Yes, it is true. Good Machine is back. But in a new and improved form. Perhaps we should have done a press release, but I thought I should do it here instead. Press releases are so yesterday.
If you went to Sundance, perhaps you noticed the secret stealth return of our so-called 90’s powerhouse. Or if you were at the Golden Globes, it must have caught your eye. Hell, even if you just watched the Golden Globes. If you missed all that, certainly by perusing the Oscar noms, something should have caused a bit of stir. I’ve been waiting for some sharp newshound to break with the story, but nope. So here’s the real buzz… [...]
The NYTimes Sunday Magazine has a must-read article on my former Good Machine partner James Schamus. The author, Carlo Rotello, does a thorough job on the difficult task of capturing most of the complexity that makes James someone that is fun to collaborate with: he is not easily defined, has many interests (sometimes conflicting), and enjoys deeply both the process and the product. People so often look for people they get along with to collaborate with; I think that is is mistake. Harmony may work in other types of relationships, but in a creative one, it is a formula for mediocrity. If you truly care about the end result of your work, you should look for someone you enjoy arguing with to partner with.
Rotello sums up our Good Machine partnership by defining David Linde as the business mind, Schamus the intellectual, and me “Hope, an advocate of radically decentralized media democracy, was the revolutionary;”. I like how that sounds, but what really worked at Good Machine, and in other creative relationships, is when people can argue clearly and without ego for what they feel will make a story work best. Trust is the next most required ingredient in a successful partnership, quickly followed by a willingness to accept that you may not be right (that non-ego thing again). [...]
Back in the day, before I had This is that, I had a production company called Good Machine. James Schamus and I founded it together, and we later partnered with David Linde. Mary Jane Skalski and Anthony Bregman were also partners, and we had the good fortune to work with a host of other talents including my later partners Anne Carey and Diana Victor, and Ross Katz, Glen Basner, Heta Paarte, Lamia Guelatti, Melinka Thompson-Gody, Jean Castelli, Kelly Miller, Dan Beers, Eric Papa, Jawal Nga, and many other later-legends to be.
As good as the films we made, as great as the individuals we got to collaborate with, we also had a genuine fondness for memos and how-to’s. If you come to my office these days, it looks like a FEMA site; we are going paperless, and I am sorting through the files, finding many choice nuggets. My madeleines.
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This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
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