St. Louis, MO – January 30, 2026 - When I first noticed The Rip climbing Netflix’s charts, I assumed it would be another well-made, star-driven crime thriller. I expected it to be entertaining, topical, and quickly absorbed into the ever-moving current of streaming content. Here today, gone tomorrow. That assumption wasn’t wrong. But it also wasn’t the point. What makes The Rip worth paying attention to isn’t just the story it tells on screen, or even the fact that it draws inspiration from real events. What makes The Rip notable is what happened behind the scenes. The business story behind the storytelling is what made me want to watch the film and write this. I’m talking specifically about how the film was financed, structured, and compensated. Quietly, without fanfare, The Rip has become a test case for something the streaming era has largely stripped away: shared upside for creators. It didn’t overturn the dominant streaming model. It didn’t restore traditional backend participation. But it did crack open a door that many in the industry had begun to assume was permanently sealed. And that’s why it matters. The Typical Streaming Deal Over the last decade, streaming platforms led by Netflix have normalized a model that most creators now take for granted: large upfront payments, no backend, and no performance participation. Streaming disrupted the Hollywood business model that had been in place for generations. It ushered in a new era that has profoundly impacted how creators make money. From a business perspective, the current model makes sense for streamers. They assume the risk. They write big checks. They remove uncertainty. In return, they retain the upside. For many creators, especially those trying to get projects made in an increasingly competitive market, this tradeoff initially felt reasonable. But over time, something else happened. The economics of storytelling flattened. When a film performs far beyond expectations, the creative team doesn’t share in that success. When it underperforms, they’re insulated. Everyone is paid the same regardless of outcome. This isn’t inherently exploitative. But it is structurally indifferent to excellence and basic market dynamics. When incentives are disconnected from results, collaboration becomes transactional. Development becomes compressed. And storytelling, particularly true storytelling, becomes more vulnerable to shortcuts. That’s the environment The Rip entered. What Makes The Rip Different Unlike most Netflix originals, The Rip deal with the production studio Artist Equity included a performance-based bonus structure tied to viewership benchmarks in its initial release window. If the film performed well, additional compensation flowed, not just to the stars, but across a broad swath of the cast and crew. It has been widely reported that roughly 1,200 cast and crew members, from above-the-line to below-the-line workers, are eligible for one-time bonuses if internal benchmarks are met. This structure is unprecedented for Netflix . More importantly, it demonstrates what becomes possible when leverage is paired with a coherent studio model. To be clear, this isn’t traditional backend participation. There are no residuals in the classic sense. No ownership stake changed hands. The bonuses are one-time, capped, and limited in scope. But they matter. They matter because they acknowledge something the streaming model often ignores. Success is the result of collective effort. And when success is shared, even modestly, it changes how people experience their work. Sharing in success isn’t ideological. In talent-driven enterprises, it’s simply sound business. Roughly 1,200 people who helped bring The Rip to life had a reason to care about how the film performed beyond professional pride. That may sound small. It isn’t. It’s a recognition that creative labor doesn’t end at delivery. Outcomes matter. Everyone has a stake in success and shares in the upside. The Role of the Studio Artists Equity This deal didn’t happen by accident. It happened because The Rip was produced by Artists Equity , the production company founded by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Artists Equity was created with a specific mission: to rebalance how value is shared in Hollywood by leveraging star power, transparency, and studio-level thinking. What’s important here isn’t celebrity. It’s structure. Artists Equity isn’t a vanity shingle. It’s a studio attempting to formalize principles many creators talk about but rarely operationalize—clarity, alignment, and participation. In the case of T he Rip , that meant using leverage to negotiate a deal that acknowledged performance. Not ownership, but outcome. That distinction matters. Why It Matters More for the Creators Than for the Stars It’s easy to dismiss this story as another example of A-list talent securing better terms. While it is true that Affleck and Damon could get a better deal than someone like you or me, that misses the point. Affleck and Damon didn’t negotiate this structure to increase their own upside. They negotiated it to extend upside to others. That’s a meaningful shift. For below-the-line creatives like editors, animators, designers, technicians, this kind of structure sends a clear signal: your contribution matters beyond delivery. You are not invisible once the check clears. For creators who have grown accustomed to flat fees and limited recognition, that signal restores dignity to the work. And dignity in creative collaboration isn’t abstract. It directly affects trust, morale, and long-term sustainability. It is the right way to do business. It aligns with our STORYSMART® Way. Why True Stories Raise the Stakes The Rip is inspired by real events. That alone elevates the conversation. True stories aren’t just intellectual property. They involve real people, reputations, families, and legacies. They live longer than release windows. They echo. When incentives are misaligned in true-story filmmaking, the consequences aren’t just creative, they’re ethical. Performance-based incentives won’t solve every problem in this space. But they do reinforce accountability. When success is shared, care tends to increase. Development tends to deepen. Decisions slow down just enough to matter. We’ve all seen what happens when true stories are rushed, underdeveloped, or extracted without alignment. The damage isn’t always visible on opening weekend, but it compounds over time. That’s why The Rip ’s deal matters more because of the kind of story it tells. What This Might Signal About the Future Let’s be clear: The Rip is not a revolution. Netflix hasn’t abandoned its flat-fee model, and performance-based bonuses remain rare. Most creators won’t suddenly gain access to backend-style participation. But this deal does signal something important: flexibility exists when leverage is paired with structure. Change doesn’t come from complaining about the system. It comes from building models that make alternative structures viable. Artists Equity didn’t ask Netflix to change its philosophy. They offered a contained experiment that aligned incentives without undermining the platform’s economics. That’s how real shifts begin. The Studio Lesson Creators Shouldn’t Miss The most important takeaway from The Rip isn’t the bonus pool. It’s the studio thinking behind it. Equity followed leverage. Leverage followed organization. Organization followed a studio model. This is why one-off projects struggle to negotiate better terms. They lack continuity, scale, and repeatability. Studios don’t. This is also why collectives, slates, and development-first models matter. They create environments where alignment is possible before contracts are signed and cameras roll. That’s not ideology. It’s infrastructure. My STORYSMART® Worldview I believe story development, not production, is the new power position in storytelling. The Rip reinforces that belief. This wasn’t a production-stage concession. It was a development-stage decision. Rights, incentives, and expectations were addressed early—before momentum made them inconvenient. That’s the throughline I see connecting The Rip , Artists Equity, and the broader shift many creators sense but struggle to articulate. For too long, value in this industry has accrued to middle layers while creators absorbed the risk. Distribution benefited. Creators scraped by. The most durable storytelling models I see emerging today share a common trait: they address development, rights, and incentives early, before value is diluted downstream. The Rip didn’t change the industry. But it reminded us that structure, not noise, is still the lever that moves it. And for creators, story sources, and anyone building for the long term, that signal is worth paying attention to. - - Ron Watermon , Founder & CEO of STORYSMART®

One of the central arguments I make in my book is simple, but it tends to unsettle people the longer they sit with it: A topic is not a story. It sounds obvious. And yet, in practice, this distinction is violated constantly, especially in documentary and true-story work. We talk about “important topics,” “timely subjects,” and “stories that need to be told,” often using those phrases interchangeably. But interest, urgency, or access do not automatically produce narrative. They produce material. A story is something else entirely. A story is designed. It has intention. It asks a specific question and leads an audience somewhere on purpose. When that distinction gets blurred, development becomes less about shaping meaning and more about accumulating content and hoping coherence reveals itself later. That confusion sits at the root of many projects that start with energy and stall somewhere between production and post. In my experience, most of the problems that show up late in a project, such bloated runtimes, unclear stakes, ethical discomfort, or editorial paralysis are not editing problems. They are development problems that were deferred. As a rule, I believe you should always begin a project with the end in mind. When it comes to filmmaking, that means you don’t fix in post, you fix in pre. How “ Fishing for the Story ” Became the Default Within documentary filmmaking, a particular development model has become widely normalized: begin with a topic, get access, start recording, and let the story “emerge” over time. This approach has real pedigree. Discovery-driven, observational, and vérité traditions have produced some of the most meaningful documentary work ever made. There is an honesty to sustained observation. It is organic. Not contrived. There is humility in admitting you don’t yet know what the story is. And yet, over time, this method has quietly become less of a choice and more of a default, especially in independent documentary culture. Many filmmakers embark on projects by fishing for a story. They conduct dozens, sometimes hundreds of interviews. They collect years of footage. They hold off on decisive narrative choices because the process itself is meant to reveal them. Development, in this model, is not something you complete. It is something you endure. There are structural reasons this approach took hold. Grant cycles reward careful exploration, detailed journalistic discovery, and thesis-driven academic rigor. Festivals celebrate discovery. Culturally, uncertainty is often equated with authenticity, while intention is treated with suspicion. To pre-scope a story can feel premature, even cynical or contrived, especially when the subject matter carries moral or political weight. But normalizing this approach has consequences that often go unexamined. The material piles up. Editors are asked to “find” the story after the fact. Projects stretch across years, sometimes a decade or more. Momentum dissipates. Burnout creeps in. And by the time a narrative finally coheres, the marketplace and the filmmaker’s own life has often moved on. None of this means discovery-driven storytelling is invalid. It means it is expensive—financially, emotionally, and professionally—and someone must absorb that cost. Often, it’s the filmmaker. What Gets Lost When Development Is Deferred When development is treated as something that happens later, risk doesn’t disappear. It simply moves downstream. Unclear point of view becomes an editorial problem. Undefined scope becomes a budget problem. Ethical questions become crises rather than conversations. Distribution becomes an afterthought rather than a design constraint. Most importantly, sustainability becomes collateral damage. The question I find myself asking increasingly is not whether this or that documentary model produces good work. It’s whether it produces careers. Whether it allows storytellers to keep working, collaborating, and building bodies of work without starting from zero every time. This is where the conversation about development needs to mature. Because on the other side of the industry—inside media companies, studios, and commercial nonfiction production—development is treated very differently. Not because those organizations care less about truth or meaning, but because they are forced to account for costs, timelines, audiences, and outcomes early. They ask uncomfortable questions sooner. They constrain possibility to make decisions. Production is the result of the practical, pecuniary, and pragmatic. To many creatives, that approach feels contrived. Formulaic. Too neat. Constraining. But what it really represents is intentionality. And the false choice between endless discovery and rigid engineering has left many storytellers stuck in a system that is emotionally validating, but structurally unsustainable. The rest of this article is an attempt to map a third or new path forward: one that respects discovery, insists on discipline, and treats story development not as a hurdle to clear, but as the foundation of a sustainable storytelling career. Story Development with Intent On the other side of the documentary ecosystem sits a very different development culture, one that many creatives are taught to distrust. Media companies, distributors, and film studios tend to begin with questions that feel unromantic but are unavoidable: Who is this for? How long should it be? What format best serves the material? What does success look like, and when do we need to know if we’re off track? This disciplined, deadline-driven, distribution-focused business approach is often dismissed as commercial, formulaic, or overly cautious. And to be fair, it can be. Not every pre-scoped project will yield meaningful work. But the caricature misses something important. What these organizations understand sometimes better than individual creators are that constraints are not the enemy of storytelling. They are valuable tools for essential decision-making. By forcing clarity early, they reduce downstream risk. They protect timelines. They align collaborators around shared expectations. They design stories that can reach audiences, not just exist in principle. What creatives often label “contrived,” professionals are more likely to call “intentional.” The problem is not that one side cares about art and the other about money. The problem is that these two approaches have been positioned as mutually exclusive, when they are responding to different risk models. The False Choice Between Discovery and Design Too much of the conversation about documentary development gets stuck in a false binary. It is either this or that. Either or. Not and. There is belief in two extremes. On one end, you have open-ended discovery: gather everything, decide later, trust the process. Take all the time you need. Marinate on it. There is no rush to finish, no artificial deadline. Finish it when it is ready. On the other end, you have tightly pre-engineered narratives designed to satisfy distributors and algorithms. Defined. Distribution focused, and deadline driven. Neither extreme is particularly satisfying or sustainable. The alternative is not to abandon discovery, but to guide it. To make early decisions about what kind of story you are building, even if you remain open to what you don’t yet know. To define guardrails without pretending you already have all the answers. Professional development lives in that middle space. Begin with the end in mind, but don’t be blind to a better version of the story if or when it emerges in your work. It is all about building a process that allows you to pursue the best of both approaches. It’s the difference between saying, “We’ll see what we get,” and saying, “Here’s the question we’re exploring, here’s what’s out of bounds, and here’s how we’ll know if we’re getting closer to something meaningful.” Discipline does not eliminate discovery. It focuses it. What Professional Story Development Includes When people talk about development abstractly, it can sound like theory or paperwork. In practice, it’s very concrete. Professional story development means doing real work before production begins. It means clarifying point of view and authority. It means deciding what the story is about, not just what it touches. It means confronting ethical boundaries early, when there is still time to make thoughtful choices instead of reactive ones. It also means aligning scope with reality, including budget, access, time, and emotional capacity. It means understanding what format best serves the material and how that choice shapes everything downstream. It means being honest about what this story can become, and what it cannot. Most importantly, it means recognizing that development is not separate from collaboration. It is where trust is built or eroded. Where expectations are set or left dangerously vague. Where creative ambition is either grounded or quietly deferred until it becomes a problem someone else must solve. This work is rarely visible to audiences. But its absence is always felt. Story Development as a Sustainability Practice I’ve come to see development less as a phase of a project and more as a practice within a career. Documentary filmmaking is not an end in and of itself. It is one expression of a much larger true-story ecosystem, one that now includes books, podcasts, scripted adaptations, and hybrid forms that move across platforms and audiences. At the same time, the conditions around documentary work are changing. Funding models are in flux. Distribution is more fragmented. Competition for attention is relentless. Fewer creators can afford to spend years exploring a single project without knowing whether it will ever find a home. In that environment, development becomes a form of self-respect. It’s how you decide what to pursue and what to pass on. How you avoid pouring years of effort into work that can’t support you—or the people you collaborate with. How you build a body of work rather than a series of heroic one-offs. The question shifts from “ Can I make this film? ” to “ Does this project fit within a sustainable storytelling practice? ” That’s not a cynical question. It’s a responsible one. Collaboration, Ownership, and the Long Game Another thing professional development forces into the open is ownership—of ideas, of process, and of outcomes. When development is rushed or deferred, collaboration often becomes fragile. Roles blur. Expectations go unstated. Risk pools unevenly. And when things get hard, as they inevitably do, relationships strain under the weight of assumptions that were never clarified. Thoughtful development creates space for shared understanding. It allows collaborators to align around purpose, scope, and upside. It makes it possible to think beyond a single release and toward reuse, adaptation, and continuity. Sustainable storytelling is rarely a solo endeavor. It depends on relationships that can endure beyond one project, and on infrastructure that doesn’t have to be rebuilt from scratch each time. Those conditions don’t happen by accident. They are designed. STORYSMART® Story Development My thinking about development has evolved alongside my career. Early on, like many filmmakers, I was drawn to momentum—to getting started, to capturing material, to trusting that meaning would reveal itself along the way. Over time, I began to see how often that approach transferred risk forward and outward, leaving editors, collaborators, and even subjects to absorb the consequences. Today, I’m optimizing for something different. I care about career sustainability. About collaboration that lasts. About building story assets that can travel across formats and time. About creating conditions where serious storytellers can keep working without burning out, giving away control, or starting over every time. That requires a more intentional approach to development, one that respects discovery but insists on discipline. About the Storytelling for ALL™ Newsletter The Storytelling for ALL™ LinkedIn Newsletter is a biweekly newsletter examining how true stories are developed, protected, and brought to life in today’s evolving storytelling economy. Every other week, I explore the creative, ethical, and economic forces shaping books, films, documentaries, and other true-story work through the lens of development, rights, collaboration, and long-term value. Written primarily for creators and collaborators, the newsletter also serves story sources who want to understand how their stories move from lived experience to finished work and how better structure early leads to better outcomes later. For deeper studio thinking, tools, and updates, The STORYSMART® Way is our monthly email newsletter for members of our FREE Storytelling for ALL™ community .

When we decided to get into making documentary films, my first instinct was not to chase streamers, foundations, or private backers. Instead, I reached out to Nine PBS, the local public television station in St. Louis. From my point of view, PBS represents the gold standard of documentary excellence. If we were going to do this work seriously, I wanted to understand the bar we needed to reach. I needed to understand the ethical, editorial, and structural expectations before anything was filmed. In October 2024, I met Aja Williams, Vice President and Chief Content Officer at Nine PBS, for lunch. I came with very basic questions: How do you decide what to air? What are you looking for in documentary films? Do you provide funding? Do you have guidelines for how documentaries should be financed? What are the best practices? What are the common mistakes? I had a lot of basic questions. Partway through the conversation, Aja said something that stayed with me: I was the first filmmaker who had come to her before making a film. Usually, filmmakers come to her after they made something. I learned a lot that afternoon. What I encountered was not a gatekeeper, but a steward. Aja walked me through their programming guidelines, the realities of their limited funding, and the practical constraints that shape public television. We even got down to specifics like structuring your film down to the minute to meet a broadcast slot. Having produced a weekly TV show, I was familiar with these practical considerations. I was grateful for her time and help. In parting she made me aware of the St. Louis Film Grant competition, a civic funding mechanism that ultimately helped support Steak Guerrillas. It was a real game changer for a project that had otherwise stalled. At the time, it felt like I was learning the rules of a system that, while imperfect, was coherent and durable. I did not yet understand how fragile it was. What PBS Actually Is (and isn’t) To understand what is being lost today with the end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it is helpful to understand what PBS is and what it is not. PBS is not a single studio, network, or commissioning body in the commercial sense. It is a federated public media system made up of local stations, each serving a specific community, operating under shared standards of editorial independence, ethics, and public accountability. Its strength has never been scale or speed. Its strength has been trust. That trust has historically been underwritten by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB did not exist to produce content or chase ratings. It existed to stabilize the system—to ensure that local stations could function, that national programming could be sustained, and that public media remained insulated, however imperfectly, from both commercial and political pressures. This is where the public conversation often goes astray. CPB funding was never primarily about underwriting individual films. It was about maintaining the infrastructure that made ethical, community-rooted documentary work possible in the first place. The standards I was introduced to at Nine PBS—the emphasis on accuracy, context, editorial independence, and audience responsibility—did not emerge spontaneously. They were the product of decades of institutional practice. Public media provided filmmakers with more than a distribution outlet. It provided a shared professional language. A baseline of expectations. A place where development mattered, where form followed function, and where the public—not the algorithm—was the ultimate stakeholder. That distinction matters more now than ever. Public Media as Civic Infrastructure Public media is often discussed as if it were simply another content brand competing in a crowded marketplace. That framing misses the point. PBS and the CPB-supported system behind it functioned as civic infrastructure. Like libraries, universities, courts, or public archives, public media existed to serve a democratic purpose that could not be fully justified by market logic alone. Its role was not to maximize engagement, but to preserve standards. Not to move fast, but to get it right. Not to chase trends, but to document reality with care. In documentary filmmaking, this civic role was especially pronounced. Public media quietly set the norms around disclosure, sourcing, narration, length, tone, and fairness. It created a developmental environment where filmmakers could learn how to shape a story responsibly before it ever reached an audience. That is why my instinct, at the outset, was to start there. When civic infrastructure is healthy, it is largely invisible. You only notice it when it fails or when it disappears. Within a year of those conversations in St. Louis, much of what I had been taught about the public-media ecosystem would no longer be operative. The assumptions that shaped that lunch—the stability of institutions, the continuity of standards, the presence of a shared system—would no longer hold. What follows is not a lament for the past, but an examination of what changes when a society unplugs one of the quiet systems that once helped it tell the truth. The American Outlier The United States has long been an outlier in how it treats public media. In most peer democracies, public broadcasting is understood as civic infrastructure in the clearest sense of the term—an essential public service supported at scale, insulated from short-term political cycles, and expected to serve the entire population. The debates in those countries are typically about governance, modernization, or editorial scope. The baseline assumption—that public media should exist—rarely comes into question. The American model has always been different. Public media here has been comparatively underfunded, structurally fragmented, and perpetually required to justify its existence. Even at its strongest, the system rested on a thinner margin of error than many realized. Yet for decades, it functioned—less because of abundance than because of continuity. That continuity mattered. It allowed standards to compound over time. It allowed institutional memory to form. It allowed filmmakers to learn what responsible nonfiction storytelling looked like within a stable framework, even as technologies and platforms evolved around it. Against that backdrop, the effective dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is not simply a budgetary adjustment. It represents a fundamental departure from the already-modest American commitment to public media. Where other nations have treated public broadcasting as a democratic necessity, the United States has now chosen to treat it as discretionary. The result is not merely less funding. It is the loss of a shared institutional center—one that quietly shaped how true stories were developed, evaluated, and delivered to the public. And it is precisely that center that many documentary filmmakers were still orienting themselves around as recently as last year. The Collapse of Assumptions In the fall of 2024, I attended the filmmakers’ forum at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. I went intentionally not to pitch a project, but to listen, learn, and understand the ecosystem I was stepping into. The forum brought together documentary filmmakers, representatives from local PBS stations, leaders connected to CPB, and others responsible for maintaining standards and pathways within public media. The conversations were candid and, at the time, reassuring. We talked about financing realities, editorial ethics, best practices, and the long timelines inherent in serious documentary work. There was a shared understanding of constraints, but also a shared belief in the durability of the system itself. I also spent time with representatives from the National Endowment for the Humanities, learning about grant opportunities and federal support for humanities-driven storytelling. Those discussions were practical and grounded. NEH funding was clearly positioned as important, but supplemental, one piece of a broader ecosystem. What struck me most was how much of the guidance I was receiving depended on institutional continuity. Advice about development cycles, editorial review, broadcast standards, and financing strategies all assumed the presence of public media as a stable reference point. Not perfect. Not lavishly funded. But present. Less than a year later, many of those assumptions no longer hold. The pace of change has been extraordinary. The rules that had governed documentary filmmaking for decades have been overtaken by events faster than most filmmakers could reasonably adapt. What once felt like a system in need of careful navigation now looks, in many respects, like a system in retreat. This is not an indictment of the people I met. Quite the opposite. It is a recognition of how quickly institutional ground can give way beneath even the most conscientious professionals when civic infrastructure is removed. The question now is not whether documentary filmmaking will continue. It will. The question is what fills the void when the shared assumptions, standards, and public obligations that once shaped the work are no longer anchored by a common system. And that question leads directly to what we lose—and what we must now rethink—when public media ceases to function as civic infrastructure. What We Lose When Civic Infrastructure Disappears When civic infrastructure disappears, the loss is rarely immediate or dramatic. It is cumulative. In documentary filmmaking, the first loss is not funding—it is coherence. Without a shared institutional center, standards fragment. Ethical norms become optional rather than assumed. Practices that once felt non-negotiable—clear disclosure, editorial independence, disciplined development—become matters of individual choice rather than collective expectation. The second loss is development. Public media has historically functioned as a training ground, not just for filmmakers, but for projects. It rewarded preparation. It insisted on structure. It encouraged filmmakers to think through access, rights, length, tone, and audience responsibility before a camera ever rolled. That developmental discipline is difficult to monetize and therefore easy to abandon in a purely private marketplace. The third loss is access. Public media provided a pathway for serious, non-sensational storytelling to reach audiences without a paywall. It ensured that documentaries about history, culture, labor, science, and civic life were not reserved exclusively for those who could afford subscriptions. Taken together, these losses do not end documentary filmmaking. They change who it serves and under what conditions. From Civic System to Private Marketplace We are now moving from a documentary ecosystem anchored in public service to one governed almost entirely by private-market dynamics. In this new environment, financing is increasingly fragmented. Patronage replaces public underwriting. Platforms replace institutions. Audience reach is mediated by algorithms rather than obligations. Ethics, once reinforced by shared standards, become individualized risk calculations. This shift does not inherently produce bad work. But it does change incentives. Stories that are complex, local, or resistant to simplification become harder to justify. Development timelines compress. Rights concessions increase. And the pressure to conform to tone, format, or trend intensifies. The paradox is striking. Documentary filmmakers today have more tools, more access, and more distribution options than ever before. Yet they operate with fewer shared norms, fewer institutional buffers, and less public accountability. What once functioned as a civic system has become a marketplace. And marketplaces, by definition, reward what sells, not necessarily what serves. What PBS Represented—and Why It Matters Now When I told leaders at PBS and CPB that I viewed public media as the gold standard for documentary filmmaking, I meant it in the most practical sense. PBS represented a place where standards existed independent of scale. Where ethics were not performative. Where development was not a luxury. Where public trust still mattered more than velocity. That system was never perfect. But it provided a common reference point—a shared understanding of what responsible nonfiction storytelling could and should be. The disappearance of that reference point does not mean truth-based storytelling ends. It means it becomes harder. It means it becomes more uneven. And it means that access to ethical, well-developed documentary work increasingly depends on private means rather than public commitment. We did not just lose a funding mechanism. We lost a piece of civic infrastructure that quietly shaped how this country learned to tell true stories about itself. What replaces it, if anything, will determine not only the future of documentary filmmaking, but who gets to participate in the act of public truth-telling, and on whose terms. That is the question now before us.

My wife Colleen and I saw Song Sung Blue on New Year’s Eve. It felt like the right way to end the year. We’re both Neil Diamond fans, the film was based on a true story, and it turned out to be a warm, entertaining, well-crafted movie that we genuinely enjoyed. Once the credits rolled, our curiosity kicked in. We learned the Craig Brewer–directed film was based on a 2008 documentary of the same name by Greg Kohs, which followed Milwaukee tribute performers Mike and Claire Sardina. We tracked the documentary down and watched that as well.

When I saw the headline about Rob Reiner, I felt that familiar internal jolt. I stopped. I stared at the screen. I let the weight of it settle before my mind immediately went to reflection. I have a photo of Rob Reiner on a shelf in my living room. We met once, briefly, nearly two decades ago. It was one of those special moments that, with the passage of time, has become something else entirely. Not because of fame, but because of what that moment now carries with it: memory, absence, and the quiet accumulation of loss. Even though he isn’t in it, the photo reminds me of my friend Marty Hendin who died shortly after. The news of Reiner’s death triggered memories of Marty, a reflection on addiction, and sadly, in the weeks following a host of other complicated emotions compounded by our family coping with a profound loss of our own. On Christmas Eve, my father-in-law Mick McLaughlin died.

This year, Variety turns 120. In an industry built on reinvention, that kind of longevity is rare. Trade publications don’t survive for more than a century by accident. They endure because they become indispensable, not just as chroniclers of an industry, but as part of its infrastructure. Variety has helped shape Broadway, film, television, and music for generations. It has documented the business of entertainment while quietly helping define what that business values, rewards, and amplifies. That’s the paradox at the heart of industry press: it presents itself as an observer, but it operates as a participant. It covers the industry it depends on; and in doing so, inevitably influences it. This isn’t a criticism. It’s a structural reality. The Comfortable Fiction of Arm’s-Length Coverage We like to believe industry media stands at arm’s length. The idea reassures us. It suggests neutrality, independence, and objectivity. It tells us that coverage reflects reality rather than shaping it. But industry trades are not designed to function like adversarial watchdogs. They are embedded by nature. Their access, advertising revenue, and relevance depend on the very ecosystems they cover. They sit inside the loop, not outside it. In Hollywood, this embeddedness is particularly visible during awards season. Pages fill with studio ads. Coverage accelerates. Language tightens. Narratives congeal. The machine hums. The goal is not deception. The goal is participation. Industry press exists to serve insiders first. Everyone else is reading over their shoulders. In a sense, the industry trades serve as an advertising and PR vehicle for the dominant players in the industry. Like virtually all media, I have no doubt that advertising spend influences coverage. It is the fundamental economic reality of American media. Language Is the Lever One of the most powerful tools trade press wields isn’t access, it’s language and how they frame coverage. Certain words don’t merely describe momentum in the entertainment business; they create it. “Buzz.” “Heat.” “Tracking.” “Breakout.” “Frontrunner.” “Prestige.” These terms function like market signals. They reduce uncertainty. They imply inevitability. They tell financiers, buyers, and talent where to place their bets. Once a project is described as having “heat,” behavior changes around it. Meetings happen faster. Risk tolerance expands. Competing narratives recede. Coverage doesn’t just report momentum; through coverage it manufactures it. Over time, this vocabulary migrates outward. It moves from the trades into agency decks, studio meetings, pitch sessions, and eventually into the broader culture. The language becomes shorthand for value. It shapes what gets made and who gets taken seriously. In reflecting on its 120 year history, Variety acknowledged the “slanguage” it has used to cover the industry has entered not only the language of the industry it covers, but broader society. If you want to understand how an industry works, start by listening to the words it uses to talk about itself. To truly understand how an industry works, look first at industry trade publications. Industry Publications Take You Behind the Curtain In my book STORYSMART Storytelling for ALL: How to Take Control, Own Your True Story, and Profit Like a Hollywood Insider , I make it a point to explain the importance of understanding how the storytelling industry works. To succeed in any industry, you need to grasp how it operates. You need to see the logic in how everything connects. If you are a consumer or a fan, it is sometimes hard to see past the marketing to understand the economics and structural elements that drive its operation. If you are a devoted fan of something, it is easy to miss the business aspect behind it. I share my experience of growing up in St. Louis as a Cardinals fan. Baseball is almost a religion in our town. To me, baseball was pure magic – home runs, hot dogs, and warm summer days at the ballpark. But when I started working for the team in 2001, the magic didn’t disappear, it transformed. I began to see the business of baseball. That shift in perspective from Cardinals fans to Cardinals Insider was in part fueled by my consumption of the Sports Business Daily, a industry trade publication that was photocopied and placed on my front office desk each morning. This publication took you into the front offices of teams to understand the economics and decision making that was taking place behind the curtain of the exhibition aspect sports. While fan publications focus on the spectacle on the field, court or track, industry publications offer a window into the ownership and management. The sports reporters that covered the team rarely understood the business aspect of the team they covered. And it was over time that I realized how they functionally fit into the marketing flywheel of the broader industry. Baseball Taught Me This First In professional baseball, the Baseball Writers' Association of America is not an external body. It is part of the MLB ecosystem. Its members work for daily newspapers in major league cities. Their coverage drives readership. Their votes decide Hall of Fame careers. Access is the currency. Credentials open doors—literally. Clubhouse access, dugout proximity, travel privileges. Writers are woven into the daily rhythms of the game. Over time, that access can feel less like a professional courtesy and more like an entitlement. Teams understand this dynamic. Writers understand it too. Everyone pretends otherwise. When Embedded Turns Entitled I saw this dynamic come into sharp relief when we tightened security protocols at the ballpark. We were working hard to meet all the Department of Homeland Security’s rigorous security protocols to have our facilities meet their designation standards. The changes needed were straightforward: more screening, more consistency, better safety, a security perimeter around players and front office staff. While the changes were understandable, the pushback from some of our press was not. At spring training, Derrick Goold, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch refused to comply. He staged a sit-in outside the media director’s office. The objection wasn’t about inconvenience. It was about status. The idea that a credentialed writer should be treated like everyone else felt, to him, like a violation of the natural order. Derrick lodged his protest in a way that in hindsight should have been foreseeable from his generation of journalists. Our PR staff began to recognize that millennial reporters were different than the baby boomers and generation x reporters who proceeded them. While our seasoned reporters didn’t like the changes, they understood them and handled them with grace and class. My staff was put off by the less dignified reaction. I spent hours on the phone with Derrick’s editor trying to defuse the situation. The subtext was clear: access had become identity. The boundary between observer and participant had blurred. This wasn’t an anomaly. It was a feature of an embedded system. Politics vs. Baseball: Two Very Different Press Cultures Before baseball, I worked in politics. The contrast was striking. Political press operates in a more openly adversarial posture. Access is transactional and temporary. The relationship is tense and mutually distrusting by design. No one pretends otherwise. Baseball was different. I remember being almost shocked by how Tony La Russa handled press conferences. Coming from politics, I expected more diplomacy. I saw control. The dynamic was not hostile, it was managed. There was an unspoken understanding that the press needed the team as much, if not more, than the team needed the press. I was used to PR people bending over backwards to help reporters on deadline. I was stunned by the apathy of our staff to helping reporters. It was virtually non-existent. Our staff’s attitude was that their job was to provide access, and then it was up to the reporter to build relationships with players, the manager, the GM and others. Our approach was not unique in our industry. That mindset shapes coverage. It affects tone, framing, and consequence. It rewards fluency over friction. Hollywood Is Baseball with Better Wardrobes Hollywood operates on the same logic, but just with better lighting. Trade reporters enjoy proximity to glamour, celebrity, and influence. Access is everything. Relationships matter. Being “in” is a professional asset. Publications like Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter don’t simply cover success; they help define it. Their language signals who is ascendant, who is fading, and what narratives are worth attention. Advertising and editorial coexist comfortably. Awards season makes that explicit. Studios promote their contenders in the same pages that analyze the race. No one is confused about the arrangement. It works because everyone benefits. This doesn’t make trade press corrupt. It makes it symbiotic. Learning an Industry by Reading Its Mirror When I decided to move STORYSMART into filmmaking, one of the first things I did was subscribe to the trades. I wanted to learn how the industry talked to itself. What it celebrated. What it ignored. How it framed risk and reward. Industry publications are not just news sources. They are educational tools. They teach newcomers how power flows. They reveal the incentives beneath the surface. They expose the language that unlocks rooms. If you don’t understand that language, you are at a disadvantage—especially if you are a creator trying to protect your rights and control your story. Naming the Paradox Variety’s 120-year run is not a contradiction of journalistic values. It is evidence of a deeper truth: industry press thrives by embedding itself so deeply that it becomes indispensable. The paradox is this: trade publications must maintain the appearance of independence even as they remain structurally intertwined with the industries they cover. They walk that line every day—and have for more than a century. If you want to understand who holds power in an industry, pay attention to the language it uses to describe itself. Watch who gets covered, how they are framed, and which words carry weight. Those words don’t just tell the story. They move the market. 120 Years of Variety Magazine

Most films don’t fail because of a lack of talent. They fail because of misalignment. Smart and capable artists with good intentions are undone not by incompetence, but by selfishness dressed up as professionalism. People protecting their lanes. Individuals pricing themselves as if success were guaranteed. Everyone hedging instead of committing. And quietly, almost imperceptibly, the story suffocates. Selfishness rarely announces itself as greed. It shows up as “reasonable” demands. Market rates. Contractual leverage. Defensive postures that make sense in isolation, but collectively kill momentum, trust, and creative risk. Some of the most enduring films in Hollywood history succeeded for the opposite reason. They were born not out of entitlement, but out of shared sacrifice, collective belief, and a willingness to pull together around something fragile and unproven. Two examples are Rocky and Good Will Hunting , films launched by unknown artists who hustled, sacrificed, and bet on themselves and each other. These were not vanity projects. They were long shots. And they worked precisely because the people involved didn’t approach them selfishly. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work When my son Charlie was younger, I used to say a line to him that he would happily parrot back—usually with a grin: “ Teamwork makes the dream work… and DreamWorks makes movies .” It was playful, but it stuck. And like many simple phrases, it carries more truth than we often want to admit. Storytelling at the highest level, especially filmmaking, is a team sport. It always has been and always will be. The irony is that as budgets grow tighter and risk increases, the instinct to protect individual interests grows stronger. But history shows us that the projects that break through, especially the ones that launch careers, are often the ones where people collectively decide to opt in, not cash out. They were produced by passionate filmmakers hungry to make their way in the industry and show they belong. That spirit drives independent filmmaking a. Anti-Selfishness in Storytelling Let me define what I mean by selfishness in creative work, because this matters. Selfishness is not about being paid fairly. It’s not about valuing your time or expertise. To the contrary. Selfishness is what happens when people demand full market rates regardless of the project’s reality. Contributors hoard control without accountability. Collaboration becomes transactional instead of relational and everyone optimizes for personal protection instead of shared success. It doesn’t look bad. It looks prudent. It sounds professional. And that’s why it can be so destructive. The antidote is not martyrdom. It’s alignment. Alignment means shared risk, shared belief, and shared upside. That’s my anti-selfishness thesis. It is rewarding those who sacrifice. And Rocky is one of the clearest expressions of it. Rocky: Betting on the Story, Not the Paycheck When Rocky was made, nobody involved knew it would become a cultural landmark. Sylvester Stallone was an unknown actor and struggling writer. He had a script and conviction, but nothing more. Studios wanted the story but not him. The easy move would have been to sell the script, take the money, and move on. Instead, he made a choice that defines this entire conversation. He refused to sell unless he remained creatively and personally invested in the project. He accepted far less money up front in exchange for belief in the story and his place in it. That wasn’t ego. It was long-term thinking. The producers took a risk too. They didn’t over-engineer the deal to extract maximum leverage. They didn’t protect themselves to death. They aligned around making the best possible film with the resources they had. What followed wasn’t just box-office success. It was cultural permanence. Rocky didn’t succeed despite sacrifice. It succeeded because of it. Everyone involved was rowing in the same direction. No one was hedging. No one was treating the project as disposable. And the audience felt that authenticity on screen. Good Will Hunting: Collective Belief Launches Careers Two decades later, Good Will Hunting followed a similar pattern. At the time, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were first-time screenwriters with a deeply personal script and very little leverage. The film was fragile—easy to over-commercialize, easy to dilute, easy to derail. What saved it was collaboration rooted in trust. Established professionals came onto the project not to dominate it, but to protect it. Talent chose terms that preserved the story’s integrity. Ego was subordinated to execution. Experience served the material rather than overwriting it. The result was not just box-office success and awards. It was the launch of multiple careers and a film that still resonates decades later. That doesn’t happen when everyone shows up with their hand out first. It happens when people show restraint. When they believe enough in the story, and in each other, to commit fully. Shared Sacrifice Is Not Exploitation “Isn’t this just asking people to work for less?” No. But the following distinction matters. Working below market with no upside, no transparency, and no respect is exploitation. I’m not advocating for that at all. Quite to the contrary. This concept of shared equity isn’t about working with shoestring budgets. It is about alignment and shared purpose. It is about rewarding shared sacrifice with shared upside. Working below market with clear participation, shared ownership, and aligned incentives is partnership. It is storytelling entrepreneurship. It is betting on your team and investing in the storytelling. There is nothing noble about suffering without agency. And there is nothing unethical about asking collaborators to invest in something they believe in, provided they are treated as partners, not just labor. The danger is when people conflate these two ideas. That confusion has poisoned many creative conversations. Real collaboration is not about squeezing people. It’s about designing success together. Backend Thinking Is a Creative Discipline Money is never neutral in storytelling. How you structure compensation shapes behavior. It affects preparation. It affects decision-making. It affects whether people show up as stewards of the story or mercenaries passing through. When everyone shares in the upside, collaborators argue harder for what’s right, standards rise, accountability deepens, and shortcuts disappear. This is why I believe “fix it in pre” applies to finance just as much as story. Rocky and Good Will Hunting weren’t accidents. They were early examples of backend thinking as a creative discipline, long before that language became fashionable. We are living this principle right now with Steak Guerrillas. I’m directing a true story with a talented team. We are all working well below market rates, stretching limited resources, and pulling together to produce something far greater than the budget would suggest. I’m hopeful our shared sacrifice and teamwork will make our dream work, but I won’t make this article about that project. It’s still being made and we still have work to do. But I will say this: the only way work like this happens ethically and sustainably is through trust, transparency, and shared belief in the outcome. Everyone on the team deserves to participate in success if success comes. That’s not generosity. That’s responsibility. What This Teaches Creators Today If you’re starting a project, assume success and plan for it. Design participation, not just payment. If you’re joining a project, ask how success is shared, not just how fees are paid. If you’re leading a team, understand this: equity is not a concession. It’s a strategy. The fastest way to kill a promising story is to let selfishness masquerade as professionalism. The fastest way to elevate one is to align people around shared risk and shared reward. Stories That Endure Are Built Together Rocky and Good Will Hunting didn’t become iconic success stories because everyone protected themselves. They lasted because people pulled together. Because unknown artists hustled. Because experienced professionals showed restraint. Because teams bet on belief instead of invoices. Teamwork made their dream work. And yes, DreamWorks makes movies. But long before studios, budgets, or brands, it has always been teams that make stories endure. When everyone pulls together, the story becomes bigger than any one person. And that’s when it lasts. About the Storytelling for ALL™ Newsletter The Storytelling for ALL™ LinkedIn Newsletter is a guide to making the most of your true story. Twice a month, I'll share proven strategies, creative approaches, and industry-tested tools to help you take control of your narrative, protect your rights, and collaborate with great storytellers to bring your vision to life. You’ll get practical, actionable insights to adapt your story into a book, film, documentary, or legacy preservation project — using the same approaches that top professionals rely on, now made accessible to you. Whether you’re an athlete, public figure, entrepreneur, or someone with a story worth telling, this is where you’ll learn to share it — on your terms. Join the conversation with #StorytellingForALL and reach out to me personally if I can help.

Every holiday season, I find myself returning to the same films that have shaped my sense of the season for as long as I can remember. At the top of that list is It’s a Wonderful Life . While it isn’t based on a true story, but it feels true in the ways that matter: the struggle, the grace, the community that shows up just when you’re convinced you are alone. It’s the cinematic equivalent of sitting around a fire with your loved ones. Among my annual favorites is a holiday classic that is rooted in real experience. A film born from personal memories, embellished with humor, sharpened with nostalgia, and shaped into something that became part of American tradition thanks to marathon holiday re-showings on cable TV. I’m talking about A Christmas Story . The story behind how it became a film can teach us a valuable lesson about turning childhood memories into enduring movies. And if you care about making your story resonate, whether you’re a public figure, an athlete, a leader, or simply someone who values the power of memory, this film offers a masterclass in how to transform lived experience into something lasting. Because A Christmas Story didn’t begin as a screenplay. It began as a boy’s memory. It became a movie because a storyteller knew how to creatively embellish and share those memories with the world. The Man Behind the Story: Jean Shepherd Before it became a 1983 film, A Christmas Story lived inside the semi-autobiographical tales of writer and radio personality Jean Shepherd. He built a devoted following telling humorous stories about growing up in the Midwest during the 1930s and 40s—stories filled with petty rivalries, childhood obsessions, family quirks, and the exaggerated stakes that define the universe when you’re nine years old. Listeners loved him because they recognized themselves in his stories. They had their own version of the kid who wanted something so badly that it felt like oxygen. They knew the overprotective parents, the neighborhood bullies, the frozen winters, the emotional intensity that turns small moments into defining memories. Those stories eventually became collections like In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories , which would form the backbone of the film. Director Bob Clark, a longtime fan of Shepherd’s radio work, approached him with the idea of using these tales to craft a movie. But it wasn’t as simple as adapting one story. The film we know today is stitched together from a constellation of memories—each reworked, exaggerated, and polished until the emotional truth shined brighter than the factual one. That process of selectively heightening reality without losing authenticity is at the heart of entertaining true storytelling on screen. The Art of Exaggeration & Embellishment One of the biggest misconceptions about “true storytelling” is that it must stay small, literal, or restrained. But humor depends on exaggeration. Narrative depends on emphasis. And childhood, especially, is remembered through a lens that distorts scale, emotion, and consequence. In real life, a boy might wish for a BB gun. In Shepherd’s telling, it becomes an epic quest, complete with dire warnings: “You’ll shoot your eye out!” In real life, a class dare might lead to a few laughs. In the film, Flick’s tongue freezes to the flagpole in a moment that every child secretly believes could absolutely happen. In real life, your father might win a goofy prize. In the film, we get the leg lamp: a glowing, unforgettable symbol of adult absurdity. Each of these moments is exaggerated, but not false. They reveal the emotional truth of childhood better than a strict retelling ever could. They show us how large the world feels before we grow into it. Embellishment makes it an entertaining story. For storytellers, especially those drawing from personal experience, this is the lesson: You do not have to choose between truth and storytelling. Exaggeration can be the vehicle that delivers emotional authenticity. It is emotionally true and universally relatable with smart embellishment. When used intentionally, it brings the audience closer to the heart of the memory, not further from it. Why A Christmas Story Endures Millions of people watch A Christmas Story every year because it does something few films manage to accomplish. It captures the universal in the specific. Ralphie’s desperation for that Red Ryder BB gun is a stand-in for every childhood longing we’ve ever felt. The chaos of the Parker household mirrors every imperfect family gathering we’ve survived. The Old Man’s muttering, the sibling bickering, the triumphs and disappointments—they’re not unique to Shepherd. They’re shared human experiences packaged with just enough comedic embellishment to make us nod and laugh at the same time. The film endures because it mirrors what we remember about our own holidays, not literally, but emotionally. And this is the core of great storytelling: Your audience is not looking for your exact life. They are looking for their own life and emotional truth inside your story. The Power of Memory Crafted and Curated The success of A Christmas Story didn’t happen by accident. It grew from: Captured memories: Shepherd documented his experiences through radio monologues and written stories. Without that source material, there would be no film. Disciplined development: Clark and Shepherd blended multiple storylines into one cohesive narrative. They shaped a childhood world, not a chronological biography. Emotional continuity: The film’s tone—a delicate mix of warmth, humor, and nostalgia—became its unifying force. Through my STORYSMART® lens, I see story development as the true power position in filmmaking. Whether you’re shaping a memoir, a documentary, a series, or a brand narrative, it’s the development phase—the blending, refining, arching, and elevating—that turns real experience into an enduring story and valuable IP. A memory alone is not a story. A story alone is not a film. It becomes a lasting work when someone takes the time to shape it into something that resonates deeply with audiences. Other Holiday Films Rooted in True Stories While A Christmas Story may be the best-known example, it’s far from the only holiday film shaped by real events or real creators’ lives. Here are a dozen others: 1.Full-Court Miracle (2003) – a popular Hanukkah movie inspired by the real life story of basketball player and coach Lamont Carr leading a Jewish Day School to a championship. 2.The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) – Dickens wrestling with his own process as he created A Christmas Carol. 3. Joyeux Noël (2005) – The true Christmas truce of 1914 on the Western Frong during the first World War. 4. Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus (1974) – Based on the famous 1897 editorial. 5. Unaccompanied Minors (2006) – inspired by the true story from Susan Burton titled “In the Event of an Emergency, Put Your Sister in an Upright Position.” 6. Prancer (1989) – Loosely based on real stories of community-driven Christmas miracles. 7. The Christmas Chronicles (2018) – Inspired by real children’s letters to Santa and folklore. 8. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) – Not fully a Christmas film, but inspired by a real incident involving playwright Moss Hart. 9. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) – Largely based on writer and director John Hughes experience on a flight from New York to Chicago that was diverted to Wichita and it took him five days to get home. 10. 8-Bit Christmas (2021) – based on a book by Kevin Jakubowski where many of the events came from his childhood, while other parts were influenced by films. 11. Once Upon a Christmas Miracle (2018) – based on the real-life romance of couple: teacher Heather Krueger who is in need of a liver transplant, and Chris Dempsey, her perfect match, who strike up a friendship, followed by romance. 12. The Man Who Saved Christmas (2002) – the true story of entrepreneur A.C. Gilbert who created the Erector set who figures out a way to keep Christmas alive after the war threatens to take it away. These films show that the line between “true” and “inspired by truth” is wide and fertile ground for storytellers who know how to cultivate it. What This Means for Your Story As we head into the holiday season, I’m reminded of something fundamental: stories become traditions because someone cared enough to craft them. Jean Shepherd took the time to turn lived experience into written material. Bob Clark took the time to shape that material into a narrative film. Audiences took the time to make the film part of their lives. If you’re a public figure, an athlete, a family steward, or simply someone with a story worth preserving, remember this: Your memories matter, but your development process determines their impact. The next classic isn’t created by nostalgia. It’s created by structure, clarity, tone, and ownership. This is the work we help people do every day. A Question for You What holiday film is part of your tradition? And if you had to choose one childhood memory—humorous, heartfelt, exaggerated or not—which one would make a great Christmas movie? I’d love to hear it. If you're ready to explore how to shape your own story into something enduring, whether a book, a documentary, or a narrative film, I urge you to join our STORYSMART® community. You can learn more about taking control of your narrative at storysmart.net. Happy holiday and happy storytelling. About the Storytelling for ALL™ Newsletter The Storytelling for ALL™ LinkedIn Newsletter is a guide to making the most of your true story. Twice a month, I'll share proven strategies, creative approaches, and industry-tested tools to help you take control of your narrative, protect your rights, and collaborate with great storytellers to bring your vision to life. You’ll get practical, actionable insights to adapt your story into a book, film, documentary, or legacy preservation project — using the same approaches that top professionals rely on, now made accessible to you. Whether you’re an athlete, public figure, entrepreneur, or someone with a story worth telling, this is where you’ll learn to share it — on your terms. Join the conversation with #StorytellingForALL and reach out to me personally if I can help.

“We’ll Fix It in Pre…” There’s an old Hollywood adage every filmmaker has heard: “We’ll fix it in post.” For decades, it was spoken with a kind of swagger—part joke, part promise, part surrender. It captured the idea that filmmaking is messy and unpredictable, and that the magic (or triage) happens later, in dark edit bays with coffee-fueled editors and armies of VFX artists. But that era is ending. According to analysis from McKinsey & Company, the phrase that once defined Hollywood problem-solving may be replaced by a different mantra for the AI age: “Fix it in pre.” And if you’re a filmmaker, storyteller, studio executive, or someone whose life story might one day be adapted for the screen, this shift represents the single most important change in how films will be made and who will have the power to make them. We’re entering a moment where what you do before production may determine everything: cost, quality, speed, risk, investor confidence, and ultimately whether your story breaks through in a crowded, consolidating entertainment landscape. It’s a moment that validates what we are building with STORYSMART® Films and STORYSMART® Studios. It is the idea that the front end of a project is no longer only creative, it's strategic, financial, and foundational. And that the studios who thrive in the next decade will be the ones that master development discipline, own their IP, and use AI as an accelerator rather than a shortcut. A New Center of Gravity in Filmmaking McKinsey & Company’s research identifies something that industry insiders have felt for years but didn’t have the data to quantify. Half of a film’s total budget now lives in preproduction and postproduction. That means the two biggest cost centers are the parts the audience never sees. Historically, budgets ballooned in post because that’s where problems became visible: scenes didn’t cut together, the story didn’t land, reshoots became necessary, continuity broke down, edits ran long, VFX costs exploded, and weeks or months of work disappeared into the “salvage bucket.” But with AI now embedded across previsualization, storyboarding, 3D set design, shot planning, scheduling, VFX previz, and automated rough cuts, the industry is waking up to a simple truth: The cheapest moment to fix a problem is before it exists. The smartest moment to invest is before the cameras roll. The most valuable work in filmmaking now happens early. This is where the leverage sits. This is where waste disappears. This is where creative clarity becomes competitive advantage. And this is exactly where our true story studio model is being planted by design. Development is the Highest ROI Stage of Filmmaking For years, development was treated as a necessary prelude. Important, of course, but not where the money was. Not glamorous. Not urgent. I believe that mindset will bankrupt studios in the AI era. Here’s why. AI will multiply the value of every decision made in development. A tightly structured story? AI-enhanced storyboards and previsualization will amplify its coherence. A weak or unfocused story? AI will not save it, but it will expose the gaps faster and more brutally. Clear character arcs? AI will help build stunning sequences that reinforce them. Messy arcs or half-formed motivations? AI will render your confusion in real time. In the past, fuzzy development led to expensive fixes later. In today’s AI-infused workflows, fuzzy development leads to chaos immediately. This is the new power position. This is the new choke point. This is where a smart studio wins, and where an unprepared one collapses. When a filmmaker can use AI to A/B test shots before shooting, you no longer have the excuse of “we’ll figure it out on set.” Every inefficient choice becomes self-inflicted. The work you do in development isn’t invisible anymore. It shows up in every pixel of the finished film. AI Is Shifting the Economics of Filmmaking McKinsey & Company forecasts that AI will lead to 80–90% efficiency gains in VFX and 3D asset creation. That number should make every studio CFO lightheaded. But efficiency doesn’t automatically mean lower costs. Hollywood has already learned this lesson: when VFX got cheaper, movies didn’t get cheaper, they just looked better. What this shift does mean is that capital allocation inside a film’s budget will change. Money will move from back-end correction to front-end design, borrowing best practices from the tech start-up ecosystem. What this will look like practically is that: Less money burned on reshoots Less money wasted on unused VFX Fewer overstaffed production days More money spent on story architecture More invested in development More resources directed at rights acquisition, archive licensing, and IP protection More intentionality in marketing and distribution planning The studios that fail will be those that cling to the old model: underdeveloped scripts, rushed prep, and hope-as-a-strategy. The studios that succeed will be the ones that treat development not as a cost but as capital investment—one that multiplies the value of everything that follows. For us, this shift isn’t just theoretical. It’s baked into the DNA of how we will build our slate. We will front-load development because it’s where the creative advantage is. Front-loaded development is the financial advantage too. IP Ownership Becomes the Most Valuable Asset AI introduces a new competitive layer that didn’t exist before: the need for IP-protected training models. McKinsey highlights Adobe’s “commercial safe” models—AI systems trained only on materials the creator or studio has full rights to. Here’s what that means in practice, if you want to use AI to generate AI-enhanced pre-visualization, historical reenactments, stylized sequences, motion elements from still photographs, character expressions, backgrounds or any other proprietary creative, then the safest and most powerful way to do that is by training AI on assets you own. This changes the stakes and your focus. It makes developing your own copyright protected storytelling source material critically important. Having an IP bullet-proof digital archive will be vital to success in the space of true storytelling. Suddenly: Home movies aren’t sentimental —they’re training data. Family photos aren’t just keepsakes —they’re intellectual property. Memoirs aren’t private —they’re story engines. Oral histories aren’t anecdotal —they’re IP foundations. Archive collections aren’t clutter —they’re competitive advantage. This is why STORYSMART urges public figures, families, athletes, founders, and others we work with to build digital archives and protect their IP on the front end. AI doesn’t diminish the value of these materials. It radically increases it. In a world where AI can recreate the past, the people who own the past hold the power. An Opportunity for Independent Filmmakers Today’s media headlines tell us everything we need to know: consolidation is accelerating, legacy studios are merging or being acquired, and risk tolerance is dropping across the board. This leaves three consequences: Fewer greenlights for unconventional stories. Fewer buyers for mid-budget films. Fewer opportunities for emerging or diverse voices. But AI flips this dynamic. A small, rights-disciplined, development-driven studio like ours can now compete visually with studios 10x our size, prepare more thoroughly and cheaply, deliver cleaner budgets, eliminate waste, create sophisticated marketing assets in-house, and distribute through flexible, audience-driven channels. With a great story, a smart development framework, and the right implementation of AI, a small studio can now punch far above its weight. This is what we are building STORYSMART for, not to chase studio scraps, but to redefine how true stories become powerful, commercially viable films. AI Can’t Replace Human Creative Judgment For anyone who fears that AI will automate creativity out of filmmaking, let me offer this reassurance: Great stories and great storytelling will always matter. AI can generate images, but it can’t generate integrity. Sure, it can simulate motion, but it can’t simulate meaning. Yes, it can accelerate decisions, but it can’t make the right ones for you. The creative vision, the ethical line, the narrative precision, the commitment to truth all remain human responsibilities. The filmmakers who thrive will be those who hold the line on story clarity while using AI responsibly to elevate their craft. A Practical Playbook for True Storytelling Here is the emerging blueprint for success in the AI era: 1. Start with Story Source Material Gather archives, photographs, journals, recordings, manuscripts, letters, and testimonies. These are not “nice to have”—they’re the core of your IP advantage. 2. Build Chain of Title Early Rights disputes kill films. Resolve them before you write a script or approach investors. 3. Use a Development-First Framework Structure your story deeply before you visualize it. Clarity is the cheapest and most scalable asset you can create. 4. Use Proprietary, IP-Safe AI Workflows Do not feed your materials into open models. Protect your story from unwanted training and misuse. 5. Create Investor-Ready Story Packages AI allows you to create mood boards, sample sequences, and previs early. Use this to attract investment on solid ground. 6. Think Like a Studio, Act Like a Startup Be lean, decisive, and development driven. The big players are too slow to seize many of the opportunities AI is unlocking. This is the heart of the STORYSMART model: helping people own, shape, and develop their stories into assets—before anyone talks about production. The Future Belongs to Those Who Prepare AI is not reinventing filmmaking. It’s reinventing where profitable filmmaking happens. The center of power has moved to the front of the process, into the place where our framework thrives: development, rights stewardship, ethical clarity, and disciplined story design. The future will not be defined by who has the most expensive toys or the biggest crews. It will be defined by: who owns the story, who understands the story, who structures the story, and who prepares with enough clarity to let AI amplify that work. Fix it in pre isn’t just a new production philosophy. It’s a new economic model. It is the new creative paradigm, the new competitive advantage. And for those of us building a new studio model, it is a once in a generation opportunity. The tools have changed. The process has changed. Now the question is are we prepared to lead in the era where story development is the power position? At STORYSMART®, we are. And we’re inviting the next generation of storytellers, families, public figures, and creators to join us. About the Author Ron Watermon is a filmmaker, author, and founder of STORYSMART®, a story development film studio that helps individuals preserve, protect, and profit from their true stories. He is currently directing Steak Guerrillas: The Dr. Arturo M. Taca Story , a documentary exploring courage, truth, and the cost of resistance. Learn more at storysmart.net, ronwatermon.com and steakguerillas.com