Copycatting
If a movie is really popular, sometimes you can buy the screenplay.
It's neat. That means you can take a hard copy of a movie you really love to a coffee shop and read it. When I was a kid I took copies of Pulp Fiction, Clerks, and Swingers on a road trip across the country with my parents.
Reading the words and the brief descriptions of the scenes works really well when you've already seen the movie. In your mind, you have the end result to reference, so you have no trouble fleshing out the characters, their lines, or the visuals that add depth to the story.
Going in the other direction is much harder. I've tried reading screenplays for movies that I haven't seen. If you ever try it, you'll see that it's very difficult to visualize what the writer had in mind. And when I end up seeing the movie, finally, the actual production is drastically different from what I had envisioned.
Imagine having a stack of 15 or 20 screenplays and being charged with picking the one among them to greenlight. Filtering in this direction is tough. Even if you do pick the "best" screenplay of the lot, there's no telling that the director will execute the creation of the film well, or that it won't be miscast, etc.
Lots of business books will tell you what Apple does well. His fanboys will point to all of the things that Obama did correctly in gathering support and winning the 2008 election. I've heard the motivational story of Jim Carrey writing himself a check for $1 million for "Acting Services Rendered" when he was in poverty and then being able to cash that check a few years later, after striking it big in Hollywood.
These stories are great, and they probably contain better wisdom than the analysis of all their failed comrades. But that doesn't mean being a copycat, and using their means as your own roadmap, will lead to any kind of success. By definition, once there is a roadmap, it's probably not a worthwhile road to travel.
(Hint: don't attend any large seminar entitled "How To Make Millions".)
It's neat. That means you can take a hard copy of a movie you really love to a coffee shop and read it. When I was a kid I took copies of Pulp Fiction, Clerks, and Swingers on a road trip across the country with my parents.
Reading the words and the brief descriptions of the scenes works really well when you've already seen the movie. In your mind, you have the end result to reference, so you have no trouble fleshing out the characters, their lines, or the visuals that add depth to the story.
Going in the other direction is much harder. I've tried reading screenplays for movies that I haven't seen. If you ever try it, you'll see that it's very difficult to visualize what the writer had in mind. And when I end up seeing the movie, finally, the actual production is drastically different from what I had envisioned.
Imagine having a stack of 15 or 20 screenplays and being charged with picking the one among them to greenlight. Filtering in this direction is tough. Even if you do pick the "best" screenplay of the lot, there's no telling that the director will execute the creation of the film well, or that it won't be miscast, etc.
Lots of business books will tell you what Apple does well. His fanboys will point to all of the things that Obama did correctly in gathering support and winning the 2008 election. I've heard the motivational story of Jim Carrey writing himself a check for $1 million for "Acting Services Rendered" when he was in poverty and then being able to cash that check a few years later, after striking it big in Hollywood.
These stories are great, and they probably contain better wisdom than the analysis of all their failed comrades. But that doesn't mean being a copycat, and using their means as your own roadmap, will lead to any kind of success. By definition, once there is a roadmap, it's probably not a worthwhile road to travel.
(Hint: don't attend any large seminar entitled "How To Make Millions".)