A few months ago, I watched the film Arrival. I sat in awe for 116 minutes, and as the closing credits rolled, my first thought was:
“This movie shouldn’t have been made.”
Arrival is based on the novella, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. There are a number of reasons why it shouldn’t work as a film:
- It explores themes that don’t lend itself to the prototypical Hero’s journey: free will, causation, Fermat’s principle, etc.
- The third act reveal is too complex (how do you show directionless time in a medium where events move sequentially, like a film?)
- In the novella, there’s no third act. Every aspect of the film’s third act (the bomb, Louise’s phone call, the conversation with the Chinese president) was created for the film.
In almost any permutation of the Hollywood system, Arrival never should have made it past the Hollywood gatekeeper.
I know, because I was that gatekeeper.
The Hollywood assistant is the first line of defense. No agent, producer, or executive has time to read every piece that comes across the desk. That responsibility falls onto the assistant, whose job is to filter out material not suitable for the screen.
Most of the time, it’s a quality issue — you sift a lot of dirt to find the diamonds. Occasionally, it’s a commercial issue — you don’t believe the project can be done yet.
Had Story of Your Life landed on my desk, I would have passed for the latter reason. I’d have said it’s a beautiful piece but it doesn’t translate to the screen. Even if I had the screenplay in front of me, I don’t think I would have seen the film behind the words.
But Eric Heisserer did adapt it for the screen. Denis Villeneuve shot the shit out of it, and the entire cast and crew made the film work. Arrival would receive eight Oscar nominations, and win the 2017 Ray Bradbury Award and Hugo Award.
The most unfilmable television series ever
Game of Thrones has a similar origin story. (However, with the violence, politics, and sex, I think most would objectively agree it’s a more commercially viable project than Arrival).
But GoT was written to basically be unfilmable.
Author George R.R. Martin was a television writer at a time. Sick of writing for the small screen, he decided, ” I’m going to write something that’s as big as I want it to be, and it’s going to have a cast of characters that go into the thousands, and I’m going to have huge castles, and battles, and dragons.”[note]Entertainment Weekly – Game of Thrones: George R. R. Martin talks HBO show | April 3, 2011 – https://goo.gl/kFSJPE[/note]
Even David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the eventual executive producers and writers of the GoT adaptation, agreed it was unfilmable as a movie. “To do the first book even as a three-hour movie, you’d have to cut 90 percent of it.”[note]Entertainment Weekly – Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on adapting the unadaptable | April 5, 2011 – https://goo.gl/EyjfDe[/note]
It took a certain vision to create a show that today is part of the cultural zeitgeist. Yet GoT was never “destined” to be a hit. Even after the duo managed to convince HBO to greenlight a pilot, they proceeded to screw it all up. “We got everything wrong on a very basic level with the writing of it. We brought three of our friends over just to get a reaction from them. Watching them watch the pilot was a deeply humiliating, painful experience, because these are very smart individuals, and it just clearly wasn’t working for any of them on a very basic level.”[note]Variety – Game of Thrones Creators: We Know How It’s Going to End | April 15, 2015 – https://goo.gl/qhTxvy[/note] The pilot episode had to be completely reshot before it was released.
Conor McGregor’s unlikely meteoric rise
Conor McGregor should not been allowed to fight for the UFC featherweight title so quickly. He skipped over most of the top 5 title contenders (Chad Mendes, Frankie Edgar, Cub Swanson) after beating Dennis Siver at UFC Fight Night 59 on January 18, 2015.
But he did.
After capturing the featherweight title, he shouldn’t have been allowed book a title bout with Eddie Alvarez for the UFC lightweight bout. He hadn’t defended his first belt — ever. He took two welterweight bouts in between. Plus, he had never even competed in the UFC lightweight division.
Yet on September 27, 2016, the fight with Alvarez was officially announced. Then on November 12, at UFC 205, McGregor defeated Alvarez by second-round TKO. He became the only man to hold two belts simultaneously in the UFC, in the history of the organization.
He shouldn’t have been allowed to put all his UFC obligations aside and go box Floyd Mayweather. But he did it anyway, and despite losing that bout, received his guaranteed $30 million purse.
It’s not just Conor’s fighting skill that affords him free reign to move in and out of divisions and organizations. It’s his vision: the belief it can even be done. The audacity to do more than most fighters can even imagine, no matter the cost.
How to develop audacious vision
Skill and timing coalesced to create something extraordinary:
- For Arrival – Amazing source material, a first-rate adaptation, and people who believe in the project
- For GoT – Amazing source material, two writers with a vision, and a network ready to gamble on bringing this epic world to life
- For Conor McGregor – Catching the wave behind Ronda Rousey’s popularity, the perfect foil in Floyd Mayweather, a talented but aging boxer
But I’d argue the most important quality was the audacity to dream bigger. To have a bold, clear vision, and the will to make it a reality.
How do you do that? How do you develop your own audacious vision?
Here are three ways curated by author David Schwartz, author of The Magic of Thinking Big (the whole book is a bit old-fashioned, but worth a read, then a re-read, every few years):
1. Think success, don’t think failure. At work, in your home, substitute success thinking for failure thinking. When you face a difficult situation, think, “I’ll win,” not “I’ll probably lose.”
2. Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Big ideas and big plans are often easier — certainly no more difficult — than small ideas and small plans.
3. Create a 10-year planning guide. Think about your life in the Work Department, Home Department, and Social Department. What does your life look like in each department, 10 years from now?
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Photo Credit: Screaming_monkey
