The World According to Jeff Goldblum

Thank you, baby.

Well, well, well.

Jeff Goldblum here.

I'm an actor.

I play a little jazz music.

A curious cat, that's true.

And I guess I'm always on the lookout for the unexpected.

You know, I think that when you explore the ordinary, sometimes...

you might just discover the extraordinary.

Sneakers. Wonderful, wonderful sneakers.

I'm standing here in front of

what to the untrained eye, I'm sure,

looks like a big wall of colorful footwear.

The value of all the shoes on this wall...

is somewhere around a million dollars.

The sneaker industry has become

a multi-billion-dollar business in just three decades.

Now, there are every color of the rainbow.

Popular everywhere, from the basketball court to the boardroom.

Part of this is a mind-game.

Even if you're not a dancer or an athlete, you can feel like one.

Sneakers started out, ah, as simple foot protection...

for our lovely feet.

Today, they've been transformed into something much more...

curious.

Oh, look at that. There's a picture of little me.

It was in this period where I wore just one pair of play shoes.

- Hi, kids. - There we go. Keds.

Let's all sing the Keds song.

I think they came in just black or white.

They probably cost about five bucks.

It was the shoe that I took my first dance classes in.

Then, you know, several decades,

and for me, a whole bunch of movies later...

that play shoe...

has become a whole different animal.

Sneaker Con.

Look at this, I don't know if you're seeing it in the background, but lines.

Must be thousands of people here to get sneakers.

Wish me luck. I think I'm gonna need it. I'm going in.

Well, this is the Huntington Convention Center,

and it's Ellen Burstyn with an international congregation

who have descended upon this place

in order to worship at the altar of Mr. Sneaker.

- How old are you? Thirteen. - Thirteen.

What's the most you've ever paid for a shoe?

Eighteen hundred.

- Wait a minute. You gotta be kidding. - Yeah.

These shoes are worth...

- Twelve to fifteen, yeah. - ...twelve to fifteen thousand dollars?

- They're collector's items. - Uh-oh.

Wait a minute.

Look at that. Look what people are willing to spend.

Hey, so, I've been given a contact

in this garish, yet fascinating, foreign land.

A Mr. Jaysse Lopez...

...who, among so-called sneakerheads, is a real-life man of legend.

This is the first time, I've never been to a Sneaker Con.

It's such a great show because, look, you have people

from all walks of life

that are all excited about the culture, right?

And in this six to seven hour time frame,

you're gonna see millions of dollars being exchanged.

- Millions of dollars? - Yeah.

Now, why have they become so valuable like that?

And why are they willing to spend all this cash?

Think baseball cards.

With baseball cards, when you collect, right,

- you're consumed with the chase, right? - Well, yes, yes, yes.

And it's technically just a piece of paper.

- And just because there's... - Yeah.

...a different image or a different player,

it all of sudden is worth more...

- Right. Right. I see. I see. I see. - ...than the next piece of paper.

- So it's the same concept. - Yeah, I get it.

Does anybody ever try to put one over? Does anybody make counterfeit?

- Oh, yeah. It has a lot to do... - Us...

...with the weight, the smell, the textures, the box.

- That's the correct smell. - Really?

- Let me memorize this. - It's almost like sniffing wine.

- We like that. It's got a nice... - But in a shoe.

There's a note of chocolate and leather, fine leather in there, and, mm, I like it.

Is this deal going down right now...

- ...as we speak? - So...

My dollar is 34,000.

- Thirty-four thousand. - Oh! What do you mean?

That's what all these amount to? Thirty-four thousand dollars?

- Correct. - You're asking for that table of shoes?

Thirty-four thousand, correct.

So, that breaks down to about 309 a pair...

- Huh-huh. - ...all right?

- Three hundred and nine dollars a pair? - Wit... Correct. Three-O-nine.

I'll do 328.

Okay. How about let's make it 33?

I could do that. Would you do a bank transfer?

Is bank transfer cool? I could...

That's the killer right there.

- I can't do bank transfer? - No.

I'd prefer to do all cash.

All right, give me a second off camera, is that cool?

Off-camera, one second?

Oh, boy. Oh, my God.

Oh, boy. Fredo...

...I've got two million dollars in that case.

I'm gonna go take a nap, when I come back if it's not on the table...

...I'll know we don't have a deal.

If it is, I'll know we do.

It's not personal. It's business. Remember that, Michael.

- It's not personal. It's business. - ...as long as we're doing 999...

I hear them. Don't look.

Don't try to eavesdrop what they're doing. It's very exciting.

Something's going down. Something's going down.

I'm going back in, okay? See if I can help.

- Yo, cool. Done. - Okay.

- We have it? - We have it.

- So, we've figure... - You shake on it. You shake...

We've figured out our work-around.

- There you go, my man. - Huh.

- Sneaker... - First deal of the day.

Sneaker Con on three.

- One, two, three! - One, two, three!

- Sneaker Con. - Sneaker Con.

When you get to learn the rules of Sneaker Con, you suddenly see that...

that everybody is in on the game.

They've become this object of worship.

And the question is, how'd we get here? How'd all this happen?

Well, it happens that it's a whale of a tale,

with some connections that are quite, quite, ah, curious.

Well, it all started about 60 million years ago,

way, way back when trees became a favorite food

for giant, great big, creepy crawling bugs.

So to defend themselves,

these trees developed a poisonous sticky substance...

essentially rubber...

which was flexible and waterproof.

Now, it had a quirk, it melted in the sun.

And, then, a few million years later, there was a guy named Charles Goodyear,

and he accidentally dropped it on his stove

and saw it transformed into a...

...an elastic material kinda like leather,

and this so-called vulcanized rubber changed

our modern world,

launching everything from tires, to hoses,

to bouncy balls, and of course...

the wonderful sneaker.

And today, those sneakers are in a fertile period of evolution.

Hail Darwin! Hail Darwin!

So, here we are in Portland, Oregon, at the headquarters of Adidas.

Adidas. Or some people say Adidas.

Well, hello. Hey. Look who's hiding behind the ferns.

Good day, Jeff. How are you, mate? Paul Francis.

Paul Francis. Paul Francis. You should feel this handshake.

- Very good. - Come on. Come on.

Wow! Wow!

- Just forget everything before you leave. - Forget everything, really?

All right.

Here goes. Wow!

Wow, I did not expect this.

- This is Elise. Elise, this is Jeff. - Nice to meet you.

So nice to meet you, Elise.

The information that we're gonna extract from Elise today,

we're gonna share with our designers and our engineers,

and that actually goes into creating the future product.

- Now, this is Elise running. - It's... that's Elise?

I had no idea we were going to see her without any of her muscles or flesh.

- This is just her skeleton. - This is just her skeleton.

I hardly recognize her.

What I really geek out on is how the foot strike

is gonna be affecting things further up the chain.

And what do you see? Are you seeing anything interesting?

Yeah. So, she's rotating more to the left.

- Hmm. - And you can see the different bend

in her lumbar spine there.

So, anything that we change down at the footwear level

is gonna have consequences as we go further up.

Paul Francis

and his researchers...

...create special shoes for elite athletes.

And, now, look at me. Jeez, who's the lucky boy?

We might get you to run across the force plate there.

Okay.

- Ready? - So, Tom, we ready?

Okay. Okay. Force plate.

- Force plate. Force plate. - Oh.

That was pretty close, yeah?

I thought I was right in the middle of that force plate.

It's the first time I've ever missed a force plate.

Well.

I'll charge over. Yeah, yeah! Wow. Okay. Hey, that was good.

- Yeah? - It was pretty good,

but there's still a bit too much bop.

Let's try and have one without the bop. No bop.

I... I don't know what you mean by bop. What do you mean?

Take a more natural stride.

Natural. I'm totally natural.

- I'm totally natural. Yeah. Okay. - There we go.

- That's me. I'll be darned. - Yeah.

Whoa! That's dynamic.

And now we go frame by frame.

Get going.