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Announcer 1: Yakushev cutting right in front.
Score!
To make it seven to three.
Announcer 2: The best hockey team in the world.
Announcer 3: And the Soviets are still unbeaten.
The progress is almost frightening.
Announcer 4: The Soviet hockey team was proof,
the Soviet system was the best system.
Reporter 1: Top story, Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev
has been removed from power
and there are tanks in the streets of Moscow.
It is not clear what that means.
[crowd chanting] Yeltsin! Yeltsin!
Reporter 2: Moscow has not witnessed scenes like this
since the Communist Revolution.
Reporter 3: You can't put freedom and democracy
back into a box and keep it contained.
Reporter 4: The Soviet Union no longer exists.
Reporter 5: Boris Yeltsin has taken over
as armed forces chief.
Reporter 6: Communism is out and capitalism is in.
America won the Cold War.
Reporter 7: That poses a question to the West.
Will the world grasp the opportunity
offered by the ending of the Cold War,
or let this truly historic opening slip away?
Reporter 8: The saying goes, "Those who don't learn
from history are destined to repeat it."
Reporter 9: What is happening to Russian hockey?
The money's drying up, the fans are going away,
and so are the players, to the NHL.
Announcer 5: Shot, scores.
Sergei Fedorov, first goal in the National Hockey League.
Announcer 6: Mogilny, a sensational play.
Announcer 7: They shoot better and they skate better.
Thank you very much, I'm very happy.
Announcer 8: The talent is leaving by the thousands.
Reporter 10: The NHL's biggest young stars
are made in the USSR.
Reporter 11: The future of Red Army hockey is in question.
Now in Russia, it's like any other business,
scrambling for a buck.
Will they survive?
[indistinct chatter]
Howard: What's that?
Do you want your vodka chilled or not?
- Vodka? - I'm bringing you vodka.
Oh, chilled, because I'll just sip it.
Okay.
If somebody had an idea that was a little... different
or off the wall,
they might reach out to Howard and say,
"Hey, here's a guy that's crazy enough that might do it."
And so I got approached and they said,
"Hey, we got a fun idea for you,"
which was to invest in a team in Russia.
He has an idea, okay, and says, "What do you think?"
And it's my job to tell him if it's too crazy.
If I think it's too crazy, he probably doesn't do it, okay?
If I think it's only a little crazy,
we're probably going to do it.
Tom: The Russians were looking to get a partner
to help them pay the bills.
We couldn't believe that one of the greatest hockey teams
was on the verge of extinction, if that's possible?
This was the Soviet Union.
This was a vast country with a history of hockey,
with an Olympic tradition that went back for decades
of great teams and skills.
Announcer 9: And Kharlamov racing away on a breakaway,
coming in on goal. Scores.
Kharlamov came out of nowhere there.
Announcer 10: Circling back, Fetisov, Larionov.
Makarov. He scores!
Tom: Hundreds of thousands of kids playing all over
the country and being watched and monitored.
And the question was, would one of those players
be able to come and play for the Pittsburgh Penguins?
Announcer 11: Two seconds, the Penguins are going
to win the Stanley Cup, I believe.
Chelios shoots it wide,
the Penguins have won the Stanley Cup!
Tom: All we had to get was one player.
Or be able to trade one player or two players,
that would justify what we were doing.
He saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity
to own one of the greatest hockey teams.
Howard: When we first met Gushin and Tikhonov,
the primary purpose of the meeting was to make sure
we liked each other.
Tikhonov cared about one thing only.
Play on the ice.
Announcer 12: There's Victor Tikhonov,
one of the most successful coaches of all time.
Not liked by his players,
but that doesn't seem to matter.
Howard: He was a good old hard line communist.
If anybody tells you different, they're wrong.
Tom: He was in the army, Tikhonov.
It's a central sports club of the army.
That's what CSKA means, what we call the Red Army Team.
And in the old days, he would just send, you know,
a request, money would come. Now, money didn't come.
And he just, he suddenly woke up one day
and didn't know how he was going to keep that team going.
Howard: And Gushin was like a GM that was...
Oh, how-- how do I say this politely?
He was well-used, old Gushin was.
[singing in foreign language]
[speaking in foreign language]
[laughs]
Howard: I mean, he'd been around and seen that
and done that, and I liked that.
So it wasn't very hard to make this deal.
Now an American team has a stake in Russian hockey,
rescuing an entire sport from thin ice.
Howard: When we did the deal, I said to Mr. Gushin,
"Trust me, I'll make you a good capitalist." [laughs]
Hopefully, we will.
Reporter 12: The Red Army Team is 50 percent owned
by the Pittsburgh Penguins,
and a group of investors that includes
NHL star, Mario Lemieux,
and movie and TV star, Michael J. Fox.
Larry: Are you telling me you own a piece
of the Russian hockey team?
You can't really call it owning it
because it's the Russian government's,
but we basically stepped in and took over,
uh, a financial interest of the central Red Army hockey team
in, uh, in-- in Moscow, in Russia.
Larry: And you called them what?
Uh, well, they're called the Russian Penguins.
[instrumental music]
Good evening.
It is one of the great gambles
of our time, the attempt to turn the former Soviet Union
into a new free market economy.
Reporter 13: The risks of doing business in Moscow are obvious.
The opportunities, less obvious, but they're enormous.
The results are out tonight...
Howard: There weren't people lined up to go over there.
There was still people that were apprehensive
about doing anything with Russia.
So I figured if there's ever a time
we might be able to do this, it's now.
And so Howard said, "We're going to need a marketing guy
because this is going to be a whole new world."
Steven: They were looking for a crazy young guy.
Somebody who was willing to pack up and go to Moscow
for a couple of years.
Steven: Who wasn't afraid to die in the new Russia,
not the traditional thinker.
So that's how I got it.
I had this special talent
of creating a firestorm inside arenas.
So Howard said,
"Steven, how would you like to go to Moscow
and work with the greatest hockey team in the world?"
Nothing. I got nothing.
He just seemed like the perfect guy
to send on a venture like this.
Tom: It was the Wild West.
We were going in there and he was a gunslinger
in the Wild West.
Director: But what does that even mean?
That means it could be dangerous...
but I also never worried about that.
You know, at the beginning,
we didn't understand the-- the risks. Okay?
We didn't understand what the country was like
and what have you.
Howard: I mean, if your partner is the Red Army,
you'd think you would be safe.
But he had a lot of guts going over there
and bringing out his bag of tricks
to try to fill the building, and to make us money.
Well, hang on a sec, I just, I haven't done this in a second.
Now hang on. Here we go.
Okay, wait. No.
Steven: Russia was an enigma to all of us.
What went on behind the iron curtain, nobody knew.
And I wanted to know.
So I went.
Al Gore: Take the risk and begin investing in Russia.
We're behind you.
We want you to succeed.
This new relationship has such enormous potential.
Reporter 14: American companies are eager
to bring their products to Russia.
Western companies are investing more and more each day.
Steven: You come into Sheremetyevo Airport...
and there's this smell of death in the airport.
It's, I-- I think Marlon Brando in "Last Tango"
called the ass of death.
That's what it smelled like to me.
Roads were jammed.
Elevators weren't working.
Every aspect was difficult.
We worked on army grounds.
The arena where the team played
was called The Ice Palace, which was a complete misnomer.
It was a dump.
The lights were out.
Everything had been either stolen or broken.
The plexiglass wrapping around the rink,
you couldn't see through it.
And where we would have super boxes,
there were electricians and workers living in there.
They didn't even display their great photos that they had.
There was a small trophy case at the beginning
in the inside of the arena...
but for the most part,
it really looked like a bomb had hit the building.
I expected that the country would be somewhat functioning.
[crowd clamoring]
It turned out I was wrong.
[speaking in foreign language]
[man hammering]
Alexander: When we started our first show,
there was one television in the Soviet Union, one station,
serving four or six television channels for the country.
They had a youth programming department.
That's where this show was invented.
[speaking in foreign language]
We did political journalism,
general, like, exchange of different views.
[laughing]
We were different.
[speaking in foreign language]
Everybody understood the system is in a deadlock
mentally, emotionally,
economically as well.
And suddenly, this free market economy
comes and, like, spears in their eyes,
and they don't know how to deal with that.
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: What about... What about the law enforcement?
It was weak. Law enforcement, it was just weak.
Nobody cared... about people.
Everything which was done for people
was in very bad shape.
Everything.
Housing, health care, even nutrition.
Food was very bad... not fresh.
A lack of food.
Steven: I ran the emotion between being very excited
to be there and being part of history,
but at the same time also realizing
that this country had just been crushed.
There was no pride left.
There were medical doctors driving Zambonis
because they made more money
driving a Zamboni than doing surgery.
The idea of an office to them is even foreign.
There was no technology at all.
We had to bring everything in.
Every morning, I would go into work freshly showered,
and wearing a new suit.
Everybody there was hung over
and wiping sleep out of their eyes,
wearing the same clothes from the day before.
It's literally going to another world.
There was a club downstairs called the Red Zone...
where they lowered women in cages that were naked.
[men whistling]
I thought it was staged, I couldn't believe this was real.
Right in the hockey arena. Yeah, yeah,
Man 1: Yeah. - Crazy.
[upbeat music]
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: They were the landlords.
This is business to them.
What we were doing was just completely ancillary.
Believe me, they needed money.
Without the government's support, they were nothing.
Tom: They couldn't buy uniforms,
they couldn't buy hockey sticks.
The older kids would take their jerseys off,
and if you've ever seen a hockey jersey
after kids have played in it, they would take them off
and they'd give it to the next group of kids.
And then those kids would play,
and they'd take them off and give them to the next kids.
It was that dire.
Tikhonov, particularly, he had no idea
that there were ways to get money,
to create money with the team and then use that money.
It was just not done. They never had done it.
I mean, literally, they were selling tickets
for what would be a US equivalent of six cents.
So, I'm, uh... Uh...
Yeah. My name is Victor Gusev.
I'm commentator, sports commentator
and anchorman, Channel One which is a number one channel.
[telephone ringing]
Director: We don't mind interruptions.
Victor: The Russian Penguins,
they were impossible in the '60s, '70s, or the '80s,
almost impossible.
A joint venture between the Soviet Union
and American like this. No.
So it was like an indication, a very good
indicator of new things happening in my country.
Steven: Victor Gusev was the catalyst
for this joint venture.
[keyboard clacking]
He was fluent in Russian, and he was my right arm.
Victor saved my ass so many times
because of cultural mistakes that I was about to make.
He was also very clever and he could drink with Gushin.
Victor: Like any Russian, he becomes
even more friendly when he's drunk.
So it helped a lot when there were some problems.
I mean, everybody's drunk in Russia.
[indistinct chatter]
[burps]
Gushin was shit-faced half the time.
[speaking in foreign language]
[crowd cheering]
The first thing in doing any kind of branding is,
we had to change the brand.
All you had was CCCP,
and somebody might say, "Well, what is that?
Did somebody... [laughs]
Did somebody get the typewriter stuck?"
[speaking in foreign language]
[singing in foreign language]
[laughing]
[singing in foreign language]
Reporter 15: The hammer and sickle
of the old Soviet uniform
has now been replaced by a smiling penguin.
[instrumental music]
[speaking in foreign language]
[crowd laughs]
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: A lot was at stake on opening night.
The whole sports world was watching
to see if Russia and the United States
could collaborate.
[drumroll]
It was a disaster.
Nobody was there.
They looked like a mausoleum.
[speaking in foreign language]
We had no idea it was going to be this hard.
I looked at Gushin and then I said,
"We are going to fill this arena by Christmas."
And he looked at me and he said,
"Even Jesus Christ's re-- reappearance..."
Uh, let me, let me tell you again.
What did they call it when He comes back?
Director: Resurrection. - Resurrection. Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
My Jewishness is showing here.
[laughs]
Um, okay. So let me start...
It's an easy story. I'll just start it again. Um...
I looked into Valery Gushin's eyes, and I said,
"We will fill this arena by Christmas."
And he said to me, "Not even Jesus Christ's resurrection
could fill this building."
I'm Leif Peterson in Moscow, Russia,
where some unusual Americans are taking some unusual risks,
all in the name of capitalism.
I'll have that story coming up.
[speaking in foreign language]
Victor: Yeah, most of Steve's ideas,
uh, really seemed wild to me.
Like, let's say...
Let's bring some strip tease girls on skates.
Howard: They had a nightclub and they had strippers.
So, Stevie figured, "Well, these would make great cheerleaders.
Let's do some cheerleading here and get the crowd excited."
Mm. I told him, "We can't do it.
Gushin and Tikhonov, they would never allow it."
Well, they're not on the stands.
They're in the dressing room during the break.
So they won't even see.
"You mean, we shouldn't tell them?"
"No, we're not telling them. No, we just do it."
Steven: So we did, and we outfitted them
in our uniforms and they would skate behind the Zamboni,
pulling off layers of their gear
until they were left in pasties and a G string.
[instrumental music]
[men whistling]
Victor: The ministry of defense saw it,
and they thought it was like every game, in between periods.
[speaking in foreign language]
We had nights where we had free beer nights.
We had 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids drunk,
cheering on the team.
[crowd cheering]
Pittsburgh Brewing Company was our sponsor,
and I was trying to figure out, "What can we do
to get attention for their beer?"
The circus was in town,
so there were bears in our basement.
I talked to the trainers, and I said,
"Is it possible to set up a restaurant cafe
on the ice and have the bears come out as the waiters
and serve the beer?"
"Sure, we can do that."
The bears came out, there was another bear sitting
at the table, that he served,
and the bear took the beer and guzzled the whole beer.
That was the good part of it.
The bad part is that one of the legends of CSKA
was drunk downstairs and was playing with the bear.
He kept saying, plokhoy medved.
"Bad bear, bad bear," until the bear took off
half of his finger.
[elephant trumpets]
[crowd cheering]
The fans thought I was some crazy American freak.
They were right.
I was the crazy American freak.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: We're going to have a Gorbachev-Yeltsin
lookalike contest on the ice.
We're going to have bikini contests in January.
Reporter 16: The younger Russians love all of this.
The older Russians are not so sure.
Bryant here's something from Howard Baldwin to you.
- Just so you'll remember. - Thank you so very much.
Good investment, bad investment? Real quick.
Um, he's not going to make much money out of it
but having a lot of fun with it.
Hey, that's half of life.
8:14, we're back in just...
Steven: They thought we were crazy,
but people wanted to see the freak show,
so they came,
and word started to spread.
"What goes on at the ice palace?"
People come out, have a few beers,
laugh, dance, and enjoy themselves.
We are the only arena that has clean bathrooms
and free toilet paper.
They're issued two meters of toilet paper
as they enter the bathrooms.
This is so that they don't steal the rolls.
Tom: He got there, he rolled up his sleeves,
he worked day and night, and we started to see results.
[crowd cheering]
Steven: We just did whatever the hell we wanted there,
and it was a freak show.
[dramatic music]
Reporter 17: It's becoming hottest ticket in Moscow.
The Russian Army team is on the ice
and Americans staging the show.
Man 2: We've got Russian mini-sticks, Russian lighters,
Russian lapel pins, Russian pennants.
We've got Russian hats, T-shirts, sweatshirt,
pucks, almost anything you could want.
Reporter 18: Baldwin and his Russian counterpart,
Valery Gushin are selling advertising space
on everything but the player's underwear.
Victor: Before the Russian Penguins,
we didn't have advertisements on boards,
they were the first to put it.
And when people came, they didn't know what to say
because the empty boards were covered with advertisement.
Reporter 19: Companies pay $12,000 each
to advertise on the boards.
$48,000 to be on the team Jersey.
- Nice uniform. - Wild, isn't it?
Reporter 20: You can even put your logo on the ushers,
the concession stand attendants,
or even the security guard.
Reporter 21: It'll cost you $5,000.
For another $5,000 you can be the exclusive sponsor
of the Gorbachev-Yeltsin lookalike contest.
Steven: We would give away way chocolates, Gillette razors,
Panasonic stereos.
You're getting real value to come to a game.
We were this Petri dish.
We were a science project.
We had no idea it was going to take off so quickly...
nor did the Russians.
[speaking in foreign language]
We became a phenomenon.
"What's going on?
What's this hip bird in Russia?
Why are these jerseys selling all over the place?"
Tom: It was very optimistic.
The whole country was optimistic.
I'm telling you, the U.S.-Russian partnership
was going to be the model for the future.
[instrumental music]
Steven: And that's how Disney got involved.
Announcer 13: Now please welcome the Professional Hockey League
All-Stars, Sergei Fedorov!
Steven: During the All-Star game in Madison Square Garden.
Howard came up to me and said...
"How would you like to have dinner with Michael Eisner
tonight at the 21 Club?"
Naturally...
And we knew Michael Eisner from the film business,
and he just came into the league with the Mighty Ducks.
Mickey: Come on, Michael. Follow me.
Steven: Michael kept saying to me,
"Steven, what's going on over there?"
And I told them one crazy story after the other,
and he started to fall in love with this whole concept.
Mickey: Oh, Michael. Oh, boy!
He pulled a notepad out of his jacket
and he said, "I got the plot for "Mighty Ducks 5.""
"American team goes over to Moscow,
American player falls in love with Russian girl,
visas expire, governments step in, love story.
Mighty Ducks 5." Puts his paper back in.
And then he said to me, "How much merchandise you selling?"
I said, "We're actually doing really well.
We're out-selling a few NHL teams."
And he looks at the logo, he says,
"That's cute, but I think it needs to be more bellicose.
Let Disney Imagineering have a shot at it,
and we'll get back to you."
In a week, I got a stack of logos.
Eisner realized this is a great way to expand their brand
into Russia as well.
He said, "We're looking at a $100 million
licensing property here."
Mickey: Oh, boy! I'm gonna be rich!
You can imagine how excited we were
with this little tiny team, and now Disney had a big interest.
So, I remember on the way out, Howard said to me,
"Stevie, do you think it's going to be $100 million?"
And I said, "If he's off by $90 million,
it's still a hell of a year."
Announcer 14: Esteemed hockey fans,
the National Hockey League and the Mighty Ducks
celebrate a new era in sports entertainment!
Steven: Eisner talked about doing a Saturday morning show.
We were going to tour every year.
They were going to put us in the Disney stores.
They were offering Gushin and Tikhonov
a $100,000 a year salary,
trips to the All-Star game every year,
trips to Anaheim every year.
Living the good life.
Man 2: It's a Disney World, isn't it, Michael?
I can't help myself. I'm just a salesman at heart.
Howard: And Stevie sending him an email saying,
"Dear Comrade Eisner, Comrade Warshaw here."
And Michael is probably wondering,
"Who the hell is he?"
And I did say, "Now look, Steve, we got to cut this crap out.
Not everybody gets you."
They said you're a weird little bastard.
He just had a personality that you couldn't squash,
but it got Disney thinking of investing.
Steve was joking, he was joking with everybody.
He'd have problems joking with people
from Ministry of Defense and patting them on the back,
and Gushin and Tikhonov took his eccentricity
for a desire to become bigger.
[speaking in foreign language]
[laughs]
Patting a big general on the back
meant to Gushin that Steve wants to take his place.
But no, it was the nature of Steve.
That's it.
My nickname with the team that was actually given to me
by Viktor Vasilievich Tikhonov was Zhopa S Rootchkoi.
[speaking in foreign language]
Which translates to "Asshole with a handle..."
[laughs]
Which is nonsensical even in Russian.
And it was this weird kind of a relationship.
One night I was drinking with him
and we had too many vodkas
and he started bearing his soul to me
and he said, "We love you, Zhopa S Rootchkoi,
but we can never trust you because you're an American."
And with that, I noticed he's got blood
dripping into his canned meat
offering me canned meat with his bloody hands.
We were two totally different people.
[speaking in foreign language]
For some insane reason,
they were so paranoid
that the Americans were trying to screw them.
Then, all of a sudden,
a beautiful sauna popped up right in the arena
with marble that was imported from Italy,
and it was about $100,000.
How did all this money come in?
They were stealing from us, $100 here, $200 here.
And this became a trend.
[speaking in foreign language]
We had partners that we didn't trust completely, yes.
You know, the complications start to set in,
the fact that they don't do business the way we do.
But eventually, we thought we could stop that.
Howard: And so I figured, okay, I'm going to punish him.
We need to have a command meeting.
So, I don't know how long it took him
to come from Moscow to LA.
It had to be 24 hours,
and I figured will his punishment will it be
he's exhausted.
So, it's Saturday morning...
We lived up on the Hollywood Hills here.
[doorbell rings]
And the doorbell rings, and it's Gushin with his bag
and says, "I'm here."
Director: What was he like when he was at your house?
Oh. He sat by the pool the whole day.
We lived right next to Madonna. He loved that.
And I said, "Look, you got to, we got to watch the dollars.
You've got to respect us as partners."
"Yes, yes, yes, I'm sorry, Howard,
from now on, that'll be different," you know.
And he was exhausted. "Oh, sit down."
Here we turn on the TV, and the White House
back there in Moscow's being bombed.
[explosion]
[siren wailing]
Reporter 22: On the streets of Moscow, Russians are watching
events unfold with disbelief.
Thick clouds of smoke were billowing out
the Parliament building after the pounding
from Yeltsin's tanks,
as those inside contemplated surrender...
[explosions]
All watched by thousands of bystanders risking their lives.
Reporter 23: Yeltsin dissolved Congress Tuesday
after months of political infighting
over who should rule, the President or the Parliament?
Reporter 24: With tanks surrounding the White House,
Yeltsin's troops stormed the building again on camera.
Reporter 25: Okay, look, I can see men going into
the Russian White House now.
It appears to be a show of force
by President Boris Yeltsin
against his conservative opponents in Congress.
Our state, he had no administration.
[clamoring]
[indistinct radio chatter]
Everybody started to defend themselves.
Everywhere people were doing what they wanted.
Some of them took guns, some of them just stayed away.
Jungle.
[speaking in foreign language]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[speaking in foreign language]
[siren wailing]
Reporter 26: If there is good news in Russia tonight,
it is that it can't get much worse.
[crashing]
Reporter 27: The country has gone from extreme control
to virtually no control.
Chaos and freedom have taken
its toll on the Russian people.
Stability is what people want.
[speaking in foreign language]
[yelling in foreign language]
Alexander: And that night I-- I was on television saying,
"Stay in your houses.
Don't go to the streets because there are fights,
and there is fire.
Or you're going to be killed."
They didn't like it, and they abandoned me
for-- for half a year, I think.
[gunfire]
And since then, they didn't let me make a show, uh, on politics.
[indistinct chatter]
[speaking in foreign language]
Yeah, I was there for that.
[instrumental music]
We drove down to see what was going on,
and it was right out of a third world takeover.
Director: Did you feel scared a little?
Steven: You know I was a young, crazy kid
with a big old head of curls and no care in the world,
and, um, I didn't think twice about it.
♪ So yeah start wearing purple
♪ Wearing purple
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish ♪
♪ I promise it's just a matter of time ♪♪
Well, as you know, there's no rules in Russia.
That's our slogan, and, uh, we get away
with everything except murder.
Steven: It's a crazy world, and we took advantage of it.
Director: But were you guys worried about the health
of Russia or were you worried about the Pittsburgh Penguins?
Neither. I was just...
All I wanted to do was to create something beautiful in sport.
♪ So Vio-- Vio-- Violetta!
♪ Etta!
[singing in foreign language]
♪ So yeah hu haa hu haa
♪ Start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ La la la la la
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ It's just a matter of time ♪
It's complete chaos.
I would always talk to him, not when anybody was around.
I'd say, "Steve, you know, should we be worried?
Should we be doing something?" and he would say,
"I think it's okay, but I'll let you know."
And I said, "Please, for God's sake, if you're at any point
if there's really a risk, you got to let us know
because this is not what this is all about."
Yeah.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: When Howard flew over to Moscow
to check on his investment,
he came with a Disney representative, Kevin Gilmore.
We-- we were told that we had to be very careful to go over,
and we even went to the length of renting a plane.
We didn't wanna fly commercial.
So, we had the pilot in a hotel right by the airport,
and the idea was he was gonna call
in case we had to get out of there fast.
Howard hired a Special Forces guy to protect him for the trip,
who actually walked out onto the windowsills
of his fifth floor hotel room to make sure no one could come in
during the night. Howard loved this intrigue.
It was sort of like a Russian spy novel for him.
You know, for me, it was just going to work every day.
Tom: You know, our drivers, because we had drivers
didn't want to stop at lights or whatever,
and they told us, you can't stop at lights
because you're most likely going to get kidnapped.
Or, if you did get stopped by the police,
you wouldn't be kidnapped, but you had to pay them immediately.
And so we just reached into our wallets
and gave him $100 and moved on.
Steven: I would ask my driver, "What was the charge?"
"You're an asshole." That was the charge.
They didn't need a charge, they would just pull you over
and arrest you.
[speaking in foreign language]
People want to be rich.
They fight for resources.
You fight for what you have around.
[speaking in foreign language]
[laughs] Wild days.
[speaking in foreign language]
[instrumental music]
[speaking in foreign language]
Tom: It's a culture and it's a culture that's 1000 years old
in whatever period of time.
If we think we're gonna change that culture business-wise
overnight, we're sadly mistaken.
And we saw the kind of people. I mean...I don't know.
We went to a restaurant one day
and I thought I was in a 1930s movie.
Everybody else in the place had bodyguards
and, literally, you could see weapons.
You weren't supposed to have a weapon there.
Howard and I kinda looked around and thought,
what is this all about?
They brought out a sturgeon, a gigantic sturgeon,
then they, they auctioned it off.
So Howard turned to me, I'm the guy about the numbers, and said,
"You know, should we be bidding on this?"
I said, "No, no, we keep a low profile.
Those boys want the sturgeon, those boys get the sturgeon."
We don't understand the rules here.
We have to be a little bit careful."
And when we were there, we were getting good press,
we were on TV and what have you.
And we get an invitation from the army
to come and visit.
It was an invitation, but it was not one
we really could turn down.
So, Howard and I went with Billy, our bodyguard,
and Paul, our bodyguard.
Howard: Gushin and Tikhonov prepped us
for the meeting, and we went in.
It was like going into a vault, within a vault, within a vault.
Tom: As we come into the room, all the doors close
and at each door is a guy with a machine gun.
And we weren't sure if they were protecting us or keeping us in,
but there we were.
And in walks the General.
And he was not a... He just seemed like he's in a bad mood.
[speaking in foreign language]
And then, I said, "It's an honor to be here."
I gave him my little speech and there's a deadly silence.
All of sudden, he takes his fist. [chuckles]
I think, this guy might be hitting me.
And he took his fist and he pounded it on the table.
Howard: I look at Tom and he's ready to go home. [laughs]
Tom: He was telling us that maybe there was American money
and what have you, but this was the army's team
and it was always gonna be the army's team.
And then he looks at Tikhonov, who still was
a full bird Colonel, or whatever the equivalent is over there...
Tom: And said that if they didn't do what they were
supposed to do, they could still be
shipped off to someplace else.
Howard: Then, he looks at Gushin, and he said,
"Gushin, you're so drunk all the time."
He said, "It's about time that you served in the army."
Now, Gushin couldn't as much laced up a boot,
much less serve in the army.
And then, at some point, he sort of dismissed us.
The guys at the door with the machine guns
opened the doors and we left.
Howard: So now we go back to their office
and these guys start lacing down the vodka
like you couldn't believe.
"Oh, thank God, that's over!" they said. [laughs]
That was our meeting with the Minister of Defense.
The rest of the trip was great.
[instrumental music]
[speaking in foreign language]
[instrumental music]
Steven: During the break in the Russian season,
we took our team on a 14 city marketing tour
to play the International Hockey League.
We took these young kids, that had never even been out
of their own hometowns, into America.
[snoring]
We took them to Disneyland.
They were, literally, having the greatest time in the world.
At the same time, they didn't know the cultures, the customs.
They didn't know how to act.
[clamoring]
It was just a comedy of errors.
Steven: I remember one day, one of the kids showed up
without his jacket, $200 beautiful
Russian Penguins jacket that I made for the team.
I asked him what happened to his jacket and he told me,
"Well, I traded it for a sexual favor after the game."
[instrumental music]
Announcer 15: The Russian Penguins are not looking good.
Victor: The team wasn't the CSKA of the past.
Announcer 16: They're looking more and more like an army
of penguins.
[crowd chanting] USA! USA! USA!
Announcer 16: Another loss for the Russian Penguins.
Viktor Tikhonov looks like somebody kicked his dog.
He's not used to this.
Victor: Viktor Tikhonov was very disappointed
with the players he had.
By that time, Russia's Soviet best players,
they moved to the NHL already.
It was upsetting to Tikhonov and Gushin.
They felt like they had been raped by the NHL.
Director: If the team was bad,
then why was Disney interested in investing?
Eisner didn't care about the hockey.
Eisner's a marketing guy, we were marketing guys.
And so he was really
not concerned with the quality of play on the ice.
They wanted to have a royalty deal and they wanted
to have a deal that if a movie was made, how that would work.
That was just going to be a good thing for hockey,
a good thing for us. More money.
Male narrator: Order the jersey or the cap and receive
a free Russian Penguin mini hockey stick by calling now.
Join the revolution.
Uh, the idea was that, yes, you don't have star players,
but we have to make the stars.
We need the stars for the sponsors,
for the media, for the press.
You have Sasha Kharlamov, who is the son of Valeri Kharlamov,
a hockey hero.
And Tikhonov and Gushin were saying,
but he's not a good hockey player.
But Steven Warshaw said, "Who cares? He's Kharlamov.
We have to do, we have to make him a star."
And the Russians side they couldn't understand it,
but he doesn't play very well. Well, he's great.
He is the great player. Let's start with this. [chuckles]
Tikhonov kept talking about the essence of it.
That the essence is hockey and if there's no hockey,
no sense doing something around it.
They didn't want any of this, they didn't want
any of the madness. They wanted pure hockey.
Victor: And sometimes he was even irritated, like I said,
with all this American Western farce around nothing.
We had to convince him that it's the only way
for CSKA to survive.
So we created the world's first endorsement for a Russian.
Viktor Tikhonov for Vick's Cough Drops.
Vik for Vick's, obviously.
[crowd cheering]
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: And that television commercial ran
thousands of times.
Director: Did he like the commercial?
- At the end of the day? - He did.
He needed a makeover and this was
a great thing for his reputation.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: Without us, he didn't have players
and he didn't have ice and he didn't have equipment
and he didn't have jerseys and he didn't have tours.
Al Gore: While you can't anticipate the obstacles,
they can be overcome
if you have imagination and persistence.
Attendance for the new Moscow Penguins is up 400 percent.
I went to a hockey game, they do an excellent job
of presenting the game to the audience.
[speaking in foreign language]
Reporter 28: We are Penguins now, he says,
but in our souls, we are Russian Bear.
Howard: It's like anything else...
Something you do and it works
and it gets a lot of attention,
everybody then wants to get in on the act.
Victor: Some small Russian companies,
they started coming in,
because they saw the success and they wanted to have
some part of it.
Tom: They were all companies that were buying boxes
and stuff like that, but we weren't quite sure
who owned the companies.
This-- this was the mob.
Guys would come into the arena with long trench coats
and sawed off shotguns under them.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: One night, we made an announcement
that one fan is gonna drive away
in a Jeep... guaranteed tonight.
And the place went crazy.
Finally, we were down to two guys after a shootout.
One of the keys would open the door, the other wouldn't.
And the kid on the passenger side pops the door open,
starts going crazy. The fans went nuts.
He was so scared that he was gonna be robbed that night
and have his car stolen, that he negotiated a deal
with the dealer on the ice and actually got $10,000 cash
instead of a $30,000 car.
One day, we got a phone call that the tax police
were in their offices. And we said, w-- what does that mean?
And he said, well,
there were literally guys with machine guns
in there and they wanted money.
Steven: And if you didn't pay them, they would hijack
your trucks, they'd steal your product,
and they would destroy your business.
And so we said, well, what can we do?
We can't... You know, we'll try to help out,
but we just can't ship money to you, you're in a room,
a closed room with guys with machine guns.
Director: Was it part of the government or was it,
maybe, some other entity here?
Who-- who knows.
[speaking in foreign language]
Reporter 29: There are so many troubles here on so many fronts,
including a new degree of fear about corruption and crime.
Reporter 30: Guns are being sold in increasing numbers.
Reporter 31: The underworld now controls
40 percent of the nation's economy.
Reporter 30: Nearly 60 major figures
have been victims of contract killings in the past year.
It got dangerous.
I mean, one of the concessions guys was machine gunned
outside our building.
This doesn't happen, typically, in, you know, New York
or Chicago or Montreal.
You don't usually have your concession guy shot down.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: All the Russian hockey players told me.
They said, you know, you wanna be friends
with these mafia guys.
You want to win them over.
Tom: We became concerned.
One of the things we were concerned about was,
literally, you know, his safety
and the safety of our people there.
We always would say the same thing to him,
"Are you in danger?"
[speaking in foreign language]
Victor: Friends of Gushin, they started coming in,
saying that you are being cheated by the Americans.
They even approached me, saying that,
"You are getting this small amount of money
and you should be getting three times as much.
And if we take over, everything would be different
for all of us." They even managed to talk Gushin into it.
Uh, Gushin had very big influence on Tikhonov,
in terms of things around hockey.
And if they convinced Gushin,
he immediately would convince Tikhonov.
[intense music]
Steven: I'll never forget, we had Nike coming in
from all over the world.
And it was a Nike night and we had Nike promotions.
Tikhonov and Gushin cut Nike's logo out of the ice
and tore their signs up and their rink boards,
and replaced it with Adidas.
And I got in the next morning and I looked at them and I said,
"Why would you do this? They're paying us $100,000 a year.
Why would you take money out of your own pockets?"
And they said, "Because it's our fucking team."
He did it to prove his power.
[music continues]
It was serious business.
And when people are doing serious business,
they show different sides of their characters.
They had a guy from the mafia who worked for a company
called Mikrodin, sit in my office every single day,
watching everything I did,
photocopying everything I sent out.
I once asked Valery Gushin,
"Who are they? What do they do?"
He said, "Don't ask questions or you'll be hanging
from your thumbs by the top of the arena."
[speaking in foreign language]
[laughing]
What I loved about Gushin is, he had a contagious laugh.
He had a great laugh, despite being a real vicious guy.
He had this really soft side about him.
The same with Tikhonov.
But they tried to destroy us,
so it's hard to be in love with somebody
that's trying to kill you all the time.
[speaking in foreign language]
[laughing]
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: Did you know that there was sort of
mafia around the building?
No, not 'til the end. I wasn't paying that much attention.
We were doing the movie in Pittsburgh
called "Sudden Death."
Male narrator: Tonight, 17,000 hockey fans
have been taken hostage, but only one of them knows it.
I'm gonna try to stop you.
[dramatic music]
Male narrator: Now he has more to lose than anyone.
"Sudden Death."
Yeah, it was a little crazy, especially when we, you know,
got introduced to our future partners.
Howard and I had one particular meeting
with, uh, Gushin and Tikhonov.
They came to New York and we got introduced to somebody
who, we were told, was their partner.
See, everything was 50:50.
So we had our 50 percent was the Pittsburgh Penguins,
theirs was supposed to be Gushin and Tikhonov.
And all of a sudden, they introduced us to somebody
who they said was now their partner, on their piece.
To me, these guys, they weren't telling me
that there would be three parts in it.
No, no, they were telling me that now Pittsburgh was out.
They did their job. They played their role.
We thank them very much for arranging everything for us,
but now they're cheating us,
because they're getting all the money from it.
And I knew it was a lie, because Pittsburgh was not getting
any money from it. They were paying, they were losing money.
Director: Did you get a bad feeling from them of--
Yes. Um...
There is no question
that you were in there at your own risk,
if you weren't going to play their game of paying people off.
And there is no question, they were there looking for a payoff.
Steven: We felt like we were losing control.
Tom: And we were concerned about the safety of our money.
You know this was a big investment.
Steven: I said to Valery Gushin,
we're expecting you to steal $100,000, $200,000 a year.
But you stole a million from us last year,
and our fears were that Disney,
uh, would be the next victim.
Our last resort was to, was to ask
for help from the Russian army.
We needed them to protect Disney,
to make Disney certain that there was no risk involved.
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: But I mean, if you're protected by the army, why--
See the point was we weren't.
What we realized is we thought, you know,
that they would take care of us. No.
The system there, there were
the army took care of itself,
and then there was this other group of people,
you know, which I don't know, we identify as,
what we would call the Mafia.
And businessmen, or is what they call businessmen.
So, the army was not gonna protect us from them.
- And we thought that-- Director: Why?
Director: I mean, they're the law enforcement.
Well, it's not, this isn't like we have here.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: The Mafia, they were the banks.
They were everything.
It was the business structure.
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: Dmitry.
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: Are they telling us I've got to get out of here...
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: Dmitry, are we alright?
Producer: Keep on walking. They think it might be a bomb.
Director: Jesus Christ. That's scary, dude.
Producer: Yeah. I know...
[speaking in foreign language]
How you control people? There're two ways of controlling them.
Greed and fear.
If you, if you don't have greed, like generally
as your way of control,
fear is the one, the only one you have.
[speaking in foreign language]
Alexander: The show was banned very many times.
Every week was a fight.
Director: Did you ever feel threatened?
Yeah, I was threatened. I felt threatened all the time.
I was attacked.
They opened criminal cases against me.
Director: Who is they opened criminal cases?
The state.
[speaking in foreign language]
[instrumental music]
Steven: I don't think the Russians really ever got it.
They didn't get it, 'cause if they got it,
they would have become commercial
and they would have ridden our coattails
to, you know, as-- as Michael said, $100 million.
[instrumental music]
Um...
Well, I can call Michael for you. He may...
I don't know why he would have said that
because he would remember this.
He would remember this.
So on one hand, our major economic reason, you know,
was being taken away from us.
And then we had on the other hand, the strange partner
getting introduced to us and so we said,
"Well, this is not... We have to stop this."
Remember, at this point looming was the fact that we thought
we'd be getting players and what have you.
By the way, that stopped.
That was the other reason we had to get out.
All the teams complained because they were worried that the--
Director: All of which teams? - The National Hockey League.
They said to the commissioner and said "You can't let these
guys do it." Because they suddenly realized we were gonna
get all the good Russian players.
And what happened of course is
Stevie was so successful that they wanted to hire him.
Steven: They came to me and said,
"Why don't you come and work with the Mafia?
You don't need Pittsburgh. We'll take care of you."
Offering me women and drugs and an apartment.
And I asked them how much they were going to pay me.
And it was actually less than the Penguins.
So I said, "You idiot, I can get my own women, my own drugs.
Why would I take less money and work for you
when I can enjoy my life and get more money with the Penguins?"
And they said, "Well if you don't, we'll kill you."
And I said, "Really? How much is a hit on my life?"
He said, "$6500."
It was enough to tell me to get the hell out of Russia.
[crowd cheering]
Not too long after we left,
four major figures in our hockey sphere were killed.
Our team photographer took a photo of a table,
but behind that table was a big mobster
who thought he was in the frame.
So the next day, on his way to work,
he got five bullets in his head.
Alexander Osadchi was a San Jose draft pick.
Found him in his apartment dead one morning.
No trace, no bruises, nothing.
Just dead.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: The Mafia actually killed
one of our assistant coaches one day.
They were laying in wait in the parking lot
and they put five bullets in his head right in front of his wife.
The head of the Russian Hockey Federation, Valentin Sinch
was also gunned down.
Who knows what would have happened if we had stayed?
That could have been us.
[speaking in foreign language]
[instrumental music]
Alexander: Vladislav Listyev.
It's an awful story for me.
Director: Were you a close friend of his or...
Right.
Still not understanding why that happened.
Because I don't know.
Victor: If you compare these business killings
to the killings under Stalin,
you cannot compare it.
This criminality and...
all the things you mentioned.
I just accepted them as something inevitable,
but, but we have to live with it and I was so happy
that the whole thing with the Soviet Union
and communism was over.
That I was ready to accept anything.
[chuckles]
[instrumental music]
[speaking in foreign language]
The pre-eminent mission of our new government
is to give all Americans an opportunity.
[speaking in foreign language]
[applauding]
[speaking in foreign language]
Director: Did you get any, last night, did you sleep much?
I n-- I never sleep. So it's a normal night. Yeah.
Director: You never do?
I told you this condition is killing me, too. Yeah.
[sighs]
[shutter clicking]
[speaking in foreign language]
Look, here's a guy. Oh, shit, no light on.
Although I can't prove it, I'm quite certain that
I got a toxic multi-nodal goiter in my neck that's choked
my thyroid from my stint in the former Soviet Union.
And, uh, I'm suffering to this day.
[speaking in foreign language]
Steven: It's the most ambivalent feeling
I've had in my life because I fell in love with somebody
that didn't love me back.
[chuckles]
[instrumental music]
♪ Start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ It's just a matter of time
♪ So yeah start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ It's just a matter of time
♪ I know you since you were a twenty ♪
♪ I was twenty and thought that some years from now ♪
♪ A purple little little lady will be perfect ♪
♪ For dirty old and useless clown ♪
♪ So yeah start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ La la la la la la la
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ 'Cause it's just a matter of time ♪
♪ I know it all from Diogenis to the Foucault ♪
♪ From Lozgechkin to Paspartu
[singing in foreign language]
♪ Start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ 'Cause it's just a matter of time ♪
♪ So yeah uh ah uh ah
♪ Start wearing purple wearing purple ♪
♪ Start wearing purple for me now ♪
♪ So why don't you start wearing purple? ♪
♪ Why don't you start wearing purple? ♪
♪ Start wearing purple
♪ For me now
♪ All your sanity and wits they will all vanish I promise ♪
♪ 'Cause it's just a matter of time ♪
♪ So Vio-- Vio-- Violetta!
♪ Etta! ♪
[singing in foreign language]