Some quick notes out of Sony via Linkedin – Critics don’t kill movies – movies kill movies. The narrative ABOUT a movie is just as important as the narrative OF the movie. Know what that means? It means that you and I – writers / authors / aspiring creatives that we are – need to pay attention. The narrative ABOUT our work is just as important as the narrative OF our work.
Here’s how we got here: Simon Pulman is a lawyer in New York specializing in media and entertainment law. Commenting on Sony’s response to the failures of Madame Web, he pulls out some important nuggets for all of us to learn from. Pulman doesn’t blame the critics – he blames ‘the story about Madame Web.’ “[E]arly in the life cycle of a high profile project (long before reviews are published), a narrative is created … Once that narrative is created, it can be very hard to change.’
This problem is bigger than Madame Web. “It is attributable to a bigger narrative … Sony keeps trying to force a cinematic universe on audiences that they don’t want … [T]his narrative was determined by audiences themselves … journalists were not the source.”
This isn’t ‘Bag on Sony Day’ – we’re simply using their experience to teach ourselves a valuable lesson. Critics don’t kill stories – stories kill stories. Feedback from your audience, people who experience your work, the story you hear them tell themselves. LISTEN TO THAT. The feedback you get is they story they’re telling themselves about YOU. Good, bad, or ugly. We must LISTEN TO THEM.
“But, but they hate me!” I can hear myself telling me. “They didn’t even look at the book!”
Yeah, I get it. It’s a lost of work to push past the vulnerability and shame and listen to people when your work doesn’t immediately resonate or resonates badly. Listening and being vulnerable are scary propositions, but absolutely necessary to the work of being a creative professional.
Let me address that point more clearly – hearing negative feedback provokes stressful, difficult feelings like vulnerability and shame. Here’s the good news – while it’s stressful to be vulnerable, but it’s also a form of courage. “Vulnerability is not winning or losing,” Bene Brown assures us. “It’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
Back to ‘critics don’t kill stories’ – managing that narrative around your project is a challenge for everybody. That means the playing field for stories is completely level. One person with a pen has just as much an opportunity to creative a narrative of work, and about their work, as a billion-dollar company. In fact, the little guys have it easier – let me explain.
Billion-dollar companies like Sony, Comcast Universal, Disney have THREE layers of story where we have only TWO. We’re out here telling the story OF our work, and the story ABOUT our work. They’re telling the story OF their work, the story ABOUT their work, and the story of WHY this one person should be in charge of the first two layers. That last layer is tricky – they’re accountable to the audiences AND their bosses.
That means it’s easy to say ‘Critics kill stories’ when the reality is you aren’t paying attention to your audience, or you’re letting the bosses dictate what they think the audiences want. If you followed Pulman’s advice, you’d know that you can’t manipulate your way into box office success. “There is little that a company can do to control it. However, we do know what companies cannot do: impose a mandate on audiences. It is now very difficult to tell audiences what they do or should want – and in fact, that’s more likely to be counterproductive because if an audience feels like it is being manipulated, it will push back hard.”
At the end of the day, each of us have our own box of crayons. “The best way to spin a positive narrative is to drop your own preconceptions, ideologies and agendas, listen to the market, and actually make your audience happy.” Hard to do that when you have quarterly profit margins, Wall Street analysts, and stock prices to maintain.
I hope this helps illustrate some background information on the nature of critics, stories, and what kills a project. It’s more complicated than we think – these moments of discovery help inform on what we need to pay attention to within our creative professional journey. Sometimes being the the Little Guy really is the best place to be.
