This kinda relates to the Burger King thing… Entertainment pros who don’t step up and do what needs to be done because it doesn’t feel right. We don’t need a performer to walk on stage and be completely honest with us. We need them to serve us.
We want something that *looks* real for sure.
No matter how real it looks, we don’t need to believe it 100%
We don’t want the suspension of disbelief to be too difficult. The easiest way for a creator to make that environment is to bring a lot of truth into what they do… but that’s curated truth. That’s the truth that helps the mission. That’s truth that helps them lead the audience. That’s the truth that moves us forward.
I’m not talking about partial truths to tell a lie. I’m talking about how there’s lots of truth in the world. We don’t need to express everything as it comes up, just like a painter doesn’t have to use every color just because it’s on their palette.
This came to my mind when someone was talking about lighting for online shows. They said, “Just doesn’t feel natural to sit with these blazing in my eyes… ” I responded…
It’s not natural! It’s showbiz!
I immediately thought about the performers I’ve seen enter the stage and hold their hands over their brow, blocking out the stage lights so they could see the crowd. That irks me. Stage lights are bright, don’t act like you’re surprised by it. Don’t get thrown off because there’s water on the stage. Don’t bring your depression to the stage because your dressing room was far away.
Give us truth
When we hone something until it connects with people deeply, that’s truth. That’s the truth we want from entertainment. A deep, seismic, human truth that we all need to connect with each other. The badasses bring that truth as consistently as possible no matter what’s going on in their lives. That truth can look like an 8 bit video game, or a tap dance, or a superhero movie. It isn’t reality. It’s beyond that.
Promoting our stuff happens so fast now. Videos are under 1 minute long and webpages are super short. If we were lawyers defending our right to provide entertainment, we’d be in 20 minute court.
“I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”
Blaise Pascal
It’s not easy making it simple and powerful, but the technique follows the “instant lawyer” technique.
Make an opening statement summarizing the value
Prove it with evidence (resume + awards usually) & witnesses (social proof = quotes + reviews usually)
Before we get to the opening statement, we gotta figure out what’s important to the jury. Before that, we gotta figure out who our jury is. Before that, we gotta figure out the plea.
Once we have that together, we make a super succinct statement like “The world’s most engaging book for cats.” After that, we prove that statement as quickly and effectively as possible. Then, we have nothing further.
An opening statement or proof will not do the trick on their own. Either the jury will not believe, or they’ll believe, but not come to the conclusion we want. We need both parts and that’s ALL we need.
Customers, now more than ever, want polarizing, straightforward communication. They don’t want to spend time connecting the dots, and there’s no reason they would. All the options in the world are at their fingertips.
I performed in a variety show a few years ago and the host was just dragging ass. No charm, no jokes, no vibes, no consideration, no energy. I was on deck soon, and I did not want the room he was setting up for me. I pulled him to the side and asked “Are you on morphine?”
“What?” Good, I got his attention.
“What the fuck, dude? Why are you asleep out there?”
“Well, yeah, the crowd energy is really low tonight.”
“It’s not their job to decide the energy level. That’s what you’re here for. Go, kick their butts. Don’t accept it. Tell some jokes! Force them to wake up!”
He did. He turned on all that he had, one act before me, and I got the best crowd energy of the night. I like this story because I was the hero.
It’s happened to me plenty
It’s easy for us to forget that we’re the leaders. It’s easy to forget that this is our domain. Entertainment, the way we choose to do it, is our position of power and that’s what people want. They want to come in and play by our rules and experience the mastery that we provide.
Sometimes we fall into a popular vote mentality, creation by committee, or a belief that we are limited by our genre.
So, I understand the zoom drag
I keep seeing these zoom shows where the host of the show says “Let me see how this thing works” “Is my audio on” “Ok, what’s next” “We’re having a little bit of a technical issue” or all the other complete oxygen sucking phrases that entertainers think they need to say…I understand it…BUT NO!
We don’t have to do it like this, people. Get off the morphine. Quit succumbing. Quit sucking. We might be doing the best zoom show we’ve seen, but that’s not good enough. We need to make leaps and bounds right now, but we’re sitting in our chairs in front of a cameras squinting at the comments, degrading ourselves and our audience.
Make it move.
Do we sweat on stage? Heck yeah! So we better be sweating twice as much on zoom, because sacrificing our energy doesn’t mean as much on camera.
Quit stopping
There’s no stopping on stage. There’s no apology. There’s no accidental breathing. C’mon everybody! Give more!
Imagine starting a show with “What would you like? This whole show is your way.” That would be the worst show ever. It isn’t up to the crowd, it isn’t up to the technology. It is up to us. What do we want to bring?
The stage is a wooden box. If we let the box call the shots, the show wouldn’t be tres great. It would be a lot more about wood and rectangles than most audiences would like.
In Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, we have weird acts. We have a category for them called “weird.” They’re really great for mixing it up and destabilizing the show. I didn’t always like weird.
In San Francisco, I had been exposed to Dadaism, art films, nonsensical Burning Man art and all kinds of funky things that were not entertaining to me. They were surprising and unusual, but they didn’t bring me in as powerfully as Jurassic Park or Chris Rock. I don’t just mean odd acts like “pancake juggling,” I mean mostly performances that don’t have escalation or an arc.
Most of the time these kind of acts seem like they’re for audiences who really want to claim that they “get it.”
The most masterful exhibitor of weird, I think is Reggie Watts. The first time I saw him was in a bar in Echo Park, Los Angeles. I loved it immediately. It was a very unique experience for me at that time. I love watching great entertainers to see the things they create and to see what it does to the audience. My personal taste comes very little into the picture. I’m mostly interested in seeing an audience be dragged into the riptide of an act. The surprising thing about Reggie’s performance was that I didn’t care about what he was doing on stage. He had incredible skills, but it was so weird I was turned off to it. I wouldn’t have watched him do it if I was the only one in the room. It only took a few moments to notice that I wasn’t alone in the room at all. The audience was roaring ( together ) at all the right times.
Reggie has a subconscious, emotional rhythm that doesn’t need to connect with words, logic, or physicality. It’s just like a standup comedian’s rhythm that can get you in the flow, but without the extra baggage.
Watts converted me to appreciating weird. I saw him in that show and all other shows generate the same or more power as any amazing linear act. Since meeting him that night, I’ve gotten the chance to understand weird acts more. One thing about the experience of a weird act – especially in a safe framework – is they show how much brain breaking people can handle. It’s fun to watch with your friends and see if they get pissed off or delighted.
At Boobietrap, one of my favorite moments was this 65 year old dude who had never seen the show before came up to me. It was an insanely great night filled with awesome acts. He said “A lot of good stuff, but that feller who talked about the taco truck… he was incredible!” That feller was Reggie. I loved it. I loved that this man who was probably carrying a couple pistols in his waistband had been dragged across the surreal rainbow bridge that Watts created and was grateful for it.
Five legendary clowns in a 30 year old theater company developing a retro style show. Nothing good could come of it.
I recommend always collaborating with badasses, but the hangup is badasses can easily bloat your budget and timeline.
Two things about badasses:
They’re driven by challenge – that’s how they became what they are
They’re burdened by cognitive biases – they don’t want to lose everything
The clowns are not going to make something good, I promise you. Even clowns – extremely creative, seemingly no ego, socially liberated, progressively motivated – are held back in this scenario.
It’s like getting in the ring with an eight year old kung fu master. You might be curious about what will happen. Unfortunately, if you lose, you get beat up by little a kid. If you win, you beat up a little kid.
The theater company thinks putting these five clowns together is going to make a magic cocktail, but they’re missing the ingredient that matters. “NEW”
Of course they’re seeking new
They’re trying to make a new show, but a little bit of new is dangerous. What they need is “NEW!” They need an opportunity to start from scratch.
These clowns work for three months and make stale nonsense. They are running out of time. The company is over budget.
They have some wrong idea about who they are and how they got there.
They don’t want to take a new approach to work because then, it will prove that they’ve done it wrong.
They don’t want to accept help from the outside because that will prove they’re not badasses.
They don’t want to throw away all the work they’ve done to make new work.
They want personal validation for who they are and not for the work they do.
Candor will be blocked to protect reputation.
Risk will be avoided.
They have ideas about how things work and those ideas might conflict with their collaborators, so they get more intrenched in fighting for their ideas.
This is not how to create.
The solution in this case was a NEW director
Bringing in a NEW collaborator isn’t always the solution, and it would not work without the theater company’s willingness to go all in. If it was just a fresh face, it wouldn’t matter. They needed someone who could start from scratch and really have the authority to burn it down.
This new director
Respected the individuals, but didn’t respect their status. They were starting from scratch
Threw away all that they had worked on for three months
Trashed the idea of being retro. He figured whatever they did, they could dress up in old style clothes and that would serve the retro part.
Brought in new technology that the clowns hadn’t worked with
Repeatedly pointed out that this is a new show
Gave them all characters they had never tried
Observed how they worked and deliberately changed the entire process
Removed all the self-imposed burden of the clowns by being a decisive leader
Brought in non-badass clowns for rehearsal to show that the work matters more than the person and get the competitive juices going.
A NEW Show in a week
It took a week to get this new bit made. All the shittiness got peeled away and these creators were able to bring their value to the table. They didn’t have to prove anything, or conquer anything. All they had to do what create the way they loved, the way they did when they were new.
Don’t start at 100%
Start with the best in the world theater company, best in the world director, best in the world clowns, on an old problem: how to make a better show… You’ve got failure. Everyone’s coming in at 100% quality. In the best case scenario, they will stay 100%. Nothing to fight for, a lot to protect.
We, as entertainment pros, want to work with badasses. We also want to come in on time and on budget with an incredible thing. To do this, we have to establish a culture of NEW in personal projects and group work.
Our messaging is our mission and reiteration that everything is NEW when one part is new.
A video game has never been made with a character like this. Anything goes.
We are at the bleeding edge of novel writing for a new generation. We need innovation.
This movie is being made based on the latest statistics from Hulu viewership and modern collected theory on storytelling. What are we going to do to change the game?
It’s not “How do we build on our past success?” Instead it’s “How do we make something out of nothing?” Badasses love starting from 0%
I flinched even the first time I heard the phrase “TV executives have no imagination.”
Now I’ll tell you what’s up.
I’ve heard variations over and over and it’s nonsense. Here are some people that have “no imagination…”
Studio heads
TV Producers
Casting Agents
Teachers
Networks
Marketing clients
Bookers
Publishers
The logic of this phrase stems from the fact that we can’t present partial work to a gatekeeper and get a pat on the back, or an accomplished mission ribbon, or sell the completed work. Since we can’t show them a quarter of a pizza and ask them to bet on the rest of the pizza, they must have no imagination.
They’re imagining your failure.
These people are insanely creative and insanely imaginative. Even if they weren’t there isn’t such a thing as a person with no imagination.
What they are imagining is the millions of decisions that are left. Chances are, those decisions will be bad decisions. 99.99% of stuff sucks. The whole point of entertainment is to entertain. Even after all the decisions are made and the product is out there, will it work? Will it entertain? Probably not.
When we ask someone to back us based on partial work, we’re basically saying, “Hey! Bet on this race horse. It’s brown. Look at this leg muscle. It has a cool name.”
ME ME ME
People tell me to book a comedian. They say, “this lady right here is funny. You gotta book her.” Well great, but I want her to directly send me a video of exactly the act she wants to do. Here are a few of the unknowns that I immediately imagine sight-unseen based on a recommendation.
does she want to do my show?
does she know what the show is?
does she care about doing a good job?
is she consistent?
is her material in line with our show?
what’s her presence like on stage?
how does an audience respond?
has she done enough shows to have a decent vid?
is she actually funny?
The questions go on and on. As a gatekeeper, my responsibility is to my audience and the other people I book. I’m risking that when I bet on an act.
Not all questions are answered when I get a good video, but it’s my way of helping me manage risk a little bit and make better bets.
Grant these people respect for their imaginations
Appreciating the imaginations of everyone we collaborate / communicate with can help us understand that we don’t know what they think and can give us more patience and more fortitude in bridging the gap.
“… too many of us think of ideas as being singular, as if they float in the ether, fully formed and independent of the people who wrestle with them. Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, often made by dozens of people.”
Ed Catmull – Pixar
I guess Ed Catmull already wrote this post. His concepts in “Creativity, Inc.” keep helping me along. I do think he’s being modest with the number of decisions, though.
I am all for taking the mysticism out of entertainment creation and giving the world more concrete simple steps to power. Here are the parts of this quote that empower me…
A dream doesn’t matter
Some people claim to capture ideas from dreams and that’s how they make. But what if you don’t remember dreams? What if our dreams are petty dreams about painting a hotel a fresh coat of off-white for days? I’m not much of a dreamer, but I am pompous enough to say dreams aren’t the work.
Certain studiers say dreams happen in 5 to 20 minutes. Let’s say we dreamt of the perfect stage play. It wouldn’t be complete. It wouldn’t even be started. Who knows what would even happen when we put down the first words on paper. It might be totally off when made concrete. Regardless of that, we have millions of decisions to make before we have script, before casting, directing, set building. The dream doesn’t make the play any more than deciding the color for the tickets makes the play.
Anything can be the starting point, and that starting point is dwarfed by the plethora of questions to come. It’s an even playing field.
Your misstep doesn’t matter
Go for it. Make bad decisions. Don’t let a tricky decision unravel our flow. Go. We’ll fix it later if it’s bad or it may end up taking us down unexpected paths to brilliance.
Get started fast
When we think of a project as a few steps, it’s easy to spend more time on step 1. It can make us want to savor that moment and get it just right. When we see that there will be an ever-unfolding todo list, and this will not get done on time, we can prototype fast. We can quickly draft. We don’t know how much stuff we’re procrastinating on. We can’t think “oh, I’m just putting off that one thing.” It’s a million things and we don’t know which ones are going to be harder than this thing we’re on now. Jump!
Back off in collaboration
Most conflict in collaboration comes from imagining too far ahead. We can’t imagine far enough ahead to wrap our brains around a million decisions. We can’t see where our team is going.
We can let go.
We can invest more in trusting our collaborators and letting go of the idea that we know what they’re going to do.
Understand the power of trust
Speaking of trust, we can stop expecting others to trust us. Why would someone trust that a book we pen is going to be good based on a paragraph we’ve written. We can respect the trust given to us even if we’ve written a dozen good books. There are millions of potential bad decisions even a great author could make.
Don’t hold on to a single decision
I like being wrong. Probably comes as a relief from trying to be right all the time. The littleness of each decision helps make it clear that it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to course correct. Sure it may seem that some choices have huge impact, but it’s a great exercise to allow the decisions to be small.
I’ve been listening to Captain Frodo’s Way of the Showman. It’s like a wonderful, complicated way to understand the simplicity of entertainment. I try to be blunt and pragmatic, while Frodo’s poetic and philosophical. We agree about a lot.
I just listened to “Soul Spectacle.” To kinda paraphrase he says something about an act exposing the creator’s soul. I agree 100%, but also…
I don’t believe in soul, but I get the concept
Souls aren’t that special
The act doesn’t come from the soul
We want our creations to come with a strong voice, but entertainers can get voice (a series of bold decisions based on the project, brand, and goals) confused with soul (some magical root of a person’s being). The danger is committing boldly to things without reason because the creator thinks this is who they are.
Developing a great act is not about us unveiling our true self to the public. It is us unearthing what the public wants from us.
I don’t know what an archeologist does
I’m going to compare developing an act to what I think an archeologist does. The inventor of a great act is really a digger. Digging a lot of dirt with different tools. Trying to find the best place to dig and then gently exposing truth. The entertainer does their best to unearth the general, gobal truths about humanity. The cool thing about archeology (in my imagination) is not what it tells us about past people, but what it tells us about all people.
As an act is brushed clean, it might be exposing the soul of the performer. It is showing the core of who that person is, but not because of their stubbornness or strong voice. The revelation is the result of listening to what an audience wants us to be.
Just like humans keep telling the same story over and over, and inventing the same religions over and over, and making a million brands of cola… the “souls” of entertainers are not original and special. If you want to be recognized as being a new flavor of person, being great entertainer is not the way to get that validation.
Great entertainers are gonna keep selflessly cleaning an artifact or digging for the next. It’s not our artifact. It didn’t come from us.
Just like the global truth of humanity; an authentic, preserved, exposed ancient artifact is rare and valuable. Making a show without listening to audiences is like making a crappy arrowhead yourself and getting it dirty.
The thing that keeps entertainment peeps going is something generous. A generous mission. Everyone I’ve consulted for has a mission that’s positive stuff for others.
We are never not selfish enough. We can feel the selfishness on a spectrum. It can be a little irritation, a bummer feeling, or can even lead to “stage fright” or “writers block”
When I’m thinking about myself before a show, I’ll peek through the curtain and spot someone I want to entertain. I’ll hang with the audience and empathize with them. They have normal lives and they would love a peak into mine. When I’m writing, I think of someone who could really use the info or the enjoyment.
All we need when we want to generate MORE is to remember others and remember what our work can do for them.
Get the motor started…
Just intentionally thinking up a joke that a friend will like or drawing a doodle for a spouse is a little vitamin boost for the generosity system.
In a high dynamic range photo, the whites are 100% white and the blacks are 100% black, and then hopefully there’s every value in between. That isn’t how it is in every photo. The brightness is the attribute people refer to with dynamic range, but DR could be measured in any attribute: hue, scale, saturation, subject matter, focus, etc.
When I see something I like in entertainment, it’s probably because it contrasts with something else. My first question is “can it contrast more?” or “can we take it further?”
When thinking about all the attributes of a video game, for example, you will go numb trying to go thru them all, but we can instantly attack one and make things more fun. People like picking their own characters in the game. They like that each one is different. Let’s start with size of character. Can the biggest character be double the size of the smallest? Can the smallest be a mouse and the biggest be a blue whale?
Stretching any dynamic range is an instant creative boost. The audience is expecting one thing and I’m doing something else. Can I set them up to expect something even more boring and I can do something more exciting? One act is a little shorter than another. That’s a delightful surprise. Can I make a 1 second act?
We just find a delightful contrast and inflate the contrast.
Entertainment pros call people out. We don’t need to call them out to shame them ( I think shame is useless ), but we call them out so the crowd knows the mission. It’s extreme, it’s disruptive, and it takes responsibility.
Scot Nery’s Boobietrap has a tradition of throwing snacks to the audience. One night there was a grumpy couple in the crowd. I told them to open up and have fun. Someone told me the woman got hit in the face with snacks and she was upset (everyone gets hit in the face with snacks).
To make it fun, we offered them prosecco and more snacks. They did not cheer up.
After the next act, I told them they were welcome to leave.
The man said “No, we’re here to see Josh.”
I replied, “Well, you’re in luck because Josh is next! Josh can you go next?”
Josh performed, did great. They clapped and cheered up, then I told them it was time to go and leave the rest of the show to the rest of us.
They mumbled, picked up their motorcycle helmets and walked out. Told me I wasn’t funny and the show sucked. I pointed out that nobody else agreed. The crowd roared. I had the ticket person meet with them on the way out and hand them their money back and they loudly complained to her so the whole audience could hear. I shouted after them, “You were the only ones here with helmets! You should have worn them!”
I called them out for the rest of the audience. Anyone that was brought down by their attitude needed to know that this behaviour was not in line with our party. Anyone that was questioning, “Should I choose to be a bummer also?” needed to know you’re either with us or against us. Entertainment works with tribal unity. If someone breaks the rules of the tribe (which are not hard to follow) they are an outsider.
At every stage, we were working it for the rest of the crowd and making it obvious that there was an invitation to come back into the tribe. I was not a tyrant, I was a shepherd. When one of my sheep was a wolf, I had to get them out of the herd.
I was surprised that they would be so difficult. That’s very unusual and the vibe of Boobietrap is ridiculously amazing. We don’t really have issues with the audience. Still, even with a great audience, certain behaviours might need to be called out so that everyone has an equally good time, and so we can all go somewhere magical together.
Crowd workers take heed
Sometimes comedians attack the crowd. This is not cool. The comedian is in a leadership position and so the signals sent by the leader are meant to be directions for those they are leading. Random hostility toward an audience is not about a laugh, it’s about something being wrong. Destabilization without benevolent guidance is completely counterproductive to getting an audience in flow.
The last 5 day branding challenge for entertainment pros was a big success, and now I’m doing it again in September. It’s even brandier and challengier and great!
