How I accidentally changed the way movies get made | Franklin Leonard

200,102 views ・ 2018-11-28

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This weekend,
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tens of millions of people in the United States
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and tens of millions more around the world,
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in Columbus, Georgia, in Cardiff, Wales,
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in Chongqing, China, in Chennai, India
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will leave their homes,
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they'll get in their cars or they'll take public transportation
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or they will carry themselves by foot,
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and they'll step into a room
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and sit down next to someone they don't know
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or maybe someone they do,
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and the lights will go down and they'll watch a movie.
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They'll watch movies about aliens or robots,
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or robot aliens or regular people.
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But they will all be movies about what it means to be human.
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Millions will feel awe or fear,
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millions will laugh and millions will cry.
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And then the lights will come back on,
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and they'll reemerge into the world they knew several hours prior.
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And millions of people will look at the world
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a little bit differently than they did when they went in.
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Like going to temple or a mosque or a church,
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or any other religious institution,
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movie-going is, in many ways, a sacred ritual.
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Repeated week after week after week.
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I'll be there this weekend,
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just like I was on most weekends between the years of 1996 and 1990,
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at the multiplex, near the shopping mall
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about five miles from my childhood home in Columbus, Georgia.
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The funny thing is that somewhere between then and now,
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I accidentally changed part of the conversation
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about which of those movies get made.
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So, the story actually begins in 2005, in an office high above Sunset Boulevard,
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where I was a junior executive
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at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way.
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And for those of you who aren't familiar with how the film industry works,
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it basically means that I was one of a few people behind the person
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who produces the movie for the people behind and in front of the camera,
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whose names you will better recognize than mine.
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Essentially, you're an assistant movie producer who does the unglamorous work
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that goes into the creative aspect of producing a movie.
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You make lists of writers and directors and actors
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who might be right for movies that you want to will into existence;
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you meet with many of them and their representatives,
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hoping to curry favor for some future date.
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And you read, a lot.
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You read novels that might become movies,
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you read comic books that might become movies,
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you read articles that might become movies,
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you read scripts that might become movies.
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And you read scripts from writers that might write the adaptations
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of the novels, of the comic books, of the articles,
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and might rewrite the scripts that you're already working on.
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All this in the hope of finding the next big thing
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or the next big writer who can deliver something
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that can make you and your company the next big thing.
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So in 2005, I was a development executive at Leonardo's production company.
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I got a phone call from the representative of a screenwriter
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that began pretty much the way all of those conversations did:
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"I've got Leo's next movie."
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Now in this movie, that his client had written,
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Leo would play an oil industry lobbyist
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whose girlfriend, a local meteorologist, threatens to leave him
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because his work contributes to global warming.
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And this is a situation that's been brought to a head
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by the fact that there's a hurricane forming in the Atlantic
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that's threatening to do Maria-like damage from Maine to Myrtle Beach.
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Leo, very sad about this impending break up,
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does a little more research about the hurricane
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and discovers that in its path across the Atlantic,
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it will pass over a long-dormant, though now active volcano
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that will spew toxic ash into its eye
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that will presumably be whipped into some sort of chemical weapon
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that will destroy the world.
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(Laughter)
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It was at that point that I asked him,
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"So are you basically pitching me 'Leo versus the toxic superstorm
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that will destroy humanity?'"
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And he responded by saying,
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"Well, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous."
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And I'm embarrassed to admit that I had the guy send me the script,
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and I read 30 pages before I was sure that it was as bad as I thought it was.
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Now, "Superstorm" is certainly an extreme example,
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but it's also not an unusual one.
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And unfortunately, most scripts aren't as easy to dismiss as that one.
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For example, a comedy about a high school senior,
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who, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy,
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makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.
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That's obviously "Juno."
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Two hundred and thirty million at the worldwide box office,
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four Oscar nominations, one win.
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How about a Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums
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wants to become a contestant on the Indian version
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of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"?
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That's an easy one -- "Slumdog Millionaire."
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Three hundred seventy-seven million worldwide,
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10 Oscar nominations and eight wins.
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A chimpanzee tells his story
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of living with the legendary pop star Michael Jackson.
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Anyone?
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(Laughter)
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It's a trick question.
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But it is a script called "Bubbles,"
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that is going to be directed by Taika Waititi,
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the director of "Thor: Ragnarok."
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So, a large part of your job as a development executive
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is to separate the "Superstorms" from the "Slumdog Millionaires,"
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and slightly more generally, the writers who write "Superstorm"
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from the writers who can write "Slumdog Millionaire."
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And the easiest way to do this, obviously, is to read all of the scripts,
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but that's, frankly, impossible.
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A good rule of thumb is that the Writers Guild of America
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registers about 50,000 new pieces of material every year,
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and most of them are screenplays.
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Of those, a reasonable estimate is about 5,000 of them
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make it through various filters, agencies, management companies,
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screenplay compositions and the like,
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and are read by someone at the production company
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or major studio level.
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And they're trying to decide whether they can become
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one of the 300-and-dropping movies that are released by the major studios
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or their sub-brands each year.
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I've described it before
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as being a little bit like walking into a members-only bookstore
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where the entire inventory is just organized haphazardly,
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and every book has the same, nondescript cover.
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Your job is to enter that bookstore
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and not come back until you've found the best and most profitable books there.
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It's anarchic and gleefully opaque.
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And everyone has their method to address these problems.
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You know, most rely on the major agencies
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and they just assume that if there's great talent in the world,
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they've already found their way to the agencies,
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regardless of the structural barriers that actually exist
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to get into the agencies in the first place.
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Others also constantly compare notes among themselves
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about what they've read and what's good,
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and they just hope that their cohort group is the best, most wired
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and has the best taste in town.
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And others try to read everything, but that's, again, impossible.
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If you're reading 500 screenplays in a year,
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you are reading a lot.
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And it's still only a small percentage of what's out there.
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Fundamentally, it's triage.
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And when you're in triage, you tend to default to conventional wisdom
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about what works and what doesn't.
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That a comedy about a young woman dealing with reproductive reality
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can't sell.
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That the story of an Indian teenager isn't viable in the domestic marketplace
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or anywhere else in the world outside of India.
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That the only source of viable movies is a very narrow groups of writers
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who have already found their way to living and working in Hollywood,
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who already have the best representation in the business,
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and are writing a very narrow band of stories.
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And I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit, that that's where I found myself in 2005.
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Sitting in that office above Sunset Boulevard,
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staring down that metaphorical anonymized bookstore,
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and having read nothing but bad scripts for months.
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And I took this to mean one of two things:
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either A: I was not very good at my job,
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which was, ostensibly, finding good scripts,
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or B: reading bad scripts was the job.
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In which case, my mother's weekly phone calls,
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asking me if my law school entrance exam scores were still valid
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was something I should probably pay more attention to.
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What I also knew
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was that I was about to go on vacation for two weeks,
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and as bad as reading bad scripts is when it is your job,
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it's even more painful on vacation.
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So I had to do something.
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So late one night at my office, I made a list
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of everyone that I had had breakfast, lunch, dinner or drinks with
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that had jobs similar to mine, and I sent them an anonymous email.
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And I made a very simple request.
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Send me a list of up to 10 of your favorite screenplays
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that meet three criteria.
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One: you love the screenplay,
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two: the filmed version of that screenplay will not be in theaters
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by the end of that calendar year,
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and three: you found out about the screenplay this year.
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This was not an appeal for the scripts that would be the next great blockbuster,
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not an appeal for the scripts that will win the Academy Award,
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they didn't need to be scripts that their bosses loved
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or that their studio wanted to make.
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It was very simply an opportunity for people to speak their minds
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about what they loved,
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which, in this world, is increasingly rare.
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Now, almost all of the 75 people I emailed anonymously responded.
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And then two dozen other people actually emailed to participate
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to this anonymous email address,
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but I confirmed that they did in fact have the jobs they claimed to have.
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And I then compiled the votes into a spreadsheet,
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ran a pivot table, output it to PowerPoint,
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and the night before I left for vacation,
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I slapped a quasi subversive name on it
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and emailed it back from that anonymous email address
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to everyone who voted.
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The Black List.
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A tribute to those who lost their careers during the anti-communist hysteria
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of the 1940s and 50s,
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and a conscious inversion of the notion
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that black somehow had a negative connotation.
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After arriving in Mexico, I pulled out a chair by the pool,
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started reading these scripts and found, to my shock and joy,
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that most of them were actually quite good.
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Mission accomplished.
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What I didn't and couldn't have expected
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was what happened next.
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About a week into my time on vacation,
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I stopped by the hotel's business center to check my email.
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This was a pre-iPhone world, after all.
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And found that this list that I had created anonymously
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had been forwarded back to me several dozen times,
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at my personal email address.
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Everyone was sharing this list of scripts that everyone had said that they loved,
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reading them and then loving them themselves.
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And my first reaction, that I can't actually say here,
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but will describe it as fear,
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the idea of surveying people about their scripts
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was certainly not a novel or a genius one.
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Surely, there was some unwritten Hollywood rule of omertà
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that had guided people away from doing that before
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that I was simply too naive to understand, it being so early in my career.
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I was sure I was going to get fired,
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and so I decided that day that A: I would never tell anybody
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that I had done this,
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and B: I would never do it again.
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Then, six months later, something even more bizarre happened.
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I was in my office, on Sunset,
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and got a phone call from another writer's agent.
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The call began very similarly to the call about "Superstorm":
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"I've got Leo's next movie."
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Now, that's not the interesting part.
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The interesting part was the way the call ended.
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Because this agent then told me, and I quote,
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"Don't tell anybody, but I have it on really good authority
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this is going to be the number one script on next year's Black List."
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(Laughter)
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Yeah.
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Suffice it to say, I was dumbfounded.
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Here was an agent, using the Black List, this thing that I had made anonymously
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and decided to never make again,
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to sell his client to me.
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To suggest that the script had merit,
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based solely on the possibility of being included on a list of beloved screenplays.
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After the call ended, I sat in my office, sort of staring out the window,
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alternating between shock and general giddiness.
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And then I realized that this thing that I had created
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had a lot more value
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than just me finding good screenplays to read over the holidays.
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And so I did it again the next year --
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and the "LA Times" had outed me as the person who had created it --
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and the year after that,
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and the year after that -- I've done it every year since 2005.
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And the results have been fascinating,
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because, unapologetic lying aside, this agent was exactly right.
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This list was evidence, to many people, of a script's value,
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and that a great script had greater value
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that, I think, a lot of people had previously anticipated.
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Very quickly, the writers whose scripts were on that list
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started getting jobs,
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those scripts started getting made,
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and the scripts that got made
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were often the ones that violated the assumptions
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about what worked and what didn't.
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They were scripts like "Juno" and "Little Miss Sunshine"
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and "The Queen" and "The King's Speech"
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and "Spotlight."
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And yes, "Slumdog Millionaire."
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And even an upcoming movie about Michael Jackson's chimpanzee.
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Now, I think it's really important that I pause here for a second
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and say that I can't take credit for the success of any of those movies.
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I didn't write them, I didn't direct them, I didn't produce them, I didn't gaff them,
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I didn't make food and craft service --
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we all know how important that is.
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The credit for those movies, the credit for that success,
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goes to the people who made the films.
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What I did was change the way people looked at them.
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Accidentally, I asked if the conventional wisdom was correct.
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And certainly, there are movies on that list that would have gotten made
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without the Black List,
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but there are many that definitely would not have.
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And at a minimum, we've catalyzed a lot of them into production,
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and I think that's worth noting.
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There have been about 1,000 screenplays on the Black List
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since its inception in 2005.
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About 325 have been produced.
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They've been nominated for 300 Academy Awards,
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they've won 50.
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Four of the last nine Best Pictures have gone to scripts from the Black List,
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and 10 of the last 20 screenplay Oscars have gone to scripts from the Black List.
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All told, they've made about 25 billion dollars
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in worldwide box office,
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which means that hundreds of millions of people
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have seen these films when they leave their homes,
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and sit next to someone they don't know and the lights go down.
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And that's to say nothing of post-theatrical environments
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like DVD, streaming and, let's be honest, illegal downloads.
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Five years ago today, October 15,
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my business partner and I doubled down on this notion
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that screenwriting talent was not where we expected to find it,
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and we launched a website that would allow anybody on earth
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who had written an English-language screenplay
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to upload their script, have it evaluated,
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and make it available to thousands of film-industry professionals.
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And I'm pleased to say, in the five years since its launch,
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we've largely proved that thesis.
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Hundreds of writers from across the world have found representation,
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have had their work optioned or sold.
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Seven have even seen their films made in the last three years,
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including the film "Nightingale,"
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the story of a war veteran's psychological decline,
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in which David Oyelowo's face is the only one on screen
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for the film's 90-minute duration.
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It was nominated for a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards.
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It's also kind of cool that more than a dozen writers
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who were discovered on the website
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have ended up on this end-of-year annual list,
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including two of the last three number one writers.
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Simply put, the conventional wisdom about screenwriting merit --
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where it was and where it could be found,
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was wrong.
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And this is notable, because as I mentioned before,
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in the triage of finding movies to make and making them,
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there's a lot of relying on conventional wisdom.
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And that conventional wisdom,
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maybe, just maybe,
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might be wrong to even greater consequence.
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Films about black people don't sell overseas.
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15:09
Female-driven action movies don't work,
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because women will see themselves in men, but men won't see themselves in women.
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That no one wants to see movies about women over 40.
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That our onscreen heroes have to conform to a very narrow idea about beauty
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that we consider conventional.
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What does that mean when those images are projected 30 feet high
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and the lights go down,
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for a kid that looks like me in Columbus, Georgia?
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Or a Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales?
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Or a gay kid in Chennai?
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What does it mean for how we see ourselves
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and how we see the world and for how the world sees us?
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We live in very strange times.
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And I think for the most part, we all live in a state of constant triage.
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There's just too much information,
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too much stuff to contend with.
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And so as a rule, we tend to default to conventional wisdom.
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And I think it's important that we ask ourselves, constantly,
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how much of that conventional wisdom is all convention and no wisdom?
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And at what cost?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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