They did it their way
Legendary actor and activist Paul Newman died yesterday at age 83 after a long battle with cancer. He was a gigantic star and yet he rejected the Hollywood lifestyle in many ways. In a word, he was an innovator, an individual not afraid to buck the trends.
Over six decades in the business, Newman left behind a huge body of work. Beyond his extensive list of film roles, he had numerous producing and directing credits, in addition to an impressive career on Broadway. The characters Newman created are eternal: Butch Cassidy, Hud Bannon, Fast Eddie Felson, Max Roby, Sully Sullivan, and many others.
Newman created a mode of being cool – different from Brando, James Dean, Sinatra, and others – and maintained it for decades. While the rest of Hollywood was smoking dope, Newman publicly supported Gene McCarthy in ’68. That took real great insight and a lot of guts. Paul Newman was genuinely a 20th century iconoclast and national treasure.
Coincidentally, Newman’s death occurred right after I finished Scott Kirsner’s new book Inventing the Movies: Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. It’s also about individuals – leaders, not followers – who made a positive impact on all our lives. More than that, it holds important lessons for the much-ballyhooed world of Web 2.0.
Gentle readers, buy this book. It is really well written and describes with great clarity the history of innovation in the entertainment industry. He shows the century-long efforts of Hollywood pacesetters to innovate while others preferred to maintain the status quo. Kirsner’s extensive use of sources and recognizable theme makes his book compelling for both industry aficionado and the layman alike.
I think that an alternative subtitle to the book might be How power, money, and technology at various times and in various combinations helped shaped the worlds of movies, TV, consumer electronics, and related industries. (For reasons that are now obvious, I am not a book editor.)
I was fascinated to read about the early history of film, involving Thomas Edison and competitors. I did not realize how entrepreneurial Edison was in making adjustments in his development philosophy and go-to-market strategy as a result of market input and competitive influences.
Kirsner offers a fascinating history of 3D movie making and technology. The issues of perception, technology challenges, and the issues of interface relative to 3D film development and movie theater use have parallels with the software business. Today Internet and mobile applications, Software as a Service (SaaS), Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), cloud computing, and other areas of innovation face challenges in vendor, user, and distributor adoption — just like 3D films.
I thought Kirsner’s concluding chapter – “Imagining the Future” – was very strong because it quotes a range of Hollywood legends (Lucas, Spielberg, and others) and adds Kirsner’s unique perspective on Hollywood’s future. Just the same, the chapter lacked a purely technological vision on the future. If you get inspired after reading Kirsner’s book, like I did, and you need a hit of future technology, try researching seamless interfaces or perusing IEEE papers on 3D TV or SIGGRAPH. You’ll be glad you did.
There’s no doubt about it: Innovators rule.
Tags: Hollywood
October 13th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
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