How Do You Predict the Future?

That’s the whole difficulty when it comes to making any choices. It ranges from choosing the right studies, choosing the right friends, choosing the right investments, to choosing the right projects at work.

A mundane, typical scientist (such as me) can produce one, two, sometimes three first-author publications per year. Not much more is physically possible.

In such a situation, it is crucial to choose the right projects. The right projects are those which are personally interesting to you and allow you to work in a good team.

They also help you develop your skills further and learn something new. Good projects also create good perspectives for the future and a possibility for creating further downstream projects.

But, how to choose the right project? Are scientific careers drawn mostly by luck, or rather, do some people have a natural talent for sensing projects that have potential?

According to recent research by Way, Morgan, Clauset and Larremore (2017), the distribution of influential papers along the research trajectory is rather flat. This means that there is no learning curve.

The probability that your next project will be influential does not depend on your success to this point.

What does this mean? Does this mean that it is impossible to learn how to predict the success of a project? Or maybe, most people simply do not pay attention to these meta-scientific questions at all.

Notably, according to Sinatra et al. (2016), a scientist’s biggest hit can land randomly anywhere in their career.

What Does This Have to Do with Hollywood?

When I think about this, the frequency of publishing in science resembles the frequency of shooting movies by mainstream Hollywood actors. An actor may have a status good enough that they can even choose their roles. Even such an actor is capable of playing just one or two leading roles per year.

One good role in a great movie can make their careers skyrocket. On the other hand, one bad role can make their careers slow down by a few years or, in the worse case, break down completely. 

Therefore, it is crucial to make good bets on whether a given screenplay will lead to a good movie. Actors obviously get basic information about the project, such as the director’s name. But eventually, even good directors make terrible movies at times.

Moreover, the success of a movie depends on what the public thinks of it, and the public is more than moody. 

Furthermore, it is hard to find a trade-off between numbers coming from box-office scores and Rotten Tomatoes reviews. There are so many degrees of freedom that even most of the A-listers have a relatively poor record of success. Only a handful of iconic roles mark a long filmography.

When did Robert de Niro last play a remarkable role in an undisputedly good movie? Literally decades ago.

However, some actors apparently have a better success rate than others. They tend to choose good – or at least decent – movies only. And even if the movie is just all right, they still shine in their roles.

How Did I Investigate This Question?

I recently watched a lot of movies from Tom Cruise’s filmography. His profile changed over the years, from mostly drama in the 80ths and 90ths towards primarily action, sci-fi and crime movies. He also made a few pieces of comedy, such as Rock of Ages or Tropic Thunder, right now.

The quality of roles keeps very high. I could not find any interviews where he would share his personal rules for choosing the right screenplay. I guess that for some people, this might be a confidential insight into their craft.

In order to better understand how the process of choosing a screenplay works, I googled a little bit. Firstly, I had never read any screenplay before, so I looked this up.

I was surprised at how succinct the screenplays are. As far as I can tell, a screenplay does not start with an introduction to the plot. It resembles a theatrical play rather than prose, focusing on the dialogues rather than describing detailed scenography or elaborating on the internal states of the parties involved.

What Did the Screenplays Reveal?

I guess it leaves some room for improvisation and creativity to the director and the crew. At the same time, it requires really good imagination to envisage the final outcome. I have read a few scripts from movies I had watched as well as a few scripts from movies I had not seen.

In the latter case, imagining the whole story was a bit harder. How do people predict the final outcome then?

So, I googled again and found out that there is no uniform strategy to choose roles in the movie industry. In fact, the first-league actor develops their own personal style of approaching this problem.

I listed a few strategies below. The analogs with strategies for choosing research projects are so obvious that I will not put them into words, and leave it as a homework exercise.

Should You Go for the Director’s Name?

Going for the director’s name. ‘Always take a role from Woody Allen’ is one of the non-written rules of Hollywood.

2. The sentiment, or sticking to the winning team.

The sentiment, or sticking to the winning team. Famous long-lasting director-actor collaborations include, for example, Martin Scorsese – Robert de Niro and Leonardo di Caprio.

Woody Allen – Michael Caine, Quentin Tarantino – Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Burton – Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, James Cameron – Bill Paxton, Ron Howard – Tom Hanks, Wes Anderson – Bill Murray.

According to Bielby and Bielby (1994), professionals across culture industries lean heavily on reputation and imitation, reusing trusted collaborators and familiar formulas. This is a way of rationalizing decisions in an environment where predicting a genuine hit is notoriously difficult.

3. Going for the part that best displays your own skills and allows you to shine.

Going for the part that best displays your own skills and allows you to shine. Staton Robin, an established screenplay writer in Hollywood, suggests that it is a good idea to develop complex and powerful characters in order to attract an A-lister to your screenplay. These can include historical figures like Napoleon Bonaparte.

Screenwriting coach Jacob Krueger observes that, every actor is looking for something else in the screenplay, a different type of complexity. George Clooney as an example tends to choose the role of a character who is questioning himself and looking for his own identity – which often involves moral dilemmas.

Should You Stick to Your Craft?

Sticking to your craft. Some actors always, in fact, play the same character. Sometimes this is due to their visual traits, and sometimes, it is a matter of choice.

Danny Trejo is always wild and psychopathic on-screen, Helena Bonham Carter – is always quirky, Samuel L. Jackson – is always a badass, and Morgan Freeman – is always noble and wise. Actually, when you take a closer look, there is a long list of famous actors who, have a very narrow specialty.

Can You Trust Your Intuition?

Intuition. As an example, Harrison Ford declares that, when choosing roles, he focuses on projects which give him a feeling of emotional connection with the subject matter.

This is probably a luxury only a few people in the industry can afford though. Still, according to Dane and Pratt (2007), intuition can be highly effective when it rests on deep domain expertise.

6. My favourite one.

My favourite one: is being practical. Michael Caine declared in an interview that when he is reading scripts, he is trying to find one that will give them an Oscar for best actor.

If there is no script which is promising, he is searching for ones that could give a nomination for supporting actor. If there is no such script, he just goes with the honorarium size. Given that Caine was awarded Oscar twice, this strategy definitely works for him.

Conclusion.

Aaaand…. There is no punchline at the end of this blog post.

I wonder if there is any pan-discipline G-factor which allows for spotting opportunities under any circumstances. However, it seems that the concept of ‘opportunity’ is abstract and hard to quantify in any discipline, not just in science.