Page 167 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

158 STOP MAKING SENSE

One had to work nights and hire temporary help to handwrite checks
to buy the credit balances from competing companies.

DON’T CHANGE THE CHANNEL

I heard Don Hewitt, founder of 60 Minutes, the longest-running prime-
time TV show of all time, say that people at CBS thought he was crazy
with his far-out concept of an investigative news program in prime time.
I also heard the president of CBS say he thought Mark Burnett, the
producer of Survivor, was crazy when he first broached that show’s con-
cept to the network.
Then there’s the famous NBC internal memo telling the producers
of the Seinfeld pilot that the concept would never fly. A show about
nothing? Doesn’t make sense. A stand-up comic doing stand-up in a
sitcom. How could Hollywood possibly get its mind around such a rad-
ical idea?

HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

Even in a world where creativity is supposedly revered, it’s fairly well
known that Berry Gordy, head of Motown, had a hard time embracing
Marvin Gaye’s landmark What’s Goin’ On? album in 1971.
I can hear the less than harmonious voice of management crying,
“But protest songs are for folkies from Greenwich Village.”
Gaye’s masterpiece, featuring songs such as “Mercy Mercy Me (the
Ecology),” “Save the Children,” and “Inner City Blues,” went on to sell
millions and is considered one of the top records of its time, one of the
top records ever to come out of Motown.
Of course, all of these examples of ideas that survived in spite of
much protest and lack of appreciation did indeed make it. Think of
all the other brilliant ideas that did not make it because they didn’t
make sense.

It numbs my mind to think of all that has been lost because of lack of
vision. Maybe it’s a good thing that we’ll never know what
we’re missing.