Nearly fifteen years ago film director Peter Jackson decided
his life goal was to remake King Kong.
But he couldn’t get the financing. It had been remade. Badly. So instead he
acquired the rights to the Lord of the
Rings, knowing it would be successful, hoping to leverage it into the
chance to make King Kong. Indeed, LOTR
was successful and he was given the green light to make Kong. Which was not great, did not perform nearly as well as LOTR,
didn’t impact pop culture, wasn’t memorable, and hasn’t really endured.
Nearly forty years ago George Lucas was a hard-edge,
downbeat young film maker who couldn’t bring himself to write a happy ending.
On a dare he decided to make something light and fluffy. The result was Star Wars. Which he ultimately fell in
love with, and wanted to make his way.
Two treatments and four drafts later he finally was able to make the movie, but
not with everything he wanted because the technology wasn’t advanced enough
yet. 16 years after the last of his original trilogy was released he released the
first in his prequel trilogy. It was what he really wanted to do, the way he
wanted to do it. It was not great, did not perform as well as the originals,
didn’t impact pop culture in the same way, and is not a beloved masterpiece
like the classic trilogy.
Thirty years ago James Cameron, while working on Piranha II: The Spawning got very, very
sick, and had a fever. A metal skeleton holding steak knives crawling away from
an explosion. He woke up and started writing The Terminator. It was what he wanted to do. His agent asked him to
stop writing, knowing it wouldn’t sell. So he fired his agent. He made the
movie on a shoestring budget. It wasn’t expected to be successful, either
critically or financially, but it became socially, culturally, aesthetically,
and financially significant, spawning four sequels, a television series, and a
billion dollar franchise.
Twenty years ago JK Rowling was sitting on a bench at a
train station waiting for a delayed train. The idea of Harry Potter fell,
fully-formed, into her brain. She took six years to write it her way. Found an
agent to shop it. Took a year to find a home. Broke all sales expectations by
selling 30,000 copies of the first book, and then broke every record imaginable
by sell 450 MILLION books in the series, and becoming the most financially successful
film franchise in human history.
What do these anecdotes tell us? Well, George Lucas and
Peter Jackson couldn’t turn their love into success. JK Rowling and James
Cameron did. Sometimes we do our best work when we step back emotionally and
just do what we’re good at. It becomes great because other people love it. And
sometimes we love it so much, our own love makes it great. So for those of us
trying to write something people will remember this is an interesting question.
Do we write because we know it’s what audiences love, and hope to share in that
love, or do we love something and try to make it work? I’ll be perfectly
honest: the former is far more common than the latter, but when it works, it
explodes. And nothing is ever the same again.
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