I've got this great idea...

I've been putting off blogging about my day job. Perhaps it's because that has been the harbinger of unfortunate events in the past.

Since I'm getting more interesting things to do at my day job, and it looks like I have other things bubbling up anyways....here goes.

My boss is Italian. He has the slightest of accents. It's barely perceptible. But of course when I or the production manager mimic the boss, we put on our best momma mia voice.

He's (I'm sure you'll be surprised to know) very slick. He could sell ice to an Eskimo and convince Arabs they need a little sand. Our website seems to get all sorts of little jobs from other companies that we have no business doing, but it brings in money...Something our site isn't so hot at (but more on that later).

While my boss is clearly an experienced salesman and "businessman", I don't think he's got a lot of experience with creative production...In print, TV, film, websites, comics, cartoons...anything.

Tomorrow I have a casting session for a project we're doing for a potential client. While my boss was trying to give me the details about the casting session, he wouldn't tell me exactly who it was for.

Me: "What do I tell the actors and improvisers? They'll want to know what this is for."

Boss: "Just tell them it's for a high-profile client. That's all they need to know."

This is the third or forth time this has happened, so I called him on it.

Me: "Boss, are you worried that an actor is going to steal your idea at a casting session and present it to the client before you can?"

Boss: "They just don't need to know, that's all."

For all his being crafty, he's remarkably naive or ignorant of how creative products get developed. First of all, these ideas are not worth stealing. They're "eh".

Secondly, and more importantly, a professional doesn't worry about his or her ideas being stolen. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The execution is the hard part. It's where the product lives or dies.
I'm not saying that all ideas are born equal. For every "Survivor" there's a dozen "Laguna Beaches".

But what doesn't happen is the theft of an idea with emails, treatments, production schedules, non-disclosure agreements, and a mountain of physical evidence behind it that shows an entity was already moving the idea forward. Not because it couldn't be, but because...why bother?

The other company is already that much further down the pike in production. It would be a hell of a lot easier to simply come up with something else.

The inner workings of Hollywood have become much more of an open book with box office results, production budgets, lawsuits and everything else is more or less fully disclosed.

We hear about similar ideas racing for release all the time, like when several Alexander the Great movies were in development. However I don't remember a single story from the entertainment world that involved a "stolen idea" that didn't involve a crackpot.

At the end of the day, ideas are just not worth stealing. Only a very greasy, very desperate and very unoriginal person with no grasp of their own taste would steal an idea.

And then, they'd fuck it up.