MMMM: Strategies For The Future?
What we once called The Film Business now just one big whirlwind of never-ending chaos, right? We can see the trainwreck coming but we just keep on heading full force into it. Is there no turning back? Somewhere there is a switch that swings us in another direction, right?
I was on several calls over the last two weeks where it truly felt like The WGA Strike was a surprise to some. People who were in the actual business of getting movies made were just waking up to the fact that they probably couldn’t for some time. And then meanwhile the other half of the team were sending me notes saying they secretly hope the work stoppage never ends (as they would rather not have to work so hard to get stuff made). People want something new. They want something better. This doesn’t have to be a pit of despair we are headed for.
Sure, the present is chaos. And it has always been chaos. Sometimes we may try to deny it, but that chaos has always been here. Soon the chaos just becomes the new normal. We have always found a way, right?
But this time on top of all that chaos, we have had one giant domino after another fall every three years or so. World Financial Collapse. Industry-wide company closings. Streaming dominance. #MeToo. #OscarsSoWhite. Global Streaming Dominance. Covid. Industry-wide firings. Stock price collapse. The Strike. Good times. Business as usual. Yee haw!
How do we dig ourselves out of this hole? Really. It seems like there is an opportunity brewing for all of us, or for the all of us that might want something new, something truly independent from the mainstream.
I keep thinking we all need to build our own personal #RoadmapToUtopia but maybe I have it wrong; maybe we just each need our own personal strategy for the next 100 years. Maybe instead of trying to make things better, we just need to make things last, or last longer. Of course, I want both: better and more sustainable. Why does everything seem to want to pitch itself as an either/or all or nothing scenario?
Why demand more? After all, isn’t it our overreach that helps elevate things forward for future generations? Or is it that such overreach destroys things or exploits things? Maybe it is just the little things that are being destroyed, you know like the planet and over half our population. Everything is ruining everything else. It’s working together, so that’s nice. I want to try to make things of beauty, but trying to come up with a model to do that, often leads me to feeling we first and foremost have to make stuff that sells so that the stuff that sells can in turn fund the beauty, but I know how that game goes: you spend all your time trying to make money and no art ever gets produced, or at least only very rarely. And where does that leave you? Feeling you compromised yourself and didn’t get what matters to you most ever done. And then you die, so there’s that too.
Every time I think I have picked myself up off the floor of the Maslovian Pyramid and am getting close to a focus solely on self-actualization and wham! There I am again staring into the big question mark of plain old ground level survival. I quit producing as my career once. I am old and comfortable enough now to survive only doing the stuff that I love. I don’t need to quit again but I haven’t learned how to focus on being small. My mind races with the big ideas. We’ve never built a non-dependent indie film ecosystem, the one where we are not the benevolent parasite on the back of the mainstream industry. It could be done. Could we get so far down that people finally realize separation is key.
We don’t have to make films for everyone. We don’t need big success. Making a profit and paying your bills and being sustainable could be plenty. You can build things designed to last. You could build a “Disney” style company that did everything in the field to generate revenue but only with a focus on ambitiously authored work with ample attitude. Maybe we would need to pick an animated mascot first, but we could get there.
I am off to Cannes. I hope I have some wide-reaching conversations that look at the big picture, that aren’t about just getting the next film made, but are about what a better system to continually make movies in are. I am not sure how many times I have been to Cannes now but it probably is close to 15 times. I can’t say I yet know how to “do it right” – which a lot of folks ask me to tell them. I wish someone would tell me that.
Personally, I think the best way to do Cannes is to go there early, stay to the end, but leave in the middle for a short holiday. I am arriving early this year and leaving in the middle, but to return home. Early arrivals allow you to recover first and even perhaps squeeze in some first meetings before craziness arrives. You can do a bit of that too if you stop over in NYC and/or London or Paris along the way Why not visit the best cities in the world?! If I don’t stay long at Cannes, I can’t get movie viewing in, which is what the true delight is. Of course the problem with our business is you always get another chance to see films, so can you make it a screening a priority if you are not a buyer or a critic?
With all festivals, as a producer, I prioritize meeting people, especially those from other lands, and then the festival starts to unfortunately turn into a convention, and the true transactional nature of our industry is revealed. It’s bad enough we turn our art into products but when we start doing something similar to each other then we do know it is all really going to hell. None of us are just workers. We all have something unique to offer and to celebrate. How can we make sure we keep that front and center at all times? But this Cannes is a meeting feast. It will be good to see folks but I wish I was seeing more movies.
Regardless of what you actually do, the answer to How-To-Do-Cannes is also the answer on How-To-Make-Beautiful-Movies: be a good person, treat people well, remember how fortunate you are to be able to pursue the things you love, stare off into the ocean, eat some oysters, and celebrate the good times while you plan on how to make it all better.
Know that you will emerge from these bad times better from having done the right things and kept your focus on building things better than they were before.
"We don’t have to make films for everyone." So true. Dylan in his biography said something he learned was that you have to be able to get your hooks into somebody. The lesson I took away from this passage (if I'm remembering it right) is that you're not making music for everybody, but for somebody.
Enjoy Cannes.
This article sparked an idea, sort of a re-evaluation of things you've said in the past. What if the "new" tool we need to find is actually an obstacle in our path as we currently view it?
Consider your oft cited acronym (which I never quite remember your exact phrasing, so forgive me,) SOTBDA, or say one thing but do another. It's often the wrench that gums up the works as we rely on someone to provide something they're not ending up doing. But what if we turn it around? Use it to deliver a positive, while promising to deliver the mundane initially?
This inversion has been done before to great effect. Star Trek was originally pitched as, "Wagon Train to the stars." Rodenberry got the networks interested with the reference to something they were greatly familiar and comfortable with. But it was never his intention to deliver on that pitch (or at least not wholly adhearing to it.) He almost blew it by delivering a cerebral pilot episode ("The Cage") and was only able to turn it around with a more action heavy re-do and some retooling. And the rest, is history (that's still going strong.)
If we pitched our projects in the vein of more-of-the-same just a bit different, but, worked in some ambitiously authored original ideas in the mix of what is delivered, they'll be taken along for the ride and quickly forget what was originally promised isn't what they've been delivered at all.
From your own stories of working with Ang Lee, he seemed to have this knack of thinking about the future things than could be set up while working on the things currently in front of him. If we get good at it, we could tell people what they want to hear and still work on the adventurous stuff in the delivered goods. Get the greenlight and deliver a Ferrari instead of the Ford Pinto they approved. It's still a car, just a more exciting car that goes places the other one couldn't dream of.
Just food for thought.