On writing “execution dependent” movies
answering a very thorny reader question
I get a lot of questions in my DMs. Here and on social media. I try to look at them all, I try to answer the ones that I can, and I try to bring the really thorny ones here to talk about further, because, a lot of these crowd-sourced questions are ones that I think lots of people may be curious about.
So, if you ever have writing questions — whether about the creative part of the process, the business part of the process, or, focused on exactly the spot where those two processes overlap (as this question is) — send them my way! I’d love to answer them. And if it prompts a particularly longwinded response from me, you’ll know that you’ve asked something I myself have been grappled with.
So, here’s a reader question from Jake:
I find myself writing films that aren’t really designed to be pitched or optioned. In other words, the tone or style is so specific that they might not market well on their own and I would probably just need to direct them myself (I need to work on separating my writer brain from my director brain).
Do you ever write personal projects like this? Is it still worth doing? Or is it simply smarter in this industry to always write something that can be understood by the masses and be marketable on its own?
This is a doozy! And I think gets at the heart of what is uniquely challenging both about being a writer, and about working in film as a medium.
There’s a lot going on here, and it’s a bit of a cheat because it’s a few different but interconnected questions stacked together.
Let’s talk the place where art meets commerce
First — the bad news. Film will always sit at the intersection of art and commerce. Even the smallest of films — $200,000, need large audiences in order to support them. A $200,000 movie needs a much smaller audience than a $2 million movie or a $200 million movie, but it’s still a much more costly undertaking than most other artists’ mediums. And with cost comes a need for many customers. You need a very large swath of people across the country and the world to want to go see a movie in order to make the movie make sense as a business endeavor. Which it is! Even the artsiest of artsy films end up needing Quickbooks and accounting and financial reports. There’s no getting around it.
I say this and then must of course dial it back because there are no such things as absolutes. One could make a very avant garde, very experimental, solo project that is technically a film. And in doing that not worry at all about whether anyone would ever want to see it.
But I don’t really suspect that’s the goal of people reading a newsletter called “Hollyweird.” We do, in some capacity, want our work to be seen, and in some capacity bought and sold.
So, yes, to answer the most mercenary portion of the question first, I do think before writing something about whether or not it feels “marketable.” I did not always think this way. And I don’t think anyone should begin this way, honestly. Start from a pure artistic place! Pursue what you want to see in the world!
However… it’s good to also know that in pursuing what you alone want to see, you may end up with a 50/50 ratio of things that you do that remain things that only you want to see. And while 50/50 is a pretty good hit ratio, sitting down to write a script, and then make a movie is a years-long endeavor.
As I have gotten older, as I have gotten busier, as the demands on my time have increased, as the calculus of how much money could I earn during the time I work on a passion project becomes more of a concern, I have tried to make a concerted effort to pursue projects that are not only interesting to me but also feel “saleable.”
“Is this something that I could convince a large audience that they would like to see?” Is an important question, and one that I ask early on when thinking about ideas, because it does determine both the amount of difficulty you’re going to have making something, and the likelihood of success within the marketplace.
There are basically three ways you can convince a large audience to see something.
Famous people they already like are involved. This is why everyone in Hollywood is obsessed with trying to get Tom Hanks, Timothee Chalamet, and/or Zendaya in their films. If there is someone that we know and love and want to see on screen, the idea for the movie can be simple. Because what you’re selling isn’t the idea, it’s the people involved.
It has a big clear idea. There is a reason B-horror films remain something that people are willing to invest in. It’s because they “sell themselves.” What does that mean though? What it means to investors is — the value isn’t contingent on the value of the talent involved (which is usually very expensive) but instead on the idea of the film itself. Horror films tend to have a big, clear ideas, and those tend to be marketable. I’ve written about it before. If your movie has a “Big Idea,” that’s as valuable as having a familiar piece of talent / underlying source material. When you tell an audience “this is a movie about a shark attacking people at the beach,” they know what they’re going to see.
Make something undeniably exceptional. This is the toughest spot to be in with a movie idea. This is what executives and agents and managers like to call “execution dependent.” Execution dependent basically just means… “this is an idea that could be really incredible, if everything works out. Otherwise, it won’t work at all.” Now, couldn’t one argue all movies are execution dependent? Yes… mostly. But that’s why trying for numbers one and two above are considered valuable in the film marketplace, they are an attempt at some kind of insurance policy to keep the project interesting to a wide group of people.
So what if you just want to make interesting stuff and not worry about making something for everyone?
I’m right there with you.
The movies I most like are “execution dependent.” Both as a moviegoer and as a filmmaker. And as much as I may wish I were someone who could simply pitch a super clean, clear, simple idea for a big movie star — I actually tend to prefer things that are a bit more complex.
However, the business of Hollywood is one of risk mitigation. And complexity breeds risk. So when the business minds of Hollywood ding you with working on something “execution dependent,” they usually mean “we see too many ways that this could fall apart.”
Almost everything I have written has been something I personally really believe in, something that is thorny and layered and complex, and something that feels like it would take a miracle to make. I haven’t stopped wanting to make those kinds of films, and I absolutely don’t think making those kinds of films is a waste of time.
Execution dependent movies can and should be made.
You just need to make them at a scale that’s realistic. Especially if you’re advocating for something that you intend to write & direct (and I think if you’re dreaming of doing it, you should just go do it), you need to be diligent about crafting something that allows you to be the director. That doesn’t mean changing your voice or tone or temperament to hopefully conform to others’ goals. It simply means making something at a scope and scale (ie a budget) where you can take more risks. The smaller the movie the riskier you can be.
For myself, right now at least, I have bifurcated the types of work I’m pursuing. In one column are the personal, niche, “execution-dependent” projects that I intend to write and direct. In the other column are projects that I think are broader and simpler to translate, meaning I could hopefully convince a big company that it’s a good business decision.
This doesn’t mean I am thinking about how to write the broadest hackiest most people-pleasing thing imaginable, but I am consciously splitting my desires into “I will write this with the intent to try to give it to someone else” and “I will write this with the intent for me to keep it and make it myself.”
I have purposefully created a system in which those two things do not overlap anymore because the overlap is where it starts to get very, very frustrating.
Without knowing the kind of work you want to make, I can’t say whether it’s marketable or for a mass audience. But I do think making films that many people will want to see is an essential ingredient to the art form.
That’s not to say that small, intimate, personal stories cannot break through. Plenty do. Films like “Sorry Baby,” “It Was Only an Accident,” “Sentimental Value” are all films that on paper a studio executive might read and say, “These are too small / execution dependent.”
But if you make a movie like that responsibly, at a low enough price point, with the right collaborators, and with people who understand and can champion the vision of making something that is execution dependent, and understand that making something that is execution dependent is more exciting and more meaningful, ultimately, than making something for a broad audience… It can be done.
And it should be done, because this is an art form.
It exists in a very weird space within the continuum of art and business, but it is an art form. And I think making art within this medium is very, very, very important, and something that our tech and finance “geniuses” running the industry seem to have forgotten is the point of the business.
Yes, we all want to make money, but we also all got into this business because we think movies are powerful pieces of art.
Pursue the personal projects you want to pursue, but know that yes, they are more challenging. And you are setting yourself up to over and over have the conversation of “this is really interesting, but it’s execution dependent.”
And when you hear that, just know, it means you’re going to have to go execute it.