News:
  • Women Directors 2021
  • Ma Rainey Sings the Blues with Passion and Rage
  • Kareem Tayyar and the Complexities of Joy
  • LIFE AFTER BIRTH APPLAUDS IMPEACHMENT NUMBER 2
  • Poets on Craft: Stephen Kampa and Chelsea Woodward
  • Signs and the City
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
Cultural Weekly logo
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
The Artist's Life

The Value of Saying No

By Garner Simmons on February 9, 2012 inFilmLifestyleTheatre

3

Click Here To View Comments

In March of 1982, Warren Beatty, along with his co-writer Trevor Griffths, won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Reds.  In accepting the award, Beatty did a remarkable thing.  He began by thanking all those who had had the courage to tell him “no.”  While the line got a laugh, Beatty was serious.  It wasn’t the “yeses” that made his film great; it was the “nos.”   The challenges to what he had written that made him dig deeper. He learned the value of saying no.

A couple of years earlier, I had stood with legendary composer Jerry Fielding at a screening of a film that really didn’t work.  People kept coming up to him to offer congratulations to which Jerry invariably replied:  “Thank you.  It’s shit.”  Looking over at the gaggle of studio executives drinking and laughing, he shook his head.  “I’m not on speaking terms with half of the people here because I tell them what they don’t want to hear while they stand around like a bunch of glad-handing, back-slapping jackasses congratulating each other on what they don’t understand to begin with.”  Fielding and Beatty shared the same creative ethos:  great art demands rigorous rebuttal and cross-examination.  If you can’t defend it, you need to tear it down and do it again.  Merely acceptable is unacceptable.  If you can do better, you must.

In a remarkable article titled “Groupthink” appearing in the New Yorker (1/30/12), writer Jonah Lehrer (author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide, and the upcoming Imagine: How Creativity Works) challenges the widely held belief that the best ideas come from brainstorming.  Lehrer begins with a brief history of the evolution of this concept as the product of Alex Osborn, the “O” in the powerful ad agency B.B.D.O.  The key to brainstorming’s success, according to Osborn, was the elimination of negative input.  It was his belief that the only way to channel our creative juices was to banish criticism.  Every idea was equally valid.  Nothing should be excluded for out of this abundance of ideas would inevitably come brilliance.  The assumption is that if people fear ridicule for saying something stupid, they simply won’t say anything at all.  The only problem with brainstorming, in Lehrer’s opinion, is that it actually does not work.

As evidence of this, Lehrer offers numerous examples.  But among the most interesting is one that comes surprisingly from the Broadway stage.  Brian Uzzi is a sociologist at Northwestern University with a Jones for musicals.  As he notes, “Nobody creates a Broadway musical by themselves.”  It takes a composer, a lyricist, a librettist, a choreographer all working in collaboration with a director who must, in turn, work with the producers.  In other words: a team of creative talent.  Attempting to understand how this collaboration works, Uzzi decided to find out which worked better: a team comprised of close friends who had worked together before or a team of relative strangers.  To answer this, he studied every musical between 1945 and 1989 spending literally years analyzing some 474 productions.  Clearly Broadway involves an inbred system with many creative interconnections.  Attempting to quantify this, he developed a system reducing everything down to a figure he refers to as “Q.” Simply put, musicals crafted by teams that had frequently worked together receive a high Q score; those created by artists who had never worked together received a low Q score.  It was no surprise that those with a low Q score invariably failed (obviously it takes time for creative partnerships to meld).  However, those with too high a Q score also failed.  In Lehrer’s analysis: “The artists all thought in similar ways, which crushed innovation.”  The most successful collaborations, therefore, came from the middle where the discussions were vibrant and not everyone was saying “yes.”  As an example, he cites West Side Story where Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents, all legends of musical theater combined with a then unknown talent, a 25 year-old lyricist who had never worked on a Broadway musical – Stephen Sondheim.  The result was simply brilliant.

The point is that surrounding ourselves with those who only agree with us reinforces both the positives and negatives.  The result frequently fails to stand on its own merits because we have willingly blinded ourselves to what isn’t working by seeing only what we wish to see.  Candor is the only rule.  Tell me what you really think, not what you think I want to hear.  If you challenge my ideas and I can’t adequately defend them, perhaps I need to rethink them and find better ideas.  Creativity demands courage and a fearless devotion to the truth however disagreeable it may be.

Click Here To View Comments

TagsArthur Laurentsartistcollaborationcross examinationLeonard BernsteinStephen Sondheimwriters guild of america

Previous Story

Alice Walker

Next Story

Finding the Secrets Between the Notes

About the author

Garner Simmons

Garner Simmons

A member of the Writers Guild of America since 1978, Garner Simmons has written extensively for television and motion pictures. His newly released biography on the life and films of director Sam Peckinpah titled Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage – The Definitive Edition is available on Amazon. He is currently working on a novel.

Related Posts

  • Critiquing Art While Fostering Creativity: With Experienced Artist John Kissick  

    By Our Friends
    Whether you’re an artist, student, or...
  • The Responsibility of Creativity

    By Bill Cushing
    In 1981, the Hungarian film Mephisto won the...
  • Theater in the Time of COVID: The Apples and Sondheim’s 90th

    By David Sheward
    With Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional...
  • A West Side Story for 2020

    By David Sheward
    When it was announced controversial director...

Support Our Friends

Follow Us

Join Our Mailing List

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @CulturalWeekly

Comments

  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    A Case Against New Year’s Resolutions
    Here is an interesting new voice: candid,...
    1/14/2021
  • Matthew R. Matthew R.
    A Taste of Gypsy Boots
    Thank you Gypsy, for being brave in your new...
    1/8/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Bye Bye 2020 … a mute testimony
    given the events at the US Capitol of January 6th...
    1/7/2021

New

  • The Muted Truth About Buying TikTik Followers
  • 5 Netflix Sports Docus that Will Inspire Your Inner Artist
  • Top 9 Things to Remember When Buying Car Accessories Online
  • The Dangers of Drug Addiction
  • Why Should we Focus on Our Mental Health?

Tags

art dance film Los Angeles music photography poem poems poetry tomorrow's voices today

Like us

Please Help

Donate

Who are we?

Cultural Weekly is a place to talk about our creative culture with passion, perspective and analysis – and more words than “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Our mission is to draw attention to our cultural environment, illuminate it, and make it ... read more

Site map

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • Contributors
  • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Food
  • Home
  • Masthead
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Submission Form
  • Submissions: Write for us
  • Subscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Thank You

Links

Adam Leipzig
Entertainment Media Partners
This Is Crowd
CreativeFuture
Plastic Oceans Foundation
Arts & Letters Daily
Alltop
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Jack Grapes
Ethan Bearman
Writ Large Press

Mailing List

* indicates required


  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Contact us
Cultural Weekly is the digital magazine and public platform of Next Echo Foundation. DONATE HERE.
Copyright © 2010-2020 by Adam Leipzig. All Rights Reserved.