Every creative industry is engaged in a civil war. The creatives — whether writers, painters or musicians — want to play with new forms of expression; the capitalists prefer to go with what worked last time. But sometimes the two sides come together, on equal terms, in gloriously fertile equilibrium. We call these periods golden ages.
Today, a writer who cherishes a personal vision would have no qualms about taking it to the small screen. TV is the place to go if you want to make art and money at the same time. Paul Weitz, a screenwriter and director whose credits include American Pie and About a Boy, is currently at work on the fourth season of Mozart in the Jungle for Amazon Studios. “Your agent used to say, ‘Don’t do TV, it will hurt your film career,’” he recalls. “Now it’s the other way around.”
Read more in the Financial Times.
Image courtesy of the Financial Times.