Ep. 22 - Brian Koppelman - 3 Steps to Master Creativity

Brian Koppelman joins The Influencer Economy as this week's guest.  Brian is the co-writer of films such as Rounders and Ocean's Thirteen, as well as the co-director of the Emmy Award winning "30 for 30," film on Jimmy Connors This is What They Want. Ryan met Brian on a trip to NYC, and they spoke in Brian's New York office.

 

He's also a prolific podcast host and hosts a show called The Moment, a weekly podcast that is part of the Grantland network.  Brian is interested in the way people accomplish remarkable things and how they process the big moments in their lives.  That is the thesis of the show.

 

http://www.influencereconomy.com

 

He was invited on the show to talk about his creative process around filmmaking, and his embracing of social media in the digital age.  As a creator, he has launched many big ideas online, and is a defining member of The Influencer Economy. 

 

Brian also created the extremely popular "Six Second Screenwriting Tips" on Vine.  The Vine series came out of questions received from Twitter.  He created one Vine every day (for 300 days), and one Vine has over 20 million loops.  The videos were focused on the idea of “giving yourself permission to create.” 

 

Brian is an avid podcast listener and"loves the intimacy of the conversations ." He talks about how Marc Maron's WTF inspired him to get into podcasting. Brian also details how he connected Bill Simmons and Dave Jacoby of Grantland, and how The Moment podcast came to be. 

 

He is currently working on a series for Showtime and shooting the pilot in the beginning of next year.  The show title: Billions, the setting is the financial industry in New York.  He is collaborating with his long time writing/directing partner David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin. 

 

Quotes:

•   “I’ve never calculated one part of my work. I’ve always just led with what fascinates me.  That’s why having the conversations is easy too. That’s what led to every movie… All this came from only being obsessed with chasing down my passions and being unrelenting with the desire to be able to tell my children that I fought to live the creative life I wanted to live and that they could do the same.” 

•   “I want all the things that I say to be things that I believe and have some value.”

•   “I actually don’t think that there is such a thing as remarkable people; people are the result of the actions that they take and then how they process the feedback from those actions.”   

•   "A blocked artist is probably a bad wife or husband.”   

 

Connect:

•   Brian on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/briankoppelman

•   Brian on Vine:  https://vine.co/briankoppelman

•   Brian's website:  http://briankoppelman.com

•   At the end of the show, he suggests that you watch his film Solitary Man: http://www.solitarymanmovie.com