How to Gain Some Leverage When You Have None
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 9:11 am
How to Gain Some Leverage When You Have None by Jon Herring
In an interview in Fortune magazine, Academy-Award-winning producer Brian Grazer was asked, "What's the best piece of advice you ever got?"
He replied that when he was starting out in his career, he spent a year trying to get a meeting with the two chiefs of MCA. Finally, they let him in. And they gave him the following advice:
"In order for you to be in the entertainment business, you have to have leverage. Since you have none - no money, no pedigree, no valuable relationships - you must have creative leverage. That exists only in your mind. So you need to write - put what's in your mind on paper. Then you'll own a piece of paper. That's leverage."
With that, Grazer went on to write the screenplay for the movie "Splash," a fantasy he had in his mind about meeting a mermaid. Since then, the "pieces of paper" he owns have generated more than $2.5 billion.
In an interview in Fortune magazine, Academy-Award-winning producer Brian Grazer was asked, "What's the best piece of advice you ever got?"
He replied that when he was starting out in his career, he spent a year trying to get a meeting with the two chiefs of MCA. Finally, they let him in. And they gave him the following advice:
"In order for you to be in the entertainment business, you have to have leverage. Since you have none - no money, no pedigree, no valuable relationships - you must have creative leverage. That exists only in your mind. So you need to write - put what's in your mind on paper. Then you'll own a piece of paper. That's leverage."
With that, Grazer went on to write the screenplay for the movie "Splash," a fantasy he had in his mind about meeting a mermaid. Since then, the "pieces of paper" he owns have generated more than $2.5 billion.
