How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick | Hacker News Reader

How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick

wired.com

198 pointspier043 comments

I've run across Prufrock451 before on the Paradox gaming boards, where he was known years ago as one of the most creative AAR (After Action Report) writers.

Two of his most popular works, both dating from 2002:

- WAAR of the Worlds, in which aliens invade (and are then repulsed by another player who alternated game sessions with Prufrock451). http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?44563-WAA...

- The Great Game Redux - Sibir, whose plot bears a striking resemblance to Rome Sweet Rome. A Englishman in 1909 is transported to Siberia in 1419 and attempts to transform the tribes into a modern country. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?35699-The...

Both were written against a backdrop of a (heavily modified) game of Europa Universalis 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_II).

A further proof, if still necessary, that overnight success is just a myth.

With four or five ideas, Madhouse said hmm.

Come on Wired, you can't use "hmm" as a noun - it at least needs quotes!!

Twenty-five were immediate noes.

I think that's also highly questionable. But I'm not certain.

Of course, like any site that thrives on pseudonymity, Reddit attracts its share of the sick and the deluded. There’s a subreddit, MensRights, “for people who believe that men are currently being disadvantaged by society,” and for years the site admins tolerated subreddits devoted to pictures of underage girls.

What? How is MensRights "sick and deluded"? There really are laws (e.g. child custody law in certain US states) that are highly skewed against men.

The author most likely meant "sick or deluded". I would however still object to that.

It sounded to me like he meant the BeatingWomen subreddit, which I believe is not made in jest.

Because to some people "mens rights" sounds like "white's rights", and the idea that men are now suddenly experiencing massive discrimination is about as believable as the idea that heterosexuals are now being systemiatically persecutre for the sexual orientation.

Also, for every 1 law (or societal norm) that are highly skewed against men, there are 10 that are highly skewed against women. (for "child custody law", I give you "access to contraceptives", "evidence during rape trials", "chance of suffering domestic violence", "chance of getting elected as a politician", "chance of getting appointed to a board", "chance of founding a start up", "frequency of being viewed as not a hacker/programmer", "risk of rape", "chance of being the victim of sexual aggression in the workplace", "chance of being the victim of unwanted verbal sexual attention on the street")

On average, men are still in a much more privileged position than women.

I don't even read that subreddit, but I feel compelled to continue defending it from outright attacks.

suddenly experiencing massive discrimination

Nobody's claiming that. But, really, certain areas of the law (child custody, child support payment) are so unfair that they can easily ruin a man's life.

"child custody law", I give you "access to contraceptives"

Bullshit, women can buy Plan B and other contraceptives over the counter.

"evidence during rape trials"

Bullshit, you can't convict a man of rape just because a woman says so. That is too prone to abuse.

The rest of your examples are not applicable, because they don't concern legal rights, but simply societal norms.

On average, men are still in a much more privileged position than women.

Again, that's beside the point, and nobody's arguing that.

> "Also, for every 1 law (or societal norm) that are highly skewed against men, there are 10 that are highly skewed against women."

I think most of the rational supporters of men's rights would like a world where both of those numbers are 0.

The brief version is: luck.

The right idea was in front of the eyes of the right person at the right time.

The idea is a staple of light sci-fi, but apparently has not crossed the desk of the right agents in the right mood.

So: luck.

Which is wildly underestimated as a cause of success.

Luck can be increased with frequency. The more often you put yourself out there, the greater the chance the right people/time/moods will align.

Absolutely; luck is in part a function of exposure. But only to an extent. Los Angeles is notoriously stuffed to the gills with attractive waiters trying to manufacture luck.

I look on things like talent as necessary but not sufficient causes of success.

For my fuller view: http://chester.id.au/2012/03/02/does-leadership-matter/

I believe that I should knock on all doors, be overjoyed at those that open, but not be crushed by those that don't. I knock on ALL doors to take my luck and turn it into opportunity.

Well, much of life is luck. But, instead of great idea dying in some coffee shop, they have an outlet where the right ideas can find the right people that can execute.

The key is that the Internet enables a giant magnifying glass on everyone. This could have died out, but now it has a chance to live.

I think the internet has made a quantitative, not qualitative change to the dynamics of luck.

There are still great ideas dying in coffee shops. They're just dying on reddit too.

The point is the size of the audience - there's usually more people in any given reddit forum than in your average coffee shop :)

And _that_ is caused by a qualitative change - physical proximity has become way less important.

Yes, but physical proximity has been steadily growing less important for thousands of years.

It used to be that you needed to convince Ugg, the big man of your tribe. Then you had to travel to Babylon -- or instead send clay tablets. Then you could be heard in Alexandria from Rome if papyrus copies of your words were transcribed and shipped. Eventually the printing press, telegraph and regular steam train schedules meant information about your speech in Paris could be news in Berlin in hours.

Today, in a few seconds, I put my hypothesis on the nature of the internet to a few hundred strangers scattered across the globe.

That's what I mean by a quantitative change. At each step, the number of people you could potentially reach has increased; the cost of doing so has fallen. I don't see it as a qualitative change, though, I see it as a series of smaller stepwise improvements.

> a giant magnifying glass on everyone

An exaggerated comment, I think. There's a lot more content out there on the net, there's no way all content gets an equal share of attention - you end up with a lot of concentration and a greater amount of darkness. Actually every little thing you post and share is diluted in enormous mass of information. Even viral videos are usually obscure for several years before someone influential happens to find them and relink them.

It may have been true at the earliest stages of the web, but in 2012, it's pretty hard to stand out on the web and to benefit from the "giant magnifying glass" you mention.

Very true. There are so many tens of thousands of people that think they can write movies that writing a great script is only part of the equation in getting a deal. Getting the right person to read it--or really, getting anyone that matters to read it--is just as hard as writing that great script in many ways.

And then, after you make that one in a million deal off some crazy-good pitch to the right executive, there's no guarantee that it will ever get shot. There are many writers in hollywood that have sold dozens of scripts and only ever had one or two get produced.

If you have zero things out there your chance of "luck" is exactly zero.

(I'm not saying you are wrong, I just think this is a paltry excuse.)

Where did I say it was an excuse?

Sure, but the hero of this story is Reddit.

In a world without Reddit, the role of luck would have been even greater. What are the odds that, had this guy simply written his ideas into a book or screenplay and tried to send it out to agents, he'd ever have gotten noticed? Or even read? Having worked in that world before, let me tell you: pretty close to zero. Absent any connections to the film world, it's almost impossible to break in.

The fact is, Reddit expanded the range of the sets "right place" and "right time." Without it, those sets would have been infinitessimals. People here like to talk of expanding one's "luck surface area," and to me, this is a perfect example of that concept.

Not really. Reddit also increases the number of other people competing for attention. It's a wash.

When we entered graduate school, the program director gave us this piece of advice:

  Success ∝ Ability * (Hard Work)^2 * Sqrt(Luck)

I think he was right.

The original post:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_des...

The original post submitted to HN, where it accumulated 33 points and 1 comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2960820

    By the end of his lunch hour, he had gotten as far as Day 6, but he didn’t want to post all the entries at once; what if no one read them? So he posted Day 2, then returned to his work, taking screenshots of software buttons and labeling them.
    ...
    Erwin dribbled out his story over the course of the afternoon, switching back and forth between Reddit and work.

What a lovely way of adapting the story so he wasn't on reddit all day instead of working.

Well he was working, just not for the company paying him at that moment :)

Does anyone else find it annoying/disconcerting the amount of time spent in the article describing what reddit is? If reddit truly is "one of the largest communities on the Internet" and wired is a technology magazine then is that necessary? Where do they stop? "Erwin was using a computer, kind of likea type-writer with a T.V. attached to it, probably not dis-similar to the thing you're using now to read this article"

Maybe it has to do with the fact that Reddit and Wired Magazine have the same parent company, Condé Nast? Space in the article spent promoting Reddit might cause interested readers to visit.

Excellent point, I hadn't thought of that.

A little pedantic, but Reddit isn't technically a division of Condé Nast anymore. It's now owed by Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast, so they're sister companies. More details here:

http://blog.reddit.com/2011/09/independence.html

"Kolbrenner says the movie is “going to be completely different—I don’t know if I should say that or not."

I really hope they don't fuck it up when they make the changes. Prufrock, if you're reading this, don't let them ruin it. Please, please, please watch out for your story. Don't let them make it completely different.

I think you know (and we all know) that that's impossible by now.

FYI, if you want to read a comic about modern soldiers going back in time to fight in Rome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Romana_(comics)

This reminds me of the Michael Criton book "Timeline" which was also made into a movie in 2003.

And "Time's Eye" by Stephen Baxter which features a battle between the Genghis Khan and a combined force of late-18th century British soldiers and 21st century UN peacekeepers.

Interesting article. The power of an idea catching on is possible through the internet. It is amazing how many shows and artists were found on YouTube. It says in the article the site's founders originally created phony accounts and posted stuff in the beginning. I wonder how many big companies did that and if any of you know the rules of it. I am happy my community is getting real people to join since it feels more authentic. You can see http://www.willlisten.com

For those of you have haven't read the first few chapters, go and do it. It's brilliant.

> “OK, I’m writing a movie for the masses,” he says. “OK, masses, what do you like?”

Oh, it'll be one of /those/ movies :(

I just see a Hollywood that ran out of ideas a long time ago and is desperate for a fresh story. The big movie pushes I've seen this year are John Carter, based on a character that first appeared a hundred years ago, and the Hunger Games, based on a book series that first appeared less than four years ago. Then I see a new Three Stooges film coming out that, among other crazy things, features an appearance of several Jersey Shore cast members. Many other big budget films this year are sequels: Wrath of the Titans, The Avengers, Men In Black 3, etc.

And here, Prufrock451 is a lucky one. Hollywood is starving for ideas, but even when innovative writers come up with a good idea, Hollywood prefers to go with established money-makers and often red-lights obscure ideas. I think they're so willing to go with Prufrock451's story because it got so popular on reddit. There's lower risk. They see that this story can attract a lot of eyeballs, and are hoping that those eyeballs will translate to box office success.

Hollywood likes to blame its decline on pirating, but in reality there are very few new ideas coming out of Hollywood anymore, and they expect to make money repackaging old ideas, putting them in 3D and charging a premium. Hopefully stories like Prufrock451's become more common and we get to see more original ideas make it to the big screen. I certainly don't want to see more movies with the old stooges and the new Jersey stooges.

Relying on literary adaptations is a symptom of Hollywood's decline from the golden age of The Maltese Falcon (1941 remake of a 1931 adaptation of a 1930 novel), Gone with the Wind (from the bestseller by Margaret Mitchell) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (way more than a hundred years old in 1938)?

The reason most Hollywood material is adapted material, is that a movie is a hell of an expensive place to try out new ideas. A book costs little to write, and takes one person to write it. And there are lots of them, succeeding, or failing, on the strength of their ideas, writing and storytelling. Cinema has never been the place to run a lot of flags up the pole and see which one the public salutes.

guess where trying out new ideas is somewhat low in costs as far as movies go? 2d Mobile Games :)

Sequels just make more sense. They are cheaper, pull a large crowd, and help promote the franchise in general (i.e. sell more toy lightsabers and the "Special Edition box-set"). They are also more predictable - you've got a better idea of both the costs, and the audience numbers.

Hollywood has rarely had many great new ideas. Maybe a lot of good ideas get tested in TV series now. DVD sales of series are pretty big, and TV quality work is much better. You only really need movie-quality production for "awesome action scenes" now. Most TV production is good enough.

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