Hollywood, software and the net

JP made an analogy between software development and film-making:

Only successful scripts should get financed

That’s what angels want first and foremost. Good scripts. Because they know that they can get good producers, good directors, good actors, good everything. But good scripts are harder to come by.

BTW, have you ever wondered why angel investors exist in only two investment genres, filmmaking and software development? Now you know.

Now JP does mention development hell, which was best described by Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman:

Whedon: I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

Gaiman: Yes. It really is this thing of executives loving the smell of their own urine and urinating on things. And then more execs come in, and they urinate. And then the next round. By the end, they have this thing which just smells like pee, and nobody likes it.

Tonight at the Vloggies, Jerry Zucker (who built his career on satirising movie clichés) spoke of the opportunity to avoid the mess of Hollywood:

We were just experimenting, we were playing, we were having fun with this whole new field... We had to build a theatre with 150 seats to bring people in to watch it. What you have today is the possibility to take this stuff and send it around the world, for nothing. It is going to change the way we view entertainment. The studios in Hollywood are already a mess - this is going to change entertainment, and you are all at the beginning of it, so good luck and god bless

I think JP and JZ are both thinking about the same thing as I spoke about last week, where the internet undoes the need to pitch a story to fiscal gatekeepers, instead enabling anyone to speak in public, and for us all to decide who to listen to. This brought to mind a stanza from the Faithless song 'Not Enuff Love':

Whoever asks my name
Or where I came from
People fear contamination
If they tarry too long
I carry a strong
Sin of despair
It's in the air
I'm broken and hard to repair
I may mistaken be
But I patiently wait
On the path to humanity
I sit at the gates

Here's to forcing open the gates, and keeping them wide open.

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