Friday, October 25, 2013

Neil Simon's Mistake

If you enjoyed the plays or movies Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Biloxi Blues (among many others) you've enjoyed Neil Simon's work. He's one of the most successful and funniest modern writers. He's won several Tony and Emmy awards and was nominated for four Academy Awards, all while making millions of dollars from his writing. He became known early in his career for helping rewrite shows out of town before they premiered on Broadway. His play doctoring work was how he got the nickname of "Doc" Simon. I've been a fan of his work for many years, and had the good luck to work as an assistant on his play Actors and Actresses. As Neil Simon writes in his memoir, "Rewrites," his talent as a writer did not always translate into business. In 1965, after Barefoot in the Park and Odd Couple were big hits on Broadway, Paramount approached Simon's business manager to buy the company that held all the rights to those two plays. Paramount offered $125,000, which was a significant amount of money in those days. Simon had misgivings, but because his business manager told him it was a good deal, he ultimately decided to sell. That meant that Neil Simon, the creator and author of the play "The Odd Couple," received no money from the run of the TV series, or any ancillary revenue from DVDs and videocassettes. He receives no royalty money from stage productions of Barefoot in the Park, which is still performed all over the world. For a $125,000 fee, Simon literally gave up tens if not hundreds of millions in revenue. In his memoir Simon takes responsibility for this decision. He says, "No one forced me to make the deal. It was a judgment call, and I let the wrong person sway me in making that judgment." Of course, when he made this deal in the sixties, very few people realized the amount of money one could make from ancillary markets for content. However today we expect that the number of outlets for our content will continue to expand in ways we can't even predict now. Hence the phrase in many content contracts - "all rights in all media currently existing or that may exist, in perpetuity." Never sell all rights to your content to a third party. If your business manager tells you to sell all your rights, get a new business manager. If your content reaches a good sized audience, it may provide you with an income for many years (see my earlier post about Norman Greenbaum, who still lives off royalties from his one hit, 'Spirit in the Sky.'). Of course, like Norman Greenbaum, you should license your content to third parties for distribution and collect your fees and royalties; just don't sell all the rights. I've advised never to sign any contract without having it reviewed by a lawyer. Don't even bother having your lawyer review a contract asking you to give up all rights to your content in perpetuity. Just don't sign it. I should add that Neil Simon wrote a lot more hits, and made a great deal of money from them. Even with this success, it still bothered him that he no longer owned the rights to two of his greatest plays. Learn from Doc Simon's mistake. Own your content.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Happy Accidents

"There are no mistakes, only happy accidents," - Bob Ross When I worked at public television station WLIW, I watched Bob Ross paint every day at 2:00 PM. Every day Bob Ross started with a blank canvas, and a half hour later he created an inspiring landscape. His soothing voice combined with the sound of his brush scratching the canvas was like white noise shutting out the world. He had by far the most popular painting show on PBS; even people who didn't paint watched it. But as practiced as he was, Bob Ross was not perfect. When he did make a mistake, rather than try to cover it up, he incorporated it into his painting. He liked to say "there are no mistakes, only happy accidents." Artistic techniques -- whether it's practicing music, sketching a still life, or creating a believable acting moment -- are studied and practiced in order to enable artists to create freely and spontaneously. There are times when all artists struggle to create, and there are times when the ideas flow freely and the canvas fills up as if by magic. We never know when inspiration will strike, but we do know that we'll make the most of it if we have a solid technique and practice every day to give our inspiration the best chance to affect our work. Allow those happy accidents to happen when you're creating content. Have a vision, but don't be so rigid you ignore opportunities for inspiration. The scene where Cary Grant is chased by the crop dusting plane in "North by Northwest" was created when director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were stuck for an idea. They considered several ideas for the scene, including a killer tornado (but how could they make the tornado appear on cue? Too bad they didn't see Sharknado). Finally, one of them said, "what about a crop dusting plane?" and suddenly they were developing the scene and writing notes madly. A happy accident of an idea became one of the most memorable scenes in the film. I bet you're wondering if Bob Ross' painting techniques worked for others. They absolutely did. Mario, one of our master control technicians at WLIW, also had watched Bob Ross' show for years and one day decide to try it. He would often show me slides of the magnificent landscapes he created using the Ross technique, without any formal art training. In your own work, follow Ross' advice. Don't make mistakes. Make happy accidents.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Create Entertaining Stories

In the classic movie Sullivan's Travels, written and directed by Preston Sturges, Joel McCrea plays film director John L. Sullivan, who's made a good living directing light comedies, but now wants to direct a 'significant' picture, a movie called "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" (yes, the Coen brothers knew about Sullivan's Travels when they wrote a movie by the same name.). When Sullivan actually does live on the streets and is sentenced to a chain gang, he learns how much joy his comedies gave ordinary people, and he goes back to making them. People want to be entertained. That's why they spend hundreds of dollars on concert or sports tickets, and share internet videos about kittens. If you want to market your content to a group larger than your friends and family, you must make it entertaining. That doesn't necessarily mean funny. Your goal as a story teller is to involve your audience so they want to know what happens next, and are anxious to find out. The more your content can do that -- whether it's a viral video or a popular novel -- the more people will want to experience it. How do you make something entertaining? If there was a formula that worked every time, every piece of content ever created would be popular. That being said, there are some principals I've learned over the years that I try to apply to my work: -- A satisfying story is both surprising and inevitable. The audience must be unsure of the ending, but when they get there the ending should result from the characters' personalities and interaction. -- Tell a story about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances -- whether they're trying to save the earth or save their Average Joe Gym (yes, that's a Dodgeball Reference. Wonder if they'd still have Lance Armstrong in that movie today). By the way, "people" does not necessarily mean humans -- your characters can be hobbits or Norse gods. -- Dialogue should reveal character and advance the plot. Even the most brilliant verbal repartee from Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde or Judd Apatow does that. -- Any message must grow out of the situation and characters to be effective. Otherwise, write an op ed piece or an essay for the NY Times. Of course, even if you apply these rules and work hard to make your content as strong as possible, it still may not find an audience. Forgive yourself, and move on to the next project. My message: If you liked this post, make a comment. My poetry collection, Two Car Garage, is also available on amazon.com and bn.com.