Last week I attended Final Draft Inc. Annual Award Event. This year the recipient of the Hall of Fame Award was Steven Zaillian. For those who are not familiar with him, Zaillian is the screenwriter of such major films as The Falcon and the Snowman, Schindler’s List, Clear and Present Danger, Gangs of New York, American Gangster, and most recently Moneyball.
In his acceptance speech, Zaillian talked about his current project, the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. How many drafts of the script do you think her wrote? 20? Maybe 30? Well, he confessed to having 126 drafts of the screenplay saved on his computer.
I’m a big believer that if you work hard enough, you can achieve whatever you want. I know that a lot of people share this belief, but at the same time, I think we tend to often underestimate how much hard work it really takes to achieve anything extraordinary. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell gives us a specific number of hours needed to reach excellence in any field which he refers as “The 10,000-hour rule.” This is an incredibly large amount of time, and it ought to make us look at achievement and high achievers, like Zaillian, with different eyes and even a newfound sense of understanding.
Real Thoughts 