THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 75 NOVEMBER 13, 2019
the center has been developing
new internal research focused
on applications for blockchain
in entertainment.
Since joining the center,
Bergquist also has launched an
under-the-radar tech startup,
Corto, which has its own recipro-
cal relationship with the ETC:
The fledgling firm, supported by
interns from USC, builds soft-
ware informed by his directed
research work there.
Corto’s clients license its
products. Bergquist won’t specify
those clients’ names, except to
say that they include some of
the sponsors of the think tank.
He notes that the firm is still in
“early-stage mode” and self-
financed. “Corto and ETC have
discussed the possibility of some
type of equity grant or licensing
arrangement should any of the
ETC research be commercialized,”
Bergquist explains.
Williams, who says he has no
involvement in Corto, stresses
and computer animation unit.)
In November 2017, more than
a year and a half after the ETC
board approved his program,
Bergquist approached his boss
about his past. “I wanted to tell
him for a very long time,” says
Bergquist. “I was very worried
that someone would come calling
before I told him. It’s just not a
fun conversation. I was really
afraid he’d say, ‘We love you but
it’s not something we can live
with and we need to part ways.’ I
was very scared that he’d have to
let me go.”
Bergquist concedes he purpose-
fully waited those many months
to tell Williams about his secret.
“I wanted the time to build a suc-
cessful track record to weigh that
against my past,” he says. “These
are hard, messy decisions.”FOR YEARS, WILLIAMS CHOSE TO
keep his dozen-member board
out of the loop about Bergquist’ssomething I gave a lot of consid-
eration to.” Disney didn’t return a
request for comment.
This June, as Bergquist’s profile
continued to rise, and he became
a frequent presence on the tech
conference circuit, Williams did
confide in one board member,
USC School of Cinematic Arts
dean Elizabeth Daley. “I started
to realize,” says Williams, “that
this might be something that
could bubble up.”
Daley tells THR she
didn’t seek further
input from her board
colleagues, deferring
to Williams’ wis-
dom. “It never seemed significant
enough,” she says of the situation.
“I would hardly go around the
CEO to talk to the board.”
By the time Daley learned about
Bergquist’s past, USC was already
contending with headline-mak-
ing ethical crises at its medical
and business schools, as well as
its outsized role in the collegeadmissions scandal. Daley says
that she, too, was sympathetic
to the idea of a second chance
for Bergquist and that, as far as
she knows, “we have 12 years of a
pristine record on this guy.”
When asked whether the ETC,
as an affiliate of a top research
university, should be employ-
ing someone who bears a public
record of falsehood, Williams and
Daley both note that Bergquist
isn’t a teacher. A School of
Cinematic Arts spokeswoman
later underscores the point: “Per
Ken Williams, Yves never repre-
sented himself as an academic
researcher — rather as an indus-
try researcher and consultant.”
Bergquist contends that his
dishonesty during his Debat days
makes him more trustworthy
now. “Having that in my past
creates a higher level of account-
ability because you have to work
harder to be on par with the value
of someone who has not had that,”
he says. “So I put a lot of pressure
on myself to deliver outstanding
work — even if the people I’m
doing that work for don’t know
about that past.”
Bergquist believes in himself,
along with the people whose faith
he’s secured. “I presented the
research agenda to the board in
2016 and they thought there was
enough value to let me do what I
do,” he says. “They aren’t idiots.
They’re extremely smart senior
executives at big companies. If
I was an impostor or I was not
good at what I did, I wouldn’t have
lasted as long as I have.”
On Nov. 8, Bergquist spoke in
Hollywood at the Infinity Festival,
a conclave of tech and entertain-
ment “thought leaders,” who gave
future-looking presentations
like “Studio in the Cloud,” by an
Amazon executive, and “Fandom
Across Life Stages,” with a Warner
Bros. consumer insights vp.
Bergquist’s lecture sought to
dispel the notion that data wonks
and industry creatives are inher-
ently at odds. “If you take a class
in writing at a film school, on the
first day you’ll hear that stories are
a set of steps to solve a problem,”
he said to the crowd, itself oblivi-
ous to his story and the problems
it conjured. “What else is a set of
steps to solve a problem?” he pos-
ited. “Algorithms.”DaleyValley, or RAND and the defense
sector. Spurred into creation by
USC alumnus and ILM founder
George Lucas in 1993, it benefits
from six-figure annual financial
support from each of the major
studios, whose chief technology
officers and senior tech execs sit
on its board and participate in its
working groups. Over the years,
its tests, models, whitepapers
and invite-only conferences have
served as the intellectual appa-
ratus for everything from the
industry’s move to digitalization
to its embrace of standard-
ized cloud systems. Recently,
that the relationship between
the startup and the think tank
is copacetic. “None of our lead
consultants are exclusive to
the ETC,” he says. “They are
all expected to be independent
consultants and practitioners,
much the way some of the val-
ued professors at [USC’s] film
school are actually still work-
ing artists and technicians. So
our structure has always been
that we want working practitio-
ners who are active in the field.”
(Williams is best known as the
co-founder of Sony Pictures
Imageworks, the studio’s VFXShould I have
blown my
brains out?
Or rebuilt
my life?”
past. “Frankly, I thought his
work would be compromised,”
he says. His stance was defined
by how “very happy” he was
with Bergquist’s work. “I think
people deserve a second chance if
they’ve earned it, and I thought he
earned it,” he says. In May 2018 he
furthered his approval by putting
Bergquist on the center’s payroll.
In recent years, multiple
board seats have been held by
executives at subsidiaries of
Disney. Now the media com-
pany was unknowingly funding
Bergquist again. Asked about
this, Williams says, “It wasn’tYVES BERGQUIST“