Latest / The Entertainment Conversation: Pop Culture, Media & Ideas / Why I Write Movies That Will Never Exist (And Why You Should Too) | The Entertainment Conversation
Transcript
- You are holding a masterpiece that will never be seen, and that is the most liberating feeling in the world. Stop waiting for permission to create something beautiful just because no one is paying you to do it. Let’s unpack that for a second, because I know exactly where your mind goes when I say 'masterpiece that will never be seen.' You probably think of it as failure. Or vanity. Or some sort of artistic delusion. But let me tell you a secret from my years as an editor: the most vibrant ideas often live in the dark. They don’t need an audience to have value. In fact, they need the absence of an audience to survive. When you write a screenplay knowing it will never be funded, filmed, or distributed, you strip away every external constraint. There is no studio note telling you to make the protagonist likelier. There is no producer asking if the third act has enough product placement opportunities for luxury cars. There is only you, the story, and the raw, unfiltered truth of what you want to say. It’s giving... absolute freedom. And honestly? It’s terrifying. Because without the safety net of potential success, you’re forced to ask yourself why you’re writing this at all. Is it for the craft? Is it for the catharsis? Or is it just to keep your hands busy while the world burns outside? Whatever the reason, it matters. The page doesn’t care about box office returns. The characters on that page only care if you treat them with respect. I remember sitting in a room five years ago, listening to a young writer pitch a film about grief that was so specific, so achingly human, it made the entire boardroom cry. But they passed on it. Not because it was bad. But because it was too expensive to shoot in the way the director envisioned, and the market didn’t understand the nuance of non-linear mourning. So that script died. It became a ghost. A beautiful, tragic ghost. Now, I’m not saying you should write screenplays that will never be funded because you’re bitter about Hollywood. Please, do not let cynicism poison your well. I’m saying you should write them because the process itself is a form of therapy that requires no validation. When you remove the financial incentive, you remove the performance. You stop acting like a professional and start being a true artist. Think about it like that episode we did last month on generative art and market crashes. We talked about how data can bleed into beauty when you let go of control. Writing an unfilmable movie is similar. You are letting go of the control of reception. You are allowing the story to exist purely as an expression of emotion, not as a commodity. It’s a radical act in a culture obsessed with monetization. You are creating art for the sake of art. Which sounds pretentious, I know, but hear me out. It’s actually quite humble. It admits that some things are too precious to be sold. When there are no stakes, everything becomes possible. In a funded project, every line of dialogue is weighed against its budget impact. Every scene is measured by its location cost. But in your private screenplay, you can have a dragon fly over a small-town diner in Ohio. You can have a conversation between two lovers that lasts forty pages of pure silence. You can kill off the main character in the first ten minutes and explore the ripple effects through the eyes of the dog. This level of creative liberty is intoxicating. It reminds me of reading Shakespeare. We assume these plays were written for immediate production, but many were likely crafted for language’s sake, for the sheer joy of rhythm and metaphor. They were meant to be spoken, yes, but their primary power lies in their text, not their staging. Your unfilmable screenplay is your stage-free zone. It is a playground where logic takes a backseat to poetry. You might write a scene where time reverses because it feels emotionally right, even if physics disagrees. You might give your villain a monologue that is more confession than threat. These choices serve the story’s internal truth, not its external viability. And isn’t that what we all crave? To be understood for our internal truths, rather than judged by our external utility? Writing for an imaginary cinema allows you to practice this kind of honesty. It trains you to trust your instincts. When you eventually do write for hire, or pitch to a real studio, you’ll bring that confidence with you. You’ll know that your voice is valid, regardless of whether someone pays for it. Let’s talk about character development, because this is where the magic really happens. In commercial cinema, protagonists must be relatable. They must have clear goals. They must grow in ways the audience can track. But in your personal script, your characters can be messy, contradictory, and utterly inexplicable. They don’t owe you an arc. They don’t owe the audience a resolution. They can just be. I once wrote a character who spent three acts staring at a wall, thinking about the color blue. No one would fund that movie. It would be called boring. It would be called slow. But that character taught me so much about stillness. About how we process trauma not through action, but through pause. If I had been pitching that to a studio, they would have demanded he fix his car or go on a road trip. They would have sanitized his pain into a plot device. By writing it for myself, I preserved its dignity. The character remained complex. He remained human. This is crucial. We live in a media landscape that often flattens people into archetypes. Heroes, villains, sidekicks. But real humans are chaotic. Our unfilmable movies allow us to depict that chaos without apologizing for it. You can write about people who fail. People who stay broken. People who choose loneliness. These stories are vital. They reflect the parts of life that aren’t cinematic, but are deeply real. By keeping them in your drawer, you protect them from the homogenizing force of mass production. You keep their edges sharp. You keep their souls intact. So how do you actually do this? How do you maintain discipline when there’s no deadline, no paycheck, no critic review looming over your shoulder? You treat it like a ritual. You sit down at the same time each week. You drink your wine, as we discussed in previous episodes, or maybe tea, whatever comforts you. You open the document. And you begin. The key is to separate the writing phase from the judging phase. When you write, you are a child playing with blocks. You build towers that fall over. You mix colors that clash. You don’t stop to critique the structure until the draft is done. This separation is essential. Most writers kill their creativity early because they judge every sentence before it’s finished. They ask, 'Is this good enough?' 'Will this work?' 'Who is this for?' Silence those voices. For this specific practice, there is no for. There is only now. Read what you’ve written aloud. Hear the rhythm. Feel the pulse. If it makes your heart ache, you’re doing it right. If it makes you laugh, keep going. The goal is not perfection. The goal is connection. With yourself. With the characters. With the idea. Over time, you might find that these scripts change you. They might inform your professional work. They might help you understand a friend’s struggle better. They might simply provide a sanctuary where you feel safe. All of these outcomes are valuable. None require a greenlight from a studio head. The value is intrinsic. It lives in the making. It lives in the courage to imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist, and to populate it with beings who deserve to be heard, even if only by you. I want you to imagine this script as a letter to your future self. Ten years from now, you might look back at these words and see who you were. You might see your fears, your hopes, your specific obsessions. You might realize that the dragon over the diner was a metaphor for the big dreams you thought were impossible. Or maybe it was just a dragon. Maybe it was just fun. Either way, it belongs to you. No one can take it away. No algorithm can delete it. No budget cut can erase it. It exists in the realm of pure creation. And in a world that constantly tries to commodify our attention and our labor, that realm is sacred. It is yours. So write the movie that won’t be filmed. Write the scene that won’t be shot. Write the dialogue that won’t be spoken. Do it for the love of the language. Do it for the joy of the puzzle. Do it because you are a storyteller, and storytelling is what we do. It’s how we make sense of the noise. It’s how we leave traces of our existence. Even if those traces are invisible to the naked eye, they are felt by the soul. Stay curious. Keep writing. The world needs your stories, even if it doesn’t know it yet. Especially if it doesn’t know it yet. Because sometimes, the most important art is the art that waits. The art that blooms in the dark. The art that refuses to be sold. Thank you for spending this evening with me. I hope you feel a little lighter, a little braver, and perhaps a little more inclined to open that notebook. I’ll be here next week, ready to dive into another corner of culture and creativity. Until then, stay curious.