How to challenge conventional wisdom -- and change any industry (with Franklin Leonard)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you think Hollywood needs to change? How about your own industry? It’s difficult to get decision makers to step outside of the tried and true and attempt something new. Franklin Leonard is Founder and CEO of The Black List-- a company that elevates great screenplays and the writers who create them. In this episode, he discusses how he shifted the way Hollywood works and how anyone can catalyze change if they start by questioning whether the conventional wisdom is all convention and no wisdom. More than 400 scripts from the annual Black List survey have been produced as feature films, earning 250 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins, including four of the last ten Best Pictures and ten of the last twenty-two screenwriting Oscars. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. who felt like everything at their job and in their industry just worked perfectly. |
| 0:14.8 | No room for improvement. |
| 0:16.3 | I definitely have not. |
| 0:17.4 | In fact, if I was talking to someone and they started to express anything even remotely |
| 0:21.1 | similar to that view, I would be like, okay, take off the disguise, you're my boss |
| 0:25.0 | undercover, I caught you riphand. My point is, whatever you do for work, there is clearly room for improvement. |
| 0:34.1 | Whether it's making hiring practices more inclusive |
| 0:36.8 | or limiting the plastic waste and packaging materials |
| 0:39.2 | or stopping the spread of misinformation, |
| 0:42.1 | we all have a role to play. And today's episode is all |
| 0:45.0 | about how to catalyze change. How do you get people to try something new when |
| 0:49.0 | they're already very familiar and very comfortable with these well-worn paths. |
| 0:54.2 | Well Franklin Leonard managed to do just that in Hollywood. |
| 0:57.7 | He created the blacklist. |
| 0:59.2 | It's a list of the unproduced screenplays that Hollywood insiders love the most. |
| 1:03.4 | And in doing so, he changed the way that Hollywood worked. |
| 1:06.5 | Once his script made that list, it made the blacklist and then powerful people started to see |
| 1:10.6 | that there was consensus that this script was actually amazing. |
| 1:13.2 | Well then these previously unsellable projects they started getting sold and |
| 1:18.1 | getting made and winning awards and here is how Franklin described the importance of |
| 1:22.2 | that in his talk at TEDx Venice Beach. |
| 1:25.0 | Simply put the conventional wisdom about screenwriting merit, where it was and where it could be found was wrong. |
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