Filmmaking Meets Its Moment as a Phoenix

Screenwriting is the ultimate hybrid of Campbell’s “Hero With A Thousand Faces.”   Integral to this is the concept of a person, society, or creation rising from the ashes – which is the story of the timeless myth of The Phoenix.  To hire a screenwriter puts the eternal potential to lift yourself and others up in your hands.  As your screenwriter for hire for a screenplay, Pilot, Bible, or Pitch Deck… knowing what the soaring bird was before the pyrrhic fire that consumes it is essential to your screenplay and also to you as an artistic storyteller entering the film or television arenas.

Films integrate so many arts the sheer creative energy turns it into the Phoenix of our age.  As we proceed, the nexus of Big Tech, government, social media, and this written art form offer us a gift: see it as a map, a tool, a hammer, wings, and a mind fed by a heart pumping the circulatory system giving film a new life.

Fretting over the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence casts a shadow on Hollywood that is now such a weak version of its glorious past.    The world embraced the Hollywood style of films over all other film sources including France, Germany, and Russia, which all were years ahead of us when filmmaking began.  People in every country wanted to watch how Hollywood inspired them to be their own heroes, and to give them hope of a better and more moral life.  Hollywood presented in screenplay writing the process of becoming what Kant called the “ubermensche” – the higher moral and powerful self that hovers above every person.

“Hollywood” is a Dynamic, which means that the systems – agencies, law firms, studios, distributors, financiers, and artists – all had to work together to deliver such enjoyable and powerful entertainment.  You could view it as having no flexibility and at the same time limitless options.   The first gatekeepers that could pass up the ladder of approval your screenplay look at the formatting and pacing of the screenplay first and will quickly dismiss it because it makes their jobs easier. In fact, they are not looking for the next brilliant screenplay or most original and inspiring story: they are looking for reasons to reject it in part out of fear, and then out of simply not really knowing much about what makes an immortal screenplay or what is involved in the production of a hit movie or series.  There was a time when the gatekeepers actually knew both how to recognize and nurture a spec screenplay they knew the steps of funding, production, and distribution.  Alas, those days are long gone, and it is a shame because my first agents mentored me relentlessly and made each screenplay or Pilot better until I simply cannot write anything but an A-List script.  Working with me as your screenwriter for hire you will learn what my mentors taught me. You will learn the process of filmmaking from your concept all the way through negotiations, production, and distribution.

The Dynamic could not adapt to the extreme changes brought by Big Tech.  But this did not happen without precursors.   Studios made their first big mistake when they replaced scripted television with reality shows that have no value in syndication and re-runs, which earned the studios and networks billions, and the systems were lorded by Freemantle Media.  

Amazon bought Sony and now doesn’t honor the craft of acting, as seen in “Road House.”  The next step for Amazon is the bankrupting of theaters.  

Yet, not even Amazon can prevent the rise of the Phoenix we know as Hollywood-style filmmaking and entertainment any more than A.I. can replace screenwriting.   In fact, the most recent reports show that screenwriting for A.I. is “derivative” in a genetic sense.  In other words, A.I. creates a screenplay and learns from it, inserting what it learned from its own writing into the next script and next ones.  This is turning out to be very much like in-breeding and how it results in deformed offspring and fatal heredity diseases.   If the second derivative screenplay distorts the human spirit 3%, the next one begins with that 3% flaw and the “genetics of story telling” mutates toward the bad dominant gene that A.I. just wrote into the script. Soon, the screenplays will be presenting a more deformed and unrelatable human condition, families, heroes, and reflections of morality, hope, and redemption.  

One of the sparks to the fire to resurrect the Phoenix of Hollywood comes from you when you hire me.   Your mind is not linked to any A.I. template and so your story flows truly through humanity and you as an individual.   I complete your vision for what inspires us and what gives our lives meaning on a level that machines will fail at worse and worse. 

I hope this inspires you and look forward to learning your story.