Blame Richard Rushfield: I made a Hollywood curriculum in thirty minutes

Please clap (but more importantly, make additional suggestions in the comments.)

Yesterday, I was a guest on the Rushfield Lunch with

The Ankler.

’s

Richard Rushfield

.

The night before last, Richard emailed me to say that he was going to add a new regular feature to these conversations wherein he’d ask his “guest what films, shows or readings he would assign if he could force everyone working in Hollywood to see or read them.”

I may have gotten carried away.

A few caveats:

• I put this together over roughly thirty minutes right after midnight when I couldn’t sleep.

• It is, therefore, woefully incomplete and, frankly, substantially less rigorous and than I’d prefer, but I did provide it so I might as well reutilize it as a Substack post.

• With more time, sleep, and thought, I’d probably have something substantially better.

(Because of all this, I implore you to add your suggestions in the comments and share with others and encourage them to do the same. Do not be shy.)

Anyway, here’s the video, which if I’m doing this right should start right when the deluge of suggestions begins (and if you want to watch the entire conversation, you can just scroll back to the beginning):

And below is a list of the things I mentioned. I’ve tried to include direct links where I could and Bookshop.org links where I found them. Where additional context might be valuable, I’ve made some light commentary that’s largely just a transcription of what I said in the episode.

Okay, caveats issued, here you go, in the order in which they appeared:

Week 1 - It’s all story. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years.

Aristotle. Aristotle’s Poetics.

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry & Legends of Charlemagne.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes.

Anonymous. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights.

Week 2. Myths, Monomyths, and Miseducation.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

hooks, bell. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies.

Baldwin, James The Devil Finds Work

Baldwin, James The Fire Next Time

Week 3: The Psychology of Storytelling

Lindsay Doran’s lecture on the The Psychology of Storytelling, which was profiled here in the New York Times. The video below is an abbreviated version and does no real justice to the actual lecture. From time to time, The Black List has hosted it at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, and we hope to do so again soon. If there was only one thing I would require for everyone working in Hollywood, it’s probably this lecture. If you ever have the chance, wherever and whenever it is, do not miss it.

Screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3 Michael Arndt on Endings: The Good, The Bad, and the Insanely Great.

Week 4: Just Do It

Vachon, Christine. Shooting to Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through Barriers to Make Work that Matters.

Lee, Spike, Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking. (Not available on Bookshop, sadly)

Coel, Michaela. “James MacTaggart Lecture.” Edinburgh TV Festival, 2018

DuVernay, Ava. “Filmmaker Keynote Address, Film Independent Forum.” Film Independent, 28 Oct. 2013. (What I love about this one, specifically, is that this is

Ava DuVernay

before SELMA, before WHEN THEY SEE US, before QUEEN SUGAR, before Array. And knowing what we now know about what she’s accomplished in the last twelve years, it hits with incredibly concussive force. You’ll see what I mean.)

Week 5: Final Drafts and Final Say

A rare departure from recommending actual paper books here to recommend listening to these, both read by the men themselves. Once you do, it will be obvious why.

Diller, Barry. Who Knew?

Lear, Norman. Even This I Get to Experience.

Week 6: Once upon a time… on a quarterly earnings call.

The 2009 Netflix Culture deck. (You’ll have to download it via SlideShare/Scribd)

Hastings, Reed, and Erin Meyer. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Katzenberg, Jeff. Memorandum: Some Thoughts On Our Business. 1991.

Week 7: Don’t Tell Me The Odds

Lewis, Michael, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Week 8: The Usual Suspects

Freeman, Jo. “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” JoFreeman.com.

Dunn, Jonathan, Sheldon Lyn, Nony Onyeador, and Ammanuel Zegeye. “Black Representation in Film and TV: The Challenges and Impact of Increasing Diversity.” McKinsey & Company, 11 Mar. 2021

Anything from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Week 9: Shameless Self Promotion

Leonard, Franklin. The Book I’m Working On Now, In Earnest, I Promise. If anyone would like to pay me to write it, please do get in touch.

---

And there you have it…

A quick and dirty Hollywood syllabus written in 30 minutes right after midnight that I will most assuredly be embarrassed by as soon as people begin start making additional suggestions, so please do that in the comments once you read (or don’t read) this.