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I Create, Therefore I Am. It's been a wild week this week. I lost a year's worth of e-mail into the ether because I refused to give up my Netscape Navigator for the more robust Internet Explorer. Idiot me. Kevin and I finally scored a pitch meeting next Monday with the Numbers two and three programming executives at CBS for our slate of four sponsor friendly Reality Shows. Only to have three major agents tell us our shows were all wrong for CBS. Bummer. Back to the drawing board for us, night and day between now and then. "Fight Club," my class at Cal State got a request from Jack Reilly, my Dept. Head, to submit any examples of "political advertising" we might have for an editorial in the "New Internationalist" Magazine. This threw five of my students and I into all-night mode this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to fulfill an offer I dare not refuse. The ads for http://2084.tv were terrific. Then a start-up software company retained me to create their entire spectrum of marketing materials in the next seven days. ? |
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One of IBM's agencies asked me if I had done any White Papers for Sun Microsystems, so I had to do a 16 page white paper on "Throughput Computing," in one day. My afore mentioned soul searching about the quality of my own creative work product compelled me to create a campaign for Internet Fraud Protection, which my agent promptly pitched to a contact at Wells Fargo who is now expecting it on Friday before noon to review over the weekend. My partner Joel reminded me that the slate of six network children's TV projects was due this coming Saturday along with a pilot pitch we are working on for yet another network. I'll get right on it Joel, right after I stroke out. |
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I want to know everything you know. I want to be just like you in every way I can. I'll do anything. ANYTHING you want, to make that happen. Just say the word. I just want you to teach me how to be just like you. I DO MEAN ANYTHING-Anon. Los Angeles Every now and then somebody get's the urge to send me an e-mail that they are certain I won't reprint. This is the third time for this one. There. I posted it. Now fuck @#%-HW |
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was also the perfect time to begin the mural of Disney characters
I had been promising my daughter Jasmine would magically appear on
her wall in time for her playdate with the kids from her preschool
class this coming Sunday. And now I've got this column to write and
launch on Tuesday night before I can get my required three hours of
sleep. Life is good.
It's usually during times like these that I begin to sing, "A Pirate's life for me. A Pirate's life for me. Yo-ho-ho-ho,A Pirate's life for me." I stretch back in my leather Captain's Chair in my studio loft overlooking 500 pristine acres of Hollywood Hills just under the Hollywood sign and imagine myself as Captain Jack Sparrow at large on the high seas in search of plunder and pieces of eight. You see the only thing one can do when faced with an impossible workload due in an improbable timeline, is plunder the work of those who have gone before. Search out the fruits of their hard earned labor and pillage it for your own nefarious purposes. "Yo-ho-ho-ho,A Pirate's life for me." Copyright? We don't heed no stinking copyright. A title here, mixed with a title there, crossed with an illustration from this Black Book spliced into a subhead from One Show Volume 16...wait...add a phrase from Kevin Kelly's "Out Of Control," and you've got it. A Reality Show CBS will die to buy. One down, three to go. And so it is that the "creative" process rips its way forward, plagiarizing as it goes to recycle in Frankensteinian fashion, yet another generation of work product for sale. Many philosophers have set forth the notion that there are no "original" ideas, only retreads of that which has passed before. I don't know if something can be derivative and "original" at the same time. One of my students did a magnificent job of adapting a website full of pirated stock photo images, hacked apart and artfully reassembled into nothing even remotely resembling their former selves. He was crushed to discover that the images had been digitally watermarked so that the smallest component could still be traced to it's rightful owner. You can't overtly outwit rights protection technology. You have to be downright devious, to make it work. As my late great friend and partner Dan Cracchiolo said about his production of "The Matrix." "Everybody's worried about us ripping off their script. We don't rip off scripts in Hollywood. We rip off scenes." The same technology that seeks to "protect", also serves to enable ways around that protection. And so, on I go."Yo-ho-ho-ho,A Pirate's life for me." A frame from a commercial here, an obscure painting from a famous artist there, a scene from "Potemkin" done in reverse here. A lyric from "Goliath" by James Brown there and Jola. My software start up campaign, done. Next victim. It's time to demystify the creative process. All you "suits" out there. You can do what we do, with just a few easy lessons. Lesson Number One. Everything is fare game. Especially the work of your competitors. For example, say you are in the IT business. Take a look at these theme lines.
You need a theme for your IT company? To hell with paying some high-priced wonker like me, to dream one up for you. Just go to the trusty cut and paste mode. Start with: The computer Is The Network. See Your Potential In The Future. Everyday Life Runs On Oracle. On Demand Business. Spotlight On Innovation. Everything Dell. Go to: "The computer Is The Network See Your Potential In The Future Everyday Life Runs On Oracle On Demand Business Spotlight On Innovation Everything Dell." Commence to cut, like so: " The Network Sees Your Potential. The Future, Everyday. Life On Demand. Business Innovation Everything." Now add a few words here and there: " The Network Sees Your Potential. The Future Happens Everyday. Life On Demand. In Business Innovation Is Everything." Now test all four or just close your eyes and pick one. That's how we do it. How about: "Innovation Is Everything." Works for me. Now take that $5 mil some agency would have charged you for the same thing and take it to your bottom line. See, that wasn't so hard, was it? Now act like you know and repeat after me. "I create. Therefore I am. I create. Therefore I am. I create. Therefore I am." O.K. You are now a full-fledged "Creative." You know what that means. Ready?...In the key of G major. One, two, three.." Ohhhh. A Pirate's life for me. A Pirate's life for me. Yo-ho-ho-ho, A Pirate's life for me. ( Vamp 'til smugly self-satisfied)
Stay Tuned.
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