Tag Archives: opinion

Movie Review 360 (or don’t plan drunk)

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mr360

Like many of you, I hang with a group of friends who watch movies and then argue in a bar afterwards. And like many of you, all of my friends are “visionaries”.

Over beers, one of my friends said “We should record this”…but whereas the rest of us sobered up, he kept pushing this idea, adding a 360-degree camera to the alcoholic mix.

This past week, Movie Review 360 was born.

Watch two goofballs and a guest (balled, bald or otherwise) talk about the latest releases from Hollywood and Netflix while drinking to excess on a limited budget (we are nothing, if not Canadian).

This week–ably assisted by documentarian Liza Vespi–our thoughts on:

  • Ron Howard’s Inferno
  • Man vs Snake (on Netflix)

Our thanks to Ginger & Russ for hosting us at The Edmund Burke in Toronto.

See also:

Inferno(t) – a review

Man vs Snake – a review

Slaughter Nick for President (trailer for Liza Vespi doc)

Substance over volume

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ddnews

When you meet someone who does not speak your language, there is a cliché response of talking louder to make yourself understood. There is something within many of us that says if we simply pump up the volume, we can overcome the disconnect.

A couple of months ago, Tufts University released their latest estimates for the average cost of developing a new drug: $2.6 billion (I’ve seen estimates up to $5 billion). Eleven years ago, the same group calculated the costs at $0.8 billion.

Now, every time these estimates arise, the hand-wringing begins over how the costs were calculated, which factors make sense and which are over-reaching. What no one seems to argue, however, is that drugs are less expensive to develop today than they were a decade ago.

So what has this to do with speaking louder?

The same period has seen amazing technological achievements designed to facilitate and accelerate drug discovery and development.

Combinatorial chemistry was heralded as a way to expand compound libraries from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. High-throughput and high-content screening, as well as miniaturization and automation, were lauded as ways to screen all of these compounds faster under the paradigm of “fail early, fail often”. And given the masses of data these technologies would churn out, the informatics revolution was supposed to convert data into knowledge and knowledge into healthcare.

And yet, for all of these improvements in throughput, I question whether we have seen much improvement in the number or quality of drugs being produced. We certainly haven’t made them less expensive.

Please understand, I don’t place any fault in the technologies. These are truly marvels of engineering. Rather, I question the applications and expectations of the technologies.

Almost two years ago, GSK CEO Andrew Witty told a London healthcare conference: “It’s entirely achievable that we can improve the efficiency of the industry and pass that forward in terms of reduced prices.”

The pivotal question here, I believe, is how one defines efficiency.

I wonder how many people simply felt economies-of-scale would improve discovery, much as mass production made Henry Ford a rich man. But drugs are not cars, and where throughput and scale make sense when you have a fully characterized end product, they have their limitations during exploration.

When I was a protein biochemist in an NMR structural biology lab, I spent some time trying to wrap my head around two concepts: precision and accuracy. A 3-Å protein structure is very precise but if the structure isn’t truly reflective of what happens in nature, it is meaningless. A 30-Å protein structure is much less precise, but if it is more accurate, more in tune with nature, then it is likely more useful.

By comparison, I wonder if our zeal to equate efficiency with throughput hasn’t improved our precision at the cost of our accuracy. If you ask the wrong question, all of the throughput in the world won’t get you closer to the right answer.

In researching the DDNews Special Reports over the last couple of years, I have spoken at length to several pharma and biotech specialists about this topic, and many feel that the industrialization of drug discovery and development has underwhelmed if not outright failed. Several have suggested it is time to step back and learn to ask better questions of our technologies.

But getting back to the costs issue.

I know many will rightly point out that the largest expense comes from clinical trials. To address this challenge, new technologies and methodologies are being developed to get the most useful information out of the smallest patient populations.

Here again, however, no one segment of the drug development process stands in isolation, and I think back to the compounds reaching the clinic and question the expense of incremental improvements.

Oncolytics CEO Brad Thompson discussed the challenge in Cancer in the Clinic (June 2014 DDNews).

“If you could double [overall survival], you could show that in a couple of hundred patients. If you want to do a 10-percent improvement, you’re talking thousands of patients to do it to the statistical level that everybody would prefer to see. How do you run a study like that?”

That is a huge difference in financial expenditure that begs the question is an efficacy improvement of just 10 percent of value.

From an individual patient perspective, assuredly. From a pharmacoeconomic perspective, maybe not, and particularly with the growing prevalence of high-cost targeted biologics. Maybe we need to aim for bigger improvements before moving candidates forward, which happens long before the clinic.

Again, I’m not placing blame. The history of any industry is filled with experimentation in different methodologies and technologies. Everyone involved had the best of intentions.

But after a couple of decades of middling results, perhaps it is time to question how and when many of these advancements are applied. Simply yelling at a higher volume doesn’t seem to be enough.

[This piece was originally published in the January 2015 issue of DDNews. A lot has happened in the year since, including some amazing results in the field of immuno-oncology that might just address the demand for high-performance treatments even if only for a select patient population. For more on that, see my June 2015 Special Report “Body, heal thyself”.]

…but I know what I like

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Congratulations! You’ve landed a paid writing gig. Finally, all of that hard work and practice is going to pay off.

Mind you, unless the person paying you to develop a screenplay, marketing campaign, novel, whatever, is simply giving away his or her money out of some form of altruistic zealotry gone mad, the benefactor is likely to want to participate in the project, to take some degree of ownership, and therefore to weigh in…with notes.

So, you’ve just received your first batch of notes.

And amazingly, they are relatively minor and/or completely in sync with concerns you had about the work and so give you further impetus to make the changes you kind of knew needed to be made.

But seriously, folks. These notes don’t make any sense. The note-giver clearly didn’t understand the nature of the project he or she assigned you. To make most or any of these changes would be to seriously weaken or outright destroy the project.

Now, what the hell do you do?

shock

Step 1: Curse.

Yes, feel free to curse the gods for this tedious torture of your creative soul. How dare these mere mortals give you notes? The audacity to think they could contribute to this work of Art, when the very notes they provide merely highlight their ignorance.

I don’t have a problem with hosting a pity party of one (or a few close friends). The key is keeping the party short, particularly when working to deadline.

You are an Artist, and Art requires Ego and a degree of Hubris. Without hubris, how would any of us ever have the cahones to show our work to others?

The reality, however, is that we have chosen to work for others, so…

unimpressed

Step 2: Set aside your ego and re-read.

Put a tea-cosy on your vision for a moment and really try to understand the notes you have been given. I’ve heard it said often: What is the note within the notes?

I have found that people often can’t identify or vocalize what they specifically find troubling in a piece of Art. But rather than simply give you no notes, they try to identify things that may have some bearing on their issues…the operative word there being “may”.

If you stand back a little further and ignore the specific requests, can you see something in common between the notes, a greater theme or need from the note-givers?

Do your best to step out of your shoes and into his or hers. A change in perspective may give you a greater insight as to the real challenge the note-giver is facing with your work. You’re the writer; you have one need. A director or a marketing manager will have different needs and perspectives. Respect that.

It is possible, however, that you will still be uncertain (or clueless) as to what to do next. In that case…

what

Step 3: Ask questions/seek clarity.

Acknowledging the note-giver’s concerns or comments is not the same as accepting them. It does, however, give him or her a sense that you respect them and are trying to maintain a collaborative relationship. I cannot begin tell you how much this means to people and pays off in the long run.

Offer your interpretation of the issues to confirm you see things the same way as the note-giver. If you do, brilliant. You can now offer alternatives to the less palatable requests that may satisfy the note-giver’s misgivings.

If you don’t, brilliant. Now, you have the opportunity to gain insights into the note-giver’s perspectives. This will allow you to brainstorm new approaches that will satisfy both parties.

You may also find that many of the requested changes are not a high priority for the note-giver or were merely suggestions of things you could do. For all the opinions people offer throughout their lives, most individuals are incapable of giving effective notes and thus, demands, suggestions and brain farts all look alike to the person receiving them. This holds for the Artist, as well. Don’t allow your and their ignorance to drive you crazy.

So, now that you either have an understanding with the note-giver or realize you are working with a control-obsessed ego-maniacal asshole (it happens)…

gotcha

Step 4: Make your changes or rollover.

What you now do with these notes hinges on a cost-benefit analysis.

Are there ways you can bring greater clarity to the story you have written that will address the needs without either incorporating the specific requests or significantly altering your vision of the story?

If yes, then you have not only improved the work, but you’ve established a wonderful rapport with the note-giver that will likely lead to future opportunities for collaboration.

If not, you need to ask what your goal is for this particular project.

If it is your magnum opus, then feel free to stick your heels in and refuse to make the requested changes, but in the knowledge that you may very well be fired and find it difficult to get work in the future. The note-giver and community may respect your stance and in the final analysis, acknowledge you were correct in your refusal, but it doesn’t happen a lot.

If, however, this project is the first step toward a longer term relationship with the note-giver and/or the hiring community, then go back to Step 2 and think harder as to how to make this work to everyone’s advantage. The onus is on you to do your best work within the framework you are given.

In this latter situation, of course, another alternative is simply to rollover and acquiesce to the requested changes. It is completely possible that the note-giver is right and you simply could not see the problems because your ego was in the way (aka you were too close to the project).

On the flipside, of course, if the note-giver was wrong, you may carry the burden of his or her errors and so find future work with that individual unlikely but then why would you want to work with that asshole again. Or, he or she could step up and take ownership of the error, in which case, you may have found a partner who will trust your instincts more the next time.

Getting notes is never easy, but it’s going to happen whenever you leave your Artistic cave. How you deal with them will have a significant impact on how often you get paid to do your thing.

What more did you need?

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There is an allegory that was better told by Karl Malden on The West Wing, but it goes something along the lines of:

There was a man who lived by a river, and one day, he heard a weather report that said the river was going to flood and that everyone should move to higher ground. A devout man, he said, “God will protect me. I do not have to leave my home.”

The rains started and a policeman came knocking on the man’s door, telling him he had to evacuate. The man smiled and said, “The Lord will protect me. I’ll be okay.”

The river flooded and the man was stranded on his roof, when a rescuer in a boat rowed by, telling him to get into the boat. The man shook his head and said “I have prayed and God will protect me.”

Eventually, the river swept the house away and the man drowned, and when he got to heaven, he stood confused before God and asked, “Lord, you let me drown. I am a good man, why did you not protect me?”

And God looked down and replied, “I sent you a weather report, a police officer and a rescuer in a boat. What more did you need?”

 

I recount this story because I have a colleague who is going through similar stages with her screenplay.

After months of feedback from writing groups and instructors that suggested several issues with her screenplay, the most prominent being the passivity of her protagonist and complete lack of conflict in her story, my colleague stood fast by her story. She defended her choices vigorously and left us in no doubt that she was going down the right road.

As it is her story, that is her right, and so many of us stopped discussing these issues with her.

More recently, she’s had the opportunity to send her screenplay to a film producer she knows, who was more than happy to give my colleague her thoughts. A few days later, she shared the feedback with us and smack in the middle was several issues related to the behaviour and actions of the protagonist. My colleague was unimpressed and vaulted upon her Steed of Rationalization, charging into the night.

A week or so later, my colleague received feedback from a film director and again, was smacked with a lack of central conflict and a passive protagonist. And again, this elicited response of being misunderstood and dismissive anger.

And the screenwriting gods looked down and replied, “I sent you a screenwriters group, a film producer and a film director. What more did you need?”

 

We all want people to agree with our views, particularly when it comes to something as personal as our art. Agreement validates us as individuals and confirms that our art has merit in the world beyond.

But in the search for that agreement, we must be prepared for disagreement. And while it is always our prerogative to ignore contrary opinions, we lose the right to complain when the contrary feedback is consistent and still we choose ignore it (or worse, rail against it).

I don’t believe that anyone has to accept external feedback; positive or negative. But if you want your art to be more than mental masturbation, you should be prepared to listen to all input and incorporate what makes sense to improve your art.

Otherwise, shut up and let the rest of us evacuate the flood plain.