Bick

San Francisco, CA

[Kylian Mbappé @KMbappe]

Madame Celeste Amarilla,
Vous êtes une femme méprisable et indigne de sa fonction.
Vous ne représentez pas le Paraguay, ce pays qui a transpiré la passion et l’honneur tout au long de la compétition. Par votre inconscience et votre racisme décomplexé, le monde entier a déjà oublié le parcours et l’effort historique que vos joueurs ont réalisés durant cette coupe du monde pour laisser place à une dame incompétente donnant la pire image possible de son pays.
Je ne laisserai jamais aux gens comme elle, la liberté de laisser propager leur haine et leur racisme à travers le monde.

[Danny Boy @Care2much18]

This wildly misleading tweet, and the mostly hateful replies, is like entering an alternate version of reality.

If anybody is interested in the truth behind this claim, and what that Swedish poll actually asked, I'll go through it.

Probably banging my head against a wall. 😂

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas have been knighted by the King of England.

They are now Sir Christopher Nolan and Dame Emma Thomas.

[Kyle Becker @kylenabecker]

JUST IN: Randy Moss has announced that he has liver cancer.

The NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver recently stepped away from his ESPN job.

Prayers up. America is hoping he can "Moss" the Big C. 🙏

[nick wright @getnickwright]

At its core, every aspect of the Deshaun Watson story is about one thing & one thing only: A total lack of regard for woman as a true equal class of humanity, and that’s why the defense of him Sunday was so appalling.

[Cade @cadeeug8]

Sports are the greatest.

[Noah Lyles, OLY @LylesNoah]

I have Asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and Depression.
But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become.
Why Not You!

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

Christopher Nolan will receive a knighthood in England and become Sir Christopher Nolan.

His producing partner and wife Emma Thomas has also received a damehood.

[The Academy @TheAcademy]

Congratulations on your win for Best Directing, Christopher Nolan! #Oscars

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

Christian Bale is building 12 foster homes that aim to keep siblings in the foster care system together and under the same roof

He started working on the project 16 years ago

"I hope that this village will be the first of many, and I hope that people [come] join us in opening our eyes to what’s happening right under our noses. These are our children, and we must help our children"

[Ryan Hoover @rrhoover]

My favorite thing on Product Hunt today: Pika

I used to film videos as a kid and have ambitions to produce a documentary someday.

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

As he was struggling to break into Hollywood, Matt Damon read about how Quentin Tarantino did it:

Essentially, he got a big-name actor (Harvey Keitel) to want to star in Tarantino’s first movie (Reservoir Dogs) then leveraged that to get the movie funded.

“And so,” Damon said,

“We wrote ‘Good Will Hunting’ and that part that Robin [Williams] eventually took—we called it ‘the Harvey Keitel part.’”

“Ben [Affleck] and I wrote the movie specifically because we wanted the parts as actors…But we knew [we needed] a big-name actor who could get us some money because Ben and I were worth nothing.

And so we wrote ‘the Harvey Keitel part’ really open-ended. So we could adjust it: if Morgan Freeman or Denzel Washington wanted to come in and play it—we could make that character from Roxbury [a neighborhood in Boston], and we could explore the historic racial tension in Boston. If Meryl Streep took the part—instead of a father-son relationship, we could make it a mother-son relationship.

So we really left it open-ended because we wanted to cast as wide a net as possible because we were just trying to get the movie made.”

“And then once we got Robin to sign up to do it, that’s really what got us a green light to make it…He changed our lives.”

Takeaway 1:

In one of my favorite talks, "Runnin' Down A Dream," the venture capitalist Bill Gurley explains that while studying the career trajectories of three of his heroes—the restauranteur Danny Meyer, the coach Bobby Knight, and the musician Bob Dylan—he noticed a pattern:

They studied the career trajectories of the icons in their respective industries. Like Damon, they studied how others successfully got their foot in the door then climbed to top of their profession. And then, they took similar steps towards doing the same.

Coincidentally, Tarantino did this too. He made scrap books for each of his favorite filmmakers: Brian De Palma, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, and Martin Scorsese. "I was like a film historian," Tarantino said. "I was obsessed with studying how they did it, the evolution of their careers."

"Greatness isn't random," as Gurley puts it. Instead, it's usually a predictable step along a studied path of strategically modified emulation and, of course, determination.

Takeaway 2:

In the clip above, Damon goes on to explain that, not only did Robin Williams sign on to be in "Good Will Hunting," he also went off script and improvised one of the most iconic lines ("Son of a bitch, he stole my line") in the movie.

It reminded me of something Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull writes in his book, Creativity. Inc.:

"Getting the right people is more important than getting the right idea…If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better."

- - -

“Bob Dylan said, 'I'm a musical expeditionary.' I looked up 'expeditionary'—it's to travel for scientific research or exploration. And that's what Dylan did...For hours upon hours upon hours, he studied what other artists did. He was a mimic. He was studying, studying, studying.” — Bill Gurley

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Paul Graham @paulg]

How to Do Great Work: https://t.co/zzxQTx7JJ3

[non aesthetic things @PicturesFoIder]

this is so cool

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay ("Good Will Hunting").

After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, & looked at the award.

As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought.

"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life...It can't fill you up. If that's a hole that you have, that won't fill it."

"My heart broke," Damon said. "I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, 'oh my god. where did my life go? What have I done?' And then it's over."

Takeaway 1:

Many successful, rich, famous, etc. people talk about chasing success, money, fame, etc., getting it, and realizing that it didn't feel like they thought it would. That it didn't, as Damon said, fill the hole they had.

One of my favorite analogies for this pattern comes from Sam Hinkie.

Hinkie was asked about what he's learned from reading Robert Caro's books—about some very successful, rich, famous, etc. people.

"I think of it like the Pacific Salmon," Hinkie said. "They spend their whole life making this journey upstream to spawn in this one spot. And as soon as they do, they die. That's largely what Caro shows you."

Takeaway 2:

Before he was a big-time comedian, Hasan Minhaj was asked if he thought he was going to become a big-time comedian.

“I don’t like that question,” he said. “I fundamentally don’t like that question.”

Because that question implies that he is only doing comedy as a means to some end (success, money, fame, etc.).

“No, no, no,” he said, “The set I get to do tonight at 7:20 PM is the win. I get to do comedy—I won. It being predicated on doing X or being bigger than Y—no, no, no. To me, it’s always just been about the work."

"The work is the win," as Ryan Holiday once told me.

- - -

"It's such a gift to be able to [do] something and to love it for the sake of it...I see people with talent, with all those things. But the one thing they don't have is just that love for doing it for the sake of it...So if there's anything, just find joy in what you do for the sake of it." — Rodney Mullen

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Luke Sophinos @lukesophinos]

A former Facebook manager just launched an app that overtook giants like TikTok & Instagram to be #1 on the App Store.

He made $1M in 10 days with a team of 4 people.

Gas App 🧵

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

"The legacy of the movies is … that my children's generation will show them to their children. So you could be watching it in 50 years' time, easy. I'll not be here, sadly, but... Hagrid will, yes”

RIP Robbie Coltrane 💔

[All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies]

Behind the scenes on THE IRISHMAN, Martin Scorsese directs Al Pacino.

[Nicolas Cole 🚢👻 @Nicolascole77]

Every writer should save these 2 screenshots on their desktop.

Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling:

[Julian Shapiro @Julian]

A rare find for my fellow movie nerds.

This is Christopher Nolan’s hand drawn plot map for his film Inception.