How to Be a Better Human - How to challenge conventional wisdom -- and change any industry (with Franklin Leonard)

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Do you think Hollywood needs to change? How about your own industry? It’s difficult to get decision makers to step outside of the tried and true and attempt something new. Franklin Leonard is Founder and CEO of The Black List-- a company that elevates great screenplays and the writers who create them. In this episode, he discusses how he shifted the way Hollywood works and how anyone can catalyze change if they start by questioning whether the conventional wisdom is all convention and no wisdom. More than 400 scripts from the annual Black List survey have been produced as feature films, earning 250 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins, including four of the last ten Best Pictures and ten of the last twenty-two screenwriting Oscars. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever, in your life, met someone who felt like everything at their job and in their industry just worked perfectly? No room for improvement. I definitely have not. In fact, if I was talking to someone and they started to express anything even remotely similar to that view, I would be like, okay, take off the disguise. You're my boss undercover. I caught you red-handed. My point is, whatever you do for work, there is clearly room for improvement.

Whether it's making hiring practices more inclusive, or limiting the plastic waste in packaging materials, or stopping the spread of misinformation, we all have a role to play. And today's episode is all about how to catalyze change. How do you get people to try something new when they're already very familiar and very comfortable with these well-worn paths? Well, Franklin Leonard managed to do just that in Hollywood. He created the blacklist. It's a list of the unproduced screenplays that Hollywood insiders love the most. And in doing so, he changed the way that Hollywood worked. Once a script made that list, it made the blacklist.

And then powerful people started to see that there was consensus that this script was actually amazing. Well, then these previously unsellable projects, they started getting sold and getting made and winning awards. And here's how Franklin described the importance of that in his talk at TEDx Venice Beach. Simply put, the conventional wisdom about screenwriting merit, where it was, and where it could be found, was wrong. And this is notable, because as I mentioned before, in the triage of finding movies to make

and making them, there's a lot of relying on conventional wisdom. And that conventional wisdom, maybe, just maybe, might be wrong to even greater consequence. Films about black people don't sell overseas. Female-driven action movies don't work because women will see themselves in men,

but men won't see themselves in women. That no one wants to see movies about women over 40. That our on-screen heroes have to conform to a very narrow idea about beauty that we consider conventional. What does that mean when those images are projected 30 feet high and the lights go down for a kid that looks like me in Columbus, Georgia? Or a Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales? Or a gay kid in Chennai?

What does it mean for how we see ourselves, and how we see the world, and for how the world sees us? We live in very strange times. I think for the most part, we all live in a state of constant triage. There's just too much information, too much stuff to contend with.

And so, as a rule, we tend to default to conventional wisdom. I think it's important that we ask ourselves constantly, how much of that conventional wisdom is all convention and no wisdom and at what cost? As a writer myself, I think that there is something really amazing here. Normally, what makes a script hot is if there's a huge celebrity attached or if it's a remake of something beloved or if your last movie won six Academy Awards and grossed a billion dollars. And not that those will stop getting Scripps attention. I'm sure those will keep getting sold. But what's really amazing about what Franklin did is he managed to find

another way to get Scripps attention. If enough of the people who read Scripps all day say that this one, this one deserves attention. Well, now all of a sudden people would actually read it and people would take it seriously. And whatever industry you work in, whatever you do, the question that Franklin's experience with the blacklist raises is, I think, central to all progress. How can you challenge conventional wisdom? Today on How to Be a Better Human, we've got Franklin here to answer that question and so many more right after this. And we are back.

Now we've got Franklin here to share his wisdom with us. This is Franklin Leonard, founder of The Blacklist. The Blacklist has gone from being just a list of the most beloved scripts to so much more than that. So I'm wondering just in your own words, how do you now think of and describe what The Blacklist is? Yeah, I mean, I think of our North Star as being identifying and celebrating

great screenwriting and the people who do it. Um, and that can take many forms. It's everything from giving folks who are trying to become better screenwriters, uh, reasonably priced feedback that, uh, from reputable sources. It is when that feedback returns good, telling people in the industry that can help their careers and help their movies get made, hey, this is a really good script. It's providing workshops for the best among those writers, oftentimes in collaboration with other organizations. It's the annual survey of the industry's most liked screenplays. It's the partnered list that we do with GLAAD, Impact, and other sort of affinity groups, you know, for the Muslim community, the Asian Pacific Islander community, etc., all the way up to and including making some of those scripts into movies. So we're producing a lot of these things now. It's more about how can we be supportive of the Hollywood community at large and especially screenwriters within it. And I think that that as a general guide would sort of be the guiding principle for everything we do. What's so cool about the blacklist is you basically found a way to give people an excuse to trust their actual taste and to say like this thing that we really

love, we actually can make. And I think that's a really powerful thing across industries, not even just in Hollywood. I think that's right. Look, and I don't think that it's that Hollywood lacks imagination. I mean, I can say concretely, having worked in the business for now for coming up on 18 years, the people that work in Hollywood are wildly imaginative and wildly talented, and it is a joy to be able to work with them. I think that the difficulty and the frustration is that the industry, you know, people are running scare at all times. And the decisions that are made about the economics of the business are made based on a set of conventional wisdom

that is all convention and no wisdom that has been passed down through generations. And implicit in that sort of past now conventional wisdom is a ton of bias, some of which is, you know, sort of innocuous and a lot of it is terribly dangerous, right? Some of which is, you know, sort of innocuous and a lot of it is terribly dangerous, right? So it can be something as simple as, you know, certain kinds of action sequences don't work, right? Now, does it really matter about like, you know, a certain kind of car chases work or don't work in movies? Probably not really. Does it matter when we decide, as the industry had for years, that female-driven action movies don't work commercially. And the consequences of that we see in our gender relationships in our daily lives. When people

assume, oh, well, you can't sell black actors abroad outside of the US, the consequences of that are apocalyptic in terms of the actual valuing of black lives in America and around the world because we make fewer black movies. We don't market those movies abroad, you know, and it's just fundamentally not true. Stacey Smith, a professor at USC, ran the numbers and found that basically when you support movies with diversity at the same level that you support movies that don't have that diversity, guess what? They make the same amount of money. People don't have a problem seeing diverse actors on screen or seeing diverse stories. What they want more than anything is for those movies to be good. And what the Blacklist, I hope, has done is created more of a true meritocracy where the focus is not who's in

the movie, what's the movie about. It's simply, is this a good script? And probably one of the most gratifying things about the sort of 15-year history of the blacklist coming up on 16 years is that last year, the Harvard Business School did a study on the economics of the blacklist and found that movies on the blacklist, when controlling for every other factor, movies made from scripts on the blacklist made 90% more in revenue than movies made from scripts not on the blacklist. And I want to say it again because I think that it can't be emphasized enough that movies that were made from scripts on the blacklist made 90% more than movies that were made from scripts not on the blacklist. And there's one reason why, which is if you start

with a great screenplay, you have a better chance of making a great movie. And if you make a great movie, you have a better chance of making a profitable one. And so, you know, I think that that's a lesson that everybody instinctively knows, but it's not one that has been the guiding principle of the film industry for a very long time, if ever. So they've kind of worked both artistically and profitably. What lessons do you think you've learned that apply to people who don't work in entertainment or maybe even in a creative field at all? Because it seems like so much of what you've learned here is that challenging the conventional

wisdom is not just good for diversity and equity and inclusion. It's also good for the bottom line. That's exactly right. And I think that that's probably a number one. Increasing's also good for the bottom line. That's exactly right. And I think that that's probably a number one, uh, increasing diversity is good for the bottom line. Like it's good morally and ethically, but it's also good capitalistically. If we can use that probably, uh, neologism. Um, no, look, I think the other, the other thing that I've learned is that conventional wisdom is more often than not convention and not wisdom.

You know, I think that in a world, especially over the last, let's say, 20, 25 years, where the amount of information that we're expected to sort of keep in our brain and the analytics that we have to do on a daily basis to do our job and to process the world and to interact with other people, we are inclined to create these heuristics that we just take for granted. And a lot of those heuristics are deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. And we as individuals and as organizations have to do a better job of aggressively interrogating them, both for the good of the world, but also for our own individual self-interest. That means that I have to do that as well, right? Like this is not just me giving advice to other people and saying, why aren't you doing better? It's me looking in the mirror every day and saying,

are you doing better? When you look at your business, are you just saying, well, I'm a black guy from the South, so I'm sure I'm doing fine. Or am I saying, you know, are we good on gender? Are we making sure that everybody has a seat at the table? Are we making sure that we're deconstructing the table and deconstructing the house and allowing everybody to rebuild it? And if we're not,

then I have to make changes. And I think that's probably the biggest thing is trying to build a mirror for myself that actually presents an image of me as I am and not as I want to imagine myself, if that makes sense. That totally makes sense. So for everyone listening who may not know, last year, the Academy issued some new rules for films to be considered for an Oscar. The rules had minimum requirements for diversity and inclusion. And there's been a mixed response as to what the effects of those rules might be. Some people think it's going to make a huge difference.

Some people think it doesn't go far enough. And some people are angry about it. Franklin, you have really publicly said that you think that the new rules are a good start and you're optimistic. I'm curious, though, if you think they're going to make a real tangible difference in the kinds of movies that are getting produced. But again, because of the way in which the sort of thresholds are structured, if you just hire one like a woman of color in a senior role at your distribution

company and like have an internship program with two interns, you're fine. And so the way I read the Academy's sort of announcement is a public statement that in order to be a responsible corporate citizen of the film industry, you have to be trying to expand the pipeline ever so slightly. And if you're not doing that, then no, we're not going to give you the chance of winning an Oscar, but they did not prevent anyone who has made a movie from getting, you know,

the sort of laurels that their artistic accomplishment, uh, may have earned them. And that's the thing, like, look for me personally, I don't need for any individual movie to include black people, right? Or any other group. If you want to make a movie with all like made by and about all straight white cis men over the age of

50 who grew up upper middle class, like more power to you. I just want to make sure that if somebody wants to make a movie about trans women who are black and poor, that they have just as much likelihood of getting that movie made as the white dudes did. And then, you know, best movie wins. The problem is not that we need all these movies to be super diverse and for all of these groups to be diverse when they make them, though that would be nice. The problem is, is that for the entire history of Hollywood, we've had massive amounts of affirmative action for one group, white, upper middle class, straight cis men, and everybody else has to not only make something good, but also do it and overcome all of these obstacles to just

getting their movie made or even being in a position where they can make a movie. So I would like to focus on the access to resources and the access to distribution problem far more than I would, hey, who's eligible for an Oscar? But I do think that because the Academy Awards are the time every year when most people are thinking about the ecosystem of the film industry, it's critical that we have that conversation about the Oscars as part of a broader conversation that should be tackling year round. I also have to say, shout out to April Rain, who came up with the hashtag OscarsSoWhite. There is very little chance that we'd be having this conversation right now if it wasn't for her. And I think it's really important that we remember that Oscars So White is not just about black actors. It is about all non-white men and making sure that everyone is represented in the culture because we have a better culture when that's true and we all make

more money when that's true. And I think that, you know, I'm really just in awe of what she built with that, with something very, very simple that had the power to change the world. Yeah. And the fact that she did make such a huge impact with that and she's not at the very top of the power structure and the money. She's not the person greenlighting the films, I think, does speak to the fact that anyone can actually have a real impact on the films that are getting made and the culture that is being spread around the world. That is the power that all of us have in a world where social media exists. Again, that is a sword that cuts both ways as well. But it is something that that power exists for all of us if we want to become advocates on behalf of any ideas, you know, diversifying Hollywood or diversifying Congress or making sure that

people have enough food to eat and a roof over their heads. We'll be right back with more from Franklin Leonard after this break. Here we are, we're back. How do you think people who maybe don't see themselves as having that kind of power, how can they think about the creative force that they can create change in? I think it's really about just modeling your values in your day-to-day actions, right? You don't have to be an advocate to change the way a person sees the world or somebody else. But I think that if you are in a position where you see somebody mistreating

somebody else, or you see somebody being disrespectful to somebody else, or you hear somebody say something that's maybe not even disrespectful to anybody who's in the room, but maybe tell them, hey, not cool. Have you considered this? Do you realize that when you say this, you also mean this that's one way, but also then just modeling kindness, right? Like, again, it's super simple. It's a super, it's a, it's a very cliched idea, but on a fundamental basis, you don't know the effect that your actions will have on someone else who may be watching you. And on someone else who may be watching you and you never know who may be watching you. We all fail to live up to our highest ideals, but we all

do. I know I knew, but aspiring towards them has effects that we can never anticipate. And so you may never even know what the consequence is, but you can't really go wrong by trying. Totally saccharine, but true. It's weird. So what can audiences, both in the US and abroad, what can audiences do to kind of help support systemic change or broader representation? Ironically, because I think a lot of people in the film and television industry are very uncomfortable with these sort of review aggregators, but Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are a great place to start. You know, look, we are all in a time of sort of super abundance of content, right? There's

more TV shows to watch than any human being could ever watch. There's more movies to watch than any human being could ever watch. And we all want to watch the good stuff, right? And by good, I want to be clear. I don't mean pretentious. I don't mean Oscar winning. I just mean best in class, right? Like if you want to watch a weed comedy, you want to watch the best weed comedy. You want to watch the bad one. Film critics, television critics, there are deep problems with those communities. They tend to be overrepresented by white older men. by white older men, but seek out critics who consistently have opinions that mirror your own, right? If you love a movie, go find a critic who felt similarly to you, that wrote about the movie in a way that you found compelling, and go see what else they liked, right? Because odds are, you will find other movies that you will be intrigued by. And then you can be the critic that shares information about those movies with other people in your community.

And I know that sounds like a very elaborate thing to do in order to find a good movie or television show, but I promised you two things. One, you will enjoy the process of looking because you will learn about things that you would not otherwise learn about. And if people are reviewing things in a way that is compelling, that process alone will be entertaining. And two, you will find better things to watch. You will have fewer nights where you made the decision to watch something for two hours. And at the end of the two hours, you're like, that's two hours

of my life. I'm never getting back. So there's there's obviously a huge portion of the movie going audience that mainly watches things like superhero movies or big franchise films. Do you not believe that that's a problem? I think people should watch what they like. And if that's superhero movies, it's all good, right? There are a lot of really good superhero movies out there. Black Panther, excellent film. Thor Ragnarok, excellent film, right? Thor Ragnarok is a meditation on refugees and the displacement of peoples, right? Black Panther, like there's a reason why Immigrant Song is the song they play over the climactic battle scene. Black Panther is about many things, but it is fundamentally about this tension between, you know, the black community wanting to sort of shutter itself off and sort of integrate into the

world despite the tortures that the rest of the world has put us through, right? It's Martin versus Malcolm. And literally the climactic fight scene happens on a literal underground railroad. There's a tendency for a lot of people to sort of tut-tut about, you know, these big studio action movies and act like they're somehow like a diminution of the art form. And I just have never believed that that's true. Now, some of them are not good, but there's many indie pretentious movies that are not good either. So what I would say is,

is look for things that you love. And if you loved that thing, right? If you love Black Panther, maybe check out Creed by the same director, Ryan Coogler. And if you love Creed, maybe check out Fruitvale Station, also by that director.

You know, if you loved Thor Ragnarok, there's a reason Taika Waititi, right, an indigenous New Zealander, got the job for Thor. Why don't you go watch the stuff that he made that got him that job? There's a good chance you're going to like that too. And the thing about it is, is you're the only person losing by not checking those things out, right? Like they got your money for Thor. They got your money for Black Panther. The industry is going to be fine. You have an opportunity and the world is going to open up to you and you're going to have these moments of joy and these moments of sadness and these

moments of exhilaration that you haven't gotten to have yet. And that is fundamentally, for me, the beauty of film and the beauty of art and the beauty of a cultural world in which we live. You know, we've been talking about movies and cinema, but obviously the experience of watching a film has changed dramatically with theaters being closed. I guess even if they're open, people being scared to go. I've been thinking about that a little bit personally because there's a movie theater right down the block from where I live here in Los Angeles and on their big marquee, rather than new movie title, it says to be continued. But it's said that for months now and their doors still haven't reopened. So what at first was kind of this like

charming and even funny sign is now a real open question, right? Like, will that theater ever actually reopen? And I hope they do. I hope they do, because I think that there's something really powerful about seeing movies in person, that classic experience, which you described so beautifully in your talk from a few years ago. Here's a clip of that. This weekend, tens of millions of people in the United States and tens of millions more around the world in Columbus, Georgia, in Cardiff, Wales, in Chongqing, China, in Chennai, India, we'll leave their homes. They'll get in their cars,

or they'll take public transportation, or they will carry themselves by foot. And they'll step into a room and sit down next to someone they don't know, or maybe someone they do. And the lights will go down, and they'll watch a movie. They'll watch movies about aliens or robots or robot aliens or regular people,

but they will all be movies about what it means to be human. Millions will feel awe or fear. Millions will laugh and millions will cry. And then the lights will come back on, and they'll reemerge into the world they knew several hours prior, and millions of people will look at the world a little bit differently than they did when they went in. Like going to temple or a mosque or a church or any other religious institution,

moviegoing is in many ways a sacred ritual, repeated week after week after week. I'll be there this weekend, just like I was on most weekends between the years of 1996 and 1990, at the Multiplex near the shopping mall about five miles from my childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The funny thing is that somewhere between then and now, I accidentally changed part of the conversation about which of those movies get made. You obviously gave that

talk well before the pandemic or any of the current concerns about movie theaters and public health existed. But I imagine you must be thinking about that a lot during this time right now. So do you have any new perspective on why movies matter and why this experience matters? So do you have any new perspective on why movies matter and why this experience matters? Well, you know, I think the absence of these communal environments wherein we learn about what it means to be human, right? And that was sort of the link that I was making between religion and movies is that, you know. But I think what's interesting to me about movies, and I would include television and really any storytelling in this regard, or art more generally, but movies as a popular medium is that, you know, fortunately we have these virtual spaces where we

can sort of commune around them. Um, and it's not quite the same, but it still ends up being a common language and a common touch point for humankind, right? You know, I think Netflix just put out that they had 78 million people watch Gina Prince-Bythewood's movie, The Oil Guard. And when I meet somebody and they've watched it also, we will have a really positive conversation about Gina Prince-Bythewood's brilliant work, and we will feel closer as a consequence. And that has nothing to do with us being both black or both men or whatever it is. It's just that like, we saw this thing about these people and we bonded over it. I don't know. I'm really appreciative that that exists. Now that's the positive side. There is also a negative side, which is, and I think that this sort of moment of racial reckoning

that we were seeing around the globe is in large part connected to the movie industry. Because when we go into a room and we sit with a lot of people we don't know and we learn about the world and what we learn about the world is a lie in terms of race, in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality, in terms of religion, those lies being projected 40 feet high in front of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people have real human substantive consequences, people have real human substantive consequences, particularly for black lives. You know, I'm, I've increasingly over the last few months been struck by the notion that the first ever Hollywood blockbuster was birth of a nation. And, um, you know, we're, we're seeing the consequences of it now. So I think it cuts both ways. Uh, I I'm, and part of the reason why I'm so attracted to film

as an art form is because it does cut both ways incredibly sharply and with an incredibly large sword. What is one movie or book or cultural artifact or idea that's made you a better human? lucky in that I have two parents who very clearly communicated to me and my two younger siblings that we could do anything. And as black kids in the deep South in the eighties, that probably wasn't true, but they convinced us of that anyway. And I think between that and their very clear expectation that the obligation that we had was not just to do whatever we wanted to do and aspire to whatever we wanted to aspire towards. It was to make sure that we made it more likely that anybody had more of a chance of doing it. Somehow they managed to convince us that we could do anything and also explain to us that the world was organized so that not everybody could, and that it was our responsibility to make sure that everybody could. And that's not a cultural artifact, but it's the thing that for me I'm most thankful for. And it's the thing that I hope I'm able to incorporate from a values perspective in all of my work and the arts that I

contribute to. Um, I don't know if that answers your question, but it's something that I, has been greatly on my mind of late. And a related question right now in this point in your life, what is something that you're trying to be a better human at? Um, I'm trying to have more patience with people. Um, I'm trying to be better at recognizing that the world is on fire, figuratively and literally, and that everybody's going through a lot. And that moments when I feel the need to judge or the feel the need to cast disapproval on, I need to take a moment and realize that there may be other explanations than that, which I would assume. Well, Franklin Leonard, thank you so much for

talking with us. It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure. Been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How to Be a Better Human. That's our show for today. Thank you to our guest, Franklin Leonard. You can find The Blacklist at blcklst.com. I am your host, Chris Duffy. This show is produced by Abhimanyu Das, Daniela Balarezo, Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, and Karen Newman at TED,

and Jocelyn Gonzalez, Pedro Rafael Rosado, and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve from PRX Productions. For more on How to Be a Better human, visit ideas.ted.com. We'll see you next week.