A person who doesn't seem to want to be quoted by name wrote…
I have a question about your July 16th post on the unknown assistant of Carl Barks, and the self-help mantra that all dreams can come true. Clearly, the person in question lacked talent and a desire to work hard.
But I'm wondering how many people you've known with exceptional talent and focus…who spared no effort or perseverance or sacrifice over decades of working toward their goal…only to be disappointed repeatedly. How do we know if a setback should motivate us to try even harder…and when it's a sign that we're following the wrong path?
I'm curious if you've known anyone who was a complete failure despite a lifetime of working tirelessly to achieve their dream.
Sure…and it gets back to that thing I keep saying about finding the sweet spot between idealism and pragmatism. I've also known people who never got anywhere due to personal problems. There are people whose careers get derailed by illness or marital problems or parental dilemmas and I certainly crossed paths with some who destroyed their own chances via drugs or drink.
I've even seen people who've ruined promising careers by being unreliable or difficult. "Unreliable" is bad. "Difficult" can be lethal. A few years back, I was talking with an agent and he mentioned that a certain writer we both knew had decided to give it up and get into non-writing work. "He was good," the agent said. "But he wasn't good enough to get away with being that big an asshole."
The "pragmatism" part of my little aphorism kind of demands that you recognize the marketability of your output. Yes, you have to be able to create good work but you also have to be able to create that which someone wants to buy and you have to find some way to get it to the people who might want to buy it. You know all those jokes about bad investments?
"My financial advisory got me into a great deal. I've invested everything I own in a chain of Big Man's shops in Tokyo!"
"I've invested everything I own in a chain of tuxedo stores in Tijuana!"
"I've invested everything I own in a chain of Radioshacks in Amish country!"
Those jokes. There are unmarketable ideas out there. Right now, there's probably some guy shopping around an idea for a new version of The Dating Game starring Bill Cosby. I think a lot of beginners are told, "Write what you want to see" or "Write what matters to you" and they take that way too far and, in effect, open a restaurant selling pulled pork sandwiches in a Kosher neighborhood. Those could be the greatest pulled pork sandwiches in the world but, you know, it isn't just the quality that matters or even the effort.
A few years ago, a writer acquaintance steamrollered me into reading his pitch for a new western TV show that was very much like Bonanza in terms of setting and tone. He asked me what I thought it needed and I said, "A time machine." I wished him well but I think he'd have better luck with the chain of Big Man's shops in Tokyo.
How do you know if a setback should motivate you to try even harder? I think you have to look at what kind of setback it is and how often it happens. You might be trying to sell something that nobody wants, period. Or you might be trying to sell something that's so much like what everyone else is trying to sell that you get lost in the herd.
Back when the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High was just coming out, I was hired by a producer to write a teen comedy that, God willing, would have the same appeal. One of the reasons he picked me is that I had a reputation for being fast and when he hired me, he said, "In three months, the market will be glutted with this kind of script. I want something I can be shopping around in one." I was a big hero to him when I delivered a first draft in two weeks.
He said, "This is great. Cut ten pages and lose the tits." When we'd discussed the project two weeks earlier, he wanted scenes in it like the one in Fast Times where Phoebe Cates takes off her bikini top. (If you're not familiar with the scene, it's only findable in about 73 trillion places on the Internet.)
Fourteen days later, he decided he needed to aim for a PG so I cut ten pages, including stuff like that and then into the marketplace he went with it. He had attached an experienced director and he had about a third of the financing pledged. What he needed was a studio that would put up the other two-thirds and then distribute the thing.
Within a few weeks, he called me back and said, "We may be too late. Everybody's already got a script like this." In the end, nothing happened with it and the quality of my screenplay became largely irrelevant since no one wanted to read it.
That's a setback but it's a different setback from if people were reading the script and not liking it. In this case, we had a numerical problem — the same problem actors face when fifty people go in to audition for one role. 49 of them are going to get turned down and it's usually not because only one of them was good. Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino are reportedly up for the same parts often. When Dustin doesn't get picked, it isn't because he has no future as an actor.
I think you need the idealism to keep going and you need the pragmatism to understand why you don't get the job or don't sell your script. It may be that you just aren't very good…or more likely, very special. Or it may be like those Big Man's Shops in Tokyo and you need to see if there's something else you have to sell, something a bit more commercial. Then again, I've also known writers who I thought were trying too hard to be commercial to the point of not playing to their strengths, writing what seemed to be hot instead of what they were good at.
There are also people who may be good at writing but rotten at selling; again, a restaurant analogy: If you want to have a successful restaurant, you not only need to be able to make good food, you need to be able to manage a restaurant and publicize it properly. If that's your problem, recognize it and address it. (And it's where advice from me is really useless. When new writers ask me how to break into the profession, I tell them, "I dunno. I haven't done that in over forty years. Ask someone who's broken into the current industry.")
Am I answering your question? I'm trying to say that, yes, I've known wanna-bes who worked tirelessly to achieve their dream and never got within fifty furlongs of it. There are a lot of reasons why writers — or actors or directors or whatever — don't make it and it helps to have enough realism in your attitude to understand why you aren't getting anywhere.
If you can't tell the difference, maybe that's the time to think of another line of work you'd like to pursue. If you know anything about men's suits and wouldn't mind relocating to Tokyo, I'm a partner in something over there which might have an opening.