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From the Ted Talk by How to Be a Better Human: How to challenge conventional wisdom -- and change any industry

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Have you ever in your life met someone who felt like everything at their job and in their industry just worked perfectly, no room for improvement? I definitely have not. In fact, if I was tniklag to someone and they started to express anything even remotely similar to that view, I would be like, OK, take up the disguise. You're my boss. Undercover. I caught you rppinig. My point is, whatever you do for work, there is clearly room for improvement, whether it's making hiring practices more inclusive or liitmnig the plastic waste and packaging materials work, stopping the spread of misinformation. We all have a role to play in today's episode is all about how to catalyze change. How do you get people to try something new when they're already very familiar and very comfortable with these well-worn paths? Well, Franklin Leonard managed to do just that in Hollywood. He created The Blacklist. It's a list of the unproduced screenplays that Hollywood insiders love the most. And in doing so, he changed the way that Hollywood worked. Once a script made that list, it made the blacklist. And then powerful people strtead to see that there was consensus that the script was actually amazing. Well, then, these previously unsellable projects, they started getting sold and getting made and winning awards. And here's how fkarniln describes the importance of that in his talk at Ted Venice bceah. Simply put, the conventional wisdom about screenwriting mriet where it was and where it could be found was wrong. And this is notable because, as I mentioned before, in the triage of finding movies to make and making them, there's a lot of relying on conventional wisdom and that conventional wisdom maybe, just maybe might be wrong to even greater consequence. Films about black peploe don't sell overseas. Female diervn action movies don't work because weomn will see themselves in men, but men won't see themselves and women that no one wants to see. Movies about women over 40 that are on screen heroes have to cnorfom to a very narrow idea about beauty that we consider conventional. What does that mean when those images are projected thirty feet high and the lights go down for a kid that looks like me in Columbus, ggeroia, or Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales, or a gay kid in Chennai. What does it mean for how we see ourselves and how we see the world and for how the world sees us? We live in very srtange times, but I think for the most part, we all live in a state of constant rage. There's just too much information, too much stuff to contend with. And so as a rule, we tend to dlaeuft to conventional wisdom. I think it's important that we ask ourselves constantly how much of that conventional wisdom is all convention and no wdsiom and at what cost. As a writer myself, I think that there is something really amazing here. Normally what makes a sipcrt hot is if there's a huge clbertiey attached or if it's a rmkaee of something beloved, or if your last movie won six Academy Awards and grossed a billion dollars, you know, and not that those will stop getting scripts attention, I'm sure those guys will keep getting sold. But what's really amazing about what Franklin did is he managed to find another way to get scripts attention. If enough of the people who read scripts all day say that this one, this one deserves attention. Well, now all of a sedudn, people actually read it and people would take it seriously. And whatever industry you work in, whatever you do. The question that Franklin's experience with the blacklist raises is, I think crteanl to all progress. How can you challenge caetnnoonivl wisdom today on how to be a better human? We've got Franklin here to answer that qiusoten and so many more. This is Franklin laonred, founder of The Blacklist. The blacklist has gone from being just a list of the most blveeod srctips to so much more than that. So I'm wondering, just in your own wodrs, how do you now think of it and dbercise what the blacklist is? Yeah, I mean, I think of our North Star as being in identifying and celebrating great screenwriting and the people who do it. And that can take many fmros. It's everything from giving folks who are trying to become better siwnrecerrtes reasonably priced fbeaedck that from reputable sources. It is when that feedback returns good telling people in the industry that can help their careers and help their movies get made. Hey, this is a really good script. It's providing workshops for the best among those writers, oftentimes in collaboration with other organizations. It's the annual survey of the industry's most liked screenplays. It's the partnered list that we do with GLADD, IMPAC and other sort of affinity groups, you know, for the muilsm community, the Asian picafic Islander ctimnomuy, etc. , all the way up to and including making some of those scripts and movies. So we're producing a lot of these things now. It's more about how can we be supportive of the Hollywood community at large and especially screenwriters within it. And I think that that as a general giude would sort of be the guiding pcpniilre for for everything we do. What's so cool about the blacklist is you basically found a way to give people an excuse to trust their actual taste and to say like this thing that we really love, we actually can make. And I think that's a really powferul thing across idernustis, not even just in Hollywood. I think that's right. Look, and I don't think that it's that Hollywood lacks imagination. I mean, I can say concretely, having worked in the business for now, for coming up on 18 years, the people that work in Hollywood are wlidly imaginative and wildly talented. And it is a joy to be able to work with them. I think that the the dfcfutiliy and the frustration is that the industry, you know, people are rnninug scared at all times. And the decisions that are made about the ecicoomns of the bseuisns are made based on a set of conventional wisdom. That is all conventional wisdom that has been passed down through generations. And implicit in that sort of passed down, conventional wisdom is a ton of bias, some of which is, you know, sort of innocuous. And a lot of it is is terribly dangerous. Right. So it can be something as simple as, you know, certain kdnis of action sequences don't work right now. Does it really matter about like, you know, a certain kind of car chases work or don't work in movies? Probably not really. Doesn't matter when we decide, as the industry had for years, that female driven action movies don't work cicerlamomly. And the consequences of that we see in our gender relationships, in our daily lives when people assume, oh, well, you can't sell black actors abroad outside of the US, the consequences of that are apocalyptic in terms of like the actual valuing of black lives in America and around the world. Because we make fewer black movies, we don't market those movies abroad, you know, and it's just fundamentally not true. Stacy Smith, a professor at USC, ran the nbremus and found that basically when you support movies with diversity in at the same level, that you support movies that don't have that diversity, guess what? They make the same amount of money. People don't have a problem seeing diverse actors on screen or seeing diverse stories. What they want more than anything is for those movies to be good. And what's the blacklist, I hope has done is created more of a true meritocracy where the focus is not who's in the movie, what's the movie about it slipmy is this a good script? And probably one of the most gratifying things about the sort of 15 year hosirty of the blacklist and. Up on 16 years is that last year, the Harvard Business School did a study on the economics of the Black List and found that mievos on the black list, when controlling for every other factor, movies made from scripts on the Black List made 90 percent more in revenue than movies made from scripts, not on the black list. And I want to say it again, because I think that it can't be emphasized enough that movies on the planet that were made from scripts on the Black List made 90 perenct more than movies that were made from scripts not on the Blacklist. And there's one reason why, which is if you start with a geart screenplay, you have a better chance of maikng a great movie. And if you make a great movie, you have a better chance of making a profitable one. And so, you know, I think that that's a leossn that everybody instinctively knows. But it's not one that has been the guiding principle of the film industry for a very long time, if ever. So they've kind of worked both artistically and profitably. What lessons do you think you've learned that apply to people who don't work in entertainment or maybe even in a ctraevie field at all? Because it seems like so much of what you've learned here is that challenging the conventional wisdom is not just good for diversity and equity and inclusion. It's also good for the bottom line. That's exactly right. And I think that's probably a number one. Increasing diversity is good for the bottom line, like it's good morally and ethically, but it's also good capitalistically. If we can use that probably noleiogsm. No, look, I think the other the other thing that I've learned. Is that conventional wisdom is more often than not connoetivn and not wisdom? You know, I think that in a world, especially over the last, let's say, 20, 25 years or the amount of information that we're expected to sort of keep in our brain and the analytics that we have to do on a daily basis to do our job and to process the world and to interact with other people, we are inclined to cetrae these rustics that we just take for granted. And a lot of those citicrs are deeply, delpey, deeply flawed. And we as individuals and as organizations have to do a better job of aggressively interrogating them both for the good of the world, but also for our own individual self-interest. That means that I have to do that as well. Right. Like, this is not just me giving aivcde to other people and saying, why aren't you doing better? It's me looking in the mirror every day and saying, are you doing better? When you look at your business, are you just saying, well, I'm a black guy from the south, so I'm sure I'm doing fine? Or am I saying, you know, are we good on gender or are we making sure that everybody has a seat at the table? Are we making sure that we're decroncitntsug the tlbae and deconstructing the husoe and allowing everybody to rebuild it? And if we're not, then I have to make changes. And I think that's probably the bgsegit thing is trying to build a mirror for myself that actually presents an iamge of me as I am and not as I want to imagine myself. If that makes sense, that ttolaly makes sense. So for everyone listening who may not know, last year the Academy isesud some new relus for films to be considered for an Oscar. The rules had minimum requirements for diversity and inclusion, and there's been a mixed rssoenpe as to what the effects of those rules might be. Some people think it's going to make a huge difference. Some people think it doesn't go far enough and some people are angry about it, frankly. And you have really publicly said that you think that the new rules are a good satrt and you're optimistic. I'm curious, though, if you think they're going to make a real tlbanige difference in the kinds of movies that are getting produced. But again, because of the way in which the sort of thresholds are structured, if you just hire one like a woman of color in a senior role at your distribution cnpaomy and like have an internship program with two interns, you're fine. And so the way I read the academy's sort of announcement is a public snatemtet that in order to be a responsible corporate ctzeiin of the film industry, you have to be trying to expand the pipeline ever so slightly. And if you're not doing that, then we're not going to give you the chance of winning an Oscar. But they did not prevent anyone who has made a miove from getting, you know, the sort of laurels that their artistic accomplishment may have earned them. And that's the thing like, look, for me plnrlaosey, I don't need for any individual movie to include black people. Right. Or any other group. If you want to make a movie with all like made by and about all straight wthie men over the age of 50 who grew up upper middle class, like more power to you. I just want to make sure that if somebody wants to make a movie about trans women who are black and poor, that they have just as much likelihood of getting that movie made as the white dudes did. And then, you know, best movie wins. The problem is not that we need all of these movies to be super dsveire and for all of these gpours to be diverse when they make them, though, that would be nice. The prbleom is, is that for the entire history of Hollywood, we've had massive amounts of aifmiatrvfe aioctn for one group, white, upper middle class, straight says men and everybody else has to not only make something good, but also do it and overcome all of these ocelbtsas to just getting their movie made or even being in a position where they can make a movie. So I would like to focus on the the acescs to resources and the access to distribution problem far more than I would. Hey, who's eligible for an oascr? But I do think that because the Academy Awards are, you know, the time every year when most people are tnnihikg about the the ecosystem of the film industry, it's critical that we have that conversation about the Oscars as part of a broader conversation that should be tackling year round. I also have to say, shout out to Epuron, who came up with the hashtag Oscars so white, there's very little chance that we'd be having this conversation right now if it wasn't for her. And I think it's really important that we remember that Oscars so white is not just about bclak actors, it is about all non-white men and making sure that everyone is represented in the culture because we have a better culture when that's true and we all make more money when that's true. And I think that, you know, I'm really just in awe of what she built with that with something very, very simple that had the power to change the world. Yeah. And the fact that she did make such a huge impact with that. And she's not at the very top of the power structure and the money. She's not the person. Greenlining. The films, I think, does speak to the fact that. Anyone can actually have a real impact on the films that are getting made in the culture that is being spread around the world. That is the power that all of us have in a world where social media exists. Again, that is a sword that cuts both ways as well. But it is something that that power exists for all of us if we want to become advocates on behalf of any ideas, you know, dsfyriiveing Hollywood or diversifying Congress or making sure that people have enough food to eat and a roof over their heads. We'll be right back with more from Franklin Leonard after this break. Here we are, we're back. How do you think people who maybe don't see themselves as having that kind of power, how can they think about the the creative force that they can they can create change? And I think it's really about just modeling your values in your day to day actions. You don't have to be an adotvcae to to change the way a person sees the world or somebody else. But I think that if you are in a position where you see somebody mistreating somebody else or you see somebody being disrespectful to somebody else or you you hear somebody say something that's maybe not even disrespectful to anybody who's in the room, but maybe tell them, hey. Not cool. Have you considered this? Do you realize that when you say this, you also mean this? That's one way, but also than just modeling kindness? Like, again, it's speur simple. It's a super it's a very cliched idea, but on a fandateumnl basis, you don't know the effect that your actions will have on someone else who may be watching you and you never know who may be watching you. We all fail to live up to our hghesit ideals. We all do. I know I do. But aspiring towards them has ecftfes that we can never aitiptance. And so. You may never even know what the consequences, but you can't really go wrong by trying. Hmm. That's literally saccharin, but true, you know, it's weird. So what can audiences both in the U.S. and abroad, what can aedunices do to kind of help support systemic canghe or boarder representation? Ironically, because I think a lot of people in the film and television industry are very uncomfortable with these sort of reievw aggregators. But Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are a great place to start. You know, look, we are all in a time of sort of super aadbcnnue of content, right ? There's more TV shows to watch than any human being could ever watch. There's more movies to watch than any human being could ever watch. And we all want to watch the good stuff. Right. And by good, I want to be clear. I don't mean pnrttieeous. I don't mean Oscar winning. I just mean best in class. Right. Like, if you want to watch a weird comedy, you want to watch the best week cedmoy. You want to watch the bad one. Right. Film critics, television critics. There are deep problems with those cmeniitmuos. They tend to be, you know, overrepresented by it, by white older men. But seek out critics who who cssintotleny have oniinops that mirror your own right. If you love a movie, go find a critic who felt similarly to you that wrote about the movie in a way that you found comillnepg and go see what else they liked. Right. Because odds are you will find other movies that you will be intrigued by. And then you can be the critic that shares information about those movies with other people in your community. And I know that sounds like a very elaborate thing to do in order to find a good movie or tiseeilvon show. But I promise you two things. One, you will eojny the process of looking because you will learn about things that you would not otherwise learn about. And if people are reviewing things in a way that is compelling, that process alone will be entertaining. And too, you will find better things to watch. You will have fewer nhtgis where you made the decision to watch something for two hours and at the end of the two hours you're like, that's two hours of my life. I'm never getting back. So there's there's obviously a huge portion of the movie going anceuide that mainly wecthas things like sueheprro movies or big franchise flmis. Do you not believe that that's a problem? I think people should watch what they like. And if that's superhero movies, it's all good. Right? There are a lot of really good superhero movies out there. Black Panther, eenclxlet film. Thor Ragnarok, excellent film. Right. Thor Ragnarok is a miitdoaten on rfgeeues and the displacement of peelops Black Panther. There's a reason why Immigrant Song is the song they play over the climactic battle scene. Black Panther is about many things, but it is fundamentally about this tension between, you know, the black community wanting to sort of sttehur itself off and sort of integrate into the world despite the tortures that the rest of the world has put us through. Right. As Martin versus maloclm and literally the climactic fight scene happens on a literal underground railroad. There's a tendency for a lot of people to sort of tut tut about, you know, these big siudto action movies and act like they're somehow like a diminution of the art form. And I just have never believe that that's true. Now, some of them are not good, but there are many indie pretentious movies that are not good either. So what I would say is, is look for things that you love. And if you loved that thing right, if you love Black Panther, maybe check out Creed by the same director , Ryan Coogler. And if you love Creed, maybe check out Fruitvale Station also by that director. You know, if you loved Thor Ragnarok, there's a reason thyco Waititi, right. An iuionndegs New Zealander, got the job for Thor. Why don't you go watch the stuff that he made that got him that job? There's a good chance you're going to like that, too. And the thing about it is, is you're the only poersn lnosig by not checking those things out. Right. Like they got your money for Thor, they got your mnoey for Black Panther. The industry is going to be fine. You have an opportunity and the world is going to open up to you and you're going to have these moments of joy in these moments of sadness and these moments of eiiratlxahon that you haven't gotten to have yet. And that is fundamentally, for me at least, the beauty of film when the beauty of art and the beauty of a ctarluul world in which we live. You know, we've been talking about movies and cinema, but obviously the experience of watching a film has changed dramatically with theaters being closed. I guess even if they're open, people being scared to go. I even think about that a little bit personally, because there's a movie theater right down the block from where I live here in Los Angeles. And on their big marquee rather than new movie title, it says to be continued. But it's said that for months now and their doors still haven't reopened. So what at first was kind of just like charming and even funny sign is now a real open question, right? Like, will that tahteer ever actually repoen? And I hope they do. I hope they do, because I think that there's something really powerful about seeing movies in person. That classic epecxinere, which you describe so beautifully in your talk from a few years ago. Here's a clip of that this weekend. Tens of miillnos of people in the United States and tens of millions of. All around the world, in Columbus, Georgia , in Cardiff, Wales, in Chongqing, China, in cnaheni, idina, will leave their homes, they'll get in their cars or they'll take public transportation, or they will carry themselves by foot and they'll step into a room and sit down next to someone they don't know or maybe someone they do. And the lights will go down and they'll watch a movie. They wtcah movies about aliens or robots or rboot aliens or regular people, but they will all be movies about what it means to be human. Millions will feel all or fear, millions will laugh and millions will cry, and then the lhgits will come back on and they'll reemerge into the world they knew several hours prior. And millions of people will look at the world a little bit differently than they did when they went in by going to temple or a mosque or a church or any other religious intuoitistn. Movie going is in many ways a sarecd ritual, repeated week after week after week. I'll be there this weeenkd, just like I was on most wenedkes between the yeras of 1996 and 1990 at the multiplex near the shopping mall, about five miles from my childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The funny thing is that somewhere between then and now, I accidentally cgeanhd part of the conversation about which of those movies get made. You obviously gave that talk well before the pandemic or any of the current cencrnos about movie theaters and public hetlah existed. But I imagine you must be thinking about that a lot during this time right now. So do you have any new perspective on why movies mteatr and why this experience matters? Well, you know, I think the absence of these communal environments wherein we learn about what it means to be human and right. And that was sort of a link that I was making between religion and movies, is that, you know, um, but I think what's interesting to me about movies and I would include television and really any storytelling in this raregd or art more generally, the movies as a popular medium is that, you know, fortunately we have these virtual spaces where we can sort of commune around them and it's not quite the same, but it still ends up being a common laggunae and a common touch point for hiamknund. Right. You know, I think Netflix just put out that they had seventy eight moliiln people watched Gina pnicre Bythewood movie The Old Guard. And when I meet somebody and they've watched it also, we will have a really positive conversation about Gina Prince bywords, brilliant work, and we will feel closer as a consequence. And that has nothing to do with us being both black or both men or whatever it is. It's just that like we saw this thing about these people and we bonded over it. I don't know. I'm really appreciative that that exists. Now, that's the positive side. There is also a negative side, which is and I think that the sort of moment of racial reckoning that we're seeing around the globe is in large part connected to the movie indrstuy, because when we go into a room and we sit with a lot of people we don't know and we learn about the world and what we learn about the wrold is a lie in terms of race, in temrs of gdneer , in terms of sexuality, in terms of religion. Those lies being projected 40 feet high in front of tens of millions, if not hnduerds of millions of people have real human substantive consequences, particularly for black lives. You know, I've increasingly, over the last few months been struck by the noiton that the first ever Hollywood blockbuster was birth of a nation. And, you know, we're seeing the consequences of it now. So I think it cuts both ways. I'm and part of the reason why I'm so attracted to film as an art form is because it does cut both ways icrebidnly sharply and with an incredibly lrage sword. Hmm. What is one movie or book or cultural arfiatct or idea that's made you a better human? I mean. Look, I'm very lucky in that I have two parents who. Very clearly communicated to me and my two younger siblings that we could do anything and as black kids in the Deep South in the 80s, that probably wasn't true. But they convinced us of that anyway, and I think between that and their very clear etxipceotan that the obligation that we had was not just to do whatever we wanted to do and aspire to whatever we wanted to aspire towards, it was to make sure that we made it more likely that anybody had more of a ccnahe of doing it. Somehow they managed to convince us that, like we could do anything and also explain to us that the world was organized so that not everybody could and that we it was our responsibility to make sure that everybody could. And that's not a cultural artifact, but it's the thing that for me, I'm most thfunakl for and it's the thing that I hope I'm able to itaopnrroce from a values pprecivetse and all of my work and the arts that I contribute to. I don't know if that answers your question, but it's something that I been greatly on my mind of late. And a related question right now, in this ponit in your life, what is something that you're trying to be a better human at? I'm trying to have more patience with people. I'm trying to be better at rnecgniiozg that the world is on fire, frlaigtivuey and literally, and that everybody is going through a lot. And that moment when I feel the need to judge or they feel the need to cast disapproval on, I need to take a moment and realize that there may be other explanations than that, which I would assume. Well, Franklin, Leonard, thank you so much for talking with us. It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure being a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How to be a Better Human. That's our show for today. Thank you to our guest, Franklin Leonard. You can find the black list at B.L. Seek eseiltn Dotcom. I am your host, Chris Duffie. This show is produced by Abby MONITUS, Danielle Arezzo, fcierdrea Elizabeth Yosfiah and Karen nwamen at Ted and Jocelyn Gonzalez, pdero refaal Rosado and Sandra Lopez among from Peru Productions. For more on how to be a better hmuan visit, ideas dot.com. We'll see you next week.

Open Cloze

Have you ever in your life met someone who felt like everything at their job and in their industry just worked perfectly, no room for improvement? I definitely have not. In fact, if I was _______ to someone and they started to express anything even remotely similar to that view, I would be like, OK, take up the disguise. You're my boss. Undercover. I caught you _______. My point is, whatever you do for work, there is clearly room for improvement, whether it's making hiring practices more inclusive or ________ the plastic waste and packaging materials work, stopping the spread of misinformation. We all have a role to play in today's episode is all about how to catalyze change. How do you get people to try something new when they're already very familiar and very comfortable with these well-worn paths? Well, Franklin Leonard managed to do just that in Hollywood. He created The Blacklist. It's a list of the unproduced screenplays that Hollywood insiders love the most. And in doing so, he changed the way that Hollywood worked. Once a script made that list, it made the blacklist. And then powerful people _______ to see that there was consensus that the script was actually amazing. Well, then, these previously unsellable projects, they started getting sold and getting made and winning awards. And here's how ________ describes the importance of that in his talk at Ted Venice _____. Simply put, the conventional wisdom about screenwriting _____ where it was and where it could be found was wrong. And this is notable because, as I mentioned before, in the triage of finding movies to make and making them, there's a lot of relying on conventional wisdom and that conventional wisdom maybe, just maybe might be wrong to even greater consequence. Films about black ______ don't sell overseas. Female ______ action movies don't work because _____ will see themselves in men, but men won't see themselves and women that no one wants to see. Movies about women over 40 that are on screen heroes have to _______ to a very narrow idea about beauty that we consider conventional. What does that mean when those images are projected thirty feet high and the lights go down for a kid that looks like me in Columbus, _______, or Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales, or a gay kid in Chennai. What does it mean for how we see ourselves and how we see the world and for how the world sees us? We live in very _______ times, but I think for the most part, we all live in a state of constant rage. There's just too much information, too much stuff to contend with. And so as a rule, we tend to _______ to conventional wisdom. I think it's important that we ask ourselves constantly how much of that conventional wisdom is all convention and no ______ and at what cost. As a writer myself, I think that there is something really amazing here. Normally what makes a ______ hot is if there's a huge _________ attached or if it's a ______ of something beloved, or if your last movie won six Academy Awards and grossed a billion dollars, you know, and not that those will stop getting scripts attention, I'm sure those guys will keep getting sold. But what's really amazing about what Franklin did is he managed to find another way to get scripts attention. If enough of the people who read scripts all day say that this one, this one deserves attention. Well, now all of a ______, people actually read it and people would take it seriously. And whatever industry you work in, whatever you do. The question that Franklin's experience with the blacklist raises is, I think _______ to all progress. How can you challenge ____________ wisdom today on how to be a better human? We've got Franklin here to answer that ________ and so many more. This is Franklin _______, founder of The Blacklist. The blacklist has gone from being just a list of the most _______ _______ to so much more than that. So I'm wondering, just in your own _____, how do you now think of it and ________ what the blacklist is? Yeah, I mean, I think of our North Star as being in identifying and celebrating great screenwriting and the people who do it. And that can take many _____. It's everything from giving folks who are trying to become better _____________ reasonably priced ________ that from reputable sources. It is when that feedback returns good telling people in the industry that can help their careers and help their movies get made. Hey, this is a really good script. It's providing workshops for the best among those writers, oftentimes in collaboration with other organizations. It's the annual survey of the industry's most liked screenplays. It's the partnered list that we do with GLADD, IMPAC and other sort of affinity groups, you know, for the ______ community, the Asian _______ Islander _________, etc. , all the way up to and including making some of those scripts and movies. So we're producing a lot of these things now. It's more about how can we be supportive of the Hollywood community at large and especially screenwriters within it. And I think that that as a general _____ would sort of be the guiding _________ for for everything we do. What's so cool about the blacklist is you basically found a way to give people an excuse to trust their actual taste and to say like this thing that we really love, we actually can make. And I think that's a really ________ thing across __________, not even just in Hollywood. I think that's right. Look, and I don't think that it's that Hollywood lacks imagination. I mean, I can say concretely, having worked in the business for now, for coming up on 18 years, the people that work in Hollywood are ______ imaginative and wildly talented. And it is a joy to be able to work with them. I think that the the __________ and the frustration is that the industry, you know, people are _______ scared at all times. And the decisions that are made about the _________ of the ________ are made based on a set of conventional wisdom. That is all conventional wisdom that has been passed down through generations. And implicit in that sort of passed down, conventional wisdom is a ton of bias, some of which is, you know, sort of innocuous. And a lot of it is is terribly dangerous. Right. So it can be something as simple as, you know, certain _____ of action sequences don't work right now. Does it really matter about like, you know, a certain kind of car chases work or don't work in movies? Probably not really. Doesn't matter when we decide, as the industry had for years, that female driven action movies don't work ____________. And the consequences of that we see in our gender relationships, in our daily lives when people assume, oh, well, you can't sell black actors abroad outside of the US, the consequences of that are apocalyptic in terms of like the actual valuing of black lives in America and around the world. Because we make fewer black movies, we don't market those movies abroad, you know, and it's just fundamentally not true. Stacy Smith, a professor at USC, ran the _______ and found that basically when you support movies with diversity in at the same level, that you support movies that don't have that diversity, guess what? They make the same amount of money. People don't have a problem seeing diverse actors on screen or seeing diverse stories. What they want more than anything is for those movies to be good. And what's the blacklist, I hope has done is created more of a true meritocracy where the focus is not who's in the movie, what's the movie about it ______ is this a good script? And probably one of the most gratifying things about the sort of 15 year _______ of the blacklist and. Up on 16 years is that last year, the Harvard Business School did a study on the economics of the Black List and found that ______ on the black list, when controlling for every other factor, movies made from scripts on the Black List made 90 percent more in revenue than movies made from scripts, not on the black list. And I want to say it again, because I think that it can't be emphasized enough that movies on the planet that were made from scripts on the Black List made 90 _______ more than movies that were made from scripts not on the Blacklist. And there's one reason why, which is if you start with a _____ screenplay, you have a better chance of ______ a great movie. And if you make a great movie, you have a better chance of making a profitable one. And so, you know, I think that that's a ______ that everybody instinctively knows. But it's not one that has been the guiding principle of the film industry for a very long time, if ever. So they've kind of worked both artistically and profitably. What lessons do you think you've learned that apply to people who don't work in entertainment or maybe even in a ________ field at all? Because it seems like so much of what you've learned here is that challenging the conventional wisdom is not just good for diversity and equity and inclusion. It's also good for the bottom line. That's exactly right. And I think that's probably a number one. Increasing diversity is good for the bottom line, like it's good morally and ethically, but it's also good capitalistically. If we can use that probably _________. No, look, I think the other the other thing that I've learned. Is that conventional wisdom is more often than not __________ and not wisdom? You know, I think that in a world, especially over the last, let's say, 20, 25 years or the amount of information that we're expected to sort of keep in our brain and the analytics that we have to do on a daily basis to do our job and to process the world and to interact with other people, we are inclined to ______ these rustics that we just take for granted. And a lot of those _______ are deeply, ______, deeply flawed. And we as individuals and as organizations have to do a better job of aggressively interrogating them both for the good of the world, but also for our own individual self-interest. That means that I have to do that as well. Right. Like, this is not just me giving ______ to other people and saying, why aren't you doing better? It's me looking in the mirror every day and saying, are you doing better? When you look at your business, are you just saying, well, I'm a black guy from the south, so I'm sure I'm doing fine? Or am I saying, you know, are we good on gender or are we making sure that everybody has a seat at the table? Are we making sure that we're ______________ the _____ and deconstructing the _____ and allowing everybody to rebuild it? And if we're not, then I have to make changes. And I think that's probably the _______ thing is trying to build a mirror for myself that actually presents an _____ of me as I am and not as I want to imagine myself. If that makes sense, that _______ makes sense. So for everyone listening who may not know, last year the Academy ______ some new _____ for films to be considered for an Oscar. The rules had minimum requirements for diversity and inclusion, and there's been a mixed ________ as to what the effects of those rules might be. Some people think it's going to make a huge difference. Some people think it doesn't go far enough and some people are angry about it, frankly. And you have really publicly said that you think that the new rules are a good _____ and you're optimistic. I'm curious, though, if you think they're going to make a real ________ difference in the kinds of movies that are getting produced. But again, because of the way in which the sort of thresholds are structured, if you just hire one like a woman of color in a senior role at your distribution _______ and like have an internship program with two interns, you're fine. And so the way I read the academy's sort of announcement is a public _________ that in order to be a responsible corporate _______ of the film industry, you have to be trying to expand the pipeline ever so slightly. And if you're not doing that, then we're not going to give you the chance of winning an Oscar. But they did not prevent anyone who has made a _____ from getting, you know, the sort of laurels that their artistic accomplishment may have earned them. And that's the thing like, look, for me __________, I don't need for any individual movie to include black people. Right. Or any other group. If you want to make a movie with all like made by and about all straight _____ men over the age of 50 who grew up upper middle class, like more power to you. I just want to make sure that if somebody wants to make a movie about trans women who are black and poor, that they have just as much likelihood of getting that movie made as the white dudes did. And then, you know, best movie wins. The problem is not that we need all of these movies to be super _______ and for all of these ______ to be diverse when they make them, though, that would be nice. The _______ is, is that for the entire history of Hollywood, we've had massive amounts of ___________ ______ for one group, white, upper middle class, straight says men and everybody else has to not only make something good, but also do it and overcome all of these _________ to just getting their movie made or even being in a position where they can make a movie. So I would like to focus on the the ______ to resources and the access to distribution problem far more than I would. Hey, who's eligible for an _____? But I do think that because the Academy Awards are, you know, the time every year when most people are ________ about the the ecosystem of the film industry, it's critical that we have that conversation about the Oscars as part of a broader conversation that should be tackling year round. I also have to say, shout out to Epuron, who came up with the hashtag Oscars so white, there's very little chance that we'd be having this conversation right now if it wasn't for her. And I think it's really important that we remember that Oscars so white is not just about _____ actors, it is about all non-white men and making sure that everyone is represented in the culture because we have a better culture when that's true and we all make more money when that's true. And I think that, you know, I'm really just in awe of what she built with that with something very, very simple that had the power to change the world. Yeah. And the fact that she did make such a huge impact with that. And she's not at the very top of the power structure and the money. She's not the person. Greenlining. The films, I think, does speak to the fact that. Anyone can actually have a real impact on the films that are getting made in the culture that is being spread around the world. That is the power that all of us have in a world where social media exists. Again, that is a sword that cuts both ways as well. But it is something that that power exists for all of us if we want to become advocates on behalf of any ideas, you know, ____________ Hollywood or diversifying Congress or making sure that people have enough food to eat and a roof over their heads. We'll be right back with more from Franklin Leonard after this break. Here we are, we're back. How do you think people who maybe don't see themselves as having that kind of power, how can they think about the the creative force that they can they can create change? And I think it's really about just modeling your values in your day to day actions. You don't have to be an ________ to to change the way a person sees the world or somebody else. But I think that if you are in a position where you see somebody mistreating somebody else or you see somebody being disrespectful to somebody else or you you hear somebody say something that's maybe not even disrespectful to anybody who's in the room, but maybe tell them, hey. Not cool. Have you considered this? Do you realize that when you say this, you also mean this? That's one way, but also than just modeling kindness? Like, again, it's _____ simple. It's a super it's a very cliched idea, but on a ___________ basis, you don't know the effect that your actions will have on someone else who may be watching you and you never know who may be watching you. We all fail to live up to our _______ ideals. We all do. I know I do. But aspiring towards them has _______ that we can never __________. And so. You may never even know what the consequences, but you can't really go wrong by trying. Hmm. That's literally saccharin, but true, you know, it's weird. So what can audiences both in the U.S. and abroad, what can _________ do to kind of help support systemic ______ or _______ representation? Ironically, because I think a lot of people in the film and television industry are very uncomfortable with these sort of ______ aggregators. But Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are a great place to start. You know, look, we are all in a time of sort of super _________ of content, right ? There's more TV shows to watch than any human being could ever watch. There's more movies to watch than any human being could ever watch. And we all want to watch the good stuff. Right. And by good, I want to be clear. I don't mean ___________. I don't mean Oscar winning. I just mean best in class. Right. Like, if you want to watch a weird comedy, you want to watch the best week ______. You want to watch the bad one. Right. Film critics, television critics. There are deep problems with those ___________. They tend to be, you know, overrepresented by it, by white older men. But seek out critics who who ____________ have ________ that mirror your own right. If you love a movie, go find a critic who felt similarly to you that wrote about the movie in a way that you found __________ and go see what else they liked. Right. Because odds are you will find other movies that you will be intrigued by. And then you can be the critic that shares information about those movies with other people in your community. And I know that sounds like a very elaborate thing to do in order to find a good movie or __________ show. But I promise you two things. One, you will _____ the process of looking because you will learn about things that you would not otherwise learn about. And if people are reviewing things in a way that is compelling, that process alone will be entertaining. And too, you will find better things to watch. You will have fewer ______ where you made the decision to watch something for two hours and at the end of the two hours you're like, that's two hours of my life. I'm never getting back. So there's there's obviously a huge portion of the movie going ________ that mainly _______ things like _________ movies or big franchise _____. Do you not believe that that's a problem? I think people should watch what they like. And if that's superhero movies, it's all good. Right? There are a lot of really good superhero movies out there. Black Panther, _________ film. Thor Ragnarok, excellent film. Right. Thor Ragnarok is a __________ on ________ and the displacement of _______ Black Panther. There's a reason why Immigrant Song is the song they play over the climactic battle scene. Black Panther is about many things, but it is fundamentally about this tension between, you know, the black community wanting to sort of _______ itself off and sort of integrate into the world despite the tortures that the rest of the world has put us through. Right. As Martin versus _______ and literally the climactic fight scene happens on a literal underground railroad. There's a tendency for a lot of people to sort of tut tut about, you know, these big ______ action movies and act like they're somehow like a diminution of the art form. And I just have never believe that that's true. Now, some of them are not good, but there are many indie pretentious movies that are not good either. So what I would say is, is look for things that you love. And if you loved that thing right, if you love Black Panther, maybe check out Creed by the same director , Ryan Coogler. And if you love Creed, maybe check out Fruitvale Station also by that director. You know, if you loved Thor Ragnarok, there's a reason _____ Waititi, right. An __________ New Zealander, got the job for Thor. Why don't you go watch the stuff that he made that got him that job? There's a good chance you're going to like that, too. And the thing about it is, is you're the only ______ ______ by not checking those things out. Right. Like they got your money for Thor, they got your _____ for Black Panther. The industry is going to be fine. You have an opportunity and the world is going to open up to you and you're going to have these moments of joy in these moments of sadness and these moments of ____________ that you haven't gotten to have yet. And that is fundamentally, for me at least, the beauty of film when the beauty of art and the beauty of a ________ world in which we live. You know, we've been talking about movies and cinema, but obviously the experience of watching a film has changed dramatically with theaters being closed. I guess even if they're open, people being scared to go. I even think about that a little bit personally, because there's a movie theater right down the block from where I live here in Los Angeles. And on their big marquee rather than new movie title, it says to be continued. But it's said that for months now and their doors still haven't reopened. So what at first was kind of just like charming and even funny sign is now a real open question, right? Like, will that _______ ever actually ______? And I hope they do. I hope they do, because I think that there's something really powerful about seeing movies in person. That classic __________, which you describe so beautifully in your talk from a few years ago. Here's a clip of that this weekend. Tens of ________ of people in the United States and tens of millions of. All around the world, in Columbus, Georgia , in Cardiff, Wales, in Chongqing, China, in _______, _____, will leave their homes, they'll get in their cars or they'll take public transportation, or they will carry themselves by foot and they'll step into a room and sit down next to someone they don't know or maybe someone they do. And the lights will go down and they'll watch a movie. They _____ movies about aliens or robots or _____ aliens or regular people, but they will all be movies about what it means to be human. Millions will feel all or fear, millions will laugh and millions will cry, and then the ______ will come back on and they'll reemerge into the world they knew several hours prior. And millions of people will look at the world a little bit differently than they did when they went in by going to temple or a mosque or a church or any other religious ___________. Movie going is in many ways a ______ ritual, repeated week after week after week. I'll be there this _______, just like I was on most ________ between the _____ of 1996 and 1990 at the multiplex near the shopping mall, about five miles from my childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The funny thing is that somewhere between then and now, I accidentally _______ part of the conversation about which of those movies get made. You obviously gave that talk well before the pandemic or any of the current ________ about movie theaters and public ______ existed. But I imagine you must be thinking about that a lot during this time right now. So do you have any new perspective on why movies ______ and why this experience matters? Well, you know, I think the absence of these communal environments wherein we learn about what it means to be human and right. And that was sort of a link that I was making between religion and movies, is that, you know, um, but I think what's interesting to me about movies and I would include television and really any storytelling in this ______ or art more generally, the movies as a popular medium is that, you know, fortunately we have these virtual spaces where we can sort of commune around them and it's not quite the same, but it still ends up being a common ________ and a common touch point for _________. Right. You know, I think Netflix just put out that they had seventy eight _______ people watched Gina ______ Bythewood movie The Old Guard. And when I meet somebody and they've watched it also, we will have a really positive conversation about Gina Prince bywords, brilliant work, and we will feel closer as a consequence. And that has nothing to do with us being both black or both men or whatever it is. It's just that like we saw this thing about these people and we bonded over it. I don't know. I'm really appreciative that that exists. Now, that's the positive side. There is also a negative side, which is and I think that the sort of moment of racial reckoning that we're seeing around the globe is in large part connected to the movie ________, because when we go into a room and we sit with a lot of people we don't know and we learn about the world and what we learn about the _____ is a lie in terms of race, in _____ of ______ , in terms of sexuality, in terms of religion. Those lies being projected 40 feet high in front of tens of millions, if not ________ of millions of people have real human substantive consequences, particularly for black lives. You know, I've increasingly, over the last few months been struck by the ______ that the first ever Hollywood blockbuster was birth of a nation. And, you know, we're seeing the consequences of it now. So I think it cuts both ways. I'm and part of the reason why I'm so attracted to film as an art form is because it does cut both ways __________ sharply and with an incredibly _____ sword. Hmm. What is one movie or book or cultural ________ or idea that's made you a better human? I mean. Look, I'm very lucky in that I have two parents who. Very clearly communicated to me and my two younger siblings that we could do anything and as black kids in the Deep South in the 80s, that probably wasn't true. But they convinced us of that anyway, and I think between that and their very clear ___________ that the obligation that we had was not just to do whatever we wanted to do and aspire to whatever we wanted to aspire towards, it was to make sure that we made it more likely that anybody had more of a ______ of doing it. Somehow they managed to convince us that, like we could do anything and also explain to us that the world was organized so that not everybody could and that we it was our responsibility to make sure that everybody could. And that's not a cultural artifact, but it's the thing that for me, I'm most ________ for and it's the thing that I hope I'm able to ___________ from a values ___________ and all of my work and the arts that I contribute to. I don't know if that answers your question, but it's something that I been greatly on my mind of late. And a related question right now, in this _____ in your life, what is something that you're trying to be a better human at? I'm trying to have more patience with people. I'm trying to be better at ___________ that the world is on fire, ____________ and literally, and that everybody is going through a lot. And that moment when I feel the need to judge or they feel the need to cast disapproval on, I need to take a moment and realize that there may be other explanations than that, which I would assume. Well, Franklin, Leonard, thank you so much for talking with us. It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure being a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How to be a Better Human. That's our show for today. Thank you to our guest, Franklin Leonard. You can find the black list at B.L. Seek _______ Dotcom. I am your host, Chris Duffie. This show is produced by Abby MONITUS, Danielle Arezzo, _________ Elizabeth Yosfiah and Karen ______ at Ted and Jocelyn Gonzalez, _____ ______ Rosado and Sandra Lopez among from Peru Productions. For more on how to be a better _____ visit, ideas dot.com. We'll see you next week.

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Original Text

Have you ever in your life met someone who felt like everything at their job and in their industry just worked perfectly, no room for improvement? I definitely have not. In fact, if I was talking to someone and they started to express anything even remotely similar to that view, I would be like, OK, take up the disguise. You're my boss. Undercover. I caught you ripping. My point is, whatever you do for work, there is clearly room for improvement, whether it's making hiring practices more inclusive or limiting the plastic waste and packaging materials work, stopping the spread of misinformation. We all have a role to play in today's episode is all about how to catalyze change. How do you get people to try something new when they're already very familiar and very comfortable with these well-worn paths? Well, Franklin Leonard managed to do just that in Hollywood. He created The Blacklist. It's a list of the unproduced screenplays that Hollywood insiders love the most. And in doing so, he changed the way that Hollywood worked. Once a script made that list, it made the blacklist. And then powerful people started to see that there was consensus that the script was actually amazing. Well, then, these previously unsellable projects, they started getting sold and getting made and winning awards. And here's how Franklin describes the importance of that in his talk at Ted Venice Beach. Simply put, the conventional wisdom about screenwriting merit where it was and where it could be found was wrong. And this is notable because, as I mentioned before, in the triage of finding movies to make and making them, there's a lot of relying on conventional wisdom and that conventional wisdom maybe, just maybe might be wrong to even greater consequence. Films about black people don't sell overseas. Female driven action movies don't work because women will see themselves in men, but men won't see themselves and women that no one wants to see. Movies about women over 40 that are on screen heroes have to conform to a very narrow idea about beauty that we consider conventional. What does that mean when those images are projected thirty feet high and the lights go down for a kid that looks like me in Columbus, Georgia, or Muslim girl in Cardiff, Wales, or a gay kid in Chennai. What does it mean for how we see ourselves and how we see the world and for how the world sees us? We live in very strange times, but I think for the most part, we all live in a state of constant rage. There's just too much information, too much stuff to contend with. And so as a rule, we tend to default to conventional wisdom. I think it's important that we ask ourselves constantly how much of that conventional wisdom is all convention and no wisdom and at what cost. As a writer myself, I think that there is something really amazing here. Normally what makes a script hot is if there's a huge celebrity attached or if it's a remake of something beloved, or if your last movie won six Academy Awards and grossed a billion dollars, you know, and not that those will stop getting scripts attention, I'm sure those guys will keep getting sold. But what's really amazing about what Franklin did is he managed to find another way to get scripts attention. If enough of the people who read scripts all day say that this one, this one deserves attention. Well, now all of a sudden, people actually read it and people would take it seriously. And whatever industry you work in, whatever you do. The question that Franklin's experience with the blacklist raises is, I think central to all progress. How can you challenge conventional wisdom today on how to be a better human? We've got Franklin here to answer that question and so many more. This is Franklin Leonard, founder of The Blacklist. The blacklist has gone from being just a list of the most beloved scripts to so much more than that. So I'm wondering, just in your own words, how do you now think of it and describe what the blacklist is? Yeah, I mean, I think of our North Star as being in identifying and celebrating great screenwriting and the people who do it. And that can take many forms. It's everything from giving folks who are trying to become better screenwriters reasonably priced feedback that from reputable sources. It is when that feedback returns good telling people in the industry that can help their careers and help their movies get made. Hey, this is a really good script. It's providing workshops for the best among those writers, oftentimes in collaboration with other organizations. It's the annual survey of the industry's most liked screenplays. It's the partnered list that we do with GLADD, IMPAC and other sort of affinity groups, you know, for the Muslim community, the Asian Pacific Islander community, etc. , all the way up to and including making some of those scripts and movies. So we're producing a lot of these things now. It's more about how can we be supportive of the Hollywood community at large and especially screenwriters within it. And I think that that as a general guide would sort of be the guiding principle for for everything we do. What's so cool about the blacklist is you basically found a way to give people an excuse to trust their actual taste and to say like this thing that we really love, we actually can make. And I think that's a really powerful thing across industries, not even just in Hollywood. I think that's right. Look, and I don't think that it's that Hollywood lacks imagination. I mean, I can say concretely, having worked in the business for now, for coming up on 18 years, the people that work in Hollywood are wildly imaginative and wildly talented. And it is a joy to be able to work with them. I think that the the difficulty and the frustration is that the industry, you know, people are running scared at all times. And the decisions that are made about the economics of the business are made based on a set of conventional wisdom. That is all conventional wisdom that has been passed down through generations. And implicit in that sort of passed down, conventional wisdom is a ton of bias, some of which is, you know, sort of innocuous. And a lot of it is is terribly dangerous. Right. So it can be something as simple as, you know, certain kinds of action sequences don't work right now. Does it really matter about like, you know, a certain kind of car chases work or don't work in movies? Probably not really. Doesn't matter when we decide, as the industry had for years, that female driven action movies don't work commercially. And the consequences of that we see in our gender relationships, in our daily lives when people assume, oh, well, you can't sell black actors abroad outside of the US, the consequences of that are apocalyptic in terms of like the actual valuing of black lives in America and around the world. Because we make fewer black movies, we don't market those movies abroad, you know, and it's just fundamentally not true. Stacy Smith, a professor at USC, ran the numbers and found that basically when you support movies with diversity in at the same level, that you support movies that don't have that diversity, guess what? They make the same amount of money. People don't have a problem seeing diverse actors on screen or seeing diverse stories. What they want more than anything is for those movies to be good. And what's the blacklist, I hope has done is created more of a true meritocracy where the focus is not who's in the movie, what's the movie about it simply is this a good script? And probably one of the most gratifying things about the sort of 15 year history of the blacklist and. Up on 16 years is that last year, the Harvard Business School did a study on the economics of the Black List and found that movies on the black list, when controlling for every other factor, movies made from scripts on the Black List made 90 percent more in revenue than movies made from scripts, not on the black list. And I want to say it again, because I think that it can't be emphasized enough that movies on the planet that were made from scripts on the Black List made 90 percent more than movies that were made from scripts not on the Blacklist. And there's one reason why, which is if you start with a great screenplay, you have a better chance of making a great movie. And if you make a great movie, you have a better chance of making a profitable one. And so, you know, I think that that's a lesson that everybody instinctively knows. But it's not one that has been the guiding principle of the film industry for a very long time, if ever. So they've kind of worked both artistically and profitably. What lessons do you think you've learned that apply to people who don't work in entertainment or maybe even in a creative field at all? Because it seems like so much of what you've learned here is that challenging the conventional wisdom is not just good for diversity and equity and inclusion. It's also good for the bottom line. That's exactly right. And I think that's probably a number one. Increasing diversity is good for the bottom line, like it's good morally and ethically, but it's also good capitalistically. If we can use that probably neologism. No, look, I think the other the other thing that I've learned. Is that conventional wisdom is more often than not convention and not wisdom? You know, I think that in a world, especially over the last, let's say, 20, 25 years or the amount of information that we're expected to sort of keep in our brain and the analytics that we have to do on a daily basis to do our job and to process the world and to interact with other people, we are inclined to create these rustics that we just take for granted. And a lot of those critics are deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. And we as individuals and as organizations have to do a better job of aggressively interrogating them both for the good of the world, but also for our own individual self-interest. That means that I have to do that as well. Right. Like, this is not just me giving advice to other people and saying, why aren't you doing better? It's me looking in the mirror every day and saying, are you doing better? When you look at your business, are you just saying, well, I'm a black guy from the south, so I'm sure I'm doing fine? Or am I saying, you know, are we good on gender or are we making sure that everybody has a seat at the table? Are we making sure that we're deconstructing the table and deconstructing the house and allowing everybody to rebuild it? And if we're not, then I have to make changes. And I think that's probably the biggest thing is trying to build a mirror for myself that actually presents an image of me as I am and not as I want to imagine myself. If that makes sense, that totally makes sense. So for everyone listening who may not know, last year the Academy issued some new rules for films to be considered for an Oscar. The rules had minimum requirements for diversity and inclusion, and there's been a mixed response as to what the effects of those rules might be. Some people think it's going to make a huge difference. Some people think it doesn't go far enough and some people are angry about it, frankly. And you have really publicly said that you think that the new rules are a good start and you're optimistic. I'm curious, though, if you think they're going to make a real tangible difference in the kinds of movies that are getting produced. But again, because of the way in which the sort of thresholds are structured, if you just hire one like a woman of color in a senior role at your distribution company and like have an internship program with two interns, you're fine. And so the way I read the academy's sort of announcement is a public statement that in order to be a responsible corporate citizen of the film industry, you have to be trying to expand the pipeline ever so slightly. And if you're not doing that, then we're not going to give you the chance of winning an Oscar. But they did not prevent anyone who has made a movie from getting, you know, the sort of laurels that their artistic accomplishment may have earned them. And that's the thing like, look, for me personally, I don't need for any individual movie to include black people. Right. Or any other group. If you want to make a movie with all like made by and about all straight white men over the age of 50 who grew up upper middle class, like more power to you. I just want to make sure that if somebody wants to make a movie about trans women who are black and poor, that they have just as much likelihood of getting that movie made as the white dudes did. And then, you know, best movie wins. The problem is not that we need all of these movies to be super diverse and for all of these groups to be diverse when they make them, though, that would be nice. The problem is, is that for the entire history of Hollywood, we've had massive amounts of affirmative action for one group, white, upper middle class, straight says men and everybody else has to not only make something good, but also do it and overcome all of these obstacles to just getting their movie made or even being in a position where they can make a movie. So I would like to focus on the the access to resources and the access to distribution problem far more than I would. Hey, who's eligible for an Oscar? But I do think that because the Academy Awards are, you know, the time every year when most people are thinking about the the ecosystem of the film industry, it's critical that we have that conversation about the Oscars as part of a broader conversation that should be tackling year round. I also have to say, shout out to Epuron, who came up with the hashtag Oscars so white, there's very little chance that we'd be having this conversation right now if it wasn't for her. And I think it's really important that we remember that Oscars so white is not just about black actors, it is about all non-white men and making sure that everyone is represented in the culture because we have a better culture when that's true and we all make more money when that's true. And I think that, you know, I'm really just in awe of what she built with that with something very, very simple that had the power to change the world. Yeah. And the fact that she did make such a huge impact with that. And she's not at the very top of the power structure and the money. She's not the person. Greenlining. The films, I think, does speak to the fact that. Anyone can actually have a real impact on the films that are getting made in the culture that is being spread around the world. That is the power that all of us have in a world where social media exists. Again, that is a sword that cuts both ways as well. But it is something that that power exists for all of us if we want to become advocates on behalf of any ideas, you know, diversifying Hollywood or diversifying Congress or making sure that people have enough food to eat and a roof over their heads. We'll be right back with more from Franklin Leonard after this break. Here we are, we're back. How do you think people who maybe don't see themselves as having that kind of power, how can they think about the the creative force that they can they can create change? And I think it's really about just modeling your values in your day to day actions. You don't have to be an advocate to to change the way a person sees the world or somebody else. But I think that if you are in a position where you see somebody mistreating somebody else or you see somebody being disrespectful to somebody else or you you hear somebody say something that's maybe not even disrespectful to anybody who's in the room, but maybe tell them, hey. Not cool. Have you considered this? Do you realize that when you say this, you also mean this? That's one way, but also than just modeling kindness? Like, again, it's super simple. It's a super it's a very cliched idea, but on a fundamental basis, you don't know the effect that your actions will have on someone else who may be watching you and you never know who may be watching you. We all fail to live up to our highest ideals. We all do. I know I do. But aspiring towards them has effects that we can never anticipate. And so. You may never even know what the consequences, but you can't really go wrong by trying. Hmm. That's literally saccharin, but true, you know, it's weird. So what can audiences both in the U.S. and abroad, what can audiences do to kind of help support systemic change or broader representation? Ironically, because I think a lot of people in the film and television industry are very uncomfortable with these sort of review aggregators. But Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are a great place to start. You know, look, we are all in a time of sort of super abundance of content, right ? There's more TV shows to watch than any human being could ever watch. There's more movies to watch than any human being could ever watch. And we all want to watch the good stuff. Right. And by good, I want to be clear. I don't mean pretentious. I don't mean Oscar winning. I just mean best in class. Right. Like, if you want to watch a weird comedy, you want to watch the best week comedy. You want to watch the bad one. Right. Film critics, television critics. There are deep problems with those communities. They tend to be, you know, overrepresented by it, by white older men. But seek out critics who who consistently have opinions that mirror your own right. If you love a movie, go find a critic who felt similarly to you that wrote about the movie in a way that you found compelling and go see what else they liked. Right. Because odds are you will find other movies that you will be intrigued by. And then you can be the critic that shares information about those movies with other people in your community. And I know that sounds like a very elaborate thing to do in order to find a good movie or television show. But I promise you two things. One, you will enjoy the process of looking because you will learn about things that you would not otherwise learn about. And if people are reviewing things in a way that is compelling, that process alone will be entertaining. And too, you will find better things to watch. You will have fewer nights where you made the decision to watch something for two hours and at the end of the two hours you're like, that's two hours of my life. I'm never getting back. So there's there's obviously a huge portion of the movie going audience that mainly watches things like superhero movies or big franchise films. Do you not believe that that's a problem? I think people should watch what they like. And if that's superhero movies, it's all good. Right? There are a lot of really good superhero movies out there. Black Panther, excellent film. Thor Ragnarok, excellent film. Right. Thor Ragnarok is a meditation on refugees and the displacement of peoples Black Panther. There's a reason why Immigrant Song is the song they play over the climactic battle scene. Black Panther is about many things, but it is fundamentally about this tension between, you know, the black community wanting to sort of shutter itself off and sort of integrate into the world despite the tortures that the rest of the world has put us through. Right. As Martin versus Malcolm and literally the climactic fight scene happens on a literal underground railroad. There's a tendency for a lot of people to sort of tut tut about, you know, these big studio action movies and act like they're somehow like a diminution of the art form. And I just have never believe that that's true. Now, some of them are not good, but there are many indie pretentious movies that are not good either. So what I would say is, is look for things that you love. And if you loved that thing right, if you love Black Panther, maybe check out Creed by the same director , Ryan Coogler. And if you love Creed, maybe check out Fruitvale Station also by that director. You know, if you loved Thor Ragnarok, there's a reason Tycho Waititi, right. An indigenous New Zealander, got the job for Thor. Why don't you go watch the stuff that he made that got him that job? There's a good chance you're going to like that, too. And the thing about it is, is you're the only person losing by not checking those things out. Right. Like they got your money for Thor, they got your money for Black Panther. The industry is going to be fine. You have an opportunity and the world is going to open up to you and you're going to have these moments of joy in these moments of sadness and these moments of exhilaration that you haven't gotten to have yet. And that is fundamentally, for me at least, the beauty of film when the beauty of art and the beauty of a cultural world in which we live. You know, we've been talking about movies and cinema, but obviously the experience of watching a film has changed dramatically with theaters being closed. I guess even if they're open, people being scared to go. I even think about that a little bit personally, because there's a movie theater right down the block from where I live here in Los Angeles. And on their big marquee rather than new movie title, it says to be continued. But it's said that for months now and their doors still haven't reopened. So what at first was kind of just like charming and even funny sign is now a real open question, right? Like, will that theater ever actually reopen? And I hope they do. I hope they do, because I think that there's something really powerful about seeing movies in person. That classic experience, which you describe so beautifully in your talk from a few years ago. Here's a clip of that this weekend. Tens of millions of people in the United States and tens of millions of. All around the world, in Columbus, Georgia , in Cardiff, Wales, in Chongqing, China, in Chennai, India, will leave their homes, they'll get in their cars or they'll take public transportation, or they will carry themselves by foot and they'll step into a room and sit down next to someone they don't know or maybe someone they do. And the lights will go down and they'll watch a movie. They watch movies about aliens or robots or robot aliens or regular people, but they will all be movies about what it means to be human. Millions will feel all or fear, millions will laugh and millions will cry, and then the lights will come back on and they'll reemerge into the world they knew several hours prior. And millions of people will look at the world a little bit differently than they did when they went in by going to temple or a mosque or a church or any other religious institution. Movie going is in many ways a sacred ritual, repeated week after week after week. I'll be there this weekend, just like I was on most weekends between the years of 1996 and 1990 at the multiplex near the shopping mall, about five miles from my childhood home in Columbus, Georgia. The funny thing is that somewhere between then and now, I accidentally changed part of the conversation about which of those movies get made. You obviously gave that talk well before the pandemic or any of the current concerns about movie theaters and public health existed. But I imagine you must be thinking about that a lot during this time right now. So do you have any new perspective on why movies matter and why this experience matters? Well, you know, I think the absence of these communal environments wherein we learn about what it means to be human and right. And that was sort of a link that I was making between religion and movies, is that, you know, um, but I think what's interesting to me about movies and I would include television and really any storytelling in this regard or art more generally, the movies as a popular medium is that, you know, fortunately we have these virtual spaces where we can sort of commune around them and it's not quite the same, but it still ends up being a common language and a common touch point for humankind. Right. You know, I think Netflix just put out that they had seventy eight million people watched Gina Prince Bythewood movie The Old Guard. And when I meet somebody and they've watched it also, we will have a really positive conversation about Gina Prince bywords, brilliant work, and we will feel closer as a consequence. And that has nothing to do with us being both black or both men or whatever it is. It's just that like we saw this thing about these people and we bonded over it. I don't know. I'm really appreciative that that exists. Now, that's the positive side. There is also a negative side, which is and I think that the sort of moment of racial reckoning that we're seeing around the globe is in large part connected to the movie industry, because when we go into a room and we sit with a lot of people we don't know and we learn about the world and what we learn about the world is a lie in terms of race, in terms of gender , in terms of sexuality, in terms of religion. Those lies being projected 40 feet high in front of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people have real human substantive consequences, particularly for black lives. You know, I've increasingly, over the last few months been struck by the notion that the first ever Hollywood blockbuster was birth of a nation. And, you know, we're seeing the consequences of it now. So I think it cuts both ways. I'm and part of the reason why I'm so attracted to film as an art form is because it does cut both ways incredibly sharply and with an incredibly large sword. Hmm. What is one movie or book or cultural artifact or idea that's made you a better human? I mean. Look, I'm very lucky in that I have two parents who. Very clearly communicated to me and my two younger siblings that we could do anything and as black kids in the Deep South in the 80s, that probably wasn't true. But they convinced us of that anyway, and I think between that and their very clear expectation that the obligation that we had was not just to do whatever we wanted to do and aspire to whatever we wanted to aspire towards, it was to make sure that we made it more likely that anybody had more of a chance of doing it. Somehow they managed to convince us that, like we could do anything and also explain to us that the world was organized so that not everybody could and that we it was our responsibility to make sure that everybody could. And that's not a cultural artifact, but it's the thing that for me, I'm most thankful for and it's the thing that I hope I'm able to incorporate from a values perspective and all of my work and the arts that I contribute to. I don't know if that answers your question, but it's something that I been greatly on my mind of late. And a related question right now, in this point in your life, what is something that you're trying to be a better human at? I'm trying to have more patience with people. I'm trying to be better at recognizing that the world is on fire, figuratively and literally, and that everybody is going through a lot. And that moment when I feel the need to judge or they feel the need to cast disapproval on, I need to take a moment and realize that there may be other explanations than that, which I would assume. Well, Franklin, Leonard, thank you so much for talking with us. It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure being a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How to be a Better Human. That's our show for today. Thank you to our guest, Franklin Leonard. You can find the black list at B.L. Seek Elstein Dotcom. I am your host, Chris Duffie. This show is produced by Abby MONITUS, Danielle Arezzo, Frederica Elizabeth Yosfiah and Karen Newman at Ted and Jocelyn Gonzalez, Pedro Rafael Rosado and Sandra Lopez among from Peru Productions. For more on how to be a better human visit, ideas dot.com. We'll see you next week.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
conventional wisdom	11
black list	5
franklin leonard	3
action movies	3
black panther	3
black people	2
female driven	2
driven action	2
feet high	2
academy awards	2
guiding principle	2
black lives	2
support movies	2
upper middle	2
superhero movies	2
excellent film	2
art form	2
gina prince	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
female driven action	2
driven action movies	2

ngrams of length 4

collocation	frequency
female driven action movies	2

Important Words

abby
absence
absolute
abundance
academy
access
accidentally
accomplishment
act
action
actions
actors
actual
advice
advocate
advocates
affinity
affirmative
age
aggregators
aggressively
aliens
allowing
amazing
america
amount
amounts
analytics
angeles
angry
announcement
annual
answer
answers
anticipate
apocalyptic
apply
appreciative
arezzo
art
artifact
artistic
artistically
arts
asian
aspire
aspiring
assume
attached
attention
attracted
audience
audiences
awards
awe
bad
based
basically
basis
battle
beach
beautifully
beauty
behalf
beloved
bias
big
biggest
billion
birth
bit
black
blacklist
block
blockbuster
bonded
book
boss
bottom
brain
break
brilliant
broader
build
built
business
bythewood
bywords
capitalistically
car
cardiff
careers
carry
cars
cast
catalyze
caught
celebrating
celebrity
central
challenge
challenging
chance
change
changed
charming
chases
check
checking
chennai
childhood
china
chongqing
chris
church
cinema
citizen
class
classic
clear
cliched
climactic
clip
closed
closer
collaboration
color
columbus
comedy
comfortable
coming
commercially
common
communal
commune
communicated
communities
community
company
compelling
concerns
concretely
conform
congress
connected
consensus
consequence
consequences
considered
consistently
constant
constantly
contend
content
continued
contribute
controlling
convention
conventional
conversation
convince
convinced
coogler
cool
corporate
cost
create
created
creative
creed
critic
critical
critics
cry
cultural
culture
curious
current
cut
cuts
daily
dangerous
danielle
day
decide
decision
decisions
deconstructing
deep
deeply
default
describe
describes
deserves
difference
differently
difficulty
diminution
director
disapproval
disguise
displacement
disrespectful
distribution
diverse
diversifying
diversity
dollars
doors
dot
dotcom
dramatically
driven
dudes
duffie
earned
eat
economics
ecosystem
effect
effects
elaborate
eligible
elizabeth
elstein
emphasized
ends
enjoy
entertaining
entertainment
entire
environments
episode
epuron
equity
ethically
excellent
excuse
exhilaration
existed
exists
expand
expectation
expected
experience
explain
explanations
express
fact
factor
fail
familiar
fear
feedback
feel
feet
felt
female
field
fight
figuratively
film
films
find
finding
fine
fire
flawed
focus
folks
food
foot
force
form
forms
fortunately
founder
franchise
franklin
frankly
frederica
front
fruitvale
frustration
fundamental
fundamentally
funny
gave
gay
gender
general
generally
generations
georgia
gina
girl
give
giving
gladd
globe
gonzalez
good
granted
gratifying
great
greater
greatly
greenlining
grew
grossed
group
groups
guard
guess
guest
guide
guiding
guy
guys
harvard
hashtag
heads
health
hear
heroes
hey
high
highest
hire
hiring
history
hmm
hollywood
home
homes
honor
hope
host
hot
hours
house
huge
human
humankind
hundreds
idea
ideals
ideas
identifying
image
images
imagination
imaginative
imagine
immigrant
impac
impact
implicit
importance
important
improvement
inclined
include
including
inclusion
inclusive
incorporate
increasing
increasingly
incredibly
india
indie
indigenous
individual
individuals
industries
industry
information
innocuous
insiders
instinctively
institution
integrate
interact
interesting
interns
internship
interrogating
intrigued
ironically
islander
issued
job
jocelyn
joy
judge
karen
kid
kids
kind
kindness
kinds
knew
lacks
language
large
late
laugh
laurels
learn
learned
leave
leonard
lesson
lessons
level
lie
lies
life
lights
likelihood
limiting
line
link
list
listening
literal
literally
live
lives
long
lopez
los
losing
lot
love
loved
lucky
making
malcolm
mall
managed
market
marquee
martin
massive
materials
matter
matters
means
media
meditation
medium
meet
men
mentioned
merit
meritocracy
met
metacritic
middle
miles
million
millions
mind
minimum
mirror
misinformation
mistreating
mixed
modeling
moment
moments
money
monitus
months
morally
mosque
movie
movies
multiplex
muslim
narrow
nation
negative
neologism
netflix
newman
nice
nights
north
notable
notion
number
numbers
obligation
obstacles
odds
oftentimes
older
open
opinions
opportunity
optimistic
order
organizations
organized
oscar
oscars
overcome
overrepresented
overseas
pacific
packaging
pandemic
panther
parents
part
partnered
passed
paths
patience
pedro
people
peoples
percent
perfectly
person
personally
perspective
peru
pipeline
place
planet
plastic
play
pleasure
point
poor
popular
portion
position
positive
power
powerful
practices
presents
pretentious
prevent
previously
priced
prince
principle
prior
problem
problems
process
produced
producing
productions
professor
profitable
profitably
program
progress
projected
projects
promise
providing
public
publicly
put
question
race
racial
rafael
rage
ragnarok
railroad
raises
ran
read
real
realize
reason
rebuild
reckoning
recognizing
reemerge
refugees
regard
regular
related
relationships
religion
religious
relying
remake
remember
remotely
reopen
reopened
repeated
representation
represented
reputable
requirements
resources
response
responsibility
responsible
rest
returns
revenue
review
reviewing
ripping
ritual
robot
robots
role
roof
room
rosado
rotten
rule
rules
running
rustics
ryan
saccharin
sacred
sadness
sandra
scared
scene
school
screen
screenplay
screenplays
screenwriters
screenwriting
script
scripts
seat
seek
sees
sell
senior
sense
sequences
set
seventy
sexuality
shares
sharply
shopping
shout
show
shows
shutter
siblings
side
sign
similar
similarly
simple
simply
sit
slightly
smith
social
sold
song
sort
sounds
sources
south
spaces
speak
spread
stacy
star
start
started
state
statement
states
station
step
stop
stopping
stories
storytelling
straight
strange
struck
structure
structured
studio
study
stuff
substantive
sudden
super
superhero
support
supportive
survey
sword
systemic
table
tackling
talented
talk
talking
tangible
taste
ted
television
telling
temple
tend
tendency
tens
tension
terms
terribly
thankful
theater
theaters
thinking
thor
thresholds
time
times
title
today
tomatoes
ton
top
tortures
totally
touch
trans
transportation
triage
true
trust
tut
tv
tycho
um
uncomfortable
undercover
underground
united
unproduced
unsellable
upper
usc
values
valuing
venice
view
virtual
visit
waititi
wales
wanted
wanting
waste
watch
watched
watches
watching
ways
week
weekend
weekends
weird
white
wildly
winning
wins
wisdom
woman
women
won
wondering
words
work
worked
workshops
world
writer
writers
wrong
wrote
yeah
year
years
yosfiah
younger
zealander