On Monday, all of Hollywood was in a tizzy. Kane Parsons just left Star Wars in the dust, Curry Barker somehow got even more people to see his movie in the third weekend than the second, and to top it all off one of the most popular creators the platform had ever known, Mark Edward Fischbach (aka Markiplier), on Sunday debuted his winter theatrical hit on YouTube exclusively. The creators (and filmmakers of Backrooms, Obsession and Iron Lung, respectively) had everyone scurrying.Sitting in his office in Playa Vista, the YouTube executive Fede Goldenberg radiated more zen.The company’s headquarters are built at the Howard Hughes-built “Spruce Goose Hangar,” and Goldenberg was as unbothered by conventional thinking as the man who designed the real estate around him.
“It’s a particularly great feeling — two movies leading the box office and Markiplier on the platform too,” said Goldenberg, who like so many Google executives has a title — head of film and TV partnerships — that only hints at his influence. “I know people are surprised but it does not surprise me one bit — these are people who’ve had years to perfect the craft of entertaining audiences.”Also, it’s not like Goldenberg didn’t warn Hollywood. Exactly a year ago this month, the executive stood in front of an audience at a resort a half hour east of Denver and told a streaming conference this would happen. “It’s no exaggeration to call these guys the New Hollywood,” Goldenberg said of the creators — perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, alluding to the Coppola, Scorsese and Lucas revolution of a half-century earlier. To be Goldenberg — or, really, any YouTube executive right now — is to live the kind of giddy life so many come to Los Angeles to build. You work with talented artists, you trust them, and slowly but surely people begin to take notice, until suddenly one day the whole world is banging down your door.Goldenberg came from Brazil with just such a dream nearly two decades ago. He has spent the past 15 years at Google, witnessing and building the careers of the storytellers on the site. YouTube doesn’t dictate creative choices — they’re not like a traditional studio that way. But they work with creators every step of the way on what video to release and when to release it to maximize its impact and grow subscriber bases. Any doubts that this kind of advisory system works, check out Parsons’ 3 million subscribers built in just a few years — or Markiplier’s long-play effort to get to 38 million.Goldenberg says he holds no secret as to what makes a piece of content catch on virally; the key is just listening to the connections the content creators themselves are making.“Creators have a finger on the pulse of what feeds the audience better than anyone. Last week I was at an event with Mark[iplier] here in Los Angeles and he was saying that creators will very easily cross over from horror to comedy because both forms are about telling the audience one thing and then surprising them with a turn of events,” Goldenberg says. “Now, that’s not something that would be obvious or intuitive to most of us. But they just get that instinctively.”
