Write Yourself a Mission Statement

Take a step back and ask yourself, "Why?"

Hi Hollyweirdos! Thank you to everyone who chose to log on to the first ever Hollyweird Hang this past weekend. It was really great to put faces to names, hear what you all are up to, and learn how Hollyweird can be helpful to you, the readers. It was also just a nice community building experience where a bunch of people got introduced to one another and shared ideas and support. Loved it, and excited to host another the first Sunday of NEXT MONTH — January 5th, 2025. 2025. Eek! The future is right around the corner!

One thing that stuck with me from our conversation was when someone asked me “Why are you doing this?” Good question! It’s actually THE question! And one my wife Emma keeps asking me when I have to stay up late Thursday nights writing this dang thing.

Before moving to LA I was part of Pipeline Theatre Company in New York, and ran Artistic Development for them. Every year we’d select a group of playwrights to develop new work, and we’d meet monthly to hear everyone’s progress, and try to help them solve problems, or just create the space needed to be able to create a new play. The spirit of collaboration and community is something that’s always been important to me, and it’s a key part of why I got into making movies in the first place. I started doing it on a VHS camcorder at home with friends and family, so the importance of collaborative play has been baked in from the beginning.

Part of building this newsletter up is about trying to recreate a sense of community. Creation is an oddly lonely act — thousands of hours spent thinking, whether actively at your desk or passively while washing the dishes — and the actual experience of being a writer tends to be a pretty solitary one. Which… is good. Don’t get me wrong. That’s probably how it should be. But, it means that writers tend to be (in my experience) a group of people who don’t congregate all that easily. And a newsletter felt like a nice, low-impact way to start to gather a group, without forcing everyone to “socialize.” So here we are.

I hope Hollyweird feels like it gives you, the readers, a sense of community and connection, but also that it can be of service to you in some way. Whether that’s by demystifying a very mysterious process (creation… how to?) or in sharing my own trials and tribulations that sometimes feel uniquely personal but often end up being incredibly common, and dare I say systemic.

I came out of the Hollyweird Hang feeling excited to continue to be of service to you all, so if there’s ever anything you want to hear more about, please, use the comments to let me know!!!

It was good timing, being asked “Why?” this Sunday, because I’ve spent the last week revising a big elaborate pitch deck for a project, and in it I’ve found myself needing to articulate my philosophy on how and why I pick what I want to work on.

The longer I’ve been doing this, and the longer my list of “Movie Ideas” gets, the more important it has felt to have some sort of guiding principle to what it is I even do. If I only liked writing horror, or only liked writing science-fiction, then that might be guiding principle enough. But I don’t! I always like to try something new, and that makes it all the more difficult to say (even to myself) what it is exactly that I do.

It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of something, anything, new. But writing and making a movie isn’t a lark. It’s a years-long, emotionally demanding endeavor. And over time I’ve found that “Why are we really making this?” has become a profoundly powerful question to ask myself as soon as possible. Why am I going to spend at least a year, probably more like 3-5 years, thinking about this? Why am I going to fight to get someone to spend money making this? Why am I going to then fight to get people to watch it? Why why why!

Another way to frame it, for me, is “Does this have something to say?” If it doesn’t… I don’t do it. It’s a powerful metric, because it really does eliminate probably 50% of the things that cross my mind. Having fun at the movies can be enough of an answer! For plenty of people it is! Personally, I’ve found myself in need of an even higher threshold. Fun is fun, but for me, it tends to fade.

Basically, I’ve written for myself a mission statement.

In the corporate world, mission statements tend to be bland “creating capital opportunity” or vague “building a better world.” But mission statements in the arts tend to get to be more fun! Pipeline’s mission statement, which I like a lot (I helped write it, so I’m biased), is much more specific and told us as a company, and the people who wanted to work with us, what we did and didn’t do.

Pipeline makes theater of the imagination. Our company thrives on adventure and believes no story is worth telling without a little risk. We love our villains as much as our heroes, especially in those puzzling moments when we can’t quite tell them apart. Above all, we aim to leave you with stories that stick somewhere in your heart, your brain, or your guts.

It’s a good mission statement! It guides what may or may not fit, but leaves room for interpretation. Again, I’m biased.

[Speaking of Pipeline, which is a non-profit theater company, I am sure they would LOVE a donation to help them build their next season. You can do that here.]

Why am I boring you with mission statements? Because I highly recommend writing yourself one! It helps to know for yourself what the heck it is you do (and don’t do), and to be able to pass everything through the test of “does this align with my personal mission?”

So far I’ve given you one, maybe two (it’s debatable), of my own personal rules:

The work must have a reason to exist.

The work must have something to say.

But there’s a third metric I also feel like everything I do has to hit. And this is where we go from eliminating 50% of projects to eliminating probably 85%.

The work must do something completely original.

Obviously not every movie is going to entirely revolutionize the artform. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t at least try to push the boundaries of the medium every time we create something new. My thought is, if we’re going to spend all of this time and energy trying to be creative, can’t we at least create one little moment, one technique or scene or idea, or formal conceit, that’s entirely new?

Framed another way, I like to ask myself early on in considering a project: Have I seen this before?

The old adage in Hollywood is “Familiar, but different.” So if I feel like I’ve basically already seen versions of an idea I’m considering… and I can’t come up with a way to then execute that idea that will look or feel different… then…

“But Colby, isn’t your whole thing that you don’t like rules? I feel like you’re constantly talking about how rules are meant to be broken?!”

Yes! I do hate rules! Thank you for knowing me! But… Having a set of guiding principles can be extremely useful. Film is a collaborative medium. No film gets made without an immense team of people working towards a common goal.

If I can’t answer why something appeals to me, why I want to do it, why I think it’s worth fighting for… I’m not going to be able to answer that when anyone else asks. And that’s going to make long pitch decks, and letters to actors you want to cast, and conversations with financiers whose money you want, and pep talks on set during an icy rain storm, very very challenging.

Why are we doing this? What are we here for? How are we going to make something special together?

Your mission statement doesn’t have to be fancy academic language. It doesn’t even have to be something you share with anyone. But if you don’t start with why, you almost certainly will have a harder time later on explaining that to anyone else.

So that’s my two cents for the week! And that’s why I’m writing this! And that’s why I’m working on the movies I’m working on!

Talk to you all soon!