Devin Smith

The Oscar Winning writer & director Peter Farrelly was asked, Do you get writer's block? “Writer's block is my natural state,” he said. “Everyday I sit down and go, ‘I got nothing.’” Then he forces himself to write. “I always say, ‘I’d rather write shit than nothing.’ Because with shit, you got something to work with. You can make it less shitty and then not horrible and then decent and then pretty good and then good and then very good and then excellent. But you gotta start with shit.” Everyone does, Farrelly continues. “When you read a book or a screenplay and think, ‘Wow, I could never do this.’ Well don’t forget: that person didn’t start with that. They started with shit—that they fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed and fixed.” Takeaway 1: Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull writes in Creativity, Inc, “Early on, all of our movies suck…I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are.” Catmull repeats, “Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them go, as I say, ‘from suck to not-suck.’” It's true: Everyone starts with shit—that they fix and fix and fix and fix and fix and fix and fix and fix and fix and fix. Takeaway 2: Farrelly says that everyday when he sits down to write, he initially feels blocked. Still, he forces himself to write and soon, “you start feeling good.” I wrote recently about what I say to myself before I read or write: “Accept the initial agitation.” It comes from Dr. Andrew Huberman, who explains: When you begin working on something, “the brain circuits that turn on first are of the stress system.” Meaning: “The agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning of something is just a recognized gate...There is a gate of entry. You have to wade through some sewage before you can swim in clear water. That's the way I always think about it.” The block is a “natural state,” as Farrelly said. It’s just a recognized gate. Force yourself to wade through it, and soon, you'll start feeling good. - - - “I always say, ‘I’d rather write shit than nothing.’ Because with shit, you got something to work with.” — Peter Farrelly Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

In 1991, Pixar struck a deal with Disney to make the first computer-animated movie. At the time, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull explained, “We didn’t have any storytellers among us.” Catmull and most of his employees were computer scientists. To learn how to tell a good story, The team attended STORY—a 3-day storytelling seminar taught by screenwriter and story consultant Robert Mckee. The Pixar team left the seminar, one Pixar employee said, “as true believers [in] McKee’s doctrine that...character emerges most realistically and compellingly from the choices that the protagonist makes in reaction to his problems . . . This became the law of the land at Pixar.” Essentially, McKee teaches that the beating heart of a good story is a character who wants something and has to overcome a series of problems to get it. Guided by this principle, the Pixar team wrote a story about a toy named Woody who wants to keep his position as a boy named Andy’s favorite toy. “Woody's world is rocked,” Catmull writes in summing up the plot, “when a shiny new rival, a space ranger named Buzz Lightyear, arrives on the scene and becomes the apple of Andy's eye.” That problem would become the beating heart of “Toy Story,” which released in 1995 and was a critical and commercial sensation. Following the success of Toy Story, Pixar returned repeatedly to McKee’s principle. One of Pixar's character designers said, “We really really followed McKee almost to the letter of the law.” The former Head of Pixar's Creative Development team added, “Our movies are very conventional, in terms of story conventions like character arcs. If you look at all of our movies, there’s a protagonist who...goes on a journey and comes out the other end a better person . . . or rat . . . or fish.” Takeaway 1: The decision to attend the storytelling seminar was rooted in a lesson Catmull learned when he was 12 years old in 1957. That year, the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) into Earth's orbit. "Since we’d been taught that the Communists were the enemy," Catmull writes, "the fact that they’d beaten us into space seemed pretty scary—proof that they had the upper hand." The U.S. government responded by recruiting the country's best minds and creating something called ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). The architects of ARPA, Catmull points out, said in response to a serious threat: 'We'll just have to get smarter.' The Pixar team attended the storytelling seminar because, Catmull writes, “The lesson of ARPA had lodged in my brain: When faced with a challenge, get smarter.” Takeaway 2: Woody's response to the Buzz problem, ARPA's response to the Sputnik 1 problem, Catmull's response to the storytelling problem—as Robert McKee likes to say, “What’s true of life is true of fiction,” and what’s true of fiction is true of life: “True Character is revealed in the choices [made] under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.” - - - “When faced with a challenge, get smarter.” — Ed Catmull Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

In early 1992, an aspiring director asked James Cameron, How do you become a successful director? Cameron's movie "Terminator 2" was the top-grossing movie of 1991, so Cameron, who had no formal film education, was arguably the best person in the world to ask. Cameron replied, “If you have to ask somebody how to be a film director, you’ll probably never do it." Cameron added that this is his reply to everyone who asks him that question. For 2 reasons: Number 1... In his books on screenwriting, Syd Field writes that the core trait of all great characters is the character's “dramatic need.” With a “dramatic need” (to get something, to go somewhere, to beat someone, etc.), the character persists through the story’s relentless series of obstacles, problems, and conflicts. To become a successful film director, Cameron says, you need to have a dramatic need. Like a good story, the filmmaking process, Cameron explains, is a relentless series of obstacles, problems, and conflicts. Someone who gets discouraged by his reply, Cameron says, clearly does not have the “dramatic need” needed to persist. But “if [my reply] pisses you off, and then you go out and say, ‘I’m going to show that Jim Cameron; I am going to be a director’—that gives you the kind of true grit you need to have in order to go through with it.” Number 2... Of all the successful filmmakers Cameron knows, he said, “No two people ever did it the same way.” Their career trajectories were each uniquely shaped by their unique strengths and weaknesses. “Whatever your strengths and weaknesses,” Cameron says, “you have to find the path that’s going to work for you.” This made me think of a line from the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell: “Where there’s a way or path, it is someone else’s path; each human being is a unique phenomenon. The idea is to find your own path." - - - “I’ve always felt that people seek out the information and knowledge they need. They seek it out and find it...Nobody will give you the pathway. It’s something you have to find yourself.” — James Cameron Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!