AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Come on, writers, script your futures

The Big Picture: As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.

Hollywood is a town awash in hyphenates. TV is loaded with writer-producers. The movie biz is full of writer-directors. There’s even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George Clooney. But as the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.

Visiting a UCLA film class the other night, I was asked to name the most influential filmmakers of our era. The choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they all have something in common. They’re filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start their own companies to further their work, became financially independent and created a world that operates under a radically different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It’s telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem to be following old-school models.

Writer Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here. Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of “Michael Clayton,” a nervy thriller that’s won critical raves this fall. Gilroy had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider — a Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels — said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he’d bankroll the film.

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