As a young gun film-maker in Hollywood, with an Academy Award-nominated documentary (Gang Cops) under his belt at the tender age of 26, could Dan Marks ever have envisaged his future career lay in heading up a division of a former nationalised telco?
But that telco, BT, is a different beast to the days when Bob Hoskins urged customers that: "It's good to talk". Monopoly of the UK's landline telephony has gone and it now sees content acquisition as key to its broadband penetration ambitions, in an age when the computer and the TV set are finally merging into one entertainment platform.
Marks' challenge is to wrest content from the exclusive clutches of established media players, namely Sky, to fill BT Vision's broadband video-on-demand library.
In this, BT Vision has joined Sky's other pay-TV rivals in inducing Ofcom to investigate whether the satellite broadcaster's dominance impinges on the efficient working of the market.
Their endgame is to get retail access to Sky's prime content - movies and sport - at a "fair" price.
The Financial Times recently described Vision as BT's "biggest domestic gamble since the push into broadband". Yet the size of the investment in Vision - £100m in 2007, a fraction of BT's £2bn-plus annual profit - suggests the telco is not betting the house on its fledgling entertainment division.
Strategic importance
Nevertheless, with a target of three million customers by 2010 - the same as cable TV now - and when BT's total broadband subscriber base is only 3.8 million, it is clear that Vision is strategically important to BT's ambitions.
The doomsayers cast doubt on these ambitions. They say Vision is too late to the pay-TV market, that those who haven't already subscribed to pay-TV represent the nation's unyielding technophobes - many of whom do not even own a computer, let alone a broadband line.
Marks bristles at this assumption. "These are people who have resisted taking up a pay-TV subscription, but that is very different to technophobia. Price sensitivity is the biggest issue," he claims.
"It is a judgement about the value and cost of a £43 monthly subscription to Sky or cable. Our service has to give them a sense of value, and that means offering them flexibility in the way they pay, either by subscription at a cheaper price or by pay-per-view."
Another argument is that the pay-TV refuseniks inhabit the lower demographic orders, making them difficult to monetise. Again, Marks refutes this: "Freeview runs across all the demographics. They may be lighter TV viewers, but it doesn't make them less able to pay."
He places great store in Vision's potential by the fact that about 12 million UK households currently don't have any pay-TV, and that that "is not a rejection of pay-TV, but the terms under which it is offered". Furthermore, he says broadband "will soon be close to ubiquitous, whether or not it is connected to a PC". Since Vision airs on a TV screen via a set-top box, a PC isn't required.
He also sees a "significant" proportion of BT Vision's revenue and profits coming from other revenue sources.
"By that, I mean the exploitation of the interactivity of the platform," he says. "That includes targeted advertising, sponsorship, shopping, product placement and gambling."
Marks cut his teeth in VoD at the fledgling Video Networks (Homechoice). He was introduced to it through his friend, the investment banker (Viscount) Tom Chandos, who convinced him back in 1998 that VoD was the entertainment of the future.
He cut his first movie deals there. But deal-making isn't movie-making and Marks admits he misses that sometimes.
Producer's eye
"But this (BT Vision) is not unlike being a producer," he says. "I look at everything with a producer's eye," which for a chief executive gives him an edge in assessing rights deals.
As for his passions in life, the most important are his family - his Iranian-born wife and his young son - and tinkling the ivories. Not forgetting, of course, film and TV, both of which he watches endlessly.
For a man who once made a film about LA gangsters, his favourite movie, unsurprisingly, is Goodfellas, directed by his favourite director, Martin Scorsese.
The London-born Marks, 43, studied film at the school of famous film directors, the University of Southern California, which counts Sam Peckinpah, James Ivory, George Lucas and Ron Howard among its alumni.
While he may not have followed in their Hollywood footsteps, his time in the movie capital has clearly left its mark - and good memories.
"I loved Los Angeles," he says. "I was young, making films, everybody wanted to talk about films. The weather was good. I met my wife there. What's not to love?"
CV
2005: Chief executive, BT Vision
2000: Senior vice-president business development, Universal Studios Networks, then president
1998: Head of programming, Video Networks
1994: Director, TV3 Russia
1987: Independent film producer and director, Los Angeles.