00:04
Jesper Bæhrenz
I chose We the People (detail) by a Danish Vietnamese artist called Danh Vō. It's two details, part of a toe, and part of a foot. It's a one-to-one replica of the Statue of Liberty, cut into 400 different pieces. It's done in copper, and he adopted "We the People," which is the first three words of the Declaration of Independence. The 398 other pieces are spread all over the world.

00:32
Jesper Bæhrenz
And it's a rethinking of an old concept. With the iron core inside, and on the outside, it's clad with two millimeter-thin copper. He thought, that's how I can recreate it by taking the skin of the statue.

00:48
Jesper Bæhrenz
It's art as concept. He saw something and he said, what is my new take of it? How am I going to make us think about the Statue of Liberty in a different way?

01:00
Jesper Bæhrenz
As an immigrant to the US, there's hardly anything more American than the Statue of Liberty. Danh Vō was from Vietnam, came to Denmark, and he has this idea about taking things that we know and then recreating. I feel one of the fragments is almost me, going to the US and going back to Denmark. I'm a fragment of the US and a fragment of Denmark.

01:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the National Gallery of Denmark and the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is Jesper Bæhrenz, a Danish writer, producer, and radio and TV host. Welcome, Jesper.

01:53
Jesper Bæhrenz
Thank you, Tina.

01:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We're very happy to have you here. I'm talking to you from Los Angeles, where you lived for more than a decade. You worked here with your wife, Mette Lisby, and your company, VIVE Productions. Am I saying it correctly?

02:09
Jesper Bæhrenz
That's correct, yeah.

02:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. Explain to us what VIVE Productions did and does, and why did you want to settle in Los Angeles?

02:18
Jesper Bæhrenz
It was sort of a natural progression. We had our company set up around 2000, been in the industry since 1983. And then a little bit like an athlete, you want to go play with the big boys and the big girls. So after we had spent five years in London from 2004 to 2009, we wanted to see if we could establish ourselves in the US. We came over in 2009 and ended up staying for 12 years, almost a better part of 13 years. We came to play in the major leagues.

02:53
Jesper Bæhrenz
And it's not for nothing that the US, it's interesting, once they have their basketball championship, they call it the world championship, even though there's only teams from Canada and the US playing. It goes in the entertainment industry as well. They just believe they're the center of the world, and to some extent, when it comes to entertainment, they truly are.

03:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I see that you have a poster of Los Angeles behind you. Maybe tell us where you are at the moment. I assume that it meant a lot to you to have been here.

03:21
Jesper Bæhrenz
Oh, absolutely. It came to a point where either we were going back to Denmark in '22, or we were staying for the rest of our life. That's where sort of the crossroads were, being in the US and being on the level and being in a city like Los Angeles, where entertainment really is everything.

03:39
Jesper Bæhrenz
You go to the dentist and on the table is Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, the lifeblood of LA. When it goes well in the movie and tv industry, everything goes well in LA, everybody makes money. To be part of that was really amazing. And for us, we had a good run.

03:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
And as I said, for us, it was either staying there for the rest of our lives, or going back. And it coincided with some opportunities that we got here in Denmark. For Mette, it was a book deal, and for me, it was doing radio that I've done since I was 17 years old. And I got an offer I couldn't refuse. And I know it sounds like something from The Godfather. And I am Danish, full Danish, I have to say that.

04:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And looking back, what were your expectations and dreams for your stay in Los Angeles? And did it turn out to become everything that you had dreamed of?

04:31
Jesper Bæhrenz
It became everything and more. One thing that was evident, Mette and I — Mette as a standup comedian and me as a radio host — we knew that we were not coming to become the new Ryan Seacrest on air and trying to make it on KIIS FM and stuff like that. We knew that we had moved behind the camera and were trying to develop concepts.

04:54
Jesper Bæhrenz
Also, that the Danish radio and TV and partly also the movie industry sometimes only take concepts from the US or from the UK or wherever they take them from. So it was sort of a necessity to establish ourselves as concept makers. And that was the dream when we came to the US.

05:12
Jesper Bæhrenz
To use an American word "blessed," we feel that we were blessed for the years that we had in the US. And great fun meeting great people. If we talk about the Danes for just a little bit, I will say that the Danes we met over there, it's our family. We're sort of brothers and sisters, because when you go to the US or to London or to New York or wherever you go, you are made of the same mold because you want that experience, you want that adventure.

05:39
Jesper Bæhrenz
And that's why easily, when you meet people from your own country, you feel the bond right away. Well, you never know what's going to happen in the future. Right now we're here in Denmark, who knows what the future will bring.

05:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And can you talk a little bit about the feeling of standing in LAX with your suitcases? It's a huge airport.

05:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
It was really something to come there. Due to the friends we had, we were there half a year before on a visit. We just went to the Obama inauguration in DC, the inauguration of his first period, and we came to LA. It had been bitterly cold in DC. And we came to LA, and it was warm. And that was also the feeling that hits you —

06:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And this is in January, right?

06:22
Jesper Bæhrenz
That's in January, but it was warm compared to DC and Denmark. But that feeling of coming to LA at that time in January was a repeat when we arrived in June, that in LA, you feel that anything can happen.

06:36
Jesper Bæhrenz
And there's a reason for it. I'm gonna explain it. It's gonna sound weird. But it's because the weather is always nice, which means that if you and I made an appointment playing tennis, or a meeting at a cafe, we wouldn't call each other up in the morning to check the weather.

06:52
Jesper Bæhrenz
You always do that when you're in London, you always do that when you're in Denmark, but in LA you just meet. So you have that feeling that anything you set your mind to is possible. And I know it's a little made up story, but that's the feeling that you get. And you get that it's people on the way all the time.

07:10
Jesper Bæhrenz
You're always surprised when you go out on the highway at four o'clock in the morning, there's always cars, you're going, who are these people? Where are they going? But they're always going somewhere. And you just feel that you tap into that bloodline that it's on the go all the time.

07:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What has surprised you about life and doing business in Los Angeles or the US in general? What was unexpected?

07:32
Jesper Bæhrenz
I remember we had a meeting with Ashton Kutcher and his production company at that time and we were presenting some game ideas for him, for TV, but also for board games because that was part of our business at that time. He loved our ideas and his people were really forthcoming, but we could feel it's not going to happen. And he was going, listen, I love the ideas and I know a production company who will love your ideas. Can I set up a meeting for you?

07:58
Jesper Bæhrenz
And we're going, what? what? You're going to send us on to somebody else and you're going to help us and you're going to help them? Isn't that your competitors? And that was the feeling that the industry is so big that yes, you're competing, but you always want to give somebody a horseshoe. You always want to give them a leg up. You want to help that idea.

08:20
Jesper Bæhrenz
Because it's all about the ideas. It's all about the concepts. It's all about the scripts. Of course you can compete about it. But you also want to help because the industry is big enough. Just because that idea walks out the door doesn't mean that you don't have a business. And it doesn't mean that we wouldn't come back with the next idea that might be even greater. So that was the initial feeling, that yes, it's a cutthroat business, it's competitive as hell, but there's also a unique friendship and unique network that just kicks in right away.

08:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Ashton Kutcher. That's a big name in Hollywood. It's a big name worldwide, actually.

08:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
We had an agent that introduced us to all the major production companies. We did a pitch of ourselves and got to shake hands and stuff. And then you're basically on your own. Then it's your ideas that really counts for you. So the introduction was super important and we spent a lot of time, I'm almost going to say, creating the art of pitching ourselves with our agent.

09:17
Jesper Bæhrenz
What is our storyline? Because that's just a major thing in the US — What's your pitch? What's your angle? It's not what you have done before. It's what you want to do. And how do you pitch that? How do you pitch that the success that you had is going to bring you even more success? That was a sport on its own.

09:39
Jesper Bæhrenz
So one of the things that we did thanks to the fabulous Danish bakery in LA was that every meeting we had, we would bring small cookies and petits fours and cakes and stuff like that, establishing who we were. So we knew the people would remember us. For Christmas, we would send out Kransekage, and say this is a Danish tradition and thanks for the year that's gone, and stuff like that. Hope to see you next year. This is what we have for New Year's Eve.

10:04
Jesper Bæhrenz
There's some small things that you can do. We got called on it once. I think it was Warner Bros. And then the guy said, yeah, so you're trying to sugar us up. And that's what you do because when you get sugar you tend to buy more. I was going, oh, I didn't know that. Sorry about that.

10:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what should Danes who want to explore being part of the entertainment business in the US be aware of before they apply for visas and pack their suitcases and board the plane?

10:34
Jesper Bæhrenz
Prepare yourself for the long haul. People really don't take meetings with you. They're not interested in you. If you're there for three months, they don't care. That's what it is. They want to know that you stay there. So save up a lot of money so you can support yourself for a sustained period.

10:52
Jesper Bæhrenz
Business will be slow in the beginning. You're not going to hit a home run unless you come over and you're Mads Mikkelsen. Then it's easy enough. If you have something running already, if you have a concept that's up and running, it's also going to be easier for you.

11:06
Jesper Bæhrenz
Prepare yourself for lots and lots of work. It's not a 9–4 job in LA. It just simply isn't. You take all the meetings you can, you get up in the morning, and then you go networking every night. It's basically a 12-hour day, and if not seven days a week, it's six days a week.

11:30
Jesper Bæhrenz
And that's just how it is. For our part, we were prepared for it because we also had business in Denmark, which meant that we would get up early in the morning and do work with Denmark. And then you start the American day. And sometimes because you have New York three hours earlier, you're up and running already.

11:44
Jesper Bæhrenz
It's gonna take a little longer than you're gonna expect, no matter how well prepared you are. Know that you have to stay longer, know that you have to work harder. But as I said, with the Danes you meet over there, they are all in the same boat.

12:00
Jesper Bæhrenz
I'm not gonna say anything about work ethics here in Denmark, but Americans, they will send you an email at 10 o'clock at night and expect to get an answer. That's just how it is. Probably their assistant, but if you're a company on your own, then you're also your own assistant. So you have to answer it. So prepare yourself.

12:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you mentioned Warner Bros. and you mentioned how important it is to be able to pitch, but how does one open the door to Warner Bros. in the first place? That is an art in itself because the doors are closed for a lot of people.

12:30
Jesper Bæhrenz
They are. Get representation, get an agent if you can, and get an agent before you move there. And make sure that you have somebody who knows the industry, who has the ability to open the door for you. Cold canvassing, calling up, trying to get a meeting — they get thousands of calls. And in that sense, you need a foot in the door somewhere on the other, and that's why you network, because in the long run, that's going to help you.

12:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
And I think that everybody who is in the US or have been there for prolonged periods, they know that their best years — I'm almost going to say the last of their years because then all of a sudden people will recognize you, they will know who you are and that means that you know you can get a meeting without your agent calling and you build a relationship with people.

13:18
Jesper Bæhrenz
The Americans, due to the way that they go to school, they'll have high school in one place of the country, then they'll go off to university, they're gonna move somewhere else, and then they'll move for a job. It's a U-Haul nation. They're used to moving from one place to another and rebuilding their whole network so they know what's expected of them. Whereas we in Denmark, sometimes we have friends that we go to public school with and that's our friends for their entire life and we might not even move cities.

13:47
Jesper Bæhrenz
Which means, that in a sense, we're not really well built for the US. I'm glad that on my own point, I was an exchange student back in the '80s in Madison, Wisconsin. So I got a little taste for it back then. And that definitely helped me a lot. So prepare yourself for that, but get an agent. If you can't get an agent, get a lawyer who's in the entertainment industry. If you can't get a lawyer, get a publicist.

14:12
Jesper Bæhrenz
Find anybody who's associated with the business and get them to introduce you one way or the other. And then, as I said, get up at dawn, and then go for it, and know that hundreds of thousands of people like you are coming to that city, and they're as good as you, some are better, some are not as good as you, hopefully, but that's who you're competing with. You are really in the Major Leagues. That's who you're playing with.

14:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that you were with like-minded Danes and Scandinavians. How important was the network of people from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland too?

14:54
Jesper Bæhrenz
If you can come with a little critique, compared to the success that Denmark has had in the US, and especially in the movie industry, I'm surprised that we don't have representation in LA. We should really have representation in LA.

15:10
Jesper Bæhrenz
I know that we have it up in San Francisco and they do tremendous work up there. The background that Denmark has in the movie industry and the entertainment industry, music industry, we should have representation in LA. And that's really missing.

15:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you say representation, what exactly do you mean by that?

15:26
Jesper Bæhrenz
I mean on the consulate level, that we should have an ongoing consulate that's there. And not just an ambassador and a minister of culture who shows up at the Oscars once we are nominated. Because we can't do anything with the suave that some of the bigger countries can do.

15:44
Jesper Bæhrenz
And sometimes I'm a little bit embarrassed that even Norway seems to be better at pushing their industry than we are. We seem a little stuck in the past and always believed, well, Hans Christian Andersen. I'm kind of going, yeah, but that's like what, 250 years ago? Let's move up. Let's get something else.

16:00
Jesper Bæhrenz
We really could do more. And I'm not saying that we should do it with the Swedes or Norwegians or Finnish or Icelandic people, not because they're not equally good as us, but I think that we have something, as a matter of fact, because with Nordisk Film, the world's oldest movie company, we should champion that. We should definitely push the envelope on that.

16:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I agree with that. The Finns are the only ones who have a real consulate here. Kudos to them.

16:28
Jesper Bæhrenz
Because it's not just culture, it's also economy. With the amount of Danish record producers in LA alone, with the amount of people who are involved in the film industry, TV industry, I can't believe we don't have representation and ongoing staying and strong representation. We should have that.

16:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, it's incomprehensible. I have visited you a few times at your home in LA and you had a lovely home in the hills with a view of downtown Los Angeles, which is mainly high rise buildings that you could see in the horizon from your house. What was the highlight of your life in LA, professionally and privately?

17:11
Jesper Bæhrenz
Well, I think that to establish ourselves over there with the home in the hills, it's what dreams are made of, honestly. There was a little movie in that. Even though it was not the biggest check when we sold our first concept for TV, that check, I wished we framed it.

17:26
Jesper Bæhrenz
Because it was just funny, that you felt, now, you're starting to get money every month because you signed off that they have the rights for a period and you might get it back if it's not getting made. That was one of the major successes. And to be honest, I don't even remember what concept it was now —

17:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I was about to ask you that.

17:44
Jesper Bæhrenz
But I think that we ended up optioning out 15, 16 different concepts. And we had lots of things going on in comedy. Had a weekly comedy show that was called I'm Not Making This Up, that was a commentary on weekly news and stuff like that, to rival some of the shows on TV, whether it be Jon Stewart or John Oliver, or whoever.

18:05
Jesper Bæhrenz
Just getting those shows optioned was amazing. And I can't remember who said it. I think it was a movie producer who said, the best thing that you can do is option things. Don't ever get them made, because then people can see if it's a success or a failure.

18:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
An interesting point of view.

18:23
Jesper Bæhrenz
It's interesting because people don't know, are you a flop, are you a success, you don't know. And sometimes, I would say maybe that was our luck in the meantime, that they didn't go, all of them, so. I would say to pinpoint one over another, I can't do that. I think that on the script side, and I know that's more Mette's business, to write and research the script for the Borge movie was really something.

18:51
Jesper Bæhrenz
On a private note, I think that standing on our balcony overlooking, as you described it, downtown LA and then all the way to the ocean and then you had the incoming planes landing at LAX, that was pretty much a highlight. And then, waving at Kate Perry as she walked by on the road, I think that would count as a highlight as well.

19:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, that sounds like a highlight. We talk about the location of your house, the sun is always shining. LA is beautiful in many ways, especially the hills, the ocean. But it can be tough on the inside when you scratch off the makeup, I guess we could call it. What is your take on this? Los Angeles is a rough city to be in.

19:36
Jesper Bæhrenz
I think that it's been a little bit of a roller coaster ride. And I'm not going to talk politics here because as I said, we arrived just as Obama was inaugurated for his first period. It was his slogan, hope. And America felt hope.

19:54
Jesper Bæhrenz
Because, as I said in the beginning, once LA is up and running and has success, then it is truly a trickle down economy. If movies are going well, if the entertainment industry is going well, the restaurants are going well, street sweepers are being paid, the gardeners are getting money and stuff like that.

20:14
Jesper Bæhrenz
And once it doesn't, like it did under COVID, then it became a little bit rough. So COVID showed the rough side again. And because of the infrastructure of LA and because of the way that you don't have paid health care, Social Security and stuff like that, when crisis hit, it gets really ugly.

21:35
Jesper Bæhrenz
And it is a weird place because you drive to your house up in the hills, and you're gone from the nitty gritty things going on Downtown LA, or for that matter, out in Santa Monica, where a lot of the homeless people are living. Yeah, it's a tough city. I think COVID made it a little bit worse. It was getting better and then it was getting worse. And yeah, now the homeless situation is really a challenge in LA.

21:00
Jesper Bæhrenz
Also an experience to meet a lot of people who maybe had success in the '80s and are living in houses they can't really afford to fix up because they're living off the residual of a hit they had in the '80s. That's a different experience. And I think that everybody who's tried to have success in LA, and then experienced hardship, they'll talk about that rollercoaster as well. I think it goes for everybody.

21:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And now that you're back in Denmark and you have a few years of perspective on working in Los Angeles, what would you say are the main differences between doing business in Denmark and here in the US?

21:37
Jesper Bæhrenz
It's just simply due to size that you have a situation where 5.6 million people in Denmark, there's a limit to who your audience can be. That's as simple as that. But it's also limited to the industry. Like for instance, I came back because I got offered to do a couple of radio shows here in Denmark. And basically there's one station who can afford to do radio shows of the caliber that I do. And if I don't want to do them there, then I got nowhere else to go.

22:05
Jesper Bæhrenz
In the US, in LA, you'll always have somewhere else to go. Of course you can become the pariah of the movie industry and never work again. I'm not gonna mention names here. There's no Danish names, I wanna say that. But international names … Roland Polanski. No, I didn't say that. There's a couple of names that can't work anymore. But you always have a shot. There's always something else.

22:26
Jesper Bæhrenz
There's always a new business opening up. Even the movie studios that were big 10 years ago, all of a sudden not the biggest anymore. Success of Netflix, Amazon, Apple, all these new players that are on the field and becoming the main players in the entertainment industry. So you're always there with a shot.

22:46
Jesper Bæhrenz
And if you write the best script or come up with the best idea, somebody will buy it. It's just a question about you getting connected to the right person. In Denmark, if you piss off somebody, you can't really come back, because that was it, you pissed off the wrong person. There's only one so, ha, too bad for you.

23:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's go back in time. You mentioned that you were 17 when you had your first job on radio, the local radio, where you're from, in Herning. What motivated you to do this, as a very young man? And talk about the radio environment at the time, the studio, and the technology.

23:23
Jesper Bæhrenz
It was funny because in Denmark, we had up till 1982, we only had Danmarks Radio. We had the national broadcast station. — It's not true — We had one ship sitting on the coastline of Copenhagen broadcasting back in the '60s, but that was deemed illegal by the government and they had to cease their broadcast.

23:44
Jesper Bæhrenz
And then in '82, as I was an exchange student in the US, local radio came to power in Denmark. And my town, Herning in Jutland, had one of the major players right from the beginning. They were very professional. They were very ambitious about how they went about it. And of course, I was sitting in the US in Madison, Wisconsin.

24:05
Jesper Bæhrenz
And back then you had one phone call a year, maybe two, if somebody died in your close family, then they could call you up and tell you, Grandpa died, and then they'll hang up again, because it cost $500 a minute to call or something. I don't know what it was.

24:17
Jesper Bæhrenz
The thing was that I got letters, who told me about this fantastic new local radio station that had come. And I imagined that it was like in the US, that it was an affiliate of something, like CBS. At one point I think they had about 600 radio stations all over the US. So I thought that's local radio.

24:35
Jesper Bæhrenz
So I came back as an exchange student and heard this local radio in Herning. I was going, what, what is that? It's nothing what I expect it to be. A Danish foreign minister said at a point, if you can't beat them, then join them. So I went up there and knocked on the door and asked if I could do some radio for them. I showed them how it was supposed to be done. I believed that I could do that.

24:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
That's how it started. I had 15 minutes the first week that I did radio, and I was, yeah, I talked a lot less than I do now, I would say. It was not a success. You have to work at something for hours and hours and hours, and then you get there.

25:12
Jesper Bæhrenz
That start with the sort of experience of what media was like in the US when I was there, coming back to Denmark and having that little bit of an American experience, which was unique at that time, there was not many exchange students per year back then, you believed that you had a playing field and you learned, and then you moved on.

25:31
Jesper Bæhrenz
It also had that thought about the US in the back of my head, that okay, that could be fun if I could come back and do what I did. And of course, I knew that when we came there in 2009, it was a little bit too late, as I said, to become Ryan Seacrest on KIIS FM. So the concept became my station, so to say.

25:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You became a very well known name and voice in Danish radio. You were headhunted to go to Copenhagen and work for Radio Uptown when you were 22. How was it to move to Copenhagen and become the so-called music boss of the radio?

26:10
Jesper Bæhrenz
It was great fun, and in hindsight, it feels a little bit of coming later on to LA, to come to Copenhagen. I remember that I couldn't find my way around Copenhagen, but from Rådhuspladsen, I could always find my way.

26:24
Jesper Bæhrenz
When I had to go someplace new, I would always start at Rådhuspladsen and then go. No matter if it was a totally different way, I always would drive into Rådhuspladsen and then drive from there. Because then I could find anything. But luckily, when we came to LA, GPS was invented. And we didn't have to look at the maps. Because I would have been so lost.

26:45
Jesper Bæhrenz
Later on in life, that's another little funny thing. LA was probably the first place in the world that I've ever felt completely at home. When I moved to Copenhagen and I was driving around, I would always be very aware that I was driving in Copenhagen. But driving in LA somehow was just, yeah, this is LA. Of course it's LA. Of course it's Sunset. Of course it's Santa Monica Boulevard. Of course it's Hollywood Boulevard. Ventura. Whatever. It's LA. I don't know why I felt like that.

27:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And for the listeners who don't know, Rådhuspladsen is the square in Copenhagen where the City Hall is, and it's very close to Tivoli. I will name drop for you now. You have worked with very talented musicians like Lenny Kravitz, Sinéad O'Connor, and Genesis. They were among them. How does one get big names like that to be part of a fairly small, compared to the rest of the world, Danish radio show?

27:43
Jesper Bæhrenz
It's all about playing out of your league. There was a music festival in Europe. It was called the Rock Festival in Montreux in Switzerland. And it was all new. And I was the only Danish journalist going there. So in that sense, when I came there, I was Denmark. Which meant that over a week, they would record some TV shows, and I would go around and there would be all these record labels that would be there and I would show up.

28:09
Jesper Bæhrenz
And I would say, Hey, my name is Jesper. I'm from Denmark. I didn't mention what station I was working with. I was from Denmark. And they looked at their paper. They go, okay, we don't have anybody from Denmark. Okay, you will do Smokey Robinson at three o'clock and then you will have Freddie Mercury at five.

28:22
Jesper Bæhrenz
So you would get all these names and you would get to do interviews with them. And that's the first big interviews that I really got in that span from Whitney Houston to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. As you mentioned, Phil Collins, all these crazy interviews.

28:36
Jesper Bæhrenz
And the artists, they treated you like you were Denmark. They didn't know. So this young dude from Denmark is going to do an interview. And then it just became a thing. And there was basically no time to get nervous. I would do all these interviews without any nerves whatsoever. And I think that I brought that forward.

28:57
Jesper Bæhrenz
I've only been nervous once in my entire life. And that was when — I shouldn't have said it, but I did. I said once that I interviewed Bruce Springsteen, then I'm done interviewing people. That's the end. That was the goal, The Boss, that's it, for music. And I finally got that interview, and it was one-on-one backstage after a concert in Scotland. And I remember I came out backstage and the manager was there and then she told me, you have 15 minutes. Okay, 15 minutes.

29:26
Jesper Bæhrenz
She knocked on the door and The Boss opened the door and the first thing he asked me was, you want a Jack Daniels? And I was feeling more like I would like some water because my throat is incredibly dry. But you never ever say no, I'm not going to have a Jack Daniels with Bruce Springsteen. Of course, I'm going to have a Jack Daniels with Bruce Springsteen, I'll say yes.

29:47
Jesper Bæhrenz
And then we had a good talk and somehow, it was a very free flowing interview. And I remember I had brought questions that our listeners had, and this is back in the day of the fax, had faxed into the show. That was a brilliant idea. No, because the fax machine just started. And it just went on for 24 hours.

30:10
Jesper Bæhrenz
So I showed up with a stack of papers with thousands of questions for Bruce Springsteen, and I brought them to him. And I said to him, here are the questions. And he went all ballistic about it. God, this is amazing. Can I keep them? And stuff like that. So the interview ran over, and I think that I ended up having one-on-one for 35 minutes.

30:34
Jesper Bæhrenz
And the manager kept coming in and she was sent out again. And at the end I got told off so badly by her because they missed the flight due to that interview. I was going, but it's not me. He's The Boss, I said, and so take it up with him, you know? So —

30:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There's no way you're gonna leave Bruce Springsteen.

30:56
Jesper Bæhrenz
No. Why? I'm having Jack Daniels with Bruce Springsteen. I'm not leaving. You gotta be crazy.

31:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah. Is there a special recipe to deal with music talent like that? I interview especially actors and directors, but I can imagine that musicians backstage are a different ballgame. Is there a recipe to do that? I assume that sometimes there's other things than water involved.

31:23
Jesper Bæhrenz
I think what you bring is, again, it's a little bit like creating concepts. Believe in your material, you know. Prepare a good interview, know something about the artist, because you can't fake interest in somebody. You can't do an interview with a writer if you haven't read their book. It's as simple as that.

31:45
Jesper Bæhrenz
So know their story, know their background, do your research, and then try to remember that you are basically not interviewing, but you are having a conversation. Because that relaxes yourself and that relaxes the guy that's sitting across from you or the girl or the band.

32:05
Jesper Bæhrenz
They're talking about their favorite subject, themselves, so it's not that hard. I think it's easier to interview musicians often, especially people who write their own songs, than an actor, because an actor is basically given a script that they haven't written. They're going to perform in a way that the director is going to tell them. And then special effects make them fly.

32:26
Jesper Bæhrenz
So basically they don't have a lot to do with the material in that way. Whereas a singer or a band, they perform sometimes their own stuff. So sometimes they're a little easier to deal with. I'm not envious of you, Tina. I'm not.

32:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you for the sympathy. I appreciate that.

32:45
Jesper Bæhrenz
You're welcome.

32:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Until recently, you worked for DR's P4, which is radio and your programs were called Takeoff and Jesper's Pop Show. But you parted ways recently. I believe that you are not happy with the way that DR did their budgets. It seems in general that there is a current critique in Denmark that cultural programs are not supported enough. Is that the case?

33:10
Jesper Bæhrenz
We are at a very interesting moment in time coming to radio. I talked about the movie industry with Netflix and Apple. Lots and lots more programming are on radio and podcasts, like this one. We compete about the same ears. More platforms doesn't mean more ears or more eyes. Definitely not when we're talking about Danes. And so we're competing about the same thing.

33:38
Jesper Bæhrenz
And to attract people for something popular, and that's P4, that's the broadest channel that we have in Denmark. If we make it too narrow, we'll lose out. I believe that Danes should be interested in Denmark. That's why my shows always go traveling, that take off during summertime. We go around the country and tell stories from one end of the country to listeners in the other end of the country. And even though it's a small country, there's a big difference sometimes.

34:08
Jesper Bæhrenz
The stories are out there. But if we don't go seek them, it's not gonna happen. For instance, podcasts. To be honest, and this might be a political statement, I don't believe that Danmarks Radio should do podcasts, because everybody, like you and me doing right now, can do a podcast from home. I could be sitting in my pajamas. This is not what I sleep in, by the way.

34:28
Jesper Bæhrenz
You could basically just do it from home. You don't have to go anywhere, and we can agree on a subject that's super interesting to the two of us, and there will be listeners, there will be somebody who's super interested in LA, super interested in the arts, and they will find it.

34:45
Jesper Bæhrenz
Danmarks Radio shouldn't do that, because they should do radio, because they're the only one who can do broad radio. You're talking about culture. Take the narrow culture, make it wide, but also remember the wide culture. And that's not white, that's wide with a "d."

35:05
Jesper Bæhrenz
Make something that we all need to see. Don't only cater to children's families because they believe that children are in control of the remote. Do something for grown-ups as well. I believe we're gonna have more and more — can you say that we all become our own radio station? That's not probably the idea with podcasts. I believe that Danmarks Radio, rather than doing podcasts that everybody can do, should do radio that only they can do.

35:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In general, I was thinking more that there's less and less cultural content. They're closing down film programs on television, the newspapers are shutting down cultural sections. Is that a problem, you think?

35:48
Jesper Bæhrenz
Yeah, it's a great problem because I think the work that you do or that I do on a radio station is that we are sort of curators of the huge variety of things that's out there, but we need somebody to guide us in that direction. And that's what you do when you have a show about culture, when you have a show about movies and stuff like that.

36:07
Jesper Bæhrenz
We all have that feeling that we turn on Netflix, even as professionals, sometimes we kind of go. What am I going to watch? What is really out there? And if you don't follow the industry news, how would you know? Then it's just the algorithms pointing you in a specific direction.

36:24
Jesper Bæhrenz
They tend to point you in a direction of things that you're already seeing. Which means more and more narrow. In the end, we don't have anything in common anymore. And that's a dangerous situation. With the newspapers, it's tricky, the same with the magazines. We had a female magazine, Femina, that closed down. It's been published and printed for 150 years.

36:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's still online.

36:45
Jesper Bæhrenz
Yeah, it's still online, but, and of course, that is the way of the world. We are electronic. We are digital. That's how it is. Same goes with radio. It's also streaming. That's not a difference. The newspapers need to find a way to cater to people, to see a niche industry, so we don't all go in the same direction and all do the same because then it ends up becoming one big reality show, basically.

37:14
Jesper Bæhrenz
I saw something last summer in Denmark, and this is not to become political. Everybody was covering the Tour de France. It was every newspaper covering the Tour de France live with a commentary section where you could follow Jonas Vingegaard, the Danish biker who won second year in a row.

37:31
Jesper Bæhrenz
We were doing live commentary about the Tour de France, every radio station, every TV station. I'm going, shouldn't somebody try something else, or else why are you there if you just do what everybody else is doing? And that's going to be the death of newspapers if they all do it the same way. It's a limited attention span. That's not going to pan out well for newspapers or magazines, I'm afraid.

37:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What makes a good radio program and what is a great radio host?

38:04
Jesper Bæhrenz
I get back to the curiosity thing that we talked about in doing artist interviews or doing interviews with actors and stuff. It is that you're curious, naturally curious. It's not something that you should try to pretend, because you can hear it, you can see it right away. If you're not interested in something, it's gonna show, trust me, it's gonna show and it's gonna be heard. So you really have to be curious about other people.

38:30
Jesper Bæhrenz
That's probably the problem about influencers. This is a very broad critique, that their only interest is themselves. That's why it becomes boring over time to follow the same influencer, because they're only interested in themselves. Whereas as a good radio host, or good TV host — As a good interviewer, you have to be curious about other people. That's what makes good radio —

38:53
Jesper Bæhrenz
Your eagerness to find a story that hasn't been told, that's what you should do when you're writing a movie or theater or a song, tell a story that hasn't been told. Or, if you tell an old story, tell it in a new way. There's plenty of opportunity to do it, but remember the good stories, they're everywhere. They're not just in Copenhagen or in LA.

39:18
Jesper Bæhrenz
And that's why right now one of the things that give me great pleasure in movies and theater and music is to see where music and movies and tv come from now. They come from all countries. We wouldn't have guessed 15 years ago that we were going to watch a tv show or tv series from South Korea. What was that about, a money heist from Spain? It's coming from so many different directions and Denmark has benefited from it big time, so we should embrace it even more.

39:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that Femina is now only online, which affects my business as a reporter. Constantly we have to renew ourselves and think in new ways of making content. How do you renew yourself? How do you make sure that you follow the times and the new trends and the new technology and whatever that's new. You know, we have to adapt.

40:12
Jesper Bæhrenz
Yeah, one of the things is to understand where you're coming from. You have to know history. If you want to make good magazines, read a lot of magazines. If you want to make good movies, see a lot of movies. If you're going to make good radio, hear a lot of radio. So you take really good decisions.

40:32
Jesper Bæhrenz
Nowadays, we seem to get chief editors on magazines, on radio stations and TV stations who haven't made a magazine or haven't made a newspaper or haven't done a TV show or radio show, and all of a sudden, they're deciding what is the next thing to do. They're gonna go with the algorithms.

40:50
Jesper Bæhrenz
I'm going, if we go with the algorithms, we basically are slowly going to shred away. Somebody said that if you only want to play the songs that people like, then you have less and less songs to play. And at the end, you're going to become bored of the ten songs that we play because you need new input.

41:12
Jesper Bæhrenz
Who's going to give you that input? It's not going to be the machine. It's going to be the host. And the same with TV and movies. Somebody's going to do the new movies. It might be a take on an old movie that's going to be a new movie seen in a new way. That's always a good place to start. That's how we're going to renew it.

41:31
Jesper Bæhrenz
As for magazines, we're going to remember, what was the excitement about the magazine? Was it the photos? Was it the story? What was it and then go back, believe that you can do an eight page interview with a person who's just interesting enough, instead of going, no, but the concept says it can only be three pages. Break that concept, renew it, and then do it all over again. You have to trust your instincts and you have to know what came before you to find a way ahead.

42:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Jesper, my final question to you is, what is on your bucket list? You're still a fairly young man. You're 58 years old. I consider that very young as I'm in my 50s too.

42:17
Jesper Bæhrenz
Yeah, the older we get, that is how it becomes younger and younger. Somebody dies at 98, you go, it's a guy in his best age. How did that happen? He was so vibrant.

42:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Exactly. What is still on your bucket list, what do you still want to achieve?

42:35
Jesper Bæhrenz
I don't know, because I haven't found it yet. I think Baz Luhrmann at one point wrote a song, it was a speech to young people at their graduation, and it had the title, "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen." So you have different advice, one of them was leave New York before it makes you hard, leave LA before it makes you soft. That's very interesting.

42:59
Jesper Bæhrenz
And bottom line was, remember to wear sunscreen. But he had a line that said, if you worry when you're 17 or 20 that you don't know what you want to do with your life, remember that the most interesting people that he ever met was people at 60, who still didn't know what they wanted to do.

43:16
Jesper Bæhrenz
And I've been fortunate, again, I'm going to use the American word, blessed. I started doing radio when I was 17, thinking, nah, I'm probably going to do this for a while, and then I'm going to get a real job. I'm still looking at the things that I do and think, nah, maybe I'll get a real job. Maybe that's on my bucket list, to get a real job. I don't know.

43:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's funny. On that note, thank you so much, Jesper, for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate it.

43:44
Jesper Bæhrenz
Thank you for having me.

43:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Jesper Baehrenz chose Danh Vō's We the People (detail) from 2011–2016 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.