill in reports, how to a witness statements, use of forensics, fingerprinting, luminol, occasionally DNA, and it's worked. Wonders close to ninety percent now end up in convictions. You know, I can't get too close. I find it just so sad. There's a lot of murders, attempt at murders, aggravated great those sort of things, and it's yeah, it's up. GYM runs it and I can't add any value. If you do it, now you go, you will get to jail for a long time. The Cambodian government's been really supportive. They've never interfered in the case. Even when it's someone that's wealthy or very powerful, they've never stepped in. So I try and look at philosophically as I can't stop the crimes from happening, but the impunity has gone and if you do it regardless, you will go to jail and chat with here and no picnic.
00:40:49
Speaker 1: Scob come to the end. I've got two more questions, Yes, which might be important to you. How are you funded and what help do you need?
00:41:00
Speaker 3: We are it's all private donations. The way we're structured. It's difficult to go for these big grants because they're very limiting. They have to.
00:41:10
Speaker 2: They're very restricted on where the money goes.
00:41:12
Speaker 3: We like to work community and families and try and push us much onto the community, and the grants are both limiting and constant reporting. So it's all private, private funding. Some family foundations, the little Bit one for us as the child sponsorship program. I started that It wasn't so much about the money, but I was, yeah, these kids are very dynamic, great kids, and I wanted my friends in Los Angeles have direct communication through email and I realized that had a lot of money, so we charged for it too, quite a bit of money that they have to write, the sponsors have to write, and they have video phone calls. And it grew from there, so we went from that to one thousand, five hundred child sponsors vonsoring a child each and that's a good way to get funding and that's a good base. But otherwise I'm on the road maybe three months of the year. This year is a big year, is twenty years since I moved here, so it's a big push. And I'm coming to Adelaide in September. I want. I want to see my old mates and have a bit of a celebration and hopefully raise some money too.
00:42:17
Speaker 1: And the best way people on access is your website.
00:42:20
Speaker 2: There's a website Cambodian Children's Sun dot org.
00:42:24
Speaker 1: That's an amazing story. I feel inadequate, but well done.
00:42:28
Speaker 3: Honestly, I feel so lucky to feel very fortunate to have had all these fabulous times. I'm looking to get a place back in Adelaida. I was there recently this on my old mates. I was fabulous. I really love that place. I loved them botanic gardens and the fabulous coffee shops on the East End side of the East Terrace area.
00:42:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to flow it down. I'm not a young man anymore.
00:42:50
Speaker 1: It looked pretty good. Still got out there.
00:42:52
Speaker 3: Yeah that's real.
00:42:55
Speaker 1: Well done, Scott, great chat. Thank you.
00:42:57
Speaker 3: Thanks.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: Scott Newson was my guest for the creative The Cambodian Children's Fun. But go and look at the website you'll be impressed. Thank you for joining us.
