Out here in Lala land, Los Angeles, Hollywood, or as I like to call it – on account of my general aversion to curse words (ahem) “H. O. Double Hockysticks Eewood,” there’s a saying that goes something like, “You’re only as good as your last project.” Of course sayings and reality are often two completely different things.

My personal experience, based on the last 20 years of me working out here, creating television shows, video games, and movies, is that people’s perceptions are that you are only as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.

It’s sad, really. You could have one medium size hit and float on that hot air for decades. You’re next three projects could turn up face down in the LA river, yet every peanut brained suit with a personal parking spot would cream corn just to have you dump your latest steaming child off in their pool. Why is that? Because they don’t have to take a chance on you. Someone else already did and you made that person a lot of money. So if you blow chunks on this guy’s buffet, as the stockholders are trying to gnaw his sack off, he can try to stop them with this simple phrase, “He was a proven winner!” Losers.

I have created, developed, recreated, written, produced, or directed a crap load of crap in this town and maybe even a gem or two. Loads and loads of it has hit the airwaves over these many years, but I’ll tell you, for the most part I’m not proud of the results. I put up a fight plenty of times, but in the end it was always the studio’s money. That means they get the final decision. All the really good stuff I’ve cooked up never saw eyeballs because somewhere after the time the studio gave me their money but before it went into production the president of Warner Brothers or Disney or Dreamworks or Nickelodeon or Sony – who picked up the project in the first place – got fired for some good reason. Or because the option ran out and they couldn’t get the star’s schedule to match up with buying season. Or because the marketing department of a MAJOR Hollywood studio was suddenly put in charge of the creative department and they couldn’t figure out how to sell products based on a TV show that dealt with drug abusing, sex crazed, suicidal high school kids dealing with a paralyzing fear of loneliness and a terrifying tragedy that shook their small town. I mean, how do you fit all that on a T-Shirt, right? Or once, just once, the project got killed because it actually sucked. I knew it when I pitched it, but it took two years for the other people in the room to catch on. Who knows, maybe the gems that died before they saw the light of a projector would have transformed into fecal matter by the time they hit this rarefied desert air.

Maybe they stank to start with.

My point is that you aren’t only as good as your last project. You aren’t even as good as your best project. If you are trying to create art that communicates an idea, moves your audience, or tells a story, then you are only as good as your NEXT project.

I know what my next project is. What’s yours?

Don’t tell me about it. Do it.

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