Moments of Conception 005 — The Xerox Scene from The Pirates of Silicon Valley

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

And so, in this new blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the Xerox scene of The Pirates of Silicon Valley:

 So, what did they do right?

Good artists copy,
great artists steal.
According to the bestselling biography Steve Jobs, the Xerox agreement was
sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of history. But
the subtext is, it’s not because Jobs stumbled across some random fragment of
an idea and casually incorporated it into his own strategy. He was ruthless,
shameless and intentional. Apple knew whom
they wanted to steal from, what they
wanted to steal, and most importantly, how
to persuade them to let them steal it. And, like any successful car thief, once
they brought the stolen hotrod back to the garage, within twenty four hours, it
had a new paint job, new rims, new tires, a convertible top and a better
designed dice in the mirror. That’s not theft, that’s theater. Proving, that it
doesn’t matter if you steal something, it only matters what you do with it once
you’ve stolen it.

Ideas are free, only
execution is priceless.
Xerox’s technologies of the mouse, the graphic
interface and the programming language were genius. But they were also ahead of
their time. And because their team lacked the taste and design and finesse when
it came to prototyping, presenting and the persuading their board of directions,
they failed to realize their concepts. Steve, on the other hand, was five moves
ahead. And as anyone in the startup world will tell you, he who ships first,
wins. Ultimately”, with the help of his trademark reality distortion field, he
convinced Xerox to open the kimono and share their new concepts in exchange for
an equity investment. Who do you think got the short end of that digital stick?
Jobs out executed the competition. He didn’t have an idea, he had an I did. To
quote the Steve Jobs biography once
again, “The mark of an innovative
company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it
knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind.”

Everything is prey. This
scene perfectly points out the astonishing short sightedness and lack of
imagination of top corporate executives. Steve knew the Xerox was sitting on a
goldmine, and yet, he couldn’t believe they hadn’t yet commercialized their
technology. And so, his philosophy was, if these dolts are so dense that they can’t
realize the economic and cultural value of this software­­, that they, themselves, have developed, then
they don’t deserve to have it. Xerox wasn’t worthy of their own innovation. And
in the words of my favorite country song, “I could love you better than that, I
know how to make you forget her, all I’m asking is for one little chance, baby
I can love you better.” Jobs was right. It comes down to trying to expose
yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those
things into what you’re doing.

What’s your favorite movie moment of conception?

Be There Before The Light Arrives

Andrew Bird is an innovative musician, songwriter, multi
instrumentalist, and quite possibly the most talented whistler in the history
of folk music. He’s also a regular columnist for The New York Times, contributing occasional articles on how to
write a song and other mysteries, pulling back the curtain on his creative
process and the pleasures and pains of being a musician.

In one particular article, he recalls the childhood memory
of learning the language of music through repetition and molding. Specifically,
by chewing his cereal along to melodies, breathing in and out to music in every
waking moment:

“At any moment, I’ll
have half a dozen strong, fully realized melodies all filed away in my head. And
when I’m waiting for a plane or walking across town, I can mentally access any
of the melodies, press play, and begin fiddling with them. The goal is not to
arrive at a perfectly crafted melody and stay there, but to find fertile ground
where that spark of conception keeps firing every time I sit down to play.”

Andrew proves that it’s not being in the light, it’s about
being there before it arrives. Or, to take it one step further, instead of
waiting to be hit by the light, he decides to become the light instead.

Moments of Conception 004 — The Sweaty Toothed Madman Scene from Dead Poets Society

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

Edward DeBono, the godfather of creativity, has published a
substantial amount of research on this process of fully fleshing out your work.
He calls the process movement value, the discipline of identifying
concepts that allow you to breed other ideas from those concepts. It’s the practice of finding the pivot point
that alters the trajectory of your creative expression. Debono’s work found that the process ofmaking the word become flesh,to use a biblical metaphor, can
actually become a form of muscle memory, allowing us to become more prolific than we ever thought possible.

And so, in this new blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from The Dead Poets Society:

So, what did they do right?



Learn to love what’s
good for you.
Schulman writes in theoriginal screenplay, “Todd is dying
inside. All eyes are on him. He stands and walks slowly to the front of the
class like a condemned man on his way to his execution.” There isn’t an artist
alive who hasn’t had that experience. It’s the kind of fear claws around in your
chest like a trapped animal trying to get out. After all, the acceptance of
having our work counted as the real, the approval of having people like it,
these are the things we crave. And so, Todd perfectly portrays a kid who’s paralyzed
by the risk of rejection. Now that he’s watched his friend recite an original
poem in front of the group, only to be met with crickets and wind, the last
thing he wants to do is stand up next. Keating, however, spots Todd’s
resignation as an indication of artistic potential. And he pounces on him in
the best way possible.

Get the creative faucet flowing. Keating doesn’t just gives his pupil the stage, he
gives him the freedom and encouragement to follow his most impractical
curiosities. We should all be so lucky to have a mentor like that. Someone who
loves us enough to shove us. Because
in that moment of free association, where Keating tells him
to answer instead of think,
where he
forces him to create without the burden of perfection,
to capture every syllable of
delirium that floats into his mind and kick it back out into the world, Todd sends
a shockwave through everyone in the room, including himself. And his poem
elicits a physiological response from the audience in the form of gasps and
smiles and nods and claps. Proving, that
there’s nothing like being
tossed into necessity to help you figure out who you are.

You can’t wink in the
dark forever.
It’s a cold and hostile world when you step outside of the
echo chamber. Audiences
bring pressure and feedback and perspective and judgment. And the minute you
stand up in front of them,
you realize that you’re no longer the tree in
the forest. Todd, face to
face with his peers and his fears,
becomes
completely naked. And when his
friends start to laugh at the words he says, his face swells and turns red.
Humiliation unearths his raw anger. But even though he struggles to spit it
out, he finally utters the words: From
the moment we enter crying, to the moment we leave dying, it will cover just
your head as you wail and cry and scream.
Stunning. Todd produces a magical
and defiant moment that nobody in that room will ever forget.



What’s your favorite movie moment of conception?


Many Roads Lead to the Unconscious Mind

All artists
create actively from the unconscious.

But there are just as many tools for doing so as there are
artists to use them.

When I graduated from college and started my publishing
company, I took an interest in meditation. I began practicing a number of
techniques including deep breathing, hypnosis, guided imagery and progressive
muscle relaxation.

What’s interesting is, my motivation wasn’t necessarily to
increase creativity, but to decrease stress. As my therapist used to say, once those waves of anxiety come
crashing in, don’t let yourself get sucked into the undertow, grab a surfboard
and ride the anxiety back to shore. The surfboard, naturally, was the
mechanical tool of meditation, and the shore was my relaxed state of being.

Which was an appropriate metaphor for meditation,
considering the timeless advice from surrealist filmmaker and meditation
advocate, David Lynch:

“Ideas are like fish.
The little ones swim on the surface, but the big ones, the fish that are more
powerful, pure, abstract and beautiful, swim down below. And so, if you can
expand the container you’re fishing in­­, your subconscious, you can catch
bigger fish.”

That’s precisely what meditation did for me. Over time, as the
practice became a staple in my daily routine, my creative container got bigger.
Much bigger. The practice helped me catch the big fish as they swam by. Meditation
allowed me wake up to what had been there all along.

But everyone wakes up in their own unique way. As I make my
daily rounds, poring over interviews with a variety of creators from a diverse
range of websites, blogs and podcasts, I’m constantly fascinated by each
artist’s approach to tapping into the unconscious mind.

Especially the more, ahem, organic approaches.

Kevin Smith, veteran filmmaker and quite possibly the most
prolific podcaster of all time, also happens to be a prolific pot smoker. He’s
an outspoken advocate for the effects of marijuana on creativity, touting its
ability to stimulate divergent thinking, encourage the chasing of whimsies,
knock down his creative inhibitions, increase the capacity for wonder and awe, and
of course, turn off his inner editor while writing.

In fact, he made a deal with himself when he started smoking:

“Instead of watching
television all day and upholding the stoner stereotype, if I am ever going to
smoke, I will tie it to something creative or productive.”

Not surprisingly, Kevin’s views on drugs became somewhat
controversial as. But there is a fascinating footnote to his smoke filled story.
Smith says that every once in awhile, some web troll or film critic will
suggest that he’s become a lazy stoner who doesn’t produce anything anymore. So
now, at the beginning of every year, he writes a blog post that provides an
accounting of his time in the previous year. And in the past few years, each
year’s list usually includes hundreds of podcasts, live performances,
television shows and at least two movies.

So much for the stereotype.

Ultimately, there are many roads that lead to the
unconscious mind. Some sleep strategically, some meditate regularly, some
intoxicate judiciously.

But the goal is always the same. If you want to become a
prolific collector, creator and communicator of ideas, identify which tools and
rituals and practices will most actively allow you to work from the
unconscious.

And you can wake up­­––or bake up––to what’s been here all along.

Moments of Conception 003 — The Manifesto Scene from Jerry Maguire

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, George Carlin. But when you read the book, you’re surprised at his discipline and drive and insight into the creative process. Here’s my favorite passage:



“Initially, ideas come together the way galaxies do, they
just naturally clump, simply because they’re related, like an extended family
of ideas around a general topic. But over time, they become parts that fit and
function together, which you then gradually formed into a whole.”

That’s our job as collectors, creators and communicators of ideas. Developing the habit of recognizing beginnings. Believing that every moment of conception has an engine, a spark, an energy source and a pulse that all the other ideas hum with and grow from and move around and work off of.

And so, in this new blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the manifesto scene of Jerry Maguire:

So, what did he do right?

Follow that vibe and
see where it takes you.
Jerry awakes in the middle of the night,  trembling. He can’t sleep. He can’t breathe. And
when he stumbles out of bed, he can’t even walk straight. This is a new feeling, he thinks to himself. But why? Is it
because he’s stuck at some crappy hotel at his annual corporate conference? Is
because he’s at a crossroads of his career, about to have the breakthrough of a
lifetime? Doesn’t matter. His brain has to take cues from his body. He
has to listen to what wants to be written. He has to purge and exhale until
there’s nothing left. So, to the laptop he goes. And within a few minutes, he activates the
creative subroutine in his head, brings up his energy level and snaps himself
into the appropriate state of mind to do his work. Now he’s in flow. Plunging into
action and building momentum. And there’s no stopping him until that vein is out. The lightning
struck and he was there to channel it.

Find a
portable home for your creativity.
Jerry doesn’t have the home field advantage.
This isn’t his bliss station, his personalized workspace that makes him feel in
control. He’s trapped inside a stale, claustrophobic, uninspiring hotel room.
He doesn’t even have a desk, just a tiny coffee table over which to squat like
a rookie catcher. And yet, he manages to convert this space into his transportable lightning rod. Maguire
makes the most of his creative environment. Look closely, and you’ll
see snacks and coffee
cups and legal pads and sticky notes and crumpled papers scattered across the
floor. This environment is exactly what Jerry needed to launch his trajectory
of thinking and writing and crafting and expressing, in a way that feels
meaningful. He even brings himself to tears, which signifies to him that he’s onto
something, because finally telling the truth. As it reads in the originalscreenplay, “There is a direct line from the deepest part of him to the words
he’s typing. His fingers fly.”

Memorialize your process with a
product.
Jerry doesn’t walk down the stairs, he dances. He runs
through the pouring rain to the nearest copy shop to print out a hundred
copies, one for every employee in the firm. But here’s why. First, if you don’t
write it down, it never happened. Ever.
The brain is a terrible office, and everything you know needs to be written
down somewhere. Secondly, hard copies are devices for building commitment,
confidence and competence. Any prototype, crude and imperfect as it may be, addsenergy to the system and moves the creative ball forward. And, it gives the creator the
psychological pat on the back that
saturates their consciousness with
victory. Lastly, Jerry’s mental obsession
now has a physical expression. Shit just got real. And nothing beats that little dancing smile of satisfaction. I
especially love when the copy clerk validates Jerry’s work by reminding him, “That’s
how you become great, man, by hanging your balls out there.”

What’s your favorite movie moment of conception?

Your First Project Doesn’t Have to be Good, Just Done

Prolificacy hinges on the power of one.

History is rife with examples of famous creators
and artists whose first projects, imperfect as they may have been, still got their careers on the runway:

The movie From Dusk
Till Dawn
wasn’t huge at the box office, but it launched George Clooney’s
career as a movie star. Since then, he’s received over one hundred nominations
and won more than fifty awards as an actor, writer and director.

The song Oh Susanna
didn’t earn Stephen Foster much money, but it launched his career as a musician
and composer who wrote hundreds of songs and earned multiple spots in
songwriting halls of fame.

The book, And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street,
was never as popular as any of Dr. Seuss’s later works, but it launched his
career as the most beloved and prolific cartoonist and children’s author of all
time.

In the classic slasher film Halloween, actress Jamie Lee Curtis was only paid eight thousand
dollars for her performance, but it launched her career as a scream queen and
allowed her to compile a body of work that spanned many genres.

The band Black Flag
once allowed superfan Henry Rollins to perform on stage with them, and that
impromptu audition launched his career as a musician, writer, journalist,
publisher, actor, radio host, spoken word artist and activist.

The soundtrack When
Harry Met Sally
included mostly jazz standards, but it allowed Harry
Connick Jr. to further expand his career as a musician to the national stage,
ultimately selling twenty eight million albums worldwide.

The movie In Old Santa
Fe
featured Gene Autry, who only sang on screen for ten minutes, but it
launched his career as a singing cowboy on the radio, in movies, and on television
for more than three decades.

If you want to get on the runway, prolificacy hinges on the
power of one.

Moments of Conception 002 — The Status Scene from The Social Network

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

There’s a fascinating book called The Demon and the Angel, written by award winning poet and critic,
Edward Hirsch. It explores the creative process by recounting and analyzing the
mysterious forces that inspired famous creators in history, from poets to
authors to musicians to painters. In the final chapterd of the book, the author concludes with
an eloquent and inspiring vision of how different artists respond to the power
and demonic energy of the creative impulse:

“Inspiration is
burning on the rooftops, moving through secret passageways and windy
staircases, through corridors of light, precarious thrones, scarlet mountain
ranges. It is carved in stone in crumbling apartment buildings, country
churches, abandoned cemeteries, gathering its strength in railroad yards at
sunset that are tinged with immaterial reds, ghostly blues. It flames out like
shining from shook foil, like twenty thousand stars purpling at midnight. It
flashes its sword in the gate, and troubles your dreams. It is a cry that rises
out of human body and annunciates the constant baptism of newly created things.
Listen closely and you may hear a voice that cries from very far down inside
you. That voice is trumpeting a liberation.”

That’s our job as collectors, creators and communicators of ideas. Developing the habit of recognizing beginnings. Believing that every moment of conception has an engine, a spark, an energy source and a pulse that all the other ideas hum with and grow from and move around and work off of.

And so, in this new blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the computer lab scene from The Social Network:

So, what does he do right?

Creativity is the highest form of active listening. Mark could almost taste the urgency and desperation and hormonal longing in his roommate’s request. But instead of dismissing his friend’s desire as an inconvenient interruption to his busy day, he said yes to the moment. He kept the ball in play. And the instant he envisioned an absurd world where college students broadcast their relationship statuses like a badge, he knew he was onto something real, practical and interesting. Because he wasn’t just listening to the voice of a user, but the voice of a generation.

Get the idea to ground zeroMark didn’t take notes, he took action. Socially awkward as it may have been to stop himself mid sentence, walk out on his friend’s conversation without saying goodbye, stumble down a flight of stairs and trudge through the snow in wearing cargo shorts and flip flops, he did what he had to do to capture his thinking before it vaporized. Mark knew that if he doesn’t write it down, it never happened. Or, if he did write it down, but failed to take action on it, somebody else would make it happen.


Usefulness leads to importance. Mark realized that relationship status was what drove life at college. Students want to get laid. Period. All signs point to that objective. And so, because he understood that fundamental attribute of the people in his community, he exploited it to his advantage. He put humanity at the center of design. And as a result, his idea forever changed the way human beings thought about relationship statuses. Proving, that if you design something useful, you’re ninety percent of the way.

What’s your favorite movie moment of conception?

The World Will Not Devote Itself To Making Us Happy

Gallup has been conducting public opinion polls for the
past eighty years.

Founded by one of the great market researchers of the last
century, their name has become synonymous with relevant, timely, and accurate
research on what people around the world think and feel.

In their annualhappiness and well being index, their survey
questions ask people to think about yesterday, from the morning until the end
of the day, reflecting on where they were, what they were doing, whom they were
with and how they felt. And they pose a series of specific questions, asking
people to remember the following:



If they were
treated with respect all day, if they smiled and laughed and learned something
interesting, if they were satisfied with their job and the work they did, if they
got to use their strengths to do what they do best, and if the people at work
created an environment that was trusting and open.

Happiness, then, seems to be driven more by experiences
than by things. Not just by the hedonic
pleasures of the senses, but also the eudaimonic
joys of connection.Having a horizon to point to. Having multiple
centers of belonging. Having a daily doorway toboth sustenance and sanity.Having
things in our lives that make us excited to wake up in the morning. Having a
combination of positive emotion, engagement and meaning and satisfaction.



The irony is, inasmuch as we need to relate to and connect
with others to become happy, the world will not devote itself to
makingus happy.

Ultimately, we are still accountable for our own happiness.

Moments of Conception 001: The Rooftop Scene from Coyote Ugly

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That
initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note
from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an
idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

I’m reminded of an
interesting interview
with Rob Bell, the renowned author, pastor and filmmaker. He was asked about
the creative process of his first bestseller, Velvet Elvis, which launched his career as one of the great mass communicators
of the last decade. Rob
told this story about the driving force of his
creative projects:

“There’s usually some
moment, like the moment of conception. There’s a distinct aha and then quickly
a number of other disparate things, that have nothing to do with it all of the
sudden, have something to do with it. It’s like, boom, and then story, story,
story, story, quote, statistic, newspaper article, story, insight, truth. And
now there are six things on that page, and I don’t even know what they all have
to do with each other. But I know they all have to do with that one fundamental
insight. Everything just grows from there.”

That’s our job as collectors, creators and communicators of
ideas. Developing the habit of recognizing beginnings. Believing that every
moment of conception has an engine, a spark, an energy source and a pulse that all
the other ideas hum with and grow from and move around and work off of.

And so, in this new blog series, I’m going to be
deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post
will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons
we can learn from the characters.

Today’s case study comes from the rooftop scene of Coyote Ugly:

So, what does she do right?



1. She physically
displaces herself.
Violet’s ratty old apartment has paper thin walls. In the scene before this one, when
she tries to play music indoors, her next door neighbors yell at
her to stop. That’s why she resigns to the rooftop to rehearse. And as a
result, the change of scenery serves the process. It alters her routines and
patterns, which stimulates creativity. It forces her out of her physical
comfort zone, which literally gives her new perspective.And it provides
her with apurposeful and private songwriting sanctuary, free of the
existential torrents and demands of life, where she can reconnect to herself.


2. She stops resisting
and starts investigating.
Violet honors the unintentional music from her
uninvited collaborator. Rather than ignoring or eradicating the dancer’s song,
she loves and accepts it. She makes herself entirely open and vulnerable to
every shred of stimuli that crosses her path. Instead of seeing disturbing or
unwanted sounds as resistance to her creativity, she transforms the distraction
into a thing of beauty. The competing artist’s becomes a bell of awareness, not
a threat to her work.


3. She steals properly. Violet has a well toned thievery muscle. Although the hip hop song has a completely different tempo, genre and attitude
than her singer songwriter acoustic pop stylings, it doesn’t stop her from
merging with the dancer. That guy’s song is fair game. It’s hers for the
plucking.And
so, shesuperimposes her own meaning onto his story. She makes it her
own. She turns a seed into a forest. And thanks to her dancing neighbor, she ends somewhere else, somewhere different, somewhere better.

What’s your favorite movie moment of conception?

Find Something That Has Magic In It For You

Jason Reitman is a film director, screenwriter and producer best
known for directing the films Thank You
for Smoking
, Juno and Up in the Air. But before he made a name
for himself in the movie business, he was first known as the son of the famous
movie director, Ivan Reitman. And as kids are known to do, he initially sought
out the polar opposite path his father.

During a recent podcast interview, the young director told the
unexpected story about his father’s reaction to this career choice:

“I went premed because
nobody questions why you want to be a doctor. And when my father visited me at
school, he said look, there’s no profession nobler than that, and if you became
a doctor, I’ll be over the moon. But I don’t think being a doctor is actually
in your heart. You’re doing it because you’re afraid. You need to find
something that has magic in it for you. You’re a storyteller, and you should
stop being so scared of that.”

After that pivotal conversation, he went on to make a series
of short independent films, one of which won several prestigious film festival
awards, all of which launched his career as successful director.

Jason, like so many artists and innovators and
entrepreneurs, willingly took on a career that promised a lot of raised
eyebrows. He existed in culture that often treated his work as frivolous. And
yet, he still pursued that path because he found something magical in it. Filmmaking
was his first ecstatic experience. His rightful work in the human family.
Because it forced him to act from his own center. 

And the process made him
alive in all his parts and powers, exposing a gift he couldn’t escape no matter
how hard he tried.

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