The Hollywood Formula
The Hollywood Formula: A Universal Mythology
The Hollywood Formula is the Holy Grail of storytelling. It is a pattern made up of symbols, a mythical language of universal archetypes that resonates within us all. It is an epic journey into the deepest recesses of our creative imagination, our dreams, our visions, nightmares, hallucinations, fantasies, experiences, memories, and everything else in our psyche that makes us who we are.
The Hollywood Formula is how the universal hero in us, the ideal self within, makes sense of it all and ultimately discovers their life's purpose. What is the point of living and dying? Does our life journey count for something? The tears and the pain, the joy and the laughter? What is life all about? What is all the suffering for? Why are we here? Is our story worth telling?
The Hollywood Formula is the Hero's Journey We all Take
Who doesn't dream of watching the visions of one's own imagination take flight across the canvas of a movie theatre screen? Who wouldn't love to give a speech at the Oscars to accept an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay?
We are all meant to go from "zero to hero," as the saying goes. We are all destined to become that Matt Damon, or Will Smith or Angelina Jolie, that movie hero who climbs walls, dodges bullets, rappels from buildings, and runs away from explosions just in the nick of time. Hollywood stars act out their roles with the grace and agility of a comic book superhero.
Why do we identify ourselves with these movie heroes? Why do we long to be like them? Why do we, as a society, turn movie stars into cultural idols? What draws us so much to these mythological journeys that always seem to tell the same story over and over again under different guises?
Wise men through the ages have said it is because, deep inside, at an unconscious level, we know the truth about ourselves. We know that we are that hero who swoops in and saves the day at the end of the movie. That's our True Self, our genuine identity. It's the most ideal version of ourselves, a heroic version of who we are.
That glorious hero that goes on a journey to save the world is YOU. Your life is an epic journey, and you get to write your own story yourself. You get to write your very own epic mythology. The Hollywood Formula provides an effective model to help you tell a visual story, perfect for the big screen.
You get to create this epic story you've always dreamed of with the Hollywood Formula. Whether you're writing a poem, a song, a novel or a short story, or if you want to write a screenplay on your own, the Hollywood Formula will show you the way.
We love movies because, for that two hours we sit there in the theater, we get to see the world from someone else's eyes. We get to be a beautiful princess in a tower, or fly in the wings of a dragon, or maybe drive a sports car through the streets of Paris. At the movies, we get a glimpse of things we probably wouldn't experience in our ordinary lives.
How do we do it? We do it by delving into the world of our imagination, by living vicariously through the movie characters. We write a movie by giving life to a new world, first in our heads, then on paper, and finally, on the silver screen.
By writing a movie, we become gods of sorts. We create our own universe, our own planets, maps, cities, communities, laws, and above all, we create characters. As movie makers, we breathe life into new characters, and these characters eventually become real people when we cast actors.
The Hollywood Formula is about turning our life experience, our imagination, our artistic creativity into magical threads to weave a visual story. The Hollywood Formula teaches us to organize the limitless abundance of our creative energy, to give it shape, much the same way a sculptor carves statues out of wood or stone.
Hollywood's visionaries are architects of the imagination. They create moving images and display them on the screen for us to see. We may think this is only reserved for the demigods in Tinseltown, but that's not true. The truth is we all have access to the archetypal world of mythology. We are all meant to produce at least one masterpiece in the course of a lifetime.
We can all be visionary storytellers who bring magic to the screen if we learn how to give shape to our creative imagination with the Hollywood Formula.
What is the Hollywood Formula?
The Hollywood Formula is a vessel, a receptacle, an algebraic expression. It is like the empty frame of a picture. It is the writer's job to pour the flow of their creative vision into this receptacle. It is our job as movie makers to create the picture that will go into the frame.
The Hollywood Formula is so easy to learn and apply to your own life experience, you'll be surprised how fast you can come up with an exciting adventure for the big screen. Whether it is a comedy, a thriller or a kids' movie you want to write, the Hollywood Formula will show you how.
We are all artists, and the movie screen is our canvas. Let us now take our brush and start painting the pictures of our very own movie script! The first step is to learn all about the Hollywood Formula. How did it come to be? What are its elements? How can we plug our story into this formula to turn it into a movie?
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