HAPPY 2024? IT CAN BE…
Can you believe it? It’s 2024! If you’re anything like me, you hope that 2024 will be better than 2023, just like we hoped 2023 would make up for 2022, as if by changing our calendars we can somehow break the terrible streak of very bad things keep coming our way. Here’s the catch: the universe doesn’t see dates. It doesn’t just randomly decide that now it’s going to be kinder to us humans. If it did, it wouldn’t have sent Japan an earthquake on Day 1. No, the universe thinks that today is just one more excellent opportunity to send us curve balls when we least expect it.
WILL THE CRAZY EVER PASS? We spent all of 2023 worried about where the entertainment industry was going. Everything was put on hold as we walked picket lines, saw our friends laid off from “secure” positions on the “inside”, and watched as networks we all knew and loved become mere shadows of their former selves.
The business is nothing like it was 5 years ago, and, I’m sorry to break it to you, but it’s never, ever going back to how it used to be. It won’t do any of us any good to wish things were different. Zoom pitching is here to stay. So are decks, self-taping, and the baffling over-reliance on underwhelming IP that nobody ever asked for ever. All the wishing in the world won’t make it go away.
I keep hearing how hard it is to sell a movie and that the networks talk about only buying projects that are “undeniable” and yet, I’ve also heard that many “undeniable” projects still didn’t sell.
So… you ask, what about the crazy? Here’s what I think…
THE INSANITY IS HERE TO STAY, IT WILL JUST BECOME OUR NEW NORMAL. Let’s be honest, our business wasn’t all it was cracked up to be even when things were “good”. It had its problems — bad behavior was condoned on set and in boardrooms, shows still had a high failure rate, and a whole bunch of talented people were left out of the system due to racism and misogyny. Maybe we were due for a reckoning all along. Although these last few years of unprecedented disruption somehow felt punitive and deeply personal. Amiright?
Don’t forget that in the creative arts nobody knows what they’re doing. Not a single person has this s**t figured out. We’re all just taking swings to see what sticks. Just look at the long list of cancelations that came out this week on Deadline. These were all great ideas that a ton of people rallied around, wrote, produced, and marketed and yet, for whatever reason, now they’re gone.
And if that’s the case, there’s only one way to get through it — focus. Find your center and breathe through it. Do the work and don’t worry about what’s going on outside. Find that thing that brings you unrelenting joy and dive in. Submerge yourself in whatever calms your soul. We can’t control who merges with whom, or who buys what, but we can control the work we put out there, the friendships we nurture, and the inner peace that comes when we live our values. The business will continue to shift, twist, and contort itself and may never settle down… but we can.