DC

@LayahHeilpern Don’t commit to things that don’t reward you. Bitterness is usually a byproduct of the feeling of betrayal. You give to your spouse, career, and they don’t validate (or see) your efforts. It creates a deep wound. You feel unworthy. Focus on that which gives back. Good luck.

@JustineBateman @latimes Insane

.@latimes this is silly, isn't it? Your own reporters have printed numerous stories about the demise of LA. This is a very silly, childish clickbait title and article. Los Angeles has become unaffordable, with crazy individuals roaming the streets, potholes and ridges popping our tires, an understaffed police force, an under-equipped fire department, a film and TV production business that is collapsing, and billions of our tax dollars just kind of getting lost in the wind. I suppose if you just moved to LA last year, you've accepted this as some "normal" state, but anyone who's lived here for more than a minute knows exactly what LA is now. It's not a "vision," just fact. Don't be silly.

@ChrisWillx Should be a card carrying membership we can apply for.

Being called an aspiring scientist, philosopher and pussy slave in the same message is the most accurate depiction of my nature I've ever read

@hirambleetman @LukeBarnett I spoke too soon. Dances with Wolves is legendary.

@LukeBarnett Dances with Wolves The Shawshank Redemption The Peanut Butter Falcon The Dark Knight Superman: The Movie Aliens Ghostbusters Heat Sinners Nomadland

Top 10 also changes all the time but gun to my head at this exact moment? There Will Be Blood Jurassic Park Children of Men Monty Python’s Holy Grail Fargo The Taking of Pelham One Two Three The Assassination of Jesse James Titanic Dead Poet’s Society The Truman Show

@LukeBarnett Top ten The Matrix Seven The Abyss Heat Casino Predator Killing them Softly Arrival Prisoners Gladiator

Part of empathy is knowing you’re going to cause pain — and doing it anyway. Character is what must be done. Empathy is why you can’t forget.

Thoreau once said — “𝙲𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛.” You don’t really know a city until you’ve walked it at night. Aimless and drifting. Without the sheen of sun. Silent. Take away the noise. The traffic. Your fellow pedestrians. Until all that’s left is the sound of your heel across concrete and the burning hum of halogens above. You might see someone. A fellow traveler, passing like a ship across the channel. But you keep your distance. Respect the danger. Don’t forget — you’re dangerous, too. I’ve walked many cities: Bangkok, Los Angeles, NY, Dubai… Each have their own dialect. Their own spine. To step their streets is to taste the blood of every hand that ever built it. But the shadows? Those never change. Daylight is the great deceiver, and night is the truth. Indeed, we all look best when our hair is coiffed — our makeup perfect. Projecting confidence without ever acknowledging the scarred skin beneath. Or that the hair on top of your head was pulled from the back of it. But you can’t lie in darkness. When buried thoughts climb to the surface. Pounding at your temples. Reminding you who you really are. What you never became. We are all walking alone in this world. But venture deep into the night, and you will soon find it’s not shadows you’re afraid of — It’s you.

@HwoodScrptReadr I do long narrative posts on instagram too. That’s where I got accused of AI. I write on a substack, and have a fascination with the creative and commerce in tandem.

@HwoodScrptReadr It did not. But I get that a lot. Is it cuz I’m long winded?

The spec market is broken and it has been for a long time. Maybe I shouldn't say this because I'm putting myself out of a job but fuck it. For years and years Hollywood has been taking the "monkeys with typewriters" approach – and I apologize in advance for calling anyone a simian. The strategy sounds good on paper. Make everyone work for free in the hopes that you'll strike gold. But it hasn't worked out that way, has it? Writing takes time. Especially when you're first starting out. Everyone's first script is shit. Who has time to write all day? Trust fund kids, mostly. Why are there so many movies and TV shows about rich people? It's not the only reason why, but it is A reason. The rest of us have day jobs. And was we get older and want a family there are even fewer hours in the day for writing. So what's the solution? Here's a radical proposal: Back in the olden days you had writers on staff. In some ways that was a bad deal because you didn't own your own material. But if a studio buys your spec you don't own it anymore then either. What that system offered was a salary. A steady paycheck is almost a prerequisite for writers to do their best work. It's really hard to be at your most creative when most of your time and energy goes toward worrying how to pay the bills. This could be an opportunity to foster young talent. It's not that different from the long-lost days of development deals and first looks. That was a cash cow for independent producers – and a select few writers who were also producers – that has largely if not totally gone away. Let's making writing a middle class job again. What we have now is a handful of writers at the top who are making the big bucks and everyone else who's making both diddly and squat. It's simply not an efficient allocation of resources. It might result in smaller paydays but it would benefit more people than it will harm. Yes, I know all of this sounds hopelessly naive and will almost certainly never happen, but throwing it out there anyway. Tell me I'm wrong in the comments.

They are, but gradually. You have to pull back to see the macro: ‘Content creators’ are becoming the dominant force in the industry. They come with a fan base and monetization that traditional talent can’t replicate. While agencies cling to their legacy talent, star value continues to plummet. The writing is on the wall: the next Tom Cruise won’t come from a casting office — he’s already on instagram. YouTube. Tik Tok. It’s viable talent too. Younger audiences don’t care about craft, they care about access. Look at Jake Shane. Tik Tok star, now on Broadway. His audience is the credential, and that’s all that matters. And the agencies? They profit from signing Jake day one — who needs years of struggle and 13 failed pilots? Jeremy Zimmer recently spoke on this. UTA radically shifted their portfolio over the last decade, and today the film / television sector may only represent 45-55%. Sports, content creation, live music, advisory positions — even asset management — are making up the difference. For writers, the barrier has been two fold: 1. Hard to make screenplays for the internet. The medium was always designed to accompany a visual anchor. 2. Television was booming, writers were employed more (while making less), and the streaming services sold a vision of Shonda Rhimes success, if you could survive. So, understandably, writers played along while the ground shifted beneath them, absent of a better alternative. Cue: AI. In 2023, generative AI was a discussion, but barely relevant. The focus was ChatGPT, and could it write a script capable of superseding a human writer? No one imagined generative tech would come this far in such a short amount of time. We worried AI could replace writers— now it threatens the whole studio system. Far fetched? Maybe. But the tech will continue to improve exponentially, and easier for user’s to harness. As more creatives reach unemployment, they will seek other outlets for their work. Something scalable, that can monetize. Soon, the digital world will allow you to pen your film, and the cinematic imagery necessary: - Proof of concept films will be made in days, not months, for a fraction of the cost. - Pilots sliced into 2 minute clips, building the series online. Creating an audience. - Genres will expand. Write your biggest budget film possible, then replicate it for the cost of monthly subscription. Meanwhile, brands accept the lower barrier to entry as an opportunity to capture a piece of the market. Current players include: - NIKE (Waffle Iron Entertainment) - Red Bull Studios - Mattel Films - Starbucks Studios - Epic Games More are coming. Indeed — my local coffee shop just put out ads for an episodic series they want to shoot. They need actors. Probably writers, too. This has been a long time coming. The original YouTubers weren’t wrong — they were early. Hollywood was insulated when the cost of cinema superseded what could be done from an iPhone. That gap is shrinking. Emerging tech will (eventually) allow people to fully realize their films, and own their audiences. The copyright will be theirs to license, to whom they choose. To answer your question specifically: this is just the beginning. The economic incentives and technology needed to align first. Now it’s off to the moon.

@cadebrigade So why aren’t people doing that now? Or more to the point why haven’t they already?

Just finished Crime 101. Best “LA Film” since Drive.

@JosephKahn Make it make sense. Also, I don’t remember this much upset when Disney bought Fox. Or Discovery bought Warner Bros — which is why WB is in the position it is anyway.

Everyone opposes Paramount because it would be a streaming monopoly but not Netflix?

@JustineBateman The fact that they keep ignoring those 2 details makes me feel like it’s intentional ignorance. Why they continue to not address those points is beyond me.

Unless a mayoral candidate addresses the actual reasons shooting isn’t happening here, this kind of plea is not useful. They need to say they will work with the CA gov to address these two points: 1. The CA tax credit is almost impossible to get. Change that. 2. The CA tax credit does not apply to ATL. Change that. It’s not about the cap. Without elements 1&2, the CA tax credit is not competitive with those in the rest of the country/world.

@HwoodScrptReadr Quality is the only metric that matters

One more thing. Most scripts are bad, very bad. You have to write a very good one. Lack of access is a real problem but it's not THE problem. The problem is you have to be better than everyone else. 90% of your energy should go toward writing, maybe 10% for networking, etc.

@KiDCuDi Especially now

It does not have to cost millions of dollars to make a good movie

@AVARY Well said

Both Steven (with Full Frontal) and I (with The Rules of Attraction) were the first filmmakers to take Final Cut Pro, a consumer tool, into prime time usage on feature films. I only narrowly beat him to theaters because his system crashed and he lost all his work. That’s what it means to be on the bleeding edge of filmmaking. The guy is a mad scientist and it doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s at the forefront of the greatest democratizing filmmaking tool since consumer digital cinema. No one complained when he shot a movie on an iPhone. It astonishes me that anyone is in a kerfuffle about his experimentation with AI.

@JosephKahn True

Anyone honest in Hollywood will tell you that in the last 10 years the common response of agents to a white male is we don't need that type right now.

The biggest self inflicted wound Hollywood did to itself was kill the white male movie star. Asian women alone fund half of this profit. My mom has made George Clooney very rich. Save Hollywood by exporting the most profitable Hollywood product: Ryan Gosling movies.

@JosephKahn I agree. I would add that — in its purest form — movies are making a humanist message above all else. Once you politicize that end message, it reduces itself to a binary, and ultimately fails to meet true potential. Audiences feel humanity. They reject ideology.

There is a loud political activist component to film ecosystem that tries to gatekeep movies to their worldview. That's actually ok. It's a free market. It's even advantageous to smaller films and specialized audiences, and they should have their movies (left or right). However when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on material that is meant to capture mind boggling numbers of tickets, it's just good business to not antagonize any portion of the potential customer base. The product should be culturally valid and strong, and the promotions should be nothing but positive. Ignore the vocal audience on the edges and go for the big, juicy middle.

Went to the movies for the first time in awhile. Solo, so I could see Project Hail Mary. I got one ticket, one large popcorn, one large soda. I’m old school. Total cost? 40 dollars. I finally get it. It’s just too expensive to go to a movie for the average person. The good news is the previews are showing a lot of promising films coming down the pipeline…

@Matt_Pinner I starred in a film with Kate Beckinsale a little over a year ago. We had a lovely chat or two on set

Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever spoken to? Not “seen from far away” — actually talked to, even for a minute. A quick hello, a handshake, a normal conversation… and you still remember it. Who was it?