The Katzenberg Memo [Part 3]

In January 1991, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then the head of Disney’s motion picture divisions, wrote a memo that ended up being circulated throughout Hollywood. Even though it is 21 years old, it is remarkably relevant to the current movie business. For example, the United States was in a recession as we are today. The movie industry was confronted by numerous financial challenges tied to technological advances and cultural shifts, also as we are today.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting the entire memo. If you have any interest in screenwriting or working in the film business, you should read it. Why? Because it gives you a wide-open view of how studio executives think. After all, any script you write and circulate in Hollywood doesn’t exist in a vacuum, rather it funnels through a system, one that operates based upon the business principles and practices of studio heads like Katzenberg.

Today: The Lowdown on High Concept

The Lowdown on High Concept

One of the most misunderstood and misused phrases in the Hollywood lexicon is “high concept.” The phrase was introduced by Michael [Eisner] for internal use by creative executives at Paramount as a guide for evaluating ideas. But it quickly spread throughout Hollywood and has since been widely misinterpreted and abused.

“High concept” was intended to describe a unique idea whose originality could be conveyed briefly. The emphasis was supposed to be on “originality” but has come to be placed on “briefly,” so that today “high concept” is thought to mean an idea that can be summarized in a logline in TV Guide.

This is unfortunate, because “high concept” is a useful, complex, thoughtful encapsulation of what we should all be working toward. It makes a link between movie making and movie marketing. It embellishes the concept that “the idea is king” by asserting that the idea that forms the basis of a film should not only be one that is compelling but also one that can be communicated.

The real meaning of high concept is that ingenuity is more important than production values. This is why we should constantly be looking for creative solutions, not financial ones.

This is a terrific insight and I’m not just saying that because I’ve made the point incessantly about how studios value story concepts because of their marketing value [as I did in an interview with a studio marketing exec here].

I read and hear so much obsession on the part of a writers about honing their story’s logline, but I can’t help but see so much of the focus on, as Katzenberg suggests, the “briefly” aspect of concepts rather than the actual substance of the idea.

You can not make a great story concept by massaging every word so it fits into a neat, compressed logline. You can only make a great story concept… by coming up with a great story concept, then massaging every word so it fits into a neat, compressed logline.

But it all starts with the idea. If you are writing spec scripts and trying to break into the business, you should spend at least some part of every day generating story ideas. Linus Pauling said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” As an object lesson in this regard, you can mark it in your calendars that this April, I will run the third annual “A Story Idea Each Day for a Month” series where I give away — for free! — story ideas culled from news items from the previous twelve months.

Now go off somewhere and come up with a great high concept!

To read Part 1 of the Katzenberg memo, go here.

To read Part 2, go here.

To read the entire memo, go here.