Rare Event

Sometimes I feel so excited about the inevitable changes in the entertainment industry that I feel I have to get it down in words. Such a moment is happening as I watch CBS give the finger to the cable industry. It was more than two decades ago that we watched the upstart cable channels learning to walk in the world of programming. Network TV was at the top of its game, and frankly, resting on its laurels half asleep to the potential that cable networks posed to them. They, the HBOs et al, were thought of along the lines of "B-Movies," second rate in every way, something that would be watched only by insomniacs, a place to send failed movies and untried television writers.

Then cable grew. It grew in every genre. It grew and it grew, and not just in shows, but in the ability to deliver a clear channel, via broadband, and satellite. Now network television, the crown jewel of home entertainment had to grovel to be a part. All of the tried and true methods of first-run to second-run re-runs disintegrated. Not to mention the awful inventions of home video recordings, then DVDs, then the freakish TiVo to undo advertising dollars. Truly it looked like the end of network TV even two or three years ago.

You may ask yourself what happened, as I did. What is giving CBS the shit to stand up and say, "NO!" to Time-Warner contracts? Is it merely the fact that it is the top network in programming? Of course, as a writer this is my true wish and certainly it helps the case for the ending of torture by cable bundling. The fact that CBS has left all of the other classic networks in the DUST with shows like NCIS, Elementary, The Big Bang Theory and Mike and Molly is surely helpful. There is no doubt about this, but it isn't the reason that CBS can say, "Buh-bye" to cable.

Along came Netflix, Hulu and any number of on-line streaming upstarts. Who needs cable, when you can watch entire seasons of reruns, and now get new programming on-demand? Honestly, this is a tale of Hollywood lore unfolding. Netflix, the company that revolutionized home entertainment by mailing out DVDs, looked like it was going under in a big way just a year or two ago has seen its stock rise to near its former zenith this past quarter because it has made the leap from the atomic age to the electronic one. It is now the leader in on-line streaming content, and it will never go back. Just the notion that CBS is looking at this and thinking, "hmmm," has my tits standing to attention. Now there's an idea. No more fucking bundles.

As the film industry was sure television would never catch on, and as the television industry was sure the cable industry would never catch on, so is the cable industry shrugging over "PewdiePie" on YouTube as if it is a fad (please note the number of views and the ad that paid them). Just as HBO is hitting the prime of its programming genius an upstart is stealing our attention, and no longer hiding behind the curtain. You know, it suddenly makes sense to have 40,000 film school graduates, if only they would change the NAME OF THE SCHOOLS. If it were me, I'd  be much more interested in studying "Transmedia Content" and get on with my life.

Here's my prediction: HBO and Showtime could be scrambling like network TV in less than five years to get your attention. CBS will rise above its own narrow field and become a new leader in content providing. Netflix will surpass its zenith stock prices of yesteryear's DVD land. PewdiePie and his progeny will make you laugh your pants off. Going to the movies will become a past-time for elitists who are sentimental about the smell of popcorn and willing to pay $100 for the chance to relive it.

Over and out from the Speculative Screenwriter

Trans-Fran-Convergent Entertainment…eh, wha’?

Trying to come up with a quick and easy way to name what’s happening in the field of entertainment for writers is kind of funny, but also dead serious. I’ve seen combinations that made me think that, finally, the only people to write for are Drag Queens, because they are going to be the most popular entertainers -- a well-deserved honor, I admit, but hard to believe. The point is that the field is in chaos and there are many opportunities for writers who are paying attention and who are willing. Willing? Yes, willing for what?

In order to cross the bridge from what was to what is, writers have to be willing to take charge of their careers in ways they, perhaps, never planned on doing. Many writers are going to be pushed away from wallflower status to front and center stage in the unfolding events they will create themselves. The product is changing. The process is changing.  For goodness sakes, the format is going to have to change.

What’s a shy writer who lives in her head supposed to do? What’s a guy who just wants to write supposed to do? Well, let it go, people. The writer’s life is no longer confined to “A Room of One’s Own,” or anything resembling quiet, unless one builds some strong boundaries, high fences, or perhaps a psuedo-persona. A writer can no longer afford to cut herself off from the world around her to write the deepest stories of her soul…wait! Stop the bus, I want to get off now, thank you very much.

Let’s go back to the title of this blog post and break it down. The “Trans” part stands for “Transmedian Writing,” which is a new word that is not in your spell check. Writers Boot Camp® told its alums yesterday,  "'Transmedia' is one of those buzz words that may evolve into another term soon, but it definitely means a lot today.“ Bottom line is that you had better not write a feature film without a plan to work it on many different levels and directions – such as the internet short features, television, and apps. Apps? Yes, apps. OMG. It is hard enough to write a friggin’ feature film, right? Am I right? But, I have to say only this, “So what?” Get out of your back alley and come into the light. This is the beginning of your thrilling career!

“Fran” stands for what I know a lot about – The Franchise. I worked on the jewel in the crown of franchises for many years on a “transmedian” level. As a publishing consultant for the STAR TREK franchise, I really get that the future has finally arrived. For writers, this means when you’re thinking of writing a story think about how it could be built into a franchise. A franchise is the “braided money tree” of the entertainment industry. It exists on multiple levels going in multiple directions and unfolding in seemingly endless possibility. Think about it this way…the Original, classic STAR TREK series with Kirk, Spock and McCoy became popular in a flash, and then died or so the studio and network thought. The fans loved it though. So the studio, Paramount Pictures, made it into a movie, when it turned out there was an audience for Sci-Fi after all. That movie bred five more, and also gave birth to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION; six more movies; STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE; STAR TREK: VOYAGER and STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, and further movies and shows, I promise you. Not only that, STAR TREK became the king pin of licensed products from games to cereals, magazines to action figures, bars to ring-tones, DVD box sets and more, so much more. Did Gene Roddenberry, STAR TREK’s creator, know when he went to the network and pitched “A Wagon Train to the Stars” show idea that this is what would become of it? I doubt it. It was an organic process then, but it led the way for all of us. We must pay attention. Study it. Know that it is possible.

I like the term “Convergent,” though it has been used by probably the MOST boring of outlets: the business website. The idea is to bring video into websites to convey information in a way that clients, trainees, and employees themselves will relate to and understand. However, the word itself, convergent, means so much more. It is an adjective used by biologists to describe the adaptive evolution of superficially similar structures. The word also suggests a confluence, such as the convergence of two rivers. It also means the coming together of focus, such as two eyes converging on a hawk flying above. To me this is what is happening in the field of writing entertainment: We are having a convergence of superficially similar products (i.e., television, film, on-line streaming, publishing and all stories franchised) focused on a singular entertainment continuum. How’s that for high-faluting?

Very exciting times. Get to work!

Willing to be Wrong

Often when writing a screenplay, I have reached a moment in the script where I really want my hero to be right, but if I follow that path then I'm sure to have a gazillion rewrites to work on down the line trying to figure out where I went wrong. Attachment to being right is a human frailty and kills a screenplay faster than anything else kills. This human frailty of righteousness does more to undo progress in the world than, I'd venture to say, anything else does. Think about it for a moment. If we are right, then there is no reason to change. If there is no reason to change, then we've reached that "happily ever after" moment. We might as well implode on the spot.

In order to grow an industry, then the industry has to assume it is wrong about something and start trying new things. Uhm. That is not happening very often these days in the movies I've seen. Case in point, just in the past few days I heard radio arts commentator, Bob Mandello (NPR) noting that in just the last eight months Hollywood put out four movies that are about the same theme - messing with our perception of reality. Okay, this is one of my favorite topics, but looking underneath the appeal, it makes me wonder why so many of the same stories are made year after year. Like remember when all the baseball films were made? Alternatively, how about the bunch of films about ants in a single year? Really? Ants? Not to mention the requisite kids at a haunted house or abducted by aliens stories. Hollywood has started making satirical films about these genres in a desperate attempt to find something new to say.

Now, I am going to go out on a limb and tell you my point of view, and I may be very wrong, but I think Hollywood is stuck in a righteous rut. There are reasons I think this is true. One of them is that some of the more interesting films I've seen over the past decade were not made in Hollywood. Another reason is that I know it is hard for Hollywood to make its way through the 50,000 plus ideas that land in its lap every year in any way that is objective. People in Hollywood want to have lives, really they do, and so like it or not, they go the easiest possible route to making a living -- tried and true. That means writers who have credits get looked at much more seriously than newcomers, and that the better revenue a writer's film makes for the producers and studios, the more likely it is that they'll get opportunities to do it again. Now, then when writers get the opportunity to repeat their own glory, what are they going to do but return to what they know and have done before? It would be crazy not to. There are very few successful screenwriters who push beyond their earliest successes in a substantial way, even if their first films did push the envelop of righteousness a bit. They tend to fall into "niche" writing, and we pretty much get what we expect. This works when a filmmaker is totally committed to their vision, and it doesn't work when a filmmaker or screenwriter is not sure why one script made it and another didn't. For a film to work, the filmmaker must know himself finally. See the movie "Nine" if this confuses you. In fact, see both movies called "Nine". They were released the same year, and they're actually very different. Grin. 

Who are the ones I think push at the envelope still...? I'm willing to be wrong on this but I do believe the people willing to flop, and to tell the story of their hearts have it. They are the ones who make the films from which I can't be distracted. Sometimes these are documentary filmmakers who have a passion about a subject. Sometimes these are comedians, who, loving the human condition of wrongness, make truly funny films. Sometimes the writers, who found something to grab onto in a comic book series when they were young, fight the urge to lighten it up and strive to tell the dark vigilante tales they remember and loved. Sometimes it comes down to a writer's willingness to state a point of view about touchy subjects like dying, or power, or sex, and going against the grain of the majority opinion they grab onto an evolved truth. Keep in mind that Hollywood doesn't generally feel comfortable going beyond where its audience is currently, and so the argument made in a script must be super compelling. Sometimes the distraction factor is destroyed by a filmmaker who creates indelible worlds that are unique and complete that the audience wants to discover. In all cases, all cases, the stories are about characters that do the wrong thing, who haven't figured everything out by the time the credits have rolled and who are in for a hell of a bumpy ride. These are films about discovery, about falling flat and getting back up. These are stories about failing before succeeding because this is the human story. 

It comes down to story always. Moreover, it doesn't have to cost $200 million to tell a great story. Furthermore, it requires your full investment.

The advice I got upon arrival in Hollywood was to write the biggest, epic film I could imagine. Then within a few years’ movies like "Sex, Lies & Videotape," and "Reservoir Dogs," both painfully intimate, small movies, came out. So, then it was write small personal films. Then it was write Sci-Fi, and then it was write family films. Whatever it was, it was already too late. Writers! We cannot write film scripts to match the trends of today. It is already too late for that. We must be the visionary writers who write film scripts that address tomorrow's audience even when Hollywood is afraid.

There are only a few ways to do this.

·        First is to write films that express your very personal vision and truth. Whether it is a small person-oriented drama, or an animation of fishes going through a human-like emotional adventure. It is the point of view that must be steady. If you write these kinds of films then you had better be prepared to find a way to get the film made yourself because these are the ones that sit in years of "development hell". ("Black Swan," "The Kids Are All Right," "Toy Story")

·        Second is to extrapolate and understand where we may be heading in the future. Seek what may be important in three, five or ten years and what stories will be ahead of that. If this is what makes your heart beat, as it did for the four or more writers who worked on the films Bob Mandello made notable last week, then you'll really need to understand what's changing in the world and extrapolate as any futurist does when predicting future trends. ("Inception," "The Adjustment Bureau," "Tron: Legacy")

·        Third is to adapt classic and historic stories that are relevant and truthful to today's audience. This requires either acquiring rights to adapt, or assuring yourself that the work you're adapting is in the public domain. Then you must be meticulous to the truth of that story while also connecting it to the audience's perception. ("Jane Eyre," "The King's Speech," "The Social Network")

In all cases, it requires good, hard work to make a good, hard screenplay. No gimmicks will help you at all without accepting that the hero is super wrong about something that is essential.

There is one last way to look at the rut, and I've touched upon it a little bit in previous posts. This is the hardest work, but the most rewarding path potentially. That is to reach beyond film itself, as we know it now. Look at the entertainment that folks have available to them on their smart phones and iPods. It's kind of thin and amateurish still. There is room, more room than I can say, for evolution there. Think about how you could use that medium to entertain and engage an audience. Think about whether you believe your story will pull millions out of the world in the palm of their hands or whether it would better fit there instead. Is it possible that new forms of entertainment, not just games, are just as rich and valid as film? Are you willing to be wrong about that? This is how we evolve people. 

The Hippopotamus at the Table

In the past two decades our choices for entertainment have exponentially increased along with our population. That has caused, however, a reduced market share for the traditional venues of television and movies. The days when network TV was the only choice for an evening of entertainment have long past. Now, there is cable. Not only is there cable, though, there is TIVO, On-Demand, and Internet Streaming entertainment. There are games. There are hand-held games, on-line games, on-demand games, Nintendo, X-box, Wii games and Kinnect Games. There are games on your smart phone. 

Then there is social networking. The fifteen hours the average Facebook user spends on Facebook are fifteen hours away from television and film viewing. It’s isn’t going away. It’s getting bigger. When Facebook announced they would stream Warner Brother’s “The Dark Knight” and it looked pretty much like nothing happened, it made me wonder what the future of film and television really can be? I rarely am so enraptured by filmed entertainment that I willingly shut off my Facebook checking.

There are about 40,000 people getting film degrees in the world, and yet the market for film and television is suffering from attrition. So, as a screenwriting teacher, it is a daunting task to find some modicum of hope that I can share with my students. Sure Hollywood has successfully promoted the idea of the “overnight success” but in truth, it is a slog to get there no matter how you slice it. Moreover, getting “there” is perhaps a questionable goal. Blasphemy! I am supposed to be cheering you on to “make it big” in Hollywood, right? Wrong.

Hollywood has now entered the phase of its life in the Universal Marketplace where it is becoming “niche” entertainment. (shhhh! The Hippopotamus is eating!) It is not all of entertainment anymore, and it never will be again. There are just too many options for the consumer to ignore. Therefore, if you want to get into that niche, you’re really going to have to figure out how to write what they produce – The Hollywood Movie. It is what they do best, and they are not looking to break out of that mold, at least for now.  Rather it seems clear they intend to hang on for dear life against the winds of change.

If you bristle against that status quo, then I suggest you stop looking towards Hollywood as your answer to the age-old questions of the artist – How do I get seen? How do I make a living? How do I get discovered? Stop assuming that the only way to get your film made is the traditional way. You don’t have to do it their way anymore. That said, it is time to notice the Hippopotamus sitting at the table with us.

“The Hippopotamus” is always an assumption that everyone makes at certain times of our lives that we strive to avoid noticing. We would like to pretend that the Hippopotamus is a figment of our imagination. We are ripe for blissful ignorance, and hope that it is having no influence on the dinner at hand. Of course, a hippo at the table is a messy thing to pretend about. Have you ever smelled a pachyderm’s house? So, that’s the kind of stinky assumption we’re dealing with, and it needs to be acknowledged and put in its proper place.

The Hippopotamus we have at the entertainment industry dinner table is an assumption about what the future of entertainment looks like. It’s a multi-tiered assumption that, in my opinion, is dangerously avoided or ignored. Let me introduce you to the unspoken thoughts that fuel fear in my industry:

• We assume that movies are going to exist as marginalized entertainment, much as theater has over the last one hundred years. There I said it.
• We assume that games and social networking will dominate the entertainment industry eventually, and that barring a few break out, technologically inventive film events, like “Avatar”, most people will eventually view all movies on their iPads, or internet televisions. There, I said it.
• We assume that an “interactive movie” is more like a game than a point of view story created by a master storyteller. In fact, the story is so hackneyed by now, it hardly matters as long as you have a celebrity that has box-office attached. Yeppers.
• We assume that people will stop wanting to leave their homes to gather for entertainment’s sake except at astronomically high prices for “important” Academy-sanctioned films. We assume that film, like theater, is going to exist still but be less important to our collective conscience and more elitist in the future. So there.
• Like libraries and books, like big box stores, like heirloom seeds, the world of big movie theaters and even multi-plexes take up too much room, require too much electricity, and will become unnecessary. There, I said it.
• Even DVDs and BlueRay disks take up too much room in our lives to exist for very long in a world of apps the audience can download for free.
• Even Television will be a hand-held app on Facebook, Amazon or Google before the end of the decade and living rooms will look more like office cubicles. There, I said it.

This Hippopotamus belies our hope that somehow people will continue to want to go to the movies, and watch television when they have so many other options in life to live adventures. Because the truth is this: we’re married to our hope, and we’re having a wild and lustful affair with the Hippopotamus.