The (complete) "Dangerous Ideas" I had hoped to share at Slamdance's "Market Monday" 2026 Day of NonDē

Another thank you to Peter Baxter & Slamdance for making it all happen.

Apr 12, 2026

∙ Paid

hell yeah, it is THOSE steps after all! (VH)

Slamdance has joined the ‘stack! Slamdance has joined the ‘stack! Slamdance has joined the ‘stack!

I think they are the first established film festival to launch their own newsletter on FilmStack. And I am particularly honored to be their first post. Every Monday for the next 15+ Mondays they are going to be sharing another presentation from the day I curated for them. I suspect you will want to subscribe to them right now so you don’t miss a drop.

I had hoped to get to seven points. Even dreamed of nine. But I set a time limit for all the presentations of ten minutes each. A rule is a rule and as much as I think all rules are meant to be broken, when you curate a day of “dangerous ideas” and you give everyone a time limit, you best accept your rules, particularly if you are the one leading off. So I did.

So, yeah, I failed again. So be it. Onwards!

If you get through the first five — be it on the video above or transcript below — I will share the last two afterwards…

I have to change my public speaking style I am afraid. I feel a bit over-caffeinated here I feel. I prefer the text to the video, but I leave that for you to decide.

Utopian Ideation, Leaderless Movements, and the Benefits of a NonDependent Cinema Ecosystem

TED: This is essentially the seven tools you need to no longer be compliant and brainwashed to work in their content farms. These are the tools that will set you free. Liberate your cinematic soul. But as I went through it, you know, I realized it wasn’t a list of seven. It’s actually a list of twenty. So I’m going to have to talk really fast. So… the reason that it’s more than seven is right off the bat. One of the key things that I learned is actually the key to, I would say, the success that I’ve had. I’ve been able to be an intimate partner on a hundred and forty films as a producer or an executive. I’ve been able to build systems. I’ve had really great opportunities along the way. And it’s because of one trait, which is I always try to ask, “why does it have to be this way? How else could it be done? What is blocking me from getting this done in this way?” And I want you to ask that regarding these seven tools that I want you to put into your belt. And ultimately the reason that was one additional one, it’s also a second additional one, is that this all has become part of my creative practice. It is how I’m loving life, how I have the enthusiasm that I do. I’ve embedded it in my creative practice and it occurs to me along the way, why don’t we talk about our creative practices more often? Why don’t we talk about the things that we can build to help us do those things better? And this is all part of mine. So it’s actually already two.

So the first one that I want to talk about is I want you to dream incessantly of a better world. This is utopian ideation, right? And it’s so key. And the truth is, it’s a big assignment. When I started embracing this myself, it took me five years to get my first draft done. And, as all of you know, first drafts aren’t worth doodly. You know? So, it is long, because you have to extend it beyond what you want for your movie, beyond what you want for yourself, beyond what you want for your relationship, beyond what you want for your community, beyond what you want for your industry, beyond what you want for your country, and beyond what you want for your world. This is about how you use your life, your love, your labor. And you have to think as broadly and as detailed as it is. I have a long, long talk about this. Save it for another day. But right now I want you to just recognize that you don’t know the path you have to walk on unless you know the destination you want to go. Why don’t we think in utopian manners? Ask yourself that and I think there are some clear answers. But as I said, today, I don’t really have much time for that.

Second point is the tool of first principles, tenants and tactics. I want you again to try to determine these for your movies, for your company, for yourself, for your industry. And ideally, try to make them align with your utopian ideation. Indie film – so called, “indie film” – failed because it didn’t do this right. It basically – indie film became nothing more than a farm system for Hollywood. And that means that it covers about probably a little bit less than half a percent of all the participants. That it didn’t really determine beyond its initial principle of embracing individual voices outside of the studio system. NonDē’s first priority is the sustainability of the art: the artist, the audience and the ecosystem that is needed to support all of that. You need a first principle. You need to break it down into tenants and you have to figure out the tactics that are there to implement it. That is such an incredible tool. It is how I manage all of my life and I encourage you to embrace it.

Three: we have to embrace a practice of capturing institutional knowledge. This is another failure of so-called “independent film.” When you start to try to examine the process of change, along the way you start to see how key this fits – that generally when people ask, “why is change so slow?”, we have kind of a broad answer. That is: change won’t occur until the pain of the present exceeds the fear of the future. How do we recognize that we can’t, we can’t afford to wait that long? We need to embrace a practice of both production and overall sustainability that has the tactics of looking at recommended best practices for every aspect of cinema. Indie film had one tactic that served that one principle, which was to demystify the development and production process of our work. One thing! There are so many other aspects of it. A lot of this day’s focus is demystifying distribution and exhibition, but there are many others, across all perspectives and all ways that we engage. To do this, we each – and this is where my list starts to build, these are the tools – [we] need to take it upon ourselves to develop the resources that we can share with others. So if you read my newsletter, you’ve already got a list of over two-hundred film financers that are out there. You already had the list of the over a hundred theatrical distributors that work in the United States. You have a list of all the podcasts that deal with the film industry. You have a template to help you and your distribution planning. You have these things being mapped out by Filmstack right now. We need to create resources. And the key piece of this, the practice that we have to embrace with it – hence the list growing – is transparency. Transparency in all things. Drop your shame about anything. To embrace transparency means that we all have to start to recognize the beauty in becoming. The fact that we are all in process in one way or the other. Don’t look just to the end state, that final product, to say that that’s where the vessel for beauty delivery is. To do that, you know, we have to also recognize that a key part of the process is always going to be failure. And that means that all of us have to stop being so damn judgy. Like, let it go! Get over it! We all make mistakes all the time. We learn. Franklin’s called me out several times. Courtney evaluates what I’m saying. They help me get better at what I do, and I appreciate it. We’re moving to a better process of recommended best practices.

This one, number four, sounds a little boring, but it is the gasoline on the match. This is where it all explodes. And the key tool is just a simple thing of what I like to call “Op-Imps”, which is operational improvements. Little changes lead to big results. Little changes show that we actually do make a difference. The reason – you’ve been asking yourself, I know because I can see it in your face all the time when I put one of these out – you say, “Why is it that way? What are the barriers? How do we get through it?” This one actually has a really clear indication. Why don’t we embrace operational improvements in any closed ecosystem? In any closed ecosystem where the dominant power or capital or customer feels that it is good enough will never invest the necessary capital, labor, brainpower in the operational improvements to the product or the process. This is what has happened over forty years in independent film. This is why I consider independent film ultimately a failure. We have been like frogs in that warm bath, not knowing that we were served for dinner. And along the way, we’ve allowed every single aspect, except the demystifying of production development to, to rust, to wither, to decay. That’s how we got into this situation.

Five, we have to embrace a completely new set of metrics for success. Our entire society values essentially two things: wealth and status. Our industry has embraced this. We are in a system, and that system is in us, right? It’s not an aberrant result that we have leaders and people like Trump and Epstein. We have the same thing. We’ve seen many of our leaders in the film industry and the evil and, that they’re capable of enstuing. Is that a word? I like it, and just look at where all of this has gotten us.