All language subtitles for Episode 0102

The '80s,
where there's no success like excess.

Wealth and arrogance.

Everything was exaggerated.

But that's not all it was about.

The '80s was an amazing
decade of contradictions.

This is he story of 10 years
that changed the world.

And when doing what you love
can turn your passion into profit.

A whole new world is waiting.

It was a life-changing decade.

New technology
creates new opportunities.

I thought we'd make maybe $20,000.

A new breed
of entrepreneur hit dizzying new heights.

We don't know what we're doing.
We're kids.

And capitalism
gets a conscience.

-Hi, I'm Ben.
-I'm Jerry.

This is a Peace Pop.

Changing the way we live,
play and eat for good.

Change started in the '80s.

At the start of the '80s,

gyms were all about men,
muscles and sweat.

And there's a poster boy
for this new movement.

Arnold Schwarzenegger,

28 years old, 6'2", 240 pounds.

The Austrian muscleman
got his break

after starring in the bodybuilding
blockbuster, Pumping Iron.

That's what I call posing.

By 1982, the big guy has muscled
his way onto the big screen.

Crush your enemies.

See them driven before you,
and hear the lamentation of their women.

Up and down the country,
Arnie wannabees are getting ripped.

Now look, gyms all
over the country are lined with muscle.

The hunk population is
definitely in a boom cycle.

But women looking to get fit

wanted an alternative
to the male-dominated gyms.

Gyms were really more for men.

Men who wanted to look like
Schwarzenegger, or Rambo.

And I remember hearing women talk
about how intimidated they were.

There just weren't many options for women

who wanted to work out and go to a gym
in the '80s.

And it's a movie star
already at the top of her game

who stumbles headfirst
into this challenge.

That is fact, not fiction.

Love her or hate her,

Jane Fonda definitely stands up
for her revolutionary beliefs.

But little does Fonda
know, that in the 1980's,

she will become the focal point
for a very different kind of revolution.

Powered by a gizmo that finally hands over
the power to the people.

Movie making power, that is.

It all starts with Fonda
making a political statement.

Two, four, six, eight,
we don't wanna radiate.

I would say we favor immediate phase out
of nuclear energy

and a crash conversion program
to alternative renewable technology.

Fonda's passion for change

brings her to the set
of The China Syndrome,

an anti-nuclear power thriller.

Them in the background and a tight
two shot with me and the...

Yeah.

Fonda stands up for her cause,
and then falls down.

I was wearing big high platforms, vanity.

I wanted my legs to look longer.

And I was running and I fell
and I had broken my foot before,

so it just re-broke in the same place.

It's okay, he's gonna make it.

For a movie star,
staying fit is a job requirement.

I couldn't do ballet anymore,
and I had a movie coming up

called California Suite,
and I had to wear a bikini.

What was I gonna do?

Up to now,
Fonda keeps in shape by doing ballet.

But with a broken foot,
she needs an alternative.

My stepmother said, "Listen, there's this
class at Gilda Marx' studio."

So I went.

It was an hour and a half
to very cool music.

I'd never taken a class like that.

It blew my mind.

Jane Fonda decides to take on
a new cause,

bringing equal opportunity exercise
to the masses.

Women were not supposed to sweat.

There were no exercise classes
of any kind.

You could go to a gym and stand
on something with a band around your butt

and it made you wiggle like this.

Can you feel that working for you?

That was about it.

With so few gyms catering
to women, Fonda decides to build her own.

She would teach
the 6:00 a.m. class

before she would go in
and start shooting the film.

And that class was jammed.

The mere fact you could rub elbows
and sweat with Jane Fonda,

made it all that much more fun.

It changed my life. Thomas Jefferson said,

"Revolutions can begin in the muscles."

Jefferson may
or may not have said that.

But someone did suggest
she use the latest technology

in home entertainment
to showcase her workout.

I'd never seen a video.

I didn't know anyone that owned
a video player or any... Or any videos.

In 1981,
the video market's tiny.

No one even knows if it's legal
to record off the TV.

Only 2% of US households own a VCR.

And let's just say, this 2% are not all
watching Jane Fonda workout videos.

It's a market
that barely existed a couple of years ago.

50% of the tapes available
are hardcore pornography.

All the more reason for Fonda to
refuse to cross this video tape barrier.

I said, "Absolutely not,

"I'm an actor.

"No, I'm not gonna do that."

I thought it would ruin my career.

She agrees to lend her voice,

but not her body,
to a video of her workout.

Okay, can we, sorry,
can we start just that part again?

Thanks.

I thought if people can see me
every day in a leotard,

how are they gonna believe me
as different characters on the big screen?

But her director,
Sid Galanty, won't take no for an answer.

I had to convince her

that people were gonna buy the video
because her name's on it,

and they're expecting
to see her in the video.

My then husband, Tom Hayden and I,
had a state-wide political organization

in California called
the Campaign for Economic Democracy.

And Sid kept pestering me and pestering me

and finally I thought,
"Well you know something?

"I mean, I don't know who'd buy it,
but we could make about 10 grand off this,

"and it, you know, it would help
the political organization,"

so I gave in.

But the political
is about to become personal.

- And this is it.
- Whoo!

Women loved doing it.

Guys like watching women do it.

And pretty much everybody got physical.

The workout video reaches further
into American life than anyone imagines.

Twenty-three more
best-selling videos follow.

You could be living in Chicago
or New York,

and you could work out with Jane Fonda

and you could be doing the same thing
that we were doing back in the studios.

So it was a genius idea.

Jane Fonda makes
the personal political.

Looking good becomes
the new '80s ideology.

Suddenly women realized
they didn't have to starve themselves,

they didn't have to engage
in eating disorders or whatever.

They could do this in the privacy of their
home, and it would alter their bodies.

And it would change their brains.

It would change their feelings
about themselves.

And Fonda's workout helps spark
a parallel revolution in the tech sector.

Within a year, VCR sales nearly double.

It's a commercial phenomenon.

Business couldn't be better.

One in 10 families
in the United States

has a video recorder now.

Those early VCR owners
were part of an entire new industry,

the home video industry,
that took off like a rocket.

We went from just a handful of people
having VCRs

at the beginning of the decade,

to virtually everybody owning a VCR
by the end of the decade.

Workout becomes
the biggest selling video of the '80s.

Jane Fonda's on set stumble
becomes a run, a home run.

I wish I could say
I was a brilliant business woman.

It would be a lie.

It was a complete fluke.

Timing as
they say, is everything.

And it's timing and practice
that will turn one teenager's rebel hobby

into a global phenomenon.

It's 1981, a young man
by the name of Tony Hawk

is back in the emergency room.

For the fourth time in a month.

At one point, the doctor

pulled me into another room
away from my parents,

and asked me if there was anything going
on that I'm not telling him.

Insinuating that my
parents were beating me.

But the only person beating up
Tony Hawk is Tony Hawk.

I went through a pretty serious
string of injuries,

when I first started getting good.

Broken pelvis, broken thumb,
broken rib, broken elbow.

Knocked my teeth out,
I dislocated my shoulder.

Thirty concussions.

And little does he know,

that it's a new piece
of movie making technology

that will turn him into
a global superstar.

As the '80s progressed,
the cameras got smaller and smaller

and smaller until suddenly,
you have a camera anybody can operate.

A revolution
is about to be televised.

Last year
they were calling eight-millimeter video

the format of the future.

In 1983, JVC and Sony
launched the first camcorders.

JVC's VHSC camcorder
does everything

the eight-millimeter cameras do and...

They're not cheap.

But wannabe Spielberg's can,
for the first time,

easily shoot color video with sound.

And it's no coincidence that with
eight million of us now owning VCRs,

this Japanese tech revolution is about
to turn one teenage rebel's passion

into a huge amount of profit.

Disillusioned with mainstream sports,

kids like Tony Hawk are drawn
to alternative sports

like skateboarding.

And you're growing up in America

and you have a number of sports
handed to you.

Football, basketball, baseball.

They're all sanctioned, they're connected
to schools, they're connected to parents.

Skateboarding's not connected
to any of those things.

A sport with no uniform,
no referee,

and most importantly, no rules.

Kids really identify with that,
especially the ones that already felt like

outcasts on their own.

I mean, that's really...
That's where I was.

In the early 1980's,
with the recession closing skate parks

due to high insurance costs,
these rebels get by and get high.

What happened in 1984,
was the invention of ramps,

and so skateboarders like Tony Hawk
invented acrobatic aerials.

He was doing maneuvers
that I never even thought were possible.

I thought, "If this kid falls, he's gonna
shatter like porcelain,"

because he was getting so high,
and what he was doing was so dangerous.

His skill level was just unbelievable.

Well, my drive is just, uh, progression.

Just to be able to keep going on
and doing new things.

But Tony Hawk never dreamed
just how far that new thing would go.

Until he met a fellow
rebel named Stacy Peralta.

I'm a former skateboarder.

I'm not somebody from corporate America.

I was somebody from the street.

Stacy is very into high tech,
which includes one of those

new-fangled video cameras
we talked about earlier.

When Tony Hawk was 13,
and he looked at me and I'm 26,

he saw a kindred spirit.

He didn't see a business person,
he saw a fellow skateboarder.

It's the perfect partnership.

Tony Hawk has the star potential,
and Peralta

has the newly invented
star-making machinery.

I hired a small crew

and the first day we went off to shoot,

I didn't feel they were listening to me,

and I felt they were
condescending towards me.

And so I fired 'em.

I rented a camera
and started shooting myself.

We literally shot
for like two hours, and he had a camera,

and I did some tricks.

I mean, that was the extent
of my involvement in the video.

Lunch, take five.

I do remember being
at my kitchen table

editing these films going,
"What am I doing?"

Peralta aims to distribute
his first skateboard video

to a few specialty shops.

He plans to sell, mmm, 300?

Thirty thousand fly right out the door.

What would happen
with these skateboarding videos

is kids would buy them,
and they'd watch them 100 and 200 times.

They'd watch 'em over and over and over.

Kids all over the world were writing us,

saying, "Please make
another one next year."

And so we started making
a new video every year.

This is a skateboard.

That's not a skateboard.

Now this is a skateboard.

Hawk and his
fellow skateboarders

become international superstars.

Oh, my God, he's gorgeous.

Everywhere we went,
we had crowds of thousands of people.

It was strange for us to suddenly
be recognized on a big scale

because we had been doing something
for so long that no one cared about.

I mean, at one point,
I think we were paying Tony Hawk

$20,000 a month based on the fact
that we sold

20,000 of his signature model boards
every month.

So when Tony Hawk was in high school,

he was making a tremendous
amount of money.

By 1987, skateboarding
has rocketed from a $4 million

to a $300 million industry.

Infiltrating movies and commercials.

In the mid '80s, advertisers and agencies
became aware, obviously,

of counter-cultural elements,

and the trick was,

how do we adopt for ourselves,
on behalf of our clients,

let's say a with it, or hip, or today,
or modern brand image?

For that you have to

associate your brand with skateboarding
or other symbols.

I guess in a Machiavellian way,

brilliant marketing scheme
of big business in the 1980's,

was rather than get into fights
with the counter culture,

why not just own the counter culture?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

The counter culture
is now the over the counter culture.

And this finds perfect expression
in two ex-hippies

who soon will become household names.

-For the record, you are?
-Jerry.

-And you are?
-Ben.

-And this is?
-Ice cream.

When Ben Cohen
and Jerry Greenfield first became friends,

they had no idea where
their shared love of food would lead.

We met in seventh grade,
'cause we were the two slowest,

chubbiest guys in the class.

After college,
is when they sat down together, and said,

"Let's start a business."

Well, we ended up
taking a correspondence course

in how to make ice cream and we wrote away
to Penn State University

and had a $5 course which
Ben and I enrolled in.

We split it and paid 2.50 apiece.

And got 100 on every test.

So we knew we were set to make ice cream.

They scraped together $12,000
to buy an old gas station

in the hippie mecca
of Burlington, Vermont.

And start pumping out ice cream.

But there's one small problem.

Ben Cohen has a reduced ability to taste.

Is he the flavor person, or is Jerry?

The chunks aren't big enough.

No, it's definitely Ben.

You know, those of us who don't have
a real good sense of taste

have compensated by having
a real good sense of mouth feel.

- So, you know the textures...
- That's why

you need the big chunks?

The texture contrasts,
yes, a very big thing.

It's kind of interesting having
your head flavor developer

be somebody that has no sense of taste.

But nothing could prepare
Ben and Jerry for what was to come.

An ice-cold war with a corporate doughboy
and his favorite brand of ice cream.

By 1981, Ben and Jerry
have started selling their ice cream

to about 30 local restaurants,
but in a true hippie fashion,

they aren't making any money, man.

It's when they decide
to package it into pints

and wholesale direct to grocery stores
that the business really takes off.

They started to get a following,

like each store in Burlington said,

"This is our ice cream."

"This is Vermont. It's Ben and Jerry."

Folks became flavor loyal.

Well, my favorite Ben and Jerry's
is Peanut Butter Cup.

I love that peanut butter in there.

Chunky Monkey.

When I was a fatso,

I would have the brownie Ben and Jerry's
ice cream all the time.

Cherry Garcia. It's on the rider.

So, all of a sudden,
this has very serious traction

and it's starting to grow.

With the bucks now rolling in,
Ben and Jerry choose

to use their new-found wealth
to change the world.

One scoop at a time.

This is how we use our packaging to talk
about an issue that we're involved in,

which is world peace.

What makes Ben and Jerry's
really different

is they are very true to
their social mission.

They wanted to be their own bosses,
and they wanted to do it their way

and often with an idealistic twist.

Ben and Jerry
are a new breed of businessman,

one that combines '80s consumerism,
with '60s values.

They weren't just selling you
good product,

they were selling you an idea,
an image, a dream.

By 1983, with business booming,
Ben and Jerry agree

the time is right to expand into Boston.

All of a sudden people started
to take notice because

it was selling out faster
than Haagen-Dazs was.

And that's
where the trouble starts.

Ice cream is the one luxury
that most people can afford.

Reuben Mattus
started it all

when he launched Haagen-Dazs,

a made up name with no meaning,
designed to sound foreign.

He now turns out
more than 16 million gallons a year,

in a big plant in New Jersey
with another soon to open in California.

Haagen-Dazs dominates
the luxury ice cream market,

making over $115 million a year.

And it seems they wanna keep it that way.

I was in my office one day

and a gentleman from Haagen-Dazs
called me.

And he said, "Chuck,

"you've gotta make a decision.

"Either you're going to carry Haagen-Dazs
or Ben & Jerry's.

"It's plain and simple.
You have to declare your loyalty."

I called Ben...

- Yo.
- Told him about what had happened.

And... And Ben just bust out laughing.

I said, you can laugh
but it's quite serious

because we have to
make a business decision.

Ben and Jerry
decide to fight the power.

A take no prisoners ice cream war began.

It wasn't legal,
it was illegal to do this,

it was fair trade
being blocked, essentially.

Ben and Jerry
may have been idealistic hippies,

but that doesn't mean
they don't have the stomach for a fight.

They hit back, where it hurts.

Haagen-Dazs
being owned by Pillsbury...

Pillsbury's new unbleached flour.

Ben and Jerry
took this iconic figure, the Doughboy,

'cause the Doughboy related
to everything Pillsbury made.

And asked,
"What's the Doughboy afraid of?"

And they printed it up on bumper stickers
and they put it

on their pints of ice cream
and they encouraged people

to write letters to the CEO of Pillsbury.

The press loved this.

It was picked up like magic,
all over the place.

Pillsbury was just embarrassed
that the Doughboy was being attacked.

How could a doughboy be evil?

It turns out that the doughboy
is afraid of something.

Two guys in Vermont doing what they love.

Pillsbury started getting inundated
with angry consumers.

So Haagen-Dazs took a position as,

"We're gonna go away quietly,
because this is very bad press."

They were forced to back off.

This power to the people
marketing strategy prevails.

Ben & Jerry's was free to go in
and sell their product in Boston.

And sales went way up really fast.

You probably couldn't get
two more unlikely

business guys than Ben and Jerry.

Who knew that two hippies
taking a correspondence course

could lead to this global
multi-million-dollar company,

but that is what happened.

We're usually cited as the two
most famous graduates of the Penn State

correspondence course, I think...

It's gone up in price now,
we've been so successful.

- What is it now?
- It's around $17.50.

All you need is love,
along with a passion for your product,

an understanding of your market,
and of course, a good lawyer.

Corporate America will never be the same.

You do get a new kind
of businessman.

You get the Whole Foods empire starting

as wholesome, organic, tasty great food.

You get this new kind of business
that took this late '60s,

'68 idea and turned it
into a way to make money.

At times it seemed the '80s
were at war with the '60s.

But the spirit of that decade
also ignited entire new industries.

It's a good time to be idealistic
when you're under 30.

Our world is
about to change forever.