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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, Whales,
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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 a 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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it 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 [unclear]
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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 had 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 on the Black List.
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All tolled, 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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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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And 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, Whales?
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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)