The Best And The Brightest Consistently Make Bad Decisions
Yet these errors of judgement are where the light gets in
Most of us are born outside the castle walls and are never even invited in. Initially I didn’t believe I would ever get to make movies; I had no money, no power (as I conceived of it), and no connections. Our entertainment industries are not meritocracies, despite some sort of cadence to the examples to the contrary. Do we ever get let in? Can we stay in if we do? Do we even want to join the party? Can we find a key and some secret power to both enter and stay long?
What got me in and what keeps me going now is a specific recognition that both illuminates a path and recharges my batteries. I’ve always had a good fight in me, and work well when I have a bit of resistance in front of me. FYIWDWYTM and all of that. Why is it that when we feel we have to prove our worth, we work harder? I think we expect that one day we will be recognized, appreciated, and truly valued, and if not widely, then by people we respect, and certainly those that love us; we hope that such respect is the true order of things. We summon the good fight in us to not let the doubters, and frustraters, and obstructers keep us down.
In my early days in the film business, I was truly desperate. Making movies was all that I wanted to do with my life. I put all my efforts on learning how to get movies made. I took jobs on worse films if they came with more opportunity to learn. As long as I was getting paid enough to live, and as long as I was able to learn, I eagerly took the job. I didn’t care about status; I only wanted to improve my skills and understanding.
I quickly saw that most had other priorities than I did, but there were some that I met and observed that seemed to feel like I did. We were interested in cinema and in finding ways to make the movies we wanted – not just the ones that were getting made. There was a comradery to NYC filmmaking in those days. You could also feel that things were changing, that the old order was slipping, that new ways and new tales were ascending. It fueled us with hope.
I have been fortunate -- I showed up in the right place at the right time and never stopped learning. Good luck and a strong commitment make for a good cocktail. Mix in some of the fellowship of the like-minded and you might have the start of something new. But you need to be prepared; each of us have to find the things that give us that TPP shell, the things that prevent us from getting bitter and help us keep on keeping on. Without it, the cruel truths will rob us of our youth.
One of the tools I use on this search for resilience is the selection of a specific lens to view the world through. This is the go-to I use to keep my commitment up. It is the filter that keeps me looking for the right opportunity, that window I can climb through and pull some others through with me. This is all part of my maintenance process. Everyone wants to be a builder, and few want to do the maintenance, but you can’t keep doing the former without always also doing the latter. In preparing for the long haul, you best know what you’ll need in the maintenance kit.
Truth is you need something more than the right tools. You know how some folks use meditation beads? For the last fifteen years, I’ve used a particular pearl to motivate me. It is the counter of what I find many others believe will fuel them; we can’t always stimulate our better angels, do good, or lift everyone else up with us, can we? Sometimes we can find inspiration from the plethora of astoundingly poor decisions others make regularly – particularly those you might suspect to be immune from such deficiencies.
If you want to last long in the film business and find the new ways to do things when hope seems almost lost, learn to marvel at the Dumb Ass Decisions The Best And Brightest, The Most Powerful And Wealthy, Do On A Regular Basis (DADTBABTMPAWDOARB). Yes, I’ve said this before, but it is important enough to warrant further examination. These errors of judgement are where the light gets in. It is not just the good things people build or do, but the failures that occur that allow us to keep doing what we do well. Those on top stumble too. One day one or more will topple. I want you to get the job where you get to ski out the avalanche that follows in others’ wake. I want you to know how to navigate around the messes the others will make.
I delight in these errors because one of the “poor thinking” habits I find perverse comfort in, is my moaning “why does it have to be this way?”. I find myself wandering those streets more than I should for I know everything changes on a regular basis. The streets are rivers that are never the same path twice. I don’t know if Film is more prone to change than other creative industries, but we sure do pile up the missed opportunities and the DADTBABTMPAWDOARB. I probably should have included this on my list of 20 Film Business Truths, but now I can get started on Volume Two for you.
Let’s look at some of these Dumb Ass Decisions, shall we? And I don’t mean the little things like claiming you are talent friendly and then removing a ton of movies off the platform you are now running? Or changing the name of that platform from something that had become synonymous with quality and reducing it something generic or better suited as a condom name. Or allowing the NY Times to run a photo of you partying down in Cannes with an expensive bottle of bubbly while all the folks who labor for you are on strike. Sure cumalitvely those add up, but they are not one way doors. It is the things that can’t easily be reversed that I want to examine.
For instance, how did the agents and artists let the Global Streamers get away with not sharing their data for so long? Oh yeah, they were bought off. They were getting good money fast, so why bother looking out for what comes next. Why? Because it is going to hurt you if you don’t. We need data so that we can share in what is rightfully ours – the upside that comes with success. When artists don’t have a part of that upside, they lose many incentives to make the work better and to make sure it has its rightful impact.
The Entertainment Strategy Guy has made the necessary point the data transparency is probably the most most important issue the unions could fight for. He also tipped me to this quote from UTA head Jeremy Zimmer:
“Well, what I really believe is important for our business, is alignment of artists with the success of the shows and films they work on. And I think that the Netflix model has separated people from that alignment in a way that we knew probably wasn't a good idea, but I don't know that we could have necessarily foreseen all the downside of it.”
There are so many Dumb Ass Decisions that we’ve made in the Film Biz, perhaps it is best to list them. This is a starter list. Let me know what I missed.
15+ Dumb Ass Decisions The Film Industry Has Made
125 years of making & releasing movies primarily for only one segment of the audience, and not addressing well over half the others.
125 years of staffing the making and releasing of movies with predominately folks of similar ethnicity, class, gender and experience.
The pivot to streaming first (and the 23+ things we lost as a result in the process)
Launching Global Streaming without having the processes / staffing to be able to Scale as planned.
Global Streamers not having a next step planned once they reached saturation point with American audience acquisition.
Believing the Capital & Distribution dominance they once had was all The Studios needed to stay in control. They were asleep at the wheel, and the FAANG digital companies acquired far more capital and had better (digital) distribution, not to mention a direct relationship with the customer.
Global Streaming’s initial 100% pivot from theatrical exhibition (as opposed to hybrid approach), abandoning revenue, and not learning to refine the various bespoke approaches needed to amplify diverse product. They now admit they were wrong.
Global streaming’s backend buyout — reducing filmmakers’ incentives to better refine their movie or promote it.
Global Streaming’s singular focus on “global 4 quadrant” titles – as if they even exist, and their failure to focus of diversifying titles.
Global streaming’s failure to diversify the supply and suppliers. Why do you think it all feels the same?
Quiby or what happens when those that a considered the best, brightest, most powerful and wealthy, launch a venture that no one wants and solves no problem.
VHS over BetaMax, or picking a poor quality product to favor a minor convenience.
Multiplexes or how we mistook a small part of the experience for the whole, diminishing it the process, and reducing a transformative experience into a transactional one.
Podcast Investment or how once again every media company copied what the other one did, thinking some success would be a permanent success and thus overwhelmed the market and made something stale before it truly got to bloom on a regular basis.
Making record profits year after year and not sharing the wealth equitably with the creators, let alone providing decent work conditions or long-term stability.
When they make ads like this you know they have no clue. (added 11/30/24)
Apple has spent $20B so far, and has what to show for it? That’s the equivalent of 10 Quibby’s. Well, at least they have stable leadership. (added 11/30/24)
Adjacent Addition (10.29.24): Although we can’t call Meta, Apple, & Microsoft “Film Industry” as even when they dabble, they just dabble. But they didn’t dabble when they bought into Virtual Reality. Call that another DAD.
And Another Adjacent Addition: (11/30/24):
What did I forget? What could I have said better? What will be the next dumbass decision they make?
In writing this I am just struck how I have been pondering for close to thirty years now why Film has not been able to build and maintain a sustainable finance and distribution ecosystem. I essentially started this newsletter with a post wondering about this. We have to learn to fail better. We will reduce our dumb ass decisions if we better understand Cinema’s unique attributes and some truths about our business.
PS. May I encourage to check out some of my earlier posts that you may have missed? And encourage you to give them a heart too (as it helps others discover them too)? Thanks!
About your comment about "having a good fight in you" -- brings to mind the profound last lines of "Ulysses" by Lord Tennyson and "Tis not too late to seek a newer world":
**
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
For me, the Big Dumb Fucking Move that I watch happen over and over and over in film, comics and books is to aggressively focus output on established nostalgia plays while ignoring the need to build new audiences... to get the NEXT generation of audience members engaged and loving the experience of film/comics/TV.