The Hollywood Commandments Page 10
When you’ve reached your goal, how will you know? What will change? How will you change? Each one of us has to define what winning is for us. The danger is that when you look at someone else’s life or career and see their version of winning, without doing an assessment for yourself, you can go down the wrong path. With Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, winning meant continuing their study in Babylon, yet doing it in a way that didn’t compromise their faith. Winning wasn’t, “We want to get the job and outshine the person we’re working next to. We want to become managers within the provenance of Babylon.”
When you look at David, what was winning? Winning was, “Restoring honor to my nation by defeating the villain that is threatening that honor.” Once he won, his ultimate win was unifying the kingdom of Israel and bringing Israel and Judah together.
You must define winning on your terms. It could be, “I don’t want to be the president of the division. I love my job, and I don’t want the stress. This job allows me the quality of life I want.” Winning is about more than money and position; it’s about the quality of your life and operating in the seat of your purpose. My definition of success is peace, so for me, winning is having what creates the most peace in my life and in my spirit.
To finish the game analogy: know what you’re playing for. If you don’t know what you’re playing for, then you will spend years aimlessly working at a job with no idea about what matters and doesn’t matter. When I first got in the industry, I knew I wanted to produce and be autonomous. I was playing for that from day one. Even while I was in the studio system, I never lost sight of what winning meant to me. I would say to myself, “The more opportunity I can get, the more experience I can get. The more experience I can get, then the more authority I can get. Eventually, the more authority I can get, the better chance I will have to become a producer. And when I become a producer, I can make the films that inspire hope and change.”
Winning starts with opportunity. Opportunity leads to experience, and then to authority. Opportunity-Experience-Authority: with these three factors in hand, you can play the game and be certain of winning.
THOU SHALT
»Know the game you’re playing, then learn the rules.
»Respect other people’s games and goals.
»Learn the power players.
THOU SHALT NOT
»Be passive.
»Compromise on what makes you a good person.
»Lose sight of why you’re playing.
5
YOUR GUT IS HIDING GOD
Warren Buffett told me once, “Always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling, you have to go with it; don’t go back on it.”
—LeBron James
God will sometimes give you a feeling that you have to follow: a gut instinct. The movie business was founded primarily on gut-instinct decision-making. One of the things that has changed over time: entertainment has become more corporate. Legendary Hollywood journalist Peter Bart recently wrote an article for Deadline.com entitled “Conglomeration Is Snuffing Out Courage in Hollywood.” In it, he quotes an industry insider who says, “Hollywood was far better off before the corporate giants annexed the studios and networks.” It’s a compelling argument. The overall quality of movies has suffered because fewer people are making decisions based on instinct and intuition while more seem to be making decisions based on quarterly earnings, analytics, and market forecasts. However, as much as Hollywood is a business, it’s also fundamentally a creative and artistic enterprise.
Great work arises from gut instinct as much as—or more than—it does from data and consensus. When you don’t trust your instincts and follow them, you might do something that makes sense intellectually, but it won’t have the impact you intended because it’s not actually the choice that’s in your spirit.
One person in the business who’s thrived on his gut instinct is my good friend and occasional producing partner Joe Roth. He is one of the most successful people in Hollywood, and we were fortunate to work together on Heaven Is for Real and Miracles from Heaven. He used to be chairman of Twentieth Century Fox and the Walt Disney Company. In 2000, he started his own studio, Revolution Studios, which made hits like Hellboy and xXx with Vin Diesel.
One of the keys to Joe’s long-term success is his ability to trust his gut. Years ago, he had a strong urge to get into the world of professional soccer and had a vision to establish Seattle as the soccer capital of the U.S. He paid $30 million for a team license from Major League Soccer (MLS) and started Seattle Sounders FC. More than eight years later, according to the Oregonian, Seattle has indeed become the soccer capital of the U.S., and Seattle Sounders FC is worth $285 million, making it the most valuable team in the MLS—all because Joe had a gut feeling and acted on it.
Joe had a gut feeling about Heaven Is for Real. He found the book and brought it to me when I was an executive for Sony. We made it into a movie for $15 million and it grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Joe has consistently lived by his gut instinct in the face of conventional information that told him otherwise—in the face of doubters who’ve said, “Oh, that’s not smart, I wouldn’t do that.” Over time, his gut has paid off tremendously. Yes, it’s important to look at information, yet you have to be willing to factor that into what your gut is telling you. That brings me to this Commandment:
Your Gut Is Hiding God
We’re told to listen for the voice of God speaking to us, guiding us toward our purpose. But despite what you may have been told, God doesn’t usually shout. He doesn’t speak as a voice from a burning bush like He did to Moses. Most of the time, His voice is subtle and organic, a voice that we recognize—the voice speaking from your gut instinct, compelling you to do something that, at first glance, might not even make sense.
But if you understand that God speaks in your gut, it makes perfect sense. Let’s look at what that voice sounds like.
TRUSTING MY GUT IN MY SONY EXODUS
Too often, we don’t trust our gut. We look to other people to tell us what to do, to validate our instincts with facts so that we feel more comfortable. But usually, that doesn’t work out. I believe gut instinct is God speaking to us in a way that challenges our intellect—that reminds us that for all we know and can figure out, we’re not smarter than the Creator. When you pray and ask God for guidance, sometimes He won’t answer because He’s already given you your answer in the form of your instinct.
Now, here’s the tricky part. Most of us are willing to follow God’s voice speaking in our gut—as long as it tells us to do something that we’re already comfortable doing. It’s the ultimate confirmation bias. But when our gut tells us to do something unexpected, risky, or that flies in the face of what society or the church thinks we should do, we’re unwilling to trust it. That’s where prayer can be a doublecheck of your instinct. You say, “Okay, Lord, I really feel this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m going to pray on it and look for confirmation.” But that confirmation does not always come in a conventional form.
This was brought home to me in a big way when I moved my company, Franklin Entertainment, from Sony Pictures Entertainment to Twentieth Century Fox. The way this works in Hollywood is if you’re a producer, and you sign a “first look” producing deal with a studio, you’re an independent contractor, but the studio pays for your overhead (which includes things like employee salaries and office space). In return, you give that studio first crack at any movies you’re developing. It’s a nice deal, but by the beginning of 2016, my gut was telling me that it might be time to move on.
A bit of backstory: I found the book proposal for Miracles from Heaven at the end of the summer in 2014. I developed the script with amazing screenwriter Randy Brown, and while we were working on the script, all the computers within Sony Pictures were hacked as an act of protest against the movie The Interview, which poked fun at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The hack was devastating because countless private emails from Sony’s top executives were leaked. It
was so severe that Amy Pascal, chairperson of the Motion Picture Group of Sony Pictures Entertainment, lost her job at the beginning of 2015. Amy hired me as an executive back in 2005 and was a tremendous source of support and guidance for my career and so many others on the Sony lot. The former chairman of Twentieth Century Fox and the then-president of TriStar Pictures, Tom Rothman, was selected to come in and succeed Amy.
I turned in the draft screenplay for Miracles from Heaven at the beginning of 2015, and even with the regime change, everyone at Sony felt that it was a great script and would be a good film. We got award-winning director Patricia Riggen to direct and Jennifer Garner came on board to star along with Queen Latifah. We finished the film at the end of the summer of 2015, tested it in front of an audience that fall, and it tested great. Everyone felt like we had a film that could be big at the box office.
Then, in January of 2016, right as we were finishing Miracles from Heaven, I had a feeling that it might be time to find a new home. Even though I had been with Sony for over ten years, it was like God was yelling in my spirit that the Sony chapter was over. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing but I decided to listen anyway. I listened to God as He was speaking in my gut. It became a lightbulb moment. It was scary but it was time for me to go. This was another moment where God was saying, “Get out of the boat!”
WAKE-UP CALL
That was a valuable wake-up call. Sometimes we look for favorable conditions as evidence that God is involved in events, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes God shows up in unfavorable things, the things we don’t want to go through. Turbulence on the job. Downsizing. Relationships ending. God will use those because when we’re comfortable, we get complacent and talk ourselves into believing that things will work out. When we’re uncomfortable, we’re more likely to act.
That spiritual punch to the gut is like smelling salts. Why does someone give you smelling salts? Because you’re unconscious. Once you’re awakened, you can see things as they are, and seeing things as they are—not as you wish they could be—is the only way that you’ll take the risk of leaving what you have for something better. As long as you have delusions that your current situation will improve someday, you’re exposed and vulnerable.
I went to my representatives and said, “I think it’s time for me to leave Sony.” They put the word out and a number of studios were interested, including Fox. While that was happening, Miracles from Heaven came out and did great at the box office.
With that wind at my back, I was able to get out of my Sony deal and I could feel my gut saying, “Fox is the place,” but my head wasn’t sure. What do you do when your gut and your head are saying completely different things?
False Idols
Listening to your gut is essential, but it’s possible to take it too far: acting only on impulse and not employing critical thinking or reason at all. People who do that tend to leap before they look in every situation, which can be detrimental if you’re running a department or a company. Have you ever had a crazy idea about work that you didn’t act on but that would’ve turned out to be a disaster if you had? My tool for avoiding this is simple: if I have a harebrained idea in my gut, I stop. I pray. I see if the same instinct is still speaking to me—and still seems worth trying—the next day. Gut impulses that don’t come from God usually lose their allure fast. Instincts that are from God continue speaking to us and often grow louder. Those are the ones to listen to.
LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT A NET
I prayed, “Lord, I know You didn’t bring me this far to leave me. I trust that if I follow what I believe You are saying in my gut, then I will make the right decision. I’m looking for You to give me confirmation once I do.” God replied, I’ve got this. A couple of days later, Fox made an offer and I took it. I’ve been working with Fox since November of 2016, and it has been even greater than I hoped it would be. I’m doing movies with all divisions, producing television series, and more.
The affair was a reminder that at the end of the day, if we’re faithful, we have to follow what God tells us to do and trust that we will be okay, even if at the time, we don’t understand how we will be okay. God knows what lies ahead for us, and if we let Him drive, He won’t steer us wrong. You know those irresistible gut instincts that you can’t seem to shut out, the ones that badger you day and night about a person or job or creative idea? That’s God whispering, bypassing the rational part of your brain that insists it knows what’s going on, and talking to your spirit, saying, “Trust me. Do this. Don’t be afraid of the risk.”
Some other important things to know about acting on your gut instinct:
•When God says move, move. God doesn’t hold windows open for you forever. There’s a timeliness to moving on whatever He has put in your gut; if you hesitate for too long, what He has in mind can disappear. My window was small and I acted while it was open, which made all the difference in the world. What are the windows God has opened for you that you’ve been too afraid to go through?
•Anticipate discomfort. Earlier, I made the point that God doesn’t give us things that we have the power to get for ourselves. This is a corollary to that: God rarely asks us to act in ways that we find comfortable. When He speaks in your gut, He’s going to push you in directions that take you out of your comfort zone: leaving your job, breaking up with someone you’re dating, moving to a new city, standing up to someone who treats you unfairly, being of service to others in a way that’s difficult or inconvenient, taking a project in a bold, new creative direction. Assume right now that when your gut instinct speaks to you in a way that you can’t ignore, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. Get used to the idea, and know that it’s a sign that God is behind the feeling.
•Take irreversible action. We’re all human. We all feel fear. We all doubt. God knows that, which is why He rewards people who trust His voice in their gut and step out in faith. But even if your faith is strong, you might be tempted to backslide, to retreat, to say, “Never mind” to a life-changing opportunity when things get tense. Know a great way to prevent that? Take an action that leaves you no path back to where you were. Resign from your job. Put your house on the market. Clean out all the unhealthy food in your house before you start your new diet and training for that marathon. Don’t give yourself a way to backtrack. When the only way you can go is forward, you will be amazed at how bravely and steadily you will progress.
I see this mentality come into play with people who want to step out into the freelance world as writers, designers, photographers, you name it. That’s scary, but it can be incredibly rewarding. But you might never do it if you have the safe harbor of a job you can retreat to. Sometimes, you don’t know what you can do until you give yourself no choice but to do it.
•If you build it, He will come. The thing you have to remember about gut instincts—this is one of the things that makes them so challenging—is that they won’t make sense to anyone else. So, you’ll meet resistance, especially if you’re doing something that requires creativity: making a movie, writing a book, starting a business, and so on. You’ll be like Ray Kinsella, the Kevin Costner character in Field of Dreams, plowing under your corn to build a baseball field while everyone around you tells you you’re insane and your bank threatens to foreclose. This is where you need to have faith and ignore the naysayers, especially the ones who try to refute your idea with facts and figures. Understand, ideas from the gut always look crazy to people who never make decisions from their gut.
•Don’t turn off your brain. Trust your gut to guide the big moves, but use your logic and reason to attend to the details. My instinct, brought to me from God, sparked my decision to make my exodus from Sony. But after I made that life-changing call, I relied on reason as well as instinct to get me home. I weighed the pros and cons and carefully considered what I wanted from my new deal. Jumping into any deal with any studio, regardless of the terms, while shouting, “God told me to do it!” would’ve been foolish. God gave you cr
itical thinking skills and intelligence to be used; don’t turn them off just because your instinct has a loud voice.
Go back to my advice to pray, but prepare, and use your reason and intelligence to give you an edge. Want to develop your engineering skills so you can advance in your company? Get involved in “maker culture,” using off-the-shelf technology to design and fabricate high-tech products that come from your instinctive vision.
Want to be a better financial planner and get better results for your clients? Trust your gut when you’re picking stocks, but also use research and science to design optimal portfolios. The most successful people I know in any business, from publishing to advertising to restaurants, are the ones who balance decisive gut instinct with actions based on facts and research.
MIND FROM WHOM YOU SEEK COUNSEL
You might be thinking, “DeVon, your story is great and I’m really happy for you, but I don’t work in Hollywood.” This principle works no matter what field your career is in because we’re all faced with choices:
•What career path to take out of school
•Whether or not to test a new career path if the current one isn’t working out
•Whether or not to ask for a raise or better deal
•Saying “No” to an offer that isn’t quite right
•Saying “Yes” to a challenging project or job that might be beyond your current abilities
•Quitting a job to pursue a creative dream like acting or writing
•Quitting a job to start a business
•Relocating for an opportunity
•Taking a flyer on a creative project
No matter how rational the decision to do any of these things might seem, there will always be an element of gut instinct in them. Your instinct could wake you up in the middle of the night with a stunning idea for a new product. It could blindside you one afternoon with the feeling that you’re unhappy at your current job and need to leave as soon as possible. It might nudge you into believing that a salary offer that seems fair is really less than what you’re worth.