Archive for April, 2008

A great new article by David Kushner about “How a small band of sci-fi geeks is leading Hollywood into a new era.” Checkout this excerpt –

“On a starry night in Los Angeles, there’s no shortage of conversation inside a dimly lit Sunset Boulevard restaurant called Eat. On Sunset. Just a few hours ago, news leaked of a deal to end the Writers Guild of America strike that shut down much of the film and TV business for three months. Everyone in Hollywood, it seems, is begging to know what the future holds. And in a windowless private room behind the bar, a group of scruffy dudes drinking vodka and munching on calamari have some answers.

Tim Kring, the lanky, goateed guy at the head of the table, created Heroes, NBC’s hit television show about superpowered people. To his right, in a black hoodie and narrow black-framed glasses is Damon Lindelof, cocreator of Lost, ABC’s island-fantasy juggernaut, as well as producer of next year’s eagerly anticipated Star Trek movie, directed by J.J. Abrams. Across the way is Lindelof’s buddy Jesse Alexander, co-executive producer of Heroes (formerly of Lost and the pioneering she-geek hit Alias). Nearby is Rob Letterman, the self-described nerdy director of DreamWorks’ next mega-franchise movie, Monsters vs. Aliens. He’s chatting up video-game creator Matt Wolf, who’s developing a project with Alexander.

“In five years,” Kring is saying, “the idea of broadcast will be gone.”

“Right,” says Lindelof. “Instead of watching Heroes on NBC, you’ll go to nbc.com and download the show to your device, and the show will be deleted as soon as you finish watching it — unless you pay $1.99; then you get audio commentary. You enhance it. It’s like building your Transformer and putting little rocket ships on the side.”

These guys are part of a closely intertwined, wildly influential unofficial 21st-century rat pack — call them Hollywood’s Geek Elite. Just as Star Wars‘ George Lucas and Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry influenced them, they’re making iconic franchises for the YouTube generation. Separately and together, they have forged a new golden age of science fiction and fantasy, and they’re reinventing the entertainment economy in the process. Why them? Because their inherently dweeby shows are the most extensible brands in the industry, playing out seamlessly across platforms from TV to video games, Web sites to comics.”

Checkout the article HERE. Or buy the magzine on a NEWSTAND near you. That way you can enjoy the GEEK ELITE pinup!

I’ve been re-reading THE PIRATE’S DILEMMA by Matt Mason. A wonderful book about how youth culture is re-writing global economics. From knock-off sneakers. MP3’s. Even HIV/AIDS drugs. Matt illustrates how piracy can be a powerful catalyst for change. He’s a great storyteller, and his punchline about how America was founded by pirates who ignored international patent laws, to jump-start an industrial economy, is all time.

Reading about Pirates in Matt’s book got me thinking –

The first movie I ever directed violated intellectual property laws. It featured SNOOPY and WOODSTOCK from Charles M. Schulz’s PEANUTS comic strip. I used Mr. Schulz’s characters without asking. And even had one of them perpetrating a crime. It was Woodstock. That little yellow bird. And he was stealing lunches from First Graders. My peers. See, when I made this movie — I was EIGHT years old.

And what about all the movies I made with my Star Wars action figures? And Hot Wheels? Hell, my 7th Grade DAWN OF THE DEAD remake was almost shot for shot. Luckily, no CEASE AND DESIST letter came in the mail. Back in the days of no access to distribution, these backyard bootlegs were a non-issue. But not anymore. Now any eight year old Eli Roth can put their opus on YOU TUBE. And with access to HD-DVD’s, and BLU-RAY, he or she can rip content from a perfect digital master of STAR WARS, or INDIANA JONES, or THE MATRIX — and seamlessly remix those elements in ways the IP holders would never imagine, much less condone.

In college I made music. Sampling old school breaks-and-beats from DOORS, and HENDRIX records. I’ve downloaded MP3’s. A couple movies. Some comic books. WOW! I just remembered that as I kid, I would smuggle my cassette recorder into movie theaters and tape the soundtracks. Then listen to the movie over and over again. Intellectual Property theft has been a part of my creative life — since I had a creative life.

And without all this piracy. I don’t know if I would’ve become a filmmaker. Being creative can be tough. It’s risky to put yourself out there. And using somebody else’s characters, and storylines, is a very safe place to experiment. To practice. To learn a craft. Until you’re finally confident enough to create your own intellectual property.

And that doesn’t just go for making movies. It’s the same for engineering, computer programming, chemistry. Taking what somebody else has done before, and iterating on it, making it into something new, the next thing to be pirated, and so on. Without the catalyst of piracy to forge new products, technologies, economic models, and creative people in all fields — the human race would still be shivering in the dark. Let’s give a shout-out to Prometheus for stealing fire from the Gods.

Piracy is in our DNA. ARRRRGGGGH!