Film Courage: Another book of your's is Sell Your Story To Hollywood, The Writer’s Pocket
Guide - The Business of Show Business.
I know there’s lots of great nuggets in there.
Something I saw from the Amazon page “There are four things in order that I’m about
to read that will guarantee success (and this is in the book’s forward or something) Perseverance,
Determination or Stamina, Connection, Be Fun To Work With and lastly…Talent?
Really, that’s the order?
Dr. Ken Atchity, author/producer: Yes, that’s definitely the order.
Actually in my mind I’ve added another one before Talent which is Luck.
Luck is definitely important.
But you can think about it, some movies get made just because of perseverance.
Somebody keeps persevering and they can get the movie made and somebody can make a movie
because they have connections, you know?
Sophia Coppola, she got to make a movie.
She’s got incredible connections and many other people in Hollywood.
Being fun to work with, that happens all the time.
Movies get made because of that.
I’ve never really seen a movie get made just because of talent.
So all of these things, the three that I started with like perseverance, etc. being fun to
work with, these are sufficient causes of movies.
In other words all you need is one of those and you’re able to make a movie but talent
is not sufficient.
You have to have talent plus one of those other things to make a movie and there is
plenty of talent around.
So that’s the bad news, talent is not enough to make a movie.
But the good news is that if you have talent, it’s what everybody is looking for in Hollywood,
looking for somebody who is truly talented because they don’t want movies that are
just made with perseverance or being fun to work with or having connections, they want
truly good movies.
So if you’ve got talent that’s great but you need to get those other things, you need
to persevere.
It’s not a career for the faint-hearted.
If you say you’re going to give yourself 5 years and then I’m going to go back to
my horse ranch in Utah, you’ll be back there before you know it because life loves little
deals like that and it always gets you back to the horse ranch.
If you say that there will be no limit on my career, I’m going to continue no matter
what then you’ve got a chance to do it and maybe you’ll get lucky along the way but
I always say build the tracks for success, don’t build them based on luck.
So luck is an important part of it because sometimes you can have everything ready to
go and somebody comes out with a similar movie and you can’t do it.
Film Courage: Going back to the school of thought on two types of people: unproductive,
negative versus positive, what about unharnessed talent versus harnessed talent?
And I’m making my own little genre here.
But there is so much talent here but there is a lot of people that don’t harness it
and they spin their wheels talking about these ideas.
How does someone go into the harnessed category?
Dr. Ken: Going into the harnessed category just means discipline to actually sit down
and figure out time and use the time and just determine to do it.
You have to be determined, you have to persevere.
There are a lot of people who have what I call artistic syndrome who would like to be
creative, who say they are creative, who show some signs of creativity but creativity is
actually having finished a script, having finished a novel and continuing to write another
one while you’re waiting on the reaction from the first one.
Creativity is “I can’t stop writing this.
I keep getting stories and I can’t wait to get to the next one.”
So you don’t really wait at all when you send it out.
Now you can work on the next one, you keep writing.
That’s someone who is harnessing their talent.
Unharnessed means when you boobytrapped your talent by either not sitting down for fear
of failure or whatever your reasons are (procrastination)…Tony Robbins always says the best way to deal with
procrastination is just to postpone it.
You can do that now but right now get to work.
So harnessed talent is all a matter of discipline and determination.
It starts with determination, turns it into discipline, discipline turns into work, work
is based on time allotted to it.
As the ancient philosopher Isiad said if you put a little upon a little, soon it will become
a lot.
You do 5 pages a day, that’s 60 pages after 12 days.
So it’s just inevitable.
It’s the law of accumulating capital and if people aren’t doing that then they are
completely unharnessed.
And the only person who can harness a writer is himself.
So nobody can harness it for you, you can get a manager to help you with that but at
the end of the day there are more ways to evade discipline than there are to impose
it (that’s the genius of humanity right)?
Film Courage: Lastly you said something about being called to the horse ranch (giving yourself
5 years).
Someone just commented on our channel the other day (and they had a valid point) “Give
yourself three years.”
And they were referring to acting.
I agreed with a lot of their statements but
they were saying “Give yourself three years max to come to LA or wherever (you can insert
writing)”
Dr. Ken: That’s like give yourself a year to go to Europe to get your wild oats out
of your system and settle down and get engaged or something.
If that’s the way you’re looking at it then it will just be a three year lark.
It’s not a career commitment.
There’s a great moment in a movie called BURLESQUE (I don’t know if you saw that
movie but Christina Aguilera is in it) but one of the opening scenes in their little
town…she goes to the bus station and she stands at the ticket window and she says “I
want a ticket to LA.”
And he looks at her and says “One way or round trip?”
And she goes “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
And it’s line in the movie that defines career commitment.
She’s not going to go to LA and come back, she’s going to LA period.
That’s the end of the story.
And that’s why movies like that (LA LA LAND) put artists in tears because they are true
examples, true stories about what artists go through when they make decisions to give
up things.
I used to give a class at UCLA called ‘Keeping Your Spirits Up’ for creative people and
one day I was going around the circle on the first day of class having people introduce
themselves (they were mostly actors and actresses who signed up for it for obvious reasons)
and the first one I said “Please give us your name so I can remember your name and
where you are from and tell us what is the question you hate to hear most at a party
in LA?”
And the first one says “Hi my name is Gayle and I’m from Detroit and the question I
hate to hear the most is When are you going to go back to Detroit and work for the Post
Office?”
And I said “How do you react to that?”
And usually by bursting into tears and running out of the room.”
And I say “Oh, okay.
We’re going to work on that in this class.”
So I go to the person “My name is Ellis.
I’m from Southern California and the question I hate to hear the most at parties is “What
have you been in big lately that I’ve seen?”
And I said “And how do you react to that?”
And she says “I say the Pacific Ocean!”
So there’s an example of a harnessed person and an unharnessed person.
A harnessed person knows that she’s going to get stupid questions from stupid people
(insensitive people who aren’t really thinking) and that there is nothing in the world that’s
going to stop that from happening so she’s going to protect herself by coming up with
an answer beforehand so she doesn’t have to run out of the room crying.
And the other person is unharnessed because she goes out of the room and cries.
She’s the one that believes that this artistry thing is some magic, miracle thing that has
to happen and she doesn’t understand that it’s mechanical.
The first thing you have to do is protect your biggest asset which is your brain.
And if you haven’t figured out how to do that then don’t go out in public yet because
people are not going to start suddenly being sensitive the moment you appear in public.
And if you haven’t figured out how to do that, then don’t go out in public yet because
people are not suddenly going to start being sensitive the moment you appear in public.
They’ve never shown any sign of it in human history, right?
I’ve always loved this book I read years ago as a graduate student called IT BEGAN
IN BABEL: The history of the world (told with a sense of humor).
And the epitaph of the book in the beginning is “When you really think about it, people
on the whole are extremely stupid.”
And it’s a carving on the walls of 1300 BC and it’s kind of comforting to read it
because you go “Well nothing has changed.
We’re still there, we’re still stupid and that’s part of the human comedy.”
But don’t be stupid if it’s your whole career at stake.
Your the one who has to use the tools to build a defense around you to build a career.
And people are not going to help you until they can see that you’ve got that figured
out and then they’ll help you.
That’s just the way they are.
Film Courage: That goes back to what you said about the sort of crack-pot neighbor in the
garage making these paintings and everyone thinks they’re crazy until they sell one
for a million or two and then all of the sudden everyone wants to know them.
Dr. Ken: Yes and then everyone thinks you’re a genius and predicts…and says “I always
knew you would do well.”
Like my father told me I was an idiot when I became a professor.
He didn’t understand how I was going to make a living because I didn’t sign up for
pre-med (I signed up for classics in college).
And 19 years later when I told him I was leaving being a professor for being a producer, he
told me I was crazy.
How was I going to make a living?
And four weeks later he was on the set of one of my movies and said “This is great.
Keep doing this.”So if you put a lot of truck on what other people think, you’ll
be a mess all your life.
One of the things I really hate to see is someone who all about just pleasing people
and will say whatever they need to say to please the people in front of them and you
realize they don’t have a mind of their own and that’s too bad.
Too bad to lose your life, to spend your life without a mind of your own.
A mind is a terrible thing to loose (as they say) and the writer I think is somebody who
has exploited their mind to the max and followed its lead into places that they would never
have imagined they would go and I think that’s a heroic way of life and the world needs more
storytellers.