I have a warning for you.

Ten years ago, or even five, this warning would have been simple. Back then, when screenwriters got together to bitch (which was often) it was usually about directors for being bullies, or for trying to steal a shared “Screenplay by” credit, or cutting necessary dialogue, or just plain botching things.

But, that’s not the case anymore.

The sands under all of us have shifted. And today, directors — even the arrogant ones — are running scared like everybody else.

Today, the warning is about the business itself and the almost pathological timidity of the institutions that control it.

When I started writing there were still a few mavericks out there; a few gunslingers who ran studios.

These were people who went with their guts and would make a movie just because they believed in it.

But that’s not the process anymore.

Today, before a studio chair can green-light a movie, that movie must also be blessed by the head of marketing, the head of foreign sales, and the head of home video.

It must be subjected to a process called “running the numbers,” which means that the movie’s cost — or, downside — is compared against its potential value because of its cast and what it might do in foreign markets.

This process takes into account every variable except the variable which actually matters — the one that can't possibly be gauged by any sort of calculus — which is whether or not the movie’s going to be any good.

And yet the process continues.

There are other challenges too. Ones born of progress itself.

It’s axiomatic now that the technology of movie making has never been greater than it is today, but I don't think any of us can honestly say that movies themselves have never been greater.

These things are not unrelated.

Suppose we were going to shoot a scene in a typical room. We can now, if we want to, add elements to that scene to make it more visually arresting.

We could light the ceiling on fire by using CGI.

We could enhance the experience by projecting it in 3-D.

Does any of this have anything to do with story, or character? No.

But, it would look great in the trailer.

That kind of thinking, the idea that dazzling visuals are enough, has led to a certain kind of movie-making laziness that has not been good for anybody.

Worse, it’s made it tougher and tougher to dazzle the audience because they know out there now that we’re making movies with software instead of cameras.

When any image is possible, no image is all that impressive anymore.

We’re storytellers, which means we have to do better. Sometimes I think we have to rescue the business from the very people who own it.

The good news is, we can.

Inside every one of you is the flame that has always lit the way in this industry, which is originality — that one spark of an idea, that one archetypal character, story, truth, or world that no one’s ever captured before.

Do you remember the movie WALL-E, the brilliant Pixar film?

He’s in a dangerous world and he’s one of thousands who are supposed to clean it up.

But, there’s something special about WALL-E. He finds this little tiny sprig which might one day become a plant. He guards it, and saves it, and preserves it on the chance that it might some day turn into something beautiful.

Well, Hollywood is that dangerous world and you are WALL-E.

Your idea is that plant and you have to protect it. If you do, it might change the world.

That’s your charge now — greatness.

You have to pursue it every single day in everything you do; in your work ethic, in the way you conduct yourself, in who you choose to do business with.