Excellent talk, Adam — even more impressive that you are so clearly passionate about the subject that you did it without notes. Both insightful and provocative. And I absolutely agree that in today's popular culture, most people are willing to accept the presumption that money measures excellence. Where I think I disagree is the notion that the ubiquitous cell phone empowers everyone to become an artist.

In my view, an artist is a visionary — someone who can stare into life's crucible and see what others cannot, then transform that vision into something (art…?) that is capable of touching us in a profound and emotional way. Taking your excellent example of "Bang, Bang, You're Dead," it was William Mastersimone's vision (coupled with yours) that created something so telling that it transcended the student performers on its various stages. Consequently, the play meaningfully connected with many, many others who, left to their own devices, would have failed to turn the all too frequent occurrences of school shootings into anything more than a sad commentary on American gun violence vs. the 2nd Amendment. The letter you read from the troubled student is transformational. A cathartic example of art achieving what all the legislation and social engineering cannot.

Given that we live in a world with an ever burgeoning technological ability to connect us all with everyone 24/7, what worries me is not that some young artist is failing to live up to his/her potential, but that all that texting/tweeting/twittering has become cacophony. So much white noise that everyone is talking and no one is truly listening. My advice to emerging artists today is to turn off your cell phone and focus on your art — whatever it may be. And if you create something of value, hopefully your work will reach out and somehow find those who will appreciate it. No guarantees. But success implies the risk of failure.

As for money, no true artist (not a word I'm crazy about because it is loaded with extra baggage) works for money. Money is a byproduct of art done well. Many years ago, as a student, I attended a NYC showing at the Leo Castelli Gallery of the "combines" (combinations of paint, canvas, wood, found objects, etc. incorporated into works of art) of the late Robert Rauschenberg. Stunning work brilliantly executed. One of the most exciting exhibits I have ever seen. Next to each were two prices. Beside the letter "H" was $30,000. Beside the letter "T" was "$1" and the instructions that if you wished to purchase one of Rauschenberg's works you must see the Gallery's bursar and sign a purchase agreement. At that point, the bursar would flip a coin — Heads you paid $30,000, Tails you paid $1. Aside from Rauschenberg's wonderfully acerbic commentary on the absurdity of marketing art, he was also saying that he cared less for the money then for someone so moved by his work that they would be willing to risk paying anything to possess it.

Great topic for further discussion. Thanks for sharing your talk.

Let’s face it, you’re an artist. When people ask you what you do, or what you are, do you say, “I’m an artist, I’m a writer, etc.”
Or do you pfumph and mumble about what your “job” is and talk about your art as if it were a hobby? Let’s face it, most of the world worries about making a living, but if you’re an artist, you worry about making a life. I know there are times when you hate this pull, when you wish you were like the others, just punching in and cashing the check and not obsessing about that poem you’re working on, that play you’re writing, that chapter in that novel you’re stuck on, that memoir, that one-person show, that teleplay or screenplay. I know. It’s like a siren call. No matter how much you try to forget about it, to throw it out of your life like an old newspaper, you can’t. You’re an artist.
And you struggle with this daily. Adam is someone who has produced successful films, has shepherded plays to meaningful runs, who knows the intricacies of the Hollywood Money Factory. He’s not an outsider, not an ivory tower bohemian talking about the weather and doing nothing about it. He knows the score. This makes his talk all the more revealing, all the more important.

As Adam says,
“It’s about the Real Culture War — not what the media keeps calling the ‘culture war.’
This talk is about the battle to be creative and to discuss our creative culture.”

hmmmmmm. “the battle to be creative . . . ”

Here I am, stuck in chapter three of a book I’m writing, trying to wrench a sentence from a pretzel into a saber.
And for what? The battle to be creative.
No dragons, no charging horsemen, no Achilles wielding his sword.
Just me and the sentence.
I’ve crawled into a cave of my own making, and the impulse to represent something from this world onto the wall of my cave seems pretty ancient right now, almost pre-historic. And when push comes to shove, I’m alone with it.
Just me and the computer screen.

I often think of that homo sapiens who crawled into the cave at Altamira to create those Upper-Paleolithic cave paintings of bisons, horses, and human hands. You know the ones.
Several painters in this century, twenty thousand years later, were influenced by the Altamira cave paintings.
Picasso is often quoted as having declared, “After Altamira, all is decadence.” That explains, I guess, the DaVinci Code and the novels of Jacqueline Suzanne, and maybe even my own feeble attempts to make a work of art, the battle to be creative. Even Steely Dan, in their 1976 album, The Royal Scam, said, “Before the fall, when they wrote it on the wall, when there wasn’t even any Hollywood; they heard the call and they wrote it on the wall.”

Every time you put paint to canvas or pen to paper or fingers to keyboard you are facing that pre-historic wall, and all around you the voices of media pummeling you into submission to the buck, the dinero, the money, the almighty dollar. You not only lose focus, you lose confidence, you lose commitment to your personal vision, you lose heart. And there are times when someone or something reminds us that our little battle to be creative is sacred. This is what Adam Leipzig is telling us in his talk. Don’t lose heart.

I have a sentence to get back to.
And you? You’ve got to get back to the battlefield, too.
Go get ‘em, Tiger.

I found the talk rather mystifying. Who is the 'we'? Who is being spoken to? The major conflict about art and money right now is that the state (that is, the media corporations and the government) are doing their best to propertize the culture of the people and thus monetize it though radical extensions of laws about 'intellectual property' (an oxymoron if there ever was one). But I don't think any even moderately conscious person is unaware that art makes people feel things (and think things) — that's why turning it into property, a commodity, is so important.

The 'culture wars' refer to something else — the offense taken by the religious Right and social reactionaries against Civil Rights, liberalism, hippies, sexual freedom, and so forth and their efforts to force everyone back to at least the 1950s. The ridiculous circus around Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' was part of that and had almost nothing to do with art. As far as I know — I don't watch the Superbowl and I certainly don't listen to Bill O'Reilly.

Great talk! Lots of food for thought about modern creative culture. Lets hope the public learns to feed itself