Sunday Morning Coming Down
Happy Sunday!
I decided to do another weekend read since I spent a good portion of last week prepping for and doing my first couple of pitches. I had two on Wednesday. I felt good about the delivery. I was EXTREMELY prepared, thanks to the practice pitch the week before.
I used to dread the practice pitch because it felt like one last opportunity to second guess the stuff we all agreed on. I over prepare for the practice pitches now. I don’t want to get lost or stumble over ideas and have that be the thing that puts somebody in a panic. If I aim for “well told” then hopefully afterward we’re just talking about how all of the information is delivered. Are the big ideas coming across clearly? Are the super cool, super fun moments landing? I love those kinds of notes. Because of that I’ve learned to stop worrying and embrace the practice pitch.
The rest aren’t until November so I’ve got a couple of weeks to let it go cold in my brain, which means another day of prep when they start up again. If I do manage to sell this show I want to do something fun to celebrate with you since you’ve been following this saga for so many months. Maybe a zoom cocktail hour or something.
I went down a Tom Sachs rabbit hole on YouTube again recently. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s an artist who does handmade, low fi recreations of well-known objects, often bringing in some kind of pop culture elements or famous brands.
I’ve seen a number of interviews where he talks about how the iPhone is the most highly advanced piece of technology ever made but there’s no indication that human beings were involved. He wants you to feel the presence of the artist in the hot glue trails and exposed screws, the “scars of labor.” Which is to say the humanity. Here's one of my favorites:
In one of the videos I watched he asked the question, “Who do you serve?”
I wrote it down and kept coming back to it throughout the week. As a writer for film and television my end goal is to serve an audience. Before I get there I have to serve the producers, studios, and networks who hire me. They foot the bill and sell ads or subscriptions to make that money back and hopefully a profit. We call it the “entertainment industry” but entertainment is a service we provide.
Whatever we call it, we seem to be in dire straits. My friend Ben Blacker just started an excellent newsletter called Re: Writing that draws on his knowledge of working in the business and the hundreds of hours he's spent interviewing writers of all levels for his Writer's Panel podcast. (I'll put a link below!) He did a deep dive on all of the challenges writers are facing and it was eye opening. There's a lot of uncertainty right now.
I started thinking about another industry that went through a nightmare the last couple of years, which is food service. So many restaurants didn’t make it through the pandemic. The ones that did either had a loyal clientele to begin with or they figured out ways to innovate. Places that never offered takeout before pulled their dining tables and chairs off the floor and set up to go stations. They built makeshift patios and put wooden decking over parking lanes for outdoor seating. In colder cities they put heated pods on the sidewalks and in the streets. Cities and states cut restrictions to let restaurants sell alcohol to go. Chefs who got laid off from their jobs started pop-ups in their houses, outside of bars, or in parking lots. Some of the best pizza in Los Angeles right now exists because people who love to cook for a living had to find a way to survive.
Nobody wanted to do all of that. It’s terrible that they had to do it. It’s heartbreaking that so many places went under. (RIP Central Grill in Glendale) But many of the people who found ways to innovate survived the pandemic and lived to fight another day (Monkey Pox).
I feel like I need to start thinking in those terms a little more. This is a service industry. It’s going through tumultuous times, the future is uncertain. How do I adjust my service and innovate for survival? I've been looking for ways around the IP problem, writing short stories and audio dramas and comedies, but my final goal is still film and television. What will that even look like five to ten years from now?
If you have been reading this newsletter for any length of time you probably already know that I’m obsessed with creative breakthroughs and innovation. I’m always in search of “the new.” Remember that journal entry from last week? A few pages later there’s a poem about Charlie Parker called “Bird Lives,” about this very subject. I was constantly thinking about this stuff as far back as twenty years ago. This is why the description of this newsletter from day one was, “Thoughts about the writing process, creativity, INNOVATION, and inspiration.”
Because I want this newsletter to be of service, I went searching for some new tools that might help spark some innovative thinking for all of us, beyond the usual nuts and bolts craft stuff. I came across a couple of great articles on the website for Autodesk, the company who created the CAD software. I’m going to link them below but here are the basics:
Autodesk has an “innovation strategist” named Bill O’Connor. Bill led a team of students who considered the 1,000 greatest innovations in human history and boiled them down to their essence. Much like mapping the human genome, they mapped “the innovation genome,” which consists of seven questions.
What could we look at in a new way?
What could we use in a new way for the first time?
What could we move, changing its position in space and time?
What could we interconnect for the first time in a new way?
What could we alter in terms of design or performance?
What can we make that is truly new?
What can we imagine that would make a great experience for someone?
I have a “go-to” list of concept/story specific questions but I love these because they work on so many other levels. You could apply them to your concepts and stories but you could also apply them to how you get those ideas out in the world, how you find and connect with an audience, how to seek representation, how to ensure that emerging writers get the kind of training they need to become the next generation of showrunners, how we keep our creative autonomy and not just resign ourselves to taking dictation, how we pay our bills with our talents.
There are very few sure bets right now. Even some the stuff based on well known IP has trouble cutting through the noise. But a movie with a heart to heart conversation between two rocks did it. We might as well take big swings. Play with form and structure, push boundaries, go meta, mash up genres. Go big. Or go really small, if that's where these questions lead you.
I have no idea what a career in writing for film and television looks like in five years, or ten. I know change is coming. We can keep trying the same old stuff we've always done, or we can pull up the tables and chairs, serve old fashioneds in mason jars, and put up pop up tents in the alley. Figure out how to streamline and take advantage of new platforms. It's not just about our skill set it's about our mindset. Questions like these can open up new ways of thinking.
One last thought about service...
Like I said before, I want this newsletter to be of service to you. It’s been a long time since I asked directly what YOU think would be helpful. George Saunders does an occasional office hours issue of his newsletter where he takes a question from a reader and gives a thoughtful answer. I love it because it seems to force him to think in new ways as well. So if you have a question about writing and producing or some aspect of the business I haven’t covered yet, please drop me a line and I’ll do my best to answer it in the near future.
Thanks for reading, I hope you have a wonderful week!
How Studying Past Innovations Revealed 7 Questions that Can Lead to Future Innovations - It is Alive in the Lab — labs.blogs.com Groups visit Autodesk and want to talk about innovation. They come to offices like the Autodesk Gallery and ask "How does Autodesk innovate?" when what they really want to know is "How can I innovate?" In response, Autodesk has developed...
The Autodesk Innovation Genome is part of a Process - It is Alive in the Lab — labs.blogs.com Last week I posted a blog article about the Autodesk Innovation Genome. "How Studying Past Innovations Revealed 7 Questions that Can Lead to Future Innovations" That article covered how our innovation Strategist, Bill O'Connor, came up with 7 questions whose...
Re: Writing newsletter from Ben Blacker
This Mess We're In - by Ben Blacker - Re:Writing — benblacker.substack.com There's no business like... ugh.
Yoda of the Week: Annie Lennox
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