Fortune's Path Podcast

Chris Barkley - How to Make it in Independent Film

Episode Summary

Chris Barkley has a name for the thing that quietly wastes an artist's years: the Hollywood no. Nobody tells you your work is bad. They tell you to keep going. It's kind, and it's a form of dishonesty — and Chris would rather you heard the other version, even when it stings. Chris and I got into: — Why a good script isn't good enough anymore, and what the one-in-five-hundred ones do differently — What a Nashville songwriter told Chris at twenty-one that changed how he writes — How you can tell a performance is fake before you can say why — And why the clip you saw go viral had thirty thousand dollars behind it.

Episode Notes

What does it actually take to break into show business? Chris Barkley has produced three feature films, reads scripts for The Black List, and votes on film of the year for the Producers Guild — which means he sits on the side of the table where the answer is usually no. Chris and host Tom Noser dig into why that no is almost never honest, what separates the one or two great scripts Chris has read in fifteen years from the other five hundred, and why age matters less for actors than the people telling you it's too late. Plus: the police-uniform test for whether a performance is real, why the industry is hungrier for content than it has ever been, and the uncomfortable truth that the clip you saw go viral was paid for.

In this episode, Chris and Tom discuss:

• The Hollywood no — Why nobody tells an artist their work is bad, how that kindness costs people years, and the difference between a professional note and unprofessional honesty
• How spec scripts actually sell — Work for hire and what a writer gives up, The Black List and Franklin Leonard's reclaiming of a poisoned word, and Scott Myers' free catalogue of every spec deal since 1991
• Good versus great — Why Chris has read one or two great scripts in fifteen years out of roughly five hundred, why most fall apart in the first twenty pages, and why typos get read as character
• Structure versus character — What has to happen by page two, page ten, and the end of Act One, and whether Syd Field's architecture still holds up
• Write what you know — but know something — The advice the late Nashville songwriter Wayne Perry gave Chris at twenty-one, and what it means for anyone stuck at their desk
• What makes a performance land — Code-switching in Huckleberry Finn and James, the friend Chris trusts to be exactly who he is, and the police-uniform test for authenticity
• Abundance, not scarcity — Why creative envy misreads the market, what vertical micro-dramas and casting at internet scale have changed, and what fewer buyers actually threatens
• Making it versus selling it — Why virality is purchased, how clip farms manufacture the appearance of consensus, and why you shouldn't quit until you've exhausted the marketing half of the job