THIS MONTH IS PILOT SHOWDOWN!

If you have a pilot script burning a hole in your hard drive, it’s time to submit it! I’m taking entries until June 20th.

In our lead-up to July’s MEGA SHOWDOWN, we’ve got one showdown left. And it’s for the TV writers out there. So start sending in your title, genre, and logline now.

What: Pilot Showdown
I need your: Title, Genre, and Logline
Optional: Crossover Pitch, Tagline
Competition Date: Friday, June 21st
Deadline: Thursday, June 20th, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

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I was going to use today’s post to bring up another sad box office take this weekend (a legit summer month and the top movie made 13 million bucks – yikes!) but since I already spent the newsletter talking about that, I decided to go in a different direction.

I stumbled upon this video about the upstart water brand, “Liquid Death.” If you haven’t heard of it, it’s water in a can. The crazy name and packaging are specifically designed to shock you so you’ll be curious. That curiosity has led to a 700 million dollar business.

The video interviews the founder and he said something about product-building that surprised me. He said, “The first thing we do is we ask, ‘What’s the worst idea we can come up with?’” He does this for a specific reason: because when you’re asked what the BEST idea you can come up with is, your mind tends to draw from things that are already hugely successful. So you don’t get any creativity.

But when you’re asked to come up with the worst idea, you’re more likely to find an original option. That’s how this business was born. What’s a terrible idea for a food product? “What about water in a can?” What’s the worst name we could call that? “Liquid Death.”

Part of the reason this strategy intrigued me was because I remember the Daniels (directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once) once saying that that’s how they come up with movie ideas. They ask, “What’s the dumbest idea we can come up with?” That’s how they came up with a farting-corpse movie. That’s how they came up with Matrix meets an Everything Bagel.

So I leave the table to you. Each of you generate, what you believe, to be the worst movie idea. Call me crazy. But I think one of them might end up being amazing. Please upvote the BEST worst idea.

Let’s see how crappy you can be!