Excerpts:

p 38 (on the topic of your spec script needing to revolve around the Central Character) – “A) The story must have an emotional conflict for the Central Character. B) The Central Character drives the action, that it, his choices make the plot progress. C) The Central Character resolves the problem.  In other words, the story is told from the Central Character’s point of view. It happens to him; and more important, he makes it happen.”

pages 49-55 have too many gems to write here

p 60 – “(Translate your personal experiences into the lives of the characters.) It’s this kind of authenticity that will give your script the fresh, original quality everyone is looking for … (draw from) your own human failings.”

And many more gems, but no time left.

• Why do successful companies fail?
• (Pixar) did have a culture where the artists and the technical people were peers with each other. They socialized with each other. They each thought the other was world class. The compensation structure was the same.
• If there are problems – and there were always problems – people felt comfortable about coming in and expressing their problems. You couldn’t fix every problem, but it’s important to hear them.
• We had a certain group of people who were very remarkable at telling stories. And part of being remarkable was, not only that they were funny and focused and good at storytelling, but they had complete trust in each other. And they were very often – what you might call “brutally honest” – except for them, they didn’t think of it as “brutally honest.” They thought of it as “necessarily honest,” and it was always taken that way. It was never a matter of ego or putting somebody down. It was always about the story. And therefore, you could say something hard, and it was taken in the right spirit. And given that kind of camaraderie in the key group of people, it is just gold.
• in the process of making the film, we reviewed the material every day. Now, this is counterintuitive for a lot of people.
• Most people – if you can imagine this – you can’t draw very well, but even if you can draw very well, suppose you come in, and you’ve got to put together animation or drawings and show it to a famous, world-class animator. Well, you don’t want to show something which is weak or poor. So you want to hold off until you get it to be right. And the trick is, actually, to stop that behavior. We show it every day when it’s incomplete. If everybody does it every day, then you get over the embarrassment. And when you get over the embarrassment, you’re more creative. And that’s – as I say – it’s not obvious to people, but starting down that path helped everything that we did. Show it in its incomplete form. There’s another advantage to doing that, and that is, when you’re done, you’re done.
• we had confused the organizational structure with the communication structure, a very common thing that happens in a lot of companies. They are different. Yes, you must be organized; things must happen in order. You can lose control. But communication needs to be able to happen between anybody in the company at any time.
• one of the tricks for a manager to learn is, you don’t need to be the first person to learn. Don’t get upset. Get over it. It actually doesn’t matter. The fact that somebody else talked about the problem ahead of time is a good thing – not a sign of disrespect.
• they really did like the fact that they were working on a groundbreaking film. It was very exciting to be making history. They loved that.
• one of the fundamental problems … with companies … is that “success hides problems” … They (look at their success and) let that get in the way of diving deep and finding the problems.
• “Which is more important … finding good ideas or finding good people? And the answer is very clear: the idea was the same. If you have a good idea and you give it to mediocre group, they’ll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they’ll fix it, or they’ll throw it away and come up with something else.
• …notice, they always remake good movies. And rarely do they beat the good movies. But the fact is, there are thousands of movies out there that are actually “great idea,” but they’re poorly executed. They should be remaking bad movies … The ones that do better aren’t those that just copy somebody else’s good product. They actually take the thing that’s going wrong and fix that
• we instituted a process in doing postmortems after every movie, trying to do a deep analysis. The first postmortems were very successful. We worked very hard to make sure people were safe – they didn’t get shot for pointing out problems. And everybody got a lot out of them. They valued them greatly. So we’re off to a good start. But then, as you go on to the next postmortem, people began to game the system. And it turns out, people know the value – they know they should do them – but they don’t like to do it. So why don’t they like to do the postmortems. Why don’t they like to do the analysis. Well, they’re kind of tired of working on something for three years. They don’t want to think about it anymore. Some people are defensive. Some people feel that one of the things they want to do in these meetings is make their team feel good. “Look what we did!” So it’s not really an in-depth analysis … again, it’s when you’re successful and the film goes off right, you kind of like to stop at that point – you sort of bask in it and not dive deeper. So what we found is, we have to change the way we do the postmortems every single film.
• the latest thing we’re doing until it gets gamed is, we’re asking them to pick, from their process, the five things that they would do again and the five things they wouldn’t do again. We try to get both to get the balance. What we’re really interested in are the things that they wouldn’t do again. but you try to get both out there. And the other – and this is a fairly important one – is to get a lot of facts about the process. When you put the facts up, and you factor it in, it actually stimulates discussion. And it’s those discussions which are very valuable.
• So let me summarize a few of the things we’ve learned. On is the constant review. The second is, it must be safe for people to tell the truth. Third is that communication should not mirror the organizational hierarchy. People and how they function is more important than ideas. And do not let success mask problems. Do a deep assessment.
• Early on, we came to believe that the story is the most important thing in our process – it led our decision-making process.  and so, as we had a lot of different polls, we’d come back to his driving principle, “It’s the story that counts.” And we thought this is one of the things that made us successful was this realization. And now so, having said that and we would say that and we would tell people about it. And we made all the sacrifices for it. And then, I discovered – as I was listening around – that studio says the same thing. Everybody says “The story’s the most important thing,” even if the story was drivel. It might be true – in fact, it is true – but it doesn’t affect behavior. Now, when I say “story is the most important thing,” I think the analogy is probably “quality is the most important thing.” It’s one of those things that’s true and you agree it’s true and you say it. That doesn’t mean anything.
• Every product that we’re making has got to be original, which implies that we can never repeat ourselves.  Now, this is … an important thing – because a lot of people in Hollywood don’t understand that. If something is successful – if you’ve got Star Wars or Shrek or whatever, then basically, “Let’s do that again,” right? We’ll try to do the same thing again. But you can’t think that way with any products. Everything is new and original. And therefore, our way of dealing with and solving the problems has got to be an original. So the secret is, we have to keep on digging deeper and deeper and knowing that we’re always missing something that’s important.
• I do believe that organizations – human organizations – are inherently unstable. They will fall over, and you have to work to keep them upright. But they fall slowly. Most people don’t notice it. They let their success blind them. They don’t see it’s falling over. The falling takes place slow, but the collapse is quick. You have to do constant assessment. You have to look for the hard truths. Mentioned Cassandra before – it’s the Greek myth. And again, she’s cursed with seeing the truth, but nobody will believe her. I don’t think the Greeks had it right, actually. I think the curse is on the people that don’t listen, right? We have to be the ones who are looking for it all the time. And when we hear things evaluate it, “Is it right?
• As far as heading for an audience, we don’t target a group – in particular, we don’t go after kids, all right. It’s a bad idea to target films for little kids. Two reasons. One is, it essentially is talking down to them. And if you talk down to them, they don’t like it that much. And for adults, it’s very boring. The truth is, children live in an adult world, and they’re used to hearing things they don’t understand. So our approach is, we want to make movies that we enjoy. There’s a physical humor and physical comedy that comes from acting from animation that kids do enjoy. So there’s a thing that they do like. And obviously, we don’t put in things into our movies that would offend families or their children. But we write the dialogue and the story for us. We want them to be meaningful to us. And that’s how we think about it.
• The question is animated actors vs. “live action” actors. The characters in our films are really a combination of the writers from the story team putting it together, the design, and the animators from the physical acting and the voice of the actor. Since we pick and select actors, we’ve got really remarkable voice. It’s really that collection that creates a character. And it’s just this part of the animations, which is different than live action. The time scale is different; the way that it’s put together is different. And in both “live action” and “animation,” you can also do it badly and you can do it well. It just depends upon talent.

Very long post, but it’s really just highlight from a terrific talk. View the video or read the whole thing at Fearless Coder blog.

Excerpts to come from pages 88, 92, 112, 116, 120, 124, 142, 148, 194, 196, 198, 206, 226, 228, 232,234, 236, 246, 256, 272, 300, 302, 308, 316, 320, 326, 336, 338, 350, 354, 366, and 374 (from the 1997 hardcover first edition).

Even though the author that seems to have a chip on her shoulder at  times, especially against Jeffrey Katzenberg, it doesn’t even come close to offsetting the fact that the time and energy she put into researching and writing this book has resulted in a ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in the industry.

Excerpts:

• p 64 – “A chief concern (of investors was) the issue of how three individuals (Jefffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Speilberg) each so powerful in their own right would manage as a team… the radically different style of each man was apparent”

• more to come from pages 70, 90, 108, 118, 124, 136, 142, 146, 148, 152, 160, 178, 256, 288, 302, 356, 390, 392, 396, 406, and 442 (2010 hardcover edition) when this post is updated…

A few excerpts that caught my eye:

p 81 – “…No matter hwo great their acting skills and box office drawing power, stars cannot get lead roles if they are uninsurable. Great acting skills and box office drawing power may make the star, but insurance is what it takes to make the movie.”

p 166 – Teens have three great advantages over adults (as target audiences) for movie studios. First, they tend to predictably cluster around the same TV programs on cable networks, such as MTV, which make them much less costly to reach than moviegoing adults who, if they watch TV at all, tend to be scattered among the most expensive programming in prime time. Second, once in multiplexes, teens tend to consume prodigious quantities of popcorn and soda, which is a powerful attraction to the theater chains that book movies for a wide opening. Third, teens buy electronic games, sports equipment, fast food, and other licensable items, which make them an appealing audience to merchandising partners with the capability of providing the multimillion dollar “tie-in” that help publicize studio movies.”

p – 185 – “Studios today… tend to green-light four types of movies for wide openings: remakes (King Kong), sequels (such as Star Wars: Episode III), or video game extensions (such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider).

p – 185 – “If Hollywood is originality-challenged, it is … because they must take into account the underlying reality of today’s entertainment economy … (studios must) create audiences from scratch for each and every film …. (which) has become just as important a creative product as the film itself … (the six major studios supply a film plus) the publicity campaign capable of driving a herd of moviegoers from their homes to the theater on opening weekend.”

“The Big Picture – The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood” tells not only ‘what,’ but also ‘why’ and ‘how.’

ISBN 1-4000-6353-1

Chapter 5 details in easily understood terms “The Clearinghouse Concept” of revenue inflows and outflows and exactly why “…except for a few exceptional starts and producers, breakeven is more a dream than reality.”

Chapter 21 reveals “The Midas Formula” that every billion dollar revenue movie (ten of them) between 1999 and 2004 follows.  “All of them:

1. are based on children’s stories, comic books, serials, cartoons, orthe case of Pirates of the Caribbean, a theme-park ride.
2. feature a child or adolescent protagonist
3. have a fairy-tale-like plot in which a weak or ineffectual youth is transformed into a powerful and purposeful hero.
4. contains only chaste, if not strictly platonic, relationships between the sexes, with no suggestive nudity, sexual foreplay, provacative language, or even hints of consummated passion.
5. feature bizarre-looking and eccentic supporting characters that are appropriate for toy and game licensing.
6. depict conflict – though it may be dazzling, large-scale, and noisy – in ways that are sufficiently nonrealistic, and bloodless, for a rating no more realistic than PG-13.
7. end happily, with the hero prevailing over powerful villains and supernatural forces (most of which remain available for potential sequels).
8. use conventional or digital animation to artificially create action sequences, supernatural forces, and elaborate settings.
9. cast actors who are not ranking stars – at least in the sense that they do not command gross revenue shares…”

The author’s website http://edwardjayepstein.com/ is worth visiting, especially the “Hollywood Economist’ pages.

We started “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” several days ago. I’d never read it before. We were making good progress up until page 62, where I came upon the following:

“Who told you so?”

“Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Jonny Baker, and Jonny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the nigger told me. There now!”

“Well, what of it? They’ll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I don’t know him. But I never see a nigger that wouldn’t lie …”

I skipped over this part and continued for a moment, but then stopped. I just could not get past these horrible words and feel right about reading this book to my little girl.

Is this wrong? Part of me thinks yes and part of me isn’t so sure. I don’t want to in any way endorse this thinking, or even expose my daughter to it at such a young age (7).

Is this book worthwhile anyway? What would you suggest I do?  Thanks.

That’s the opening line in Joseph Plambeck’s New York Times article “A Place to Bet Real Money on Movies.”

Excerpts:

• (Moneyless) betting on the success of Hollywood releases has long been a parlor game for moviegoers. In 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald bought the Web site HSX.com (for “Hollywood Stock Exchange”)

• But buyers beware: if “Avatar” is any indication, the public isn’t always so wise about Hollywood fortunes. Most users of HSX.com predicted a flop, and if those users had placed real money on the Cantor exchange, they would have taken a serious hit.

• In the real market, contracts on the Cantor exchange will trade at $1 for every $1 million a movie is expected to bring in — a figure determined by traders — at the domestic box office during its first few weeks in theaters. So if “Robin Hood” is expected to bring in $100 million in its opening weeks, a single contract could be bought for $100 by a trader who thinks Russell Crowe’s role in the movie will drive sales far above expectations. If that trader guesses right, and the movie sells $150 million in tickets, the trader makes $50.

• the metric used — domestic box-office receipts — “is as simple as it can possibly be.” … (may) attract professional and institutional investors. If a movie distributor, for example, screens a movie it has backed and thinks sales will beat expectations, the company can take an even bigger financial stake in the movie by buying contracts for it.

• “Who knows more about the movie, the studio who made the movie or the public, who says ‘I’m going to go see it or not see it?’ ” he said.

• As in other futures markets, investors will also sell — or “short” — contracts. If a distributor thinks a movie it is backing will struggle at the box office, the company can sell contracts in the futures market. If the distributor shorts a $100 contract and the movie grosses $50 million, the distributor will make $50, thereby limiting the company’s total losses from a film.

• Conflict-of-interest issues are handled by limiting the amount a company can hedge through the exchange, so that a distributor could never make more money by betting against a film through futures than by having that film succeed in theaters.

Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/business/media/11futures.html?th&emc=th

My only complaint is that there isn’t a printable diagram of Hauge’s “Six Stage Plot Structure.”

Well, as Gandhi said, “you must be the change you want to see in the world.” Since I can’t really be a diagram (to my knowledge), I decided to create the diagram instead (using both ideas from the DVD set and some low-resolution versions I found on the Web) .

Having done so, I emailed a copy to Mr. Hauge through his website http://www.screenplaymastery.com and he VERY graciously responded with a few points to improve the diagram’s information. Here’s the result:

Click the following link text for a free printer-friendly PDF of Michael Hauge’s 6 Stage Plot Structure Diagram

I hope this is helpful as you go through his books and DVDs.

DVD cover for The Hero's Two Journeys