The failure story that's stuck with me for two decades

I get a fail! You get a fail! We all get a fail!

There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t think of producer Sandy Stern’s Best First Feature acceptance speech at the 2000 American Spirit Awards. The film was Being John Malkovich.

Notably, Charlie Kauffman had just won Best First Screenplay for the film moments before, and I was watching live from home.

When Stern took the mic after director Spike Jones, he simply read the most snarky, arrogant, obnoxiously cruel studio rejection note about the script that he had received.

One of the nicer sentences:

It would probably be hailed as an aspiring piece of work on the planet on which it was written. Unfortunately, I did not have sufficient quantities of the medication necessary to allow this story to make sense to me.

The script reader went on to conclude that Kauffman’s script might do well as an Off-Broadway play, with an audience of no more than twenty people, before declaring PASS.

(I found the video! Start at 51.57)

The script not only found a studio, the film found an audience of more than twenty people.

It also went on to gross $23.1 million worldwide, earned a total of 76 nominations (including 3 Oscar noms), and launched Charlie Kauffman’s career as the screenwriter whose movies make it to a ton of My Favorite Films of All Time lists. Including this one.

I think about this speech a lot because it’s been a reminder to me that not everyone is going to like or appreciate your work — and that your work doesn’t have to be for everybody.

It’s a reminder to me that the most successful people have stories of soul-crushing failure and rejection.

It’s also a reminder to me that you should never ever allow others to take away your own belief in yourself.

---

This week,

Brad Montague

and Kristi Montague launched the book Fail-A-Bration, and I just had to share it because I believe it’s destined to become one of those children’s-books-that-make-great-gifts-for-adults-too books.

(Besides, so many of you have asked me to write about Things I Love more frequently, and this is one of them.)

The book is based on an actual party that Brad and Kristi threw in which people stood up to share things in their lives that didn’t go as planned, then received a standing ovaction for their story so they felt loved, appreciated, and seen.

Wow, would I like to go to a fail-a-bration! Maybe we should hold a virtual one over Zoom sometime.

If you want to know more about the story behind Fail-A-Bration — the book, and the party — it was a privilege to interview Brad Montague recently and you can listen here. I think it’s 30 minutes well-spent.

I’ll end with this:

I love reading success stories. I get real joy heart-ing all the posts from friends and colleagues about new jobs, new love, honors and awards, milestones reached, viral articles, best-selling novels, businesses that went from startup to 100 gazillion in profit in three days flat.

I even think we — especially women — should feel more confident sharing those successes without self-deprecation or false modesty.

But I also know that when I’m not in a great place mentally, or my life/career/hopes/dreams are not heading in exactly the direction I want at the speed that I want, there’s more comfort in stories about struggle.

I know I’m not alone; some of my most popular posts on I’m Walking Here are about times that have been tough for me.

So why does it feel brave to tell those stories?

It shouldn’t.

It would be so amazing if we could start normalizing our frustrations, painful missteps and wrong turns as unavoidable and essential parts of the human experience. Failure creates growth. Failure creates resilience.

I guess now, failure can even create an excuse to throw a cool party.

A quick note of gratitude for all the kind birthday wishes yesterday! And to those of you who signed up for a paid subscription as a birthday gift, well wow. Thank you! I’ve got a big slice of virtual cake here to share with you.

---