Attack of the Eight Percenters: Why We’re Releasing Our Movie on Substack
The Story behind “The Coddling of the American Mind” - Part 2 of a 3-part series
Dear Readers,
Below you’ll find Part 2 of a 3-part series. Part 1 can be found here.
These essays are also posted at The Coddling of the American Mind Movie, but I’ll soon return to Shiny Herd-specific content.
All the best,
Ted
I never wanted to lose so badly.
My wife and I squirmed in our seats during the awards ceremony. How could our film be nominated for this award?
If we were any whiter we’d glow in the dark, yet somehow the film Courtney and I made was being celebrated for its diversity.
Highest diversity score?
We had just discovered the category existed, and we certainly didn’t want to walk across the stage and accept that award. We love awkward comedy when we’re watching movies, not participating in the drama. The festival organizers weren’t about to make us the faces of diversity, were they!
But it was true.
Even with my white maleness holding it back, our movie, Little Pink House, racked up an extremely high diversity score. Our film had two named female characters who had a conversation about something other than a man. That meant we’d nailed the Bechdel Test, and we were just getting warmed up.
Not only did our film include two female characters, it showcased two strong female leads. It’s based on two real-life women, and the film was written and directed by a woman (Courtney). One of our producers was a woman, our editor was an Asian woman, and so on.
But Courtney and I never assembled this team to score diversity points. We simply hired the best people we could find. And we hadn’t set out to champion any particular identity group. We simply wanted to champion Susette Kelo, an underappreciated American hero. I had followed the story of the shy-but-fierce Susette for more than a decade before Courtney and I discovered that we had the opportunity to bring her historic saga to the big screen.
Yet here we were, two unlikely faces of diversity, in a most unlikely place—Bentonville, Arkansas, the backyard of WalMart’s corporate headquarters.
In post-2020 America, everyone is used to giant corporations proclaiming their support for diversity. But this was 2017, and Courtney and I were still finding our bearings. Not only was the low-price retail giant backing a film festival of all things, but the Bentonville Film Festival had quickly emerged as a rather important stop on the circuit, and one that stood out as progressive even in the lefty world of indie film.
The awards ceremony was the culmination of a long week that featured screenings, Q&As, Geena Davis addresses, and Jewel performances. (Any attendees who had forgotten that Jewel was once homeless, would be reminded of that fact throughout the festival.)
During our Little Pink House journey, we picked up on signs that the culture was changing. In the beginning, our film emerged as an unwitting poster child for diversity. But then we started to hear grumblings from concerned audience members at Q&A periods. Why was our cast so white?
One such question even came at a screening in New London, Connecticut where most of the film is based. That audience member should have known better.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the reporter at last year’s Venice Film Festival who pressed actor Mads Mikkelsen and director Nikolaj Arcel about why their film The Promised Land—which takes place in 18th Century Denmark—had such a white cast. Well, Little Pink House film takes place in a setting nearly as white as The Promised Land.
Few people are preoccupied with cast demographics, and, like most of America, Courtney and I are down with equal opportunity. But that evening in Arkansas, we were in the company of a pro-equity crowd. We knew we were in a precarious spot, and held our breath when TV’s Terry Crews announced the Highest Diversity Score winner.
Whew, we lost!
Controversial or Problematic?
After completing The Coddling of the American Mind movie, we began the process of finding distribution. Indie films often stop first at film festivals, and we had done the festival circuit plenty of times. But now, in 2023, the vibe felt different.
Festivals tracked filmmakers’ identity characteristics beginning at the application stage.
Organizers tagged films as “BIPOC,” “LGBTQ+,” “women-centered,” and so on. Panelists effortlessly referenced formerly obscure academic terms like “microaggression” and “decolonize.” Bias Response Teams tried to ensure nobody experienced discomfort.
Organizers had turned up the dial even beyond what we had experienced in progressive Bentonville. It seemed like today's film festivals were being run by the identity-obsessed university administrators our film criticizes.
But festivals don’t even play by their own rules.
They proclaim their support for women and minorities, but their first priority is politics. Our on-screen Gen Z subjects are very diverse in terms of race, sex, religion, and disability, but they challenge industry dogma on issues such as free speech and DEI.
That means our subjects fail the Eight Percenters’ test. As diverse as they may be, our subjects aren’t the kind of underrepresented voices the top festivals are eager to elevate. Courtney and I have enjoyed our previous festival runs, but we quickly realized the circuit would be a dead end for this film.
Soon one of the documentary film world’s most important figures provided more evidence of the industry’s gathering conformity.
Sales agents play an important role in bringing films to audiences, and in the doc world the biggest of the big shot sales agents is probably Josh Braun. He’s behind many celebrated films such as Wild Wild Country, The Social Dilemma, American Factory, Citizenfour, and Man on Wire. He’s known for winning Oscars and making movies with the Obamas.
He explained how sales agents were approaching the market:
“If we see something that we think is going to be problematic, we might shy away from it, even if we think it’s a good film,” [said Braun]. “Everyone is probably a little more attuned to what could end up being problematic. There’s ‘controversial,’ and then there’s ‘problematic.’
Uh oh. Controversial (good); problematic (bad).
Courtney and I knew exactly how the industry would categorize our film. What stung even more was the timing. We had reached out to Braun just a week earlier.
We still managed to attract the attention of a well-known distributor, but an exec from the company delivered the same warning studio execs used on our not-yet-shot project three years earlier: “It’ll piss off viewers.”
Spoken like a true Eight Percenter.
RELATED:
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Dissidents Need Not Apply: Is Campus Groupthink Coming to Hollywood?
If You Know You’re Right, Step on the Gas! The Rise of Fundamentalism in Academia and Hollywood
The Eight Percenters Change Their Story
Back in 2015 and 2016, Courtney and I were eager to get another recently-completed project in front of a large audience.
Can We Take a Joke? was the first mainstream film to tackle cancel culture even though the term had yet to be coined. The documentary featured comedians like Penn Jillette, Karith Foster, Christina Pazsitzky, and the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. It examined the clash between comedy and a new phenomenon known as “outrage culture.” We documented students shouting down comedy performances that offended them, and suggested that this new kind of intolerance was spilling into the larger culture.
At first, our pitches didn’t gain much traction because industry experts assured us such intolerance would mostly confine itself to a handful of kooky campuses.
How wrong they were.
Just four years separated our Can We Take a Joke? release from The Coddling of the American Mind journey where studio execs informed us that a single hypothetical Twitter user could ignite a mob that might doom our project. In just four years, industry gatekeepers shifted from pooh poohing cancel culture to being ruled by it.
Courtney and I still aren’t sure how to frame the Can We Take a Joke? journey.
It’s a success in the sense that it was picked up by a name distributor (Samuel Goldwyn Films) and enjoyed wide distribution. But it was a tragedy in the sense that its success was buoyed by the mental pollution flowing through the culture.
Courtney and I joke that a bad culture is good for business, and see ourselves in police detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin from The Naked Gun:
JANE: This world is such a violent place.
FRANK: If it wasn’t, I’d be out of a job. Be back on the circuit riding motor cross. But I’d give it all up tomorrow to live in a world without crime.
Talking to Yourself
Our production company, Korchula Productions, is tiny compared to all the well-known brands. So in everything we do—from fundraising to attracting actors, audiences, and earned media—we have to rely on technique instead of strength. Through trial and error, we figured out how to jiu jitsu our way through the industry. We use the industry to produce films the industry usually wouldn’t produce.
We’ve been able to reach large, politically diverse, mainstream audiences because our films have been distributed in many ways—in theaters, by Netflix, Prime Video, Google Play, Verizon, Comcast, DirecTV, via major airlines, special events, campus tours, classrooms, and so on.
Although Courtney and I hold strong opinions—of the classical liberal variety—we never just wanted to preach to the converted. And the “just” is important.
Of course we want to connect with people who see things the way we do, but we don’t just want to connect with those people. If you think your ideas will help improve other people’s lives, why would you be satisfied with just speaking to the converted? If you think your ideas will help improve other people’s lives, you will probably care deeply about persuasion.
Properly executed, persuasion reveals that you care about your principles as well as those who disagree with you. That’s because if you have any hope of persuading people, you have to understand them first.
Consider the apostle Paul. When he headed to Athens to speak with people who disagreed with him, he didn’t berate them as heathens, traitors or “ists”. He held to his principles, and looked for common ground.
Bringing the Fox-MSNBC model to film has some advantages. Targeting one audience often makes marketing and distribution easier. But there are downsides.
Imagine filmmakers produce an anti-Biden film and an anti-Trump film, and then show them to audiences who already hate Biden or Trump. Ninety minutes later viewers hate their foes a little more, but what have the filmmakers accomplished?
Yes, they might have made some money, but they probably didn’t persuade many people. The more film simply confirms biases, the more wooden it becomes, and the less it connects with audiences beyond the converted.
Of course we all enjoy some red meat from time to time. Think about a political ad for your favorite politician. You might get seduced by the hyper-earnest actors and the slow motion, oversaturated shots. Converts watch such ads and get choked up, but everybody else just sees schmaltz.
Reaching beyond the converted is also important if you care about truth. My mind is always trying to fool me. It creates blindspots and flatters me: You’ve got it all figured out, Ted!
But, like the bumper sticker advises, I try to not believe everything I think. When I encounter an opposing view that seems persuasive, I try to amend my beliefs. It’s a sloppy process, but I’d like to think that it gets me a little closer to the truth.
Working in industries (entertainment, and before that, media) that often mock or twist my beliefs has infuriated me. But it’s also improved me. For decades, I have been fairly well attuned to what “the other side” thinks about my beliefs. Working in a hostile environment helps counteract confirmation bias, and has sharpened my thinking.
Improvement has come in other ways too.
Lawyers and Filmmakers
Ninety percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
My dad, a retired lawyer, loves to crack jokes like that. The line reminds me of the entertainment industry, which disproportionately attracts narcissistic, myopic, shallow, smugnorant people.
I completely understand why Hollywood is so hated by so many, and chuckle when some people make snap judgements about Courtney and me being part of that Hollywood. To them I say, bring me your frustration and I will match it a thousand times over. You shake your fist at the beast from afar, but we’re slip-sliding inside its acidic belly!
But those foul stomach juices haven’t corrupted everyone.
Courtney and I have been blessed to work with and befriend some of Hollywood’s finest people. Those who resist the industry’s morality-crushing incentives often emerge as especially impressive people. Some don’t share our beliefs. And if some of our industry friends were elected president, we’d flee the country. Yet we cherish them, and they improve us.
They help us avoid the temptation to see “the other side” as an abstraction or caricature. That improves our personal lives and our storytelling.
Others in Hollywood do share our views—don’t worry, gang, I won’t name names!—and plenty of them are converts. Each movement adores its converts, but so many of us are so committed to “us vs. them” framing that we forget that those beloved converts used to live among the awful “thems!”
I regard Marxism as one of humanity’s most tragic creations, yet Thomas Sowell, a hero of mine I mentioned in Part 1 of this essay, used to be a Marxist. In the heat of the battle, we often forget that we shoot ourselves in the foot when we rush to regard our opponents as irremediable.
One of our Gen Z interview subjects from The Coddling of the American Mind movie put it well.
When Lucy Kross Wallace reflected on her former life as a social justice activist, she told me, “You know, it's funny, in my experience, people don't respond super well to being told that they're bigoted monsters. In fact, it makes them less likely to listen to what you have to say.”
Beyond the Converts
Over the years, our partners and supporters have included people and organizations from across the political spectrum: John Cleese, David Crosby, The Athena List, Women and Hollywood, The Geena Davis Institute, Greg Lukianoff, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, John Stossel, Jonathan Haidt, Heterodox Academy, and the Institute for Justice.
Little Pink House was the subject of a bipartisan congressional screening spearheaded by one of the most progressive members of Congress, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), co-hosted by one of the most conservative, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and supported by one of the most libertarian, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
The movie premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and made plenty of festival stops. It’s also the only film to open the progressive Athena Film Festival (where the honored guest was Gloria Steinem) and the libertarian Anthem Film Festival (where the honored guest was Steve Forbes).
Can We Take a Joke? earned praise from jokesters ranging from blue-collar comedian Larry the Cable Guy to progressive provocateur Seth MacFarlane. Our films have been lauded by outlets as varied as The San Francisco Chronicle and National Review.
Our films have screened on hundreds of college campuses. Sometimes they’re interrupted or cancelled by shout-downs and suspicious fire alarms, but more often they spark conversation, often among students who thought they had little in common. Sometimes political rivals like College Democrats and College Republicans co-host screenings.
Some of my fondest memories come from a post-screening discussion I attended at Mount Saint Mary’s University, a “majority minority” campus and Los Angeles’s only women’s university. I entered the theater just as the screening of Can We Take a Joke? concluded, and could feel the students’ animosity. As I made the long walk to the front, I thought to myself, “Why did I agree to fight through LA traffic just to get yelled at by college students!”
But I heard them out, and they heard me out.
The Q&A session went on and on, and then something remarkable happened—we agreed! Not on everything, but on some important things.
Afterward, the professor who asked me to attend sent me some student reactions including: “It is important to discuss controversial issues rather than push them under the rug,” and “Free speech, even though it may be offensive to you, should still be respected.”
Anecdotes like that don’t usually attract television crews, nor do they excite social media algorithms, but they should be important for anyone who truly cares about persuasion.
The First Substack Experiment
Our Naked Gun joke doesn’t always reflect reality. At a certain point, a bad culture is very bad for business, especially ours.
And the post-2020 climate of conformity had me flummoxed. With the rise of fundamentalism, would we still be able to jiu jitsu the industry? Would we still be able to reach large, politically diverse audiences?
I knew I had to do something, but what?
I wanted to understand the situation for the sake of our livelihood. I also wanted to tell others what was going on—partly as therapy, partly as a warning. Courtney and I, along with our friends and associates, had been frozen so many times, and yet few people seemed to understand The Great Chill. Many others continued to misinterpret cancel culture.
I went through many half-baked ideas, and scrapped almost all of them. But I stuck with a few, including starting a Substack.
From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, TikTok and all the rest, I usually hate the next big thing.
But Substack struck me as different. It wasn’t the blowhard Olympics. The platform attracted thoughtful writers. Even the commenters were thoughtful. Although the community represented many points of view, it seemed to be united by an ethos of free speech.
About a year ago, I started Shiny Herd, which “examines the hidden side of groupthink in entertainment, media, and more.” I figured building the habit of writing on a regular basis would help me get my thoughts straight. I wanted to interact with the community, and I wanted to write for an audience because I knew that having other people expect something of me was the only way I’d write on a regular basis.
When I began, I was afraid to speak freely. I engaged in almost none of the “best practices” like linking to Shiny Herd in my email bio. Too dangerous—what if the wrong person read it!
I hemmed and hawed about covering certain topics, and even fumbled a bona fide “Great Chill” exclusive that involved activist fury, corporate cowardice, and a doomed film. Since Courtney and I were on the verge of releasing our own problematic feature, I figured I shouldn’t go around poking any more bears than was necessary. At least that’s how I rationalized my decision.
A year later, I still haven’t added a paid subscription option. Some kind readers have pledged support, but I haven’t accepted it yet. That means my annual revenue for Shiny Herd stands at zero.
Each Tuesday, I have many tasks to complete, tasks that actually pay the mortgage. Yet there I am, hollering at myself yet again, wondering why I’m so wrapped up in my tiny corner of Substack.
In purely economic terms, Shiny Herd has been a terrible investment. Yet each time I click publish, I’m happy I engaged in another round of self flagellation.
Something else happened too.
My timid experiment evolved into something else entirely, something rather bold. A year ago, I was searching for a way to understand The Great Chill, escape from the Eight Percenters, and release our problematic film.
I had no idea that my Tuesday morning ritual might point to a new way to release movies, a way that might eventually be far better than what gatekeepers currently offer indie filmmakers.
Stay tuned for the third and final installment, which explores our pitch to Substack Inc and the path that resulted in The Coddling of the American Mind becoming the first “Substack presents” feature documentary. We’re grateful to the Substack filmmakers who came before us and hope our project will help other heterodox filmmakers reach large audiences.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream it here.
Can’t wait to watch it.