THERE IS AN OLD JOKE about Hollywood. “How do you become a
millionaire in Hollywood? Start as a billionaire.” I’ve always loved movies– most everyone has. I can’t quote every line from every movie, or get every gag, but I’m closer than many. I found myself getting into a conversation about making movies with a friend. I had read a lot about it, done numbers trying to figure out how money worked, and just guessing at most of it. I couldn’t figure out the pieces that mixed into the whole. I wanted to learn how to make movies, so I got together with my friend Sonny and we started a film company. Wait, it starts earlier than that. One December, my wife had asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told her that I wanted to learn how to paint. Under the Christmas tree were a dozen 12 x 18 pre-made canvases, paints, and paintbrushes. It was the sweetest gift. We had a great Christmas. The next morning, early, she came downstairs and couldn’t find me anywhere. She finally looked in the garage, and there I was. I had moved one of the cars out, was wearing some old clothes, and had painted four canvases. I had paint everywhere. There were jars of water with brushes in them soaking paint out of the brushes, some other tools from the workbench on the folding table, and the canvasses were on the newspapers on the floor drying. She looked at me and said with a strange look, “What are you doing?” I said with an enormously happy smile, “I’m painting! It’s awesome!” She came over and said, “Baby, if it were me, I’d have registered for some classes and learned some of the basic principles of how to draw and then how to paint.” My
naïve response was, “If you want to paint, you paint!” That is one kind of tuition. The tuition of learning by doing. Now back to Sonny. That’s how Sonny and I started QiCo Productions. Of course, this started by working together on a national speaking tour where the company he owned was doing the production and I did the speaking. In each city we visited, we spent more and more time talking about all sorts of things, drinking an increasing amount of red wine and then working slurringly through our knowledge of movies. We wanted to make movies. I love movies, but I don’t know very much about them. I like the guts of some things, and movies are one of them. How do you go from idea to screen? Sonny knew some things, but not everything. Easiest way to learn, in my opinion, was to start a film company. So we did. What’s it take to be a film company? You probably think money. That’s what most people think. It’s the first wall, and it keeps people from going forward to learning. The first thing it takes to start anything is a goal and an idea. We wanted to make a film, and we knew that we wanted to make a short film for the film festivals. The film festivals give you credibility, visibility, and in our case, a chance to make a film! We had never made a film before, and that is why we started QiCo! If this was about filmmaking, I would write the long and possible interesting story of making Clarity, and then The Grove and then Click, QiCo’s first three films. All of them have cost very little money in Hollywood terms. All of them have won a ton of awards, been noticed, and gotten us access. Mel Gibson was asked recently what one word would describe Hollywood. He responded, “Survival.” We are committed to making a film a year. Every film we make is amazing tuition. Better tools, partners, rehearsing… it goes on and on. In moments when Sonny gets down because he carries so much of the production burden, I remind him, “This is just tuition and by Hollywood terms, this is cheap.” The tuition of learning is by trying. This chapter is only kinda about making movies. It’s not really about making movies—ideas, projects, companies, and
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all manner of creation does not start with the absence of money. Money follows, it does not precede. Start the process in order: 1 IDEA You must have an idea. OK, duh. You have heard this a lot of times
if you have considered creating something. You have heard it so often because it is true. The thing you might not have heard is that you do not need to have a new idea. An old idea is just fine. Can you make it better, different, cheaper, prettier? I don’t know, but you have to have an idea. I like stealing ideas. We stole the idea “let’s make a movie.” Totally stolen. Lots of people have done it before all over the world. We were not doing anything new or different. Thieves of ideas is what we are. So sue me. 2 GOAL We wanted people to see our idea and tell us that we did a good
job (I mean, outside of our friends and family—and, by the way, we didn’t trust their opinions). We wanted a film that we could put in film festivals and win. That was our goal. We looked at the festivals and decided that we could not write about two gay men in Pakistan growing up during a war and overcoming the pressures of devastation, oppression, and violence. Seriously, festivals love that stuff and we don’t. Not against it, we like to see it when it is done well, but we don’t want to write or shoot it in Northern Florida where Sonny was working. What could we do that would get into the festivals for short films that we could learn about without blowing a lot of tuition? Horror and film noir! We already had some scripts in the can, it would be relatively easy to find sets, and it was within our tuition parameters. Goal: get noticed and awarded. 3 FIERCE FANS This is enormously important. You have to get believ-
ers in your idea who are willing to be a part of it. It is no longer just your idea and project, it is now our endeavor. The “our” is the important thing because of the collective. They believe, give time, support, money, social media, connections, and encouragement. They need to be emotionally fed and connected in such a way that they can recognize they are on the inside of this event. They are believers!
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4 MILESTONE PLAN This happens first, then this second, and so on.
The plan is not a PowerPoint with budgets and project documentation. It is a roadmap for your inside team, so that they and you are emotionally fed. Every step is a hard push and a celebration. It may be a step, a check, a number of people, or any measure that is important. It needs to be known, shared and celebrated. 5 BUSINESS PLAN This is the plan that shows how investors give you
money, how you use it, how they get more money back, and the different points in time that happens. It includes where you spend the money, what customers buy the projects or services, and what elements tell you that the project is working. 6 MONEY Now you need the money.
Sonny and I actually followed these steps for all three of our movies. It worked. The issue that we had was #6. We made certain that we needed very little money, we made very little money, and therefore in Hollywood we are rock stars! Three for three? Ben Affleck is one for three and Hollywood funds everything that guy makes. For us, it is very simple: we have to reset #2. I worked with a client who had come back from Washington D.C. discouraged. He had met with a member of the House of Representatives who had been there a very long time. He had an idea: he wanted federal funding to reduce pollution from cars. He sat down for the face-to-face meeting and the congressman asked for the presentation. At the end of the presentation, the congressman said, “How much will it cost?” My new client said, “Only $20 million.” The congressman said, “I think we can work with $20 billion.” My new client laughed and said, “We only said that we need $20 million.” The congressman stood angrily, looked at one of his aides as he was leaving the room, and said, “Why the hell am I in a $20 million meeting?”
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TRADE #1 Go in small doors, get stuck in small rooms. It’s a simple trade
off, really; if you want more or bigger opportunities, then you have to have the courage to get into the bigger meetings. If you set your expectations in #1-5 low, then you can go through small doors. Set it higher and you have to find a way to get through big doors. TRADE #2 The difference between education and learning is that learning hurts. The “fierce fans” part of this story cannot be stressed too much. I
started a company called Transcom USA. It was a call center company that had the goal of growing faster than any other company in that industry ever. We talked about what it would take to make that happen, and I knew that it was going to need seasoned, battle-hardened entrepreneurial executives. The investors wanted MBA-educated executives with what they considered to be area-relevant focuses for the business needs. I won out. TRADE #3 Price/Money is the last consideration, not first. Our team did
not have a single MBA on it. One of the team members had been fired from a competitor. Another one of our team members is probably an NSA hacker now, so I don’t know what he is doing, but he probably knows what I am. I could go on, but the point of the list is that these people were not MBA-educated, they were educated in the business. They were smart, hungry, and had a lot of grit. We made the top fastest-growing business company in our industry two out of the next four years. Education is great, and some people pay a lot of money for it. Experience has to be earned, and the learning hurts as you make your mistakes. I should confess that even though the plan works, you will probably self-sabotage throughout. It’s not the logic part. The formula is rather straightforward. It’s you—the self-doubt, highs and lows as you go from win to loss, mixed with the neuroses of your partners. That’s why most people get jobs: there is more structure, less risk, and an HR department to keep coworkers more in line.
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