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

Friday December 5, 2025 - St. Louis, MO - I was almost giddy with excitement when I saw the story in Variety about a new documentary film studio planning to use AI to bring archival photos to life. As a digital archival nerd and documentary filmmaker who is currently using archival materials to bring a true story to life on screen with Steak Guerrillas , this development makes a lot of sense to me. Call it confirmation bias, but when I read Unfeatured Films’ announcement that they were using artificial intelligence to animate archival photographs and restore old footage, I felt a jolt of affirmation. Their pitch of “cost-effective AI-driven innovation” that could “restore and resurrect archival footage in ways never before seen” is a signal to me that we are on the right path at STORYSMART®. It is also a sign that documentary filmmaking, especially the kind rooted deeply in history and personal testimony, is about to enter a new era. For filmmakers like me who work archival materials, this moment matters. In my documentary project Steak Guerrillas, we’ve been wrestling with a familiar challenge: how do you visually reconstruct moments that were never filmed? How do you help the audience see and feel the tension of history when the camera wasn’t there? How do you bring a story to life in an entertaining way with a minuscule production budget? AI is now offering an answer, but with that answer comes responsibility, risk, and a new competitive landscape for storytellers. This is post is my attempt to make sense of that landscape before we all rush headlong into it. The Bottleneck AI Is Finally Breaking Documentaries rooted in history often face the same limitation: there simply isn’t enough video. Until recently, filmmakers had only three choices: 1. Use still photographs, 2. Create live-action reenactments, or 3. Rely on animation, which can be both expensive and stylistically limiting. Unfeatured Films is proposing something different: using AI to add motion, dimensionality, and continuity to archival images, essentially transforming still photos into sequences that can play like raw footage. Clarke, the studio’s founder, frames it not as a shortcut but as a breakthrough—one that “allows us to tell the past with the vividness of the present.” This is a profound shift. It means a filmmaker no longer needs a miracle discovery of lost reels to bring a historical moment to life. The image itself can become the seed of a cinematic experience. For under-documented communities, for immigrant families, for grassroots movements that never had the luxury of filming their lives, this is a transformative development. AI has cracked open a closed door. The Promise: Cinematic Power for the People This democratizing potential is exactly what industry analysts are beginning to recognize. McKinsey & Company recently posted an article entitled “How AI could reinvent film and TV production” that I urge you to check out. Let me give a shout out to the DPA and my fellow member Joe Schroeder for sharing this in the November round up. The McKinsey team noted that AI could transform not just how films are made, but who gets to make them. For independent filmmakers, the insight is especially significant: AI may allow small studios with limited budgets to produce compelling visual content without raising massive amounts of capital. Think about that for a moment. A small team with a collection of photographs, letters, and audio recordings can now create what once required a wealthy large studio with a VFX department, an animation team, a budget for actor reenactments, and the resources to sustain months of postproduction. This technology moves documentary filmmaking closer to a world where talent, discipline, and careful story development matter more than access to expensive infrastructure. As someone building a new kind of independent studio, one focused on truthful storytelling, owned IP, and disciplined development, this is game-changing. The Risk: When Animation Looks Real, Truth Becomes Fragile To co-opt and tweak a line from Spiderman, with great power comes a pressure we’ve never quite faced before. Documentary filmmakers are custodians of truth. We are Truthstorians (stealing a line from the lead character of The Lowdown, journalist/writer Lee Raybon, played by Ethan Hawke). I love that made up word as it fits so perfectly here. As documentary filmmakers we’re not just creating content. We’re shaping how people understand real lives, real events, and real history. Truth matters. When AI can animate a face that never moved on camera, or follow someone down a hallway where no videographer ever stood, we must ask: How close is too close? When does enhancing the past become rewriting it? Unfeatured Films says their model will remain “human led,” using AI only within a responsible, creative process. That’s the right instinct. But that won’t be enough for the industry as a whole. We need standards. We need transparency. We need disclosures. We need the documentary equivalent of nutrition labels. An insight shared in the McKinsey post. The danger isn’t simply that AI-generated scenes might mislead an audience; it’s that they might mislead a memory, especially for viewers who trust documentaries to show things as they truly happened. This responsibility becomes even heavier with true-crime stories, civil rights histories, political narratives, or testimonies of trauma. These are not playgrounds for generative flashiness. They demand precision and respect. The IP Issue: Who Owns the Story That AI Learns From? Just as important, maybe even more so, is the issue of rights and source material. The McKinsey team makes a crucial point that is going to define the next decade of filmmaking: the industry is moving toward commercial-safe, IP-protected AI models, systems trained only on content a studio legally owns. Why? Because creators and studios are discovering that when you feed your footage or archival assets into large, publicly accessible AI models, you risk losing control of them. In a competitive industry, that risk is existential. For families, journalists, public figures, athletes, estates, and storytellers of all kinds, this means something simple but transformative: The most valuable asset you own may not be the story itself, it may be the archive behind it. Your photos, home movies, documents, audio recordings, letters, memoirs, notes, curated scrapbooks and other ephemera matter. These, along with your investment in developing storytelling source material (ex. Documentary interviews), will be critically important going forward. If you own them—and if you protect the rights to them—you hold leverage in a world where AI needs material to learn from. This is one reason STORYSMART’s emphasis on “storytelling source material” is more important than ever. AI doesn’t diminish the value of these artifacts; it multiplies it. The AI Reallocation of Power in Documentary Production One of the most interesting insights in the McKinsey analysis is that AI may reallocate value pools across the industry. In plain English: Production houses, VFX teams, Postproduction vendors, and Distributors will see the flow of money shift. I will not disappear, but it will move. And documentaries will feel this shift first. That's because documentaries lean heavily on the three areas AI is already transforming: 1. Archival processing and restoration 2. VFX-light but style-heavy visual storytelling 3. Lean budgets with high creative demands If AI can automate parts of postproduction and elevate the creative quality of archival material, the balance tilts toward studios that: · develop well, · work efficiently, · own their materials, and · operate with speed and clarity. In short, the future belongs to those who control their stories and prepare deeply on the front end. A Case Study: How We’re Using AI with Steak Guerrillas Our film, based on the memoirs and archives of Dr. Arturo M. Taca, sits right at the intersection of these shifts. We face the challenge shared by many historical documentaries: much of the story lives in memory, testimony, photographs, and moldy archive items. There are no video recordings of the most dramatic moments. We must reconstruct them respectfully and accurately on a minuscule budget in a compressed timeframe. Our approach has been simple: · Use AI-enhanced animation where the memoir and source material supports it. · Avoid inventing scenes not anchored in the factual record. · Ensure all materials are used within a rights-secure workflow. · Make transparency a core storytelling value. AI helps us illuminate the truth, not embellish it. It allows us to widen the lens of history, but not to fictionalize it. The Independent Studio Advantage: This Is Our Moment Massive consolidation is underway in Hollywood. Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is the latest example. As studios merge, their risk tolerance shrinks. Fewer films get greenlit. Fewer directors get chances. Fewer unconventional stories see the light of day. But AI flips that dynamic for independents. Suddenly, a small studio with strong development discipline, ethical clarity, and rights-secured archives can produce a film competitive in quality with mid-tier studio output. This is the opportunity for STORYSMART®, and for every filmmaker who believes in honest, ethical storytelling. AI Will Not Replace the Truth. It Will Test Our Commitment to It. AI isn’t the threat. AI isn’t the danger. AI isn’t going to replace documentary filmmakers or erase the need for careful research, deep empathy, and rigorous ethics. The real threat is careless stewardship. When you animate history, you become responsible for how that history is remembered. When you use AI to bring the past into motion, you must ensure you are not distorting the truth you set out to preserve. In the next era of documentary filmmaking, the winners won’t be the people with the best technology. They will be the people with the best stories. Stories that are protected, clarified, ethically stewarded, and grounded in real human truth. AI will reshape how we work. But our integrity will define what we make. And that is the future worth fighting for. -- Ron Watermon

How Real Reporting Becomes Big-Money IP

An Insatiable Appetite for True Crime It was eye-opening to hear Dave Rutherford, the Director of Photography for Steak Guerrillas , a film I’m directing, talk about work he does for news agencies. When I told him about our plans to develop a true-story film studio that would include true crime stories in our slate of projects, he enthusiastically endorsed the idea sharing that many times he has covered the same true-crime story for half a dozen networks. I knew there was an almost insatiable appetite for true crime stories, but to hear Dave put it into those terms was validating. Dave has routinely filmed interviews covering the same story for six different networks. I couldn’t shake the irony. Every outlet got their own version of the footage. Every producer got their own show. Every streamer got their slice of the audience. But the guy who lugged the camera, and stood behind the yellow tape? He got a day rate. That conversation has stayed with me because it exposes something bigger than one job (or six DP jobs for one salacious story). It reveals a structural truth about how media works and how ownership, not access, decides who wins. In the modern true-crime storytelling economy, everyone can tell the same story, but only the people who own the rights get paid long after the cameras stop rolling. The Reality Monopoly For decades, big media conglomerates have enjoyed an advantage. Their newsrooms feed the story pipeline, while their studios and streaming platforms monetize it. It plays out this way. A murder happens and the news breaks. The network’s investigative team covers it for nightly news. Months later, a “sister company” announces the limited docuseries. The reporter who uncovered the case, built trust with sources, and chased leads for months? They get thanked in the credits or interviewed for the documentary if they’re lucky. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s simply the media business model. A very profitable one. When news divisions sit under the same corporate roof as film studios and streaming platforms, stories don’t just inform the public, they fuel a content supply chain and balance sheet. The people doing the hard, dangerous, emotionally exhausting work rarely share in the upside. I’ve seen that model up close. I think it’s time to challenge it. Facts Are Free. Ownership Isn’t. You can’t copyright reality. You can’t own a crime, a scandal, or a court case. But you can own the way you investigate it, interpret it, and shape it into a compelling narrative. The intellectual property exists in the telling or “expression” of the story. When a journalist like T.J. English writes The Corporation or The Last Kilo, he’s not just reporting facts. He’s crafting a work of authorship, his unique expression of that story that is protected by copyright law. That expression is what studios pay seven figures to adapt. You heard me right, seven figures. Look it up. It can be lucrative if you are a gifted storyteller who puts in the hard work of crafting the story in an emotionally compelling way. T.J. isn’t alone. The same goes for David Grann, whose book Killers of the Flower Moon began as meticulous reporting. When Apple Studios bought the film rights, they weren’t buying history, they were buying his expression or telling of it. Ownership lives in the expression, not the event. That’s what most journalists never realize until it’s too late. How Big Media Keeps the Rights Inside legacy newsrooms, the system is designed to strip ownership from creators. “Work-for-hire” contracts make the company the author of record. There is nothing nefarious in this arrangement. It is simply smart business. Your investigation might be brilliant, but the corporation owns the footage, the notes, the transcripts, even your emails. They paid you for your work. They own it. You don’t. If that same company later adapts the story into a docuseries, you can’t claim a share because technically, you created it as their employee. The corporation didn’t steal it. They structured it that way from day one. Like I said, nothing nefarious is going on, it is simply a smart storytelling business model at work. It’s also why many of the most talented investigative journalists end up with impressive résumés but limited leverage. They generate value, but they don’t own it. But if they decide to write a book and work independently, well that’s a different story. Possibly, one with a seven-figure potential. The Rise of the Journalist-Producer A quiet rebellion is underway. In a world where more media is created by the masses than by mass media, independent journalists are starting to treat their investigations like creative properties instead of disposable assignments. They’re filing copyrights, writing treatments, self-publishing e-books, and launching narrative podcasts. They are creating assets before ever approaching Hollywood. Once the story is codified as an authored work, it becomes something that can be licensed or sold rather than simply covered. It is a smart approach. That’s how T.J. English built a career that moved seamlessly from crime reporting to producing. It’s how Sarah Koenig turned Serial into a franchise that redefined the podcast landscape. It’s how small investigative teams behind shows like Dirty John and Dr. Death parlayed journalism into multi-platform IP. The formula is simple, but powerful: Do the reporting. Shape the narrative. Secure the rights. Then choose your partners; don’t let them choose you. My Own Lesson Earlier this year, a promising project collapsed at the eleventh hour, which taught me an expensive but valuable lesson about story ownership and our business model. When I launched my company, I positioned it as a fee-for-service storytelling firm. We helped clients own their stories, first through video projects, then later through higher-end productions designed to help them monetize those stories. In 2023, I approached a labor union with a bold idea: preserve its colorful history and build a foundation for a true-crime-style series. The union’s past included fascinating characters, corruption, and organized crime — everything a filmmaker could ask for. For two years, I worked to move the project through their leadership. By September 2024, they approved the concept and asked for a contract. Then the deal stalled. For six months, I tried to get it signed. Finally, in January, one board member torpedoed the entire effort. Disappointing? Yes. But also clarifying. The same union official who killed the deal introduced me to a crime writer who had already done the story work. That’s when it clicked. We didn’t need the union’s permission to tell the story. Their cooperation would have been helpful, but the value of the project was never in their ownership of the history, it was in the telling of it. That’s what Hollywood pays for. The reason studios pursue journalists, authors, and screenwriters is simple: the creative expression is the asset. A well-crafted narrative, not the raw events, is what commands seven-figure deals. I realized I’d structured my business backward. By centering the “client,” I was giving away or undervaluing the most valuable part of the process – the storytelling. Authorship. Expression. That is us, not them. The better approach is to commit to the story, build the team, and then approach those who lived the story to see if they want to be involved. That is an entirely different offer. The smarter path, and the one we are developing with our independent film studio is creator-driven storytelling: partnering with writers, journalists, and filmmakers who already own or can create the underlying story material and then connecting with sources like the union. That’s the Hollywood model. Option the story, develop it, and protect it through copyright. Own the production process. There is no need to validate that model. It’s how a growing three-trillion-dollar global industry already builds enduring value. I just wish I’d realized it sooner. Our Storytelling for ALL Philosophy At STORYSMART®, we believe creative ownership shouldn’t belong exclusively to media giants with legal departments and distribution pipelines. It belongs to the people who lived the story, researched the truth, or invested the time to tell it Well. That includes journalists, authors, documentarians, families, and even victims’ advocates. We see it as creator collective that shares ownership with investors and story sources. Our philosophy is simple: Ownership is participation. The people who build the story should share in the reward. We believe transparency builds trust. Equity and collaboration prevent exploitation. Shared success creates sustainability. A fair deal today means more truth tomorrow. We’re developing an independent studio that partners with journalists and researchers who already have access, relationships, and deep work behind them, giving them the production and financing support to finish strong without surrendering creative control. The old model says: “We’ll buy your story.” Our model says: “Let’s own it together.” A Quick Reality Check for Journalists If you’re an investigative reporter, author, or filmmaker sitting on a powerful real-life story, here’s a simple checklist: Document Your Work . Keep research logs, interview transcripts, and a clear outline of your narrative. That becomes evidence of your authorship. Create an Original Expression. Write a treatment, an article, or a manuscript that shapes the facts into your storytelling lens. Once it’s expressed, it’s protectable. Secure Releases Early. Get written permissions from sources or subjects to use their likeness, materials, or interviews. It costs nothing now and saves everything later. Register Your Copyright. A $45 registration with the U.S. Copyright Office turns your effort into a recognized creative work. You still have protection without filing, but filing provides additional benefits. Explore Partnership Models. Don’t default to work-for-hire. Find collaborators who offer shared ownership or back-end participation. Equity isn’t just for investors — it’s for creators. Why This Matters Now We’re living through a moment when truth itself feels commodified. Disinformation spreads faster than facts. Outrage outperforms nuance. And yet, audiences crave authentic, deeply reported storytelling more than ever. That tension makes true-crime storytelling one of the few places where journalism, art, and commerce collide. The question isn’t whether these stories will be told. It’s who gets to tell them and who profits when they’re told. Independent storytellers are proving that ownership doesn’t require a newsroom behind you. It requires discipline, courage, and a basic understanding of how value moves through the entertainment system. When you treat your story as IP, you don’t just protect your work, you amplify its impact. You ensure that the people who uncover truth can afford to keep doing it. The Democratization of Story Power For most of history, the means of production (cameras, crews, edit bays, distribution) belonged to highly capitalized corporations. You needed real wealth to create wealth through production. Today, the means of production fit in your backpack. You can shoot, edit, and distribute globally for a fraction of what it once cost a network. You can crowdfund, self-release, or partner with equity-minded studios. The gatekeepers are still there, but their gates are rusting. That’s why this moment matters. We can finally democratize truth-telling, not by tearing down journalism, but by giving journalists ownership in the stories they create. That’s the future I’m betting on with the development of our storytelling collective. From Reporting to Royalties Let’s be honest: most journalists didn’t choose the profession to get rich. But that doesn’t mean they should stay broke while others cash in on their work. The current media model rewards corporations for scale, not individuals for integrity. It’s time to flip that script. If you’ve put your heart, risk, and reputation into uncovering a story, you deserve more than a paycheck and a headline. You deserve a stake. That’s the promise of independent, equity-based non-exploitative storytelling. A world where truth-tellers are not just heard but compensated fairly for the work they do. The future of storytelling will belong to those who stop renting their talent and start owning their work. Because in a world overflowing with information, truth is everyone’s, but the telling is yours. That is where the real value lives. 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.

The Theater of Revelation I didn’t expect to get emotional in the movie theater that afternoon. But as the credits rolled on Truth & Treason , I sat in the dark with my wife, profoundly moved. The film chronicles the real-life courage of Helmuth Hübener, a German teenager who defied Hitler’s propaganda by distributing leaflets of truth. He was executed for treason at seventeen. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Watching it, I realized it wasn’t just about Nazi Germany. It was about what happens when fear, fatigue, and convenience persuade decent people to stay quiet while bad things happen around them. In that sense, it was a message to me about what I need to do as a filmmaker, a business owner, and as an American. That is why I’ve decided to violate one of my Cardinal rules of business with this article. For years, I’ve believed in civility. Diplomacy. I built a career around respect, meeting people where they are, avoiding politics, and finding common ground. My diplomacy-first approach has served me well for most of my life. But I also know that my tendency for conflict avoidance is a fault. Lately, I’ve started asking a harder question: At what point does restraint, conflict avoidance, and staying silent become complicity? My work these days centers on helping people take control of their stories. But watching Truth & Treason made me realize something deeper: stories don’t just reflect who we are, they shape who we become. And in an age where lies move faster than light, maybe telling the truth is the most radical act of all. My Documentary Director's Perspective

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard me beat the drum about taking control of your story. About owning your rights. About protecting the intellectual property that comes from your life experiences. I’ll keep beating that drum because your story is one of your greatest assets. But here’s the counterintuitive truth I want to explore today: simply living a great story isn’t where the real value lies. It isn’t inherently valuable as a blob of ideas or past experiences. From a financial standpoint, your “story” is worthless without “storytelling.” It is the creative process of sharing or producing a story that drives most of the value of that story. The harsh truth is that the real value of a film or TV series based on a true story lies primarily in its production. The quality of the story's telling drives more of the financial value than any other factor. The life rights and cooperation of the subjects of true stories have some financial value, but it is typically disproportionate to the most critical investments in driving monetary value. More than ninety percent of the value of a story comes not from the fact that it happened, but from how it’s told. That explains why there is such a disparity in how much securing rights accounts for in most Hollywood projects. Life rights and related expenses are typically less than five percent of the overall budget of a film based on a true story. Now, that fraction would likely be different if you were Taylor Swift or some other big celebrity. A crap story about a celebrity can sell and make money. And a great one can too. And it is fair to say the celebrity brings more to those projects than to the typical “true story”. They can typically demand more than 5%. But even in most of these cases, the life rights don’t exceed ten percent (10%) of the overall budget because the most important investments with the highest return on investment are creative. That may sound surprising coming from someone who’s consistently talked about the importance of ownership. But stick with me on this, because this is where balance, not being greedy, and not being selfish, comes in. While understanding your rights and the advantages of controlling the process are essential, to maximize the profitability of sharing your story, you must recognize the critical role of the creators in crafting your narrative. They will typically bring much more value to it than you will. The storytelling team and their work will drive most of the real value of your story. The value of storytelling lies in the creative craft of storytelling. The High School Summer Vacation Essay Analogy Think back to high school. Imagine you had the most epic summer vacation of anyone in your class. You traveled to places your classmates had never seen, you met fascinating people, you had experiences that would make for an unforgettable story. Now picture the teacher assigning an essay: “Write about your summer vacation.” Just because you lived the best story doesn’t mean you’ll tell it well. Your essay might read flat, while a classmate with a far less exciting summer writes something so engaging it has everyone laughing or tearing up. The fact that you lived it and can share your account doesn’t mean your telling will do real justice to the truth of what happened. Frankly, you can do more harm than good if you share it poorly. You could turn an epic story into crap with bad storytelling. That’s the point. Storytelling is a craft. Done well, it unlocks value. Done poorly, it leaves potential on the table. If you are serious about making the most of your story, then your most important task is building a great creative team to produce the storytelling. Michael Jordan and The Last Dance Take Michael Jordan. He lived one of the most remarkable basketball careers of all time. Six championships. Back-to-back three-peats. A cultural icon beyond the court. But what made The Last Dance — the documentary chronicling those final two championship seasons — a global hit wasn’t just his career stats. It was how the story was told. Jordan was smart. He controlled the rights to the footage. He waited until the timing was right. And when he finally moved forward, he chose the creative storytelling team he wanted. He demanded excellence from the storytellers. He provided access, but then he let them do their work. The result? A ten-part masterpiece that captivated audiences around the world. Jordan wanted control, yes. And he took his rightful share of the profits. But he wasn’t greedy. He understood that value multiplies when you pair the raw story with the right storytellers. That is the lesson for you. T aylor Swift: Beachfront Property Analogy Now, not everyone starts from the same place. Taylor Swift is the rare example of someone who could put out a shaky iPhone documentary, and millions would watch. Her fandom guarantees it. That’s beachfront property in the world of stories if storytelling were real estate development. Her land is so prime that people will line up no matter what you build on it. But here’s the thing: even Taylor doesn’t stop there. She hires the right creative team to undertake the work at her direction. She invests in quality storytelling. She crafts eras. She layers her music with symbolism. She produces high-quality films of her concerts, transforming a live show into something fans will relive for years. She proves that even when the land is prime, the right development makes it exponentially more valuable. She is STORYSMART®. Jordan and Swift are showing us the way. Where Balance Comes In So where does that leave the rest of us? Owning your story doesn’t mean hoarding it or being greedy. When it comes to professional storytelling at the highest level, selfish is stupid. It doesn’t mean going it alone. But it also doesn’t mean handing it over to someone else and hoping they’ll do it justice. Great storytelling requires creative collaboration. That concept of smart, creative collaboration drives our work. The STORYSMART® Way is about balance, inclusion, and bringing together the best of what exists in storytelling today. It’s about honoring the authenticity of your lived experience while recognizing the immense creative lift it takes to transform that experience into something that resonates with audiences. It’s about forging partnerships that elevate the story while preserving its integrity. That’s why I talk about an ecosystem. One that rewards the person who lived the story and values the storytellers who bring it to life. Balance, not greed. Partnership, not exploitation. Creative collaboration. That’s where actual value lives. It is also what sets our framework apart from anything else you’ll find in this space. It is about bringing professionals in and giving them equity in telling your story. That is the most radical – and I’d argue, the most sensible – aspect of our approach. You don’t face an “either or” binary decision of selling out or doing it yourself. There is another way that marries the best of both into a hybrid approach – a collectivist or joint venture approach that has the potential to take your story to a transcendent level. The Real Estate Analogy Think of it like real estate. Land has inherent value. Beachfront will always be worth more than a rocky hillside (unless it has a killer view). But raw land doesn’t generate returns until you bring in architects, engineers, and builders. Quality development happens when a multi-disciplinary team collaborate like an elite level symphony performing a masterpiece. Storytelling is the same. It requires collaboration. In this analogy, your lived experience is like the land. The storytellers — the writers, filmmakers, producers, editors — are the architects and builders. Together, you collaborate to create something that multiplies the value of both. Even the best land will underperform if developed poorly. And average land, in the right hands, can become something extraordinary. Why This Matters Now We live in a time when technology and access to information have democratized storytelling. Anyone can pick up a camera, start a podcast, or self-publish a book. That’s exciting. However, the reality is that the signal-to-noise ratio is high. There is much crap out there. Millions of stories are competing for attention. Only the ones told with skill, craft, and excellence break through. That’s why quality matters more than ever. If you’ve lived something meaningful, you don’t just need to protect it — you need to tell it well. And telling it well requires recognizing the innate talents of storytellers and respecting the creative process. That starts with understanding the financial potential of the right creative collaboration. That’s the philosophy behind STORYSMART. We’re not here to replace Hollywood or declare traditional studios “bad.” Quite to the contrary. We love creators and the art they create. We’re here to pioneer a new model. One that blends the best practices of the creator economy and independent filmmaking. One that says: • The true story matters. • The storyteller matters. • And together, we can share in the value we create together. A Radical New Way Forward I don’t see the current system as broken. I see it as incomplete and corrupted by winner-take-all greed. For too long, the rewards of storytelling have tilted toward whoever controlled the intellectual property. That’s just how the business has worked. But the future is about more than control. It’s about creative collaboration. It’s about sharing. It’s about building an ecosystem where the source of the story and the team that tells it both benefit fairly and equitably. High-quality, professional storytelling for all. That’s the vision we have for the creator-owned story development studio we are pioneering. For us, it’s the way forward. In the story we are writing as we build our studio, we don’t see a villain other than systemic greed and selfishness. I see it like the movie Jaws. If you ask most people who the villain is in Jaws, most will say the shark. But they would be wrong. From a storytelling standpoint, the “villain” of that story was the town’s greed. After discovering the remains of a shark attack victim, Police Chief Brody wanted to close the beach to swimmers, but the city pushed back because it was their busy season. Don’t Be Greedy – Collaborate with Creatives If you want your story to reach the audiences it deserves, remember that more than ninety percent of the value comes from how it’s told. That means you should be investing in building your storytelling dream team, just as you would be if you were the head of your own film studio. Attach the right names to your project. Trust me when I say that having a Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, or Taylor Sheridan wanting to help with your story will only add value. Think like that. Find the right team. The right writer. The right producer, the right director, and so on. Reject the outdated thinking that you have only two choices. Sell out or do it yourself. Selfish is stupid when it comes to storytelling at the highest levels. Embrace creative collaboration. Think partnership, joint venture, shared equity, and mitigating risk by building a dream team. At STORYSMART®, we help you navigate the path of turning your story into a film while maintaining control of your narrative. If this resonates with you, I encourage you to join our FREE STORYSMART® Storytelling for ALL™ Community, pick up my book STORYSMART Storytelling for ALL: How to Take Control, Own Your True Story and Profit Like a Hollywood Insider, or reach out to me personally. 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.