29 Executives and Writers from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Transcript:

Host: In your experience has it varied from company to company from executives to executives and just how much self-awareness they have about the fact that they’re not artists in that way.

Rosanne: Well you know if you could be a writer you would be. You can’t. So you’re telling them how to do it what they already do. Now that’s not completely true all the time. There are some executives who’ve become writers which is always very interesting. They finally decided that they couldn’t not do it and they went off and did it themselves which I think is lovely. I would say some however many years ago that was more — there was more difference. A lot of executives now certainly come out of film programs where they studied — one hopes they’ve studied some screenwriting. They don’t have to be screenwriters to study the format and then it’s about how instinctively they understand story and character and what makes something engaging to people and how can they communicate that to someone who has an idea. You know you can shape and mold something and be a real help. It’s almost like people who write novels. We think oh they write them all by themselves. Well no, they have editors at the publishing companies and editors make lots of changes and they make lots of suggestions and then, of course, it’s up to the writer to take them or not but if they don’t they generally don’t get their book published. So there’s a lot of collaboration there too and so the best executives are people who understand story and either don’t want to risk being writers because it’s pretty freelance you know take your chances or they’re truly the nurturing type of people that want to pull forward people with talent and that’s the powerful place to do it more so right? So it’s an interesting mix. It’s always important if you’re going to pitch to an executive to look them up figure out where they came from. You know, where did they study? What is their background? Sometimes they were you know in somehow in production previously or sometimes they came out of Harvard right and they just studied from somebody big or whatever that is. So it’s important to understand where they’re coming from so you can understand the kind of notes that they’re given and the kind of control they want or need to have or their ability to not need it — to trust you to do what they hired you to do.