Transcriber: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello everybody.
My name is Guy Browning
and I am going to be talking about outrageous optimism,
and I know we are all going to really enjoy it.
(Laughter)
One of the reasons I know we're all going to enjoy it,
is because TED audiences are always fantastic.
I think they are charming,
they are intelligent,
and they are attractive.
I'll just try to prove that now.
Hands up if you are sitting next to somebody
charming, intelligent, and attractive.
(Laughter)
You see?
I was right to be optimistic, I really was!
I know we've all heard of glass half-empty and glass half-full,
but I like to look at things in a slightly different way.
Here's a brilliant cartoon by Janet Brown,
it's not about half-empty and half-full,
it's about "not what I ordered."
(Laughter)
An outrageous optimism is about having
a full glass of exactly what you ordered,
and I'd like to talk to you
about how that worked for me and for the little village where I live.
I'd like to start by sharing with you this photograph
which I had up as a child at home.
It's by Arthur Whitman
from a great collection, called "The Family of Man."
I've always loved that photo
because I like seeing people having a good time.
Radical, I know, but just bear with me.
I don't know what these guys were doing,
that could be in an early TED talk, they could be watching a funny film.
I noticed that there aren't many funny films out there
which is a shame because everybody loves funny films.
So I thought: "I know. I'm going to make a funny film."
And I thought I'm not just going to make this on my phone and put it on YouTube
because that would be cautious optimism,
and cautious optimists are basically pessimists having a good day.
(Laughter)
So I thought I'm going to be outrageously optimistic.
I'm going to write this,
I'm going to direct it,
I'm going to put the whole thing on and not only that,
I'm going to premiere in Leicester Square.
And as anybody who knows anything about film will tell you,
that is absolute madness.
But fortunately, I didn't know anything about film.
(Laughter)
And, in fact, had I known what I was doing,
I would not have got anywhere.
But I decided the only way I was going to make this film,
was to get the whole village where I live to make it with me.
I live in a small village in Oxfordshire.
We have a few houses, some nice farms, and a little stately home in the middle.
And so, one evening I went out into the village,
and I put these posters all over the village, and they said:
"Brad Pitt won't be in it,
but you could be!"
(Laughter)
I called a meeting at the village hall,
and I thought no one is going to turn up at all,
but that village hall was absolutely packed.
I learned the first thing about outrageous optimism,
that if you share your dream, people will come.
The village started to get to work.
We knew three things about Hollywood.
We knew it's not about the art,
it's about power, money, and sex.
(Laughter)
And in Kingston Bagpuize, in Oxforshire, we don't have any of those.
(Laughter)
We don't have any of those,
so the only way we were going to get them was by asking,
so we started asking.
The first thing we needed was power.
The power in Kingstone Bagpuize is the parish council,
they decide what happens in the village and what doesn't happen.
We asked the parish council
— here they are! —
(Laughter)
practicing for the village fate, so, obviously,
they're the right kind of people, they said yes immediately.
I thought: "Well, this asking people in power works,
so I'll move up the food chain and I'll ask our MP."
This is him shortly after I asked him.
I said: "We are making a film in the village with 2000 of your voters.
Would you like to help?"
Funny enough, he did. His name is Ed.
I learned something also about asking people.
First of all, people in power are just people like us,
normal people with slightly bigger offices,
and, most importantly,
people in power are often as surprised as you are
that they are in power.
(Laughter)
Yes.
So don't ever hesitate to ask them anything.
So, we had the power.
Then we needed the money.
We asked the people we knew, and they asked people they knew.
We unleashed the power of social media,
which in Kingstone Bagpuize means putting a little note up the bus stop,
(Laughter)
and then we raised the money.
We didn't raise a huge amount of money, but we raised enough.
What was really important is the money we didn't spend.
And the money we didn't spend was on two things:
it was on accommodation and hotels, and it was on catering
because they cost a fortune in making a film.
Instead, I went to the Women's Institute,
— here they are —
and I said: "Would you mind doing the catering for the film?"
They said: "Yes, of course!
We'll do a few scones, and we'll use the big teapot."
(Laughter)
It turned out in the end they catered for up to 60 people,
three times a day,
for six weeks,
and that is a hell of a teapot.
(Laughter)
The most wonderful thing was [that] a woman came to me,
she's not on that photo, and she said:
"Guy, I know nothing about film, but I do know about making fairy cakes,
I'm going to make you a thousand fairy cakes."
That's what she did, and here they are —
(Laughter)
We didn't spend any money on hotels either,
because all the professional cast and crew,
stayed with people in the village,
and that worked really well.
In fact, some of them are still there, haven't got rid of them yet.
So, we had the money, we had the power,
and the last thing we needed was the sex.
We wanted to do a romantic comedy, so we needed somebody good-looking,
and, sadly, there are no good looking people in Kingstone Bagpuize,
apart from the Women's Institute, obviously, just making that clear.
But I had a friend,
I had a friend, and he said he knew
a very good-looking guy who lived in London.
I thought: "Well, if he lives in London, he must be attractive!"
(Laughter)
Here he is, Tom Mitchelson, and he's a very great-looking guy.
I had lunch with him and I said:
"Would you like to be the star in our film?"
He said yes immediately, and he told me afterwards
he just wanted to get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible,
because there is a very fine line
between being an outrageous optimist and being a crazed fantasist.
But the other lesson there
is when you're outrageously optimistic, people often say yes
because they don't believe anything is ever going to happen,
and when it does, it's too late.
(Laughter)
So, we had the money, we had the power
and we had the good-looking cast.
Then we started to make the film.
Six weeks the whole village worked together.
When the whole community works together and everyone knows each other,
that changes the community forever.
So, we made our film,
everybody went home,
and I sat down to edit the whole thing together.
The good news was it was in focus.
(Laughter)
The bad news was it was 4 hours long,
it wasn't funny, it didn't make any sense
(Laughter)
[it] didn't make any sense at all.
So we knew that the critics would love it!
(Laughter)
But obviously, we didn't, it was our film,
and I've promised the whole village that we're going to Leicester Square,
and I'd just given them a big mess that was not going anywhere.
It was about this time
when I stopped going out into the village during daylight hours.
(Laughter)
But the thing about outrageous optimism
is that it works best when things are at their bleakest.
I didn't know how we are going to move forward,
but I was sure that the universe would provide some way of moving forward.
What the universe provided, was a woman,
a very special woman called Beverly Mills.
She had seen this 4-hour epic, and she said to me:
"Guy, you've got a good film in there, but that's not it."
(Laughter)
I listened to her very, very carefully,
because she was and is a BAFTA-award-winning editor,
and she reedited our entire film for nothing, between Hollywood epics,
and I didn't even have to ask her.
The wonderful thing was she gave us this fantastic 90-minute film
called "Tortoise in Love."
The only downside was that half of my friends, neighbours, and relatives
were now on the cutting room floor.
So I had to options:
one, I could emigrate to Canada,
or we could have outtakes that were twice as long as the film,
and, obviously, that's what we went for.
So, we had the film,
and then for the first time I went to Leicester Square.
By myself, I looked around Leicester Square,
and I noticed that they were rebuilding it for the Olympics.
So, right then and there, in Leicester Square,
I got my phone out, and I phoned Westminster Council.
And the miracle happened,
they answered the phone.
(Laughter)
They answered the phone and I said:
"Look, you're rebuilding the square, you'll need to reopen it,
you'll need to celebrate the reopening it,
you don't want some tired, old Batman-Superman premiere
with A-list celebrities clogging up the red carpet.
What you want is 2,000 yocals,
driving their tractors into Leicester Square
to see a film that they've made themselves."
They said, "We'll think about it."
(Laughter)
They thought about it for 3 months in total silence,
and then something truly wonderful happened,
[that] is that our friendly MP, Ed,
was made Minister for Film.
(Laughter)
You won't believe the strings I had to pull to get him that one!
(Laughter)
Of course, then things got a bit easier,
but though Ed was really helpful, it wasn't just Ed.
It was because people could see
that the dream was about to come true.
When that happens, everybody is prepared to help.
So we got our film to Leicester Square,
we took the village all the way to Leicester Square.
Here's my friend, a dairy farmer,
who drove his tractor into Leicester Square,
onto the red carpet,
with a matching tractor.
Now, that is A-list behaviour.
Here is the picture that makes me really, really happy.
This is our village in the cinema, in Leicester Square,
and, as you'll see, it is very, very much like the first photo I showed you.
What makes me really happy,
is there's a lady in the back of that photograph,
she wrote to me afterwards, and she said:
"Guy, until the premiere, I had never ever been to London,
and now you've ruined it for me."
(Laughter)
"Because every time I go to London,
I will expect a red carpet."
(Laughter)
I learned two things
about outrageous optimism in that whole project.
The first thing I learned was the absolute power of asking people,
and I firmly believe that everybody has a big yes inside them
that's just waiting to get out.
The second thing I learned with outrageous optimism,
is you can't do everything yourself.
But, that if your roll the red carpet out for other people,
they'll roll the red carpet out for you.
That's outrageous optimism.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
(Applause)