Key excerpts of his quote, and the full video interview under the cut.

His advice for screenwriters: (paraphrased)

“Find what’s important to you, and stick to that…don’t give into the temptation of shaping yourself around some sort of perception of what the market wants or what people want.  Or God forbid, what critics want.”

As children, we learn to get what we want by finding what other people want and giving it to them. Take that as obedience to your parents, doing homework for your teacher, adopting habits of dress and behavior to be accepted into a social group.

When you get into the entertainment business (and perhaps other businesses as well), you find conformist behavior has a glass ceiling. The more you conform, the more you blend into the crowd.

I had the opportunity several years ago to strike out for LA and make my way. But I didn’t, and I didn’t for a specific reason: it seemed to me, the more I made myself available to the Los Angeles crowd, the less valuable I’d become. There are already thousands of filmmakers in Hollywood knocking on doors and hawking scripts; at some point, they all have to sound the same.

I have guided my steps based on this principle: the more you are able to strike out on your own (creatively, logistically, or both) the more valuable you are.

Here’s Mr. Johnson:

Find your thing, find what makes your voice unique, and stick to your guns…in the short term, it’s gonna seem like that’s what’s holding you back, that’s what’s making it difficult to break in.  In the long term, that’s what’s gonna make your voice unique and what’s gonna pop you up above the crowd and get you noticed.

Most importantly, in my opinion:

And on a more fundamental level, it’s what will sustain you creatively, being honest to what you want to put out there in the world.

It’s easy to forget the above, with the glut of books about “the rules of filmmaking!” and “Top 10 Mistakes Every Screenwriter Makes.” (First mistake: forgetting to check if the author of the book ever actually sold a screenplay)

I get turned off when I hear creative people talking about the Hero’s Journey and “four-quadrant entertainment.”  I’m all for studying the principles that guide our business, but if you make every move based on “what do people want,” you’re going to choke yourself into mediocrity.

George Lucas.  Pixar.  Steven Spielberg.
The great creative people of our time understand the principles that guide their business, but they don’t look to principles for their solutions.  They reach inside themselves, find something true, and draw it out into the world.

And when they do it right, they find the thing that people always wanted but didn’t know to ask for.  That’s why they are considered geniuses.

Your career is a long-term proposition.  No matter how good you are, it is going to take a long, long time to get anywhere with it.  You will not have the stamina to survive the journey if you use it all trying to please other people.

Break what you learned in school.  Don’t echo your classmates.  Find something you love and cultivate the skills to communicate why you love it.

The critics will take care of themselves.

Related posts:

1. Dealing with Silence, Part Two
2. Future of Entertainment
3. New Category: Notable Links