Producer Ben Winston made the Los Angeles look so good in November 2021 when he steered the “Adele: One Night Only” concert special for CBS that he was the obvious choice for the job of producing the Paris-to-L.A. handoff moment for Sunday’s Summer Games Closing Ceremony.
Typically, the handoff from one host city to the next is done at the same venue as the Closing Ceremony. Winston, a 13-time Emmy winner with a flair for live TV and spectacle, had bigger plans as soon as he got the call from LA28 leaders in January 2022. To Winston, it didn’t make sense to do it all in Paris given the moment’s rich potential to become a transcontinental live TV stunt stretching from the City of Light to the City of Angels.
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The idea for what to do with 12 minutes of TV time watched by tens of millions of people around the world came to Winston “in about five minutes” in his first conversation with LA28 officials. The biggest challenge wasn’t recruiting the participants but rather keeping it all hush-hush.
“It’s been a fun secret project for the last year and a half,” Winston told PvNew.
The producer known for handling the past two Grammy Awards telecasts as well as the now-departed “Late Late Show with James Corden” got his first choices for talent across the board: Tom Cruise, Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg as well as having H.E.R. in the stadium in Paris to deliver a rocking rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Winston credits Cruise with elevating his plans for the stunt that saw him making an elaborate trek out of Paris on a motorcycle carrying the Olympic flag, only to emerge moments later parachuting down into the Hollywood hills next to the iconic sign.
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“My first meeting with Tom Cruise was a year and a half ago, and we managed to keep all of it quiet until the Tom news broke after a rehearsal that we did in the Stade de France,” Winston said.
Cruise’s insistence that he be the person under the mask riding the motorcycle in Paris meant a much bigger time commitment that Winston expected. But the two had a comfort level having worked together on bits for “Late Late Show” over the years. Cruise wound up making a one-day turnaround earlier this year from the London set of his latest “Mission: Impossible” film for one of the shoots.
“He was like ‘No, no. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it. I’ll do it live.’ I was like ‘OK,’ “ Winston recalled. “That defines Tom. He will hear an idea and he will make it better, he will make it bigger and he’ll make it more exciting. I don’t think there’s a better collaborator you can work with. He makes everything that you do that little bit better.”
Winston knew from the get-go that L.A.’s beautiful coastline had to be part of the moment. But it wasn’t so easy to find the right spot on the sand to shoot a few brief musical performances without drawing an enormous crowd.
Winston arranged a permit with L.A. city officials but he was under strict orders to keep the plans tightly under wraps – otherwise police and producers would have a crowd-control problem on their hands. As such, PvNew agreed to keep the location confidential even as we scooped the news on Aug. 8 that Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Red Hot Chili were set to perform.
For a number of reasons, the location changed at the last minute. Winston would not elaborate but Angelenos were quick to observe from the landmarks in the area that the concert portions originated from Long Beach. Portions of the musical performances were pre-taped but all vocals were performed live.
Winston credited the success of the segment to the strength of his strike team of producers and collaborators who rise to the challenge of crafting great TV moments. The group included producers Raj Kapoor and Dave Piendak, director Hamish Hamilton, former “Late Late Show” writer-director Glenn Clements and production designer Misty Buckley.
“I got to select, “Avengers”-style, the people who are the best of the best at what they do,” Winston said.
Although much of it was recorded in advance, the Closing Ceremony day was nearly a 24-hour work day for Winston. It wasn’t until he’d slept for 14 hours that he began to look at the public reaction to the event on Monday afternoon.
“I think it was, without question, the most stressful day of my career, by miles,” Winston said. “The idea of having the biggest movie star in the world doing a live stunt, a concert with some of the biggest artists in the world, the security and the technical side — every element of it was quite a lot.”
(Pictured: Ben Winston and Tom Cruise at the Hollywood sign)
