Several readers have written in to ask whether we have plans for Chrome or Firefox versions of Less IMDb. We don’t — not because we have anything against those browsers. We just don’t use them nearly as much as Safari. We built the extension to address our own needs, and shared it with others because they might like it.
When you make something that you yourself use, that’s called dogfooding, a contraction of “eating your own dogfood.” That’s developer-speak, but it’s a mindset screenwriters would do well to appropriate.
Aspiring screenwriters will often throw a few loglines at me and ask which one they should write. My answer is always, “The one you would pay money to see.”
That’s dogfooding’s close cousin, scratching your own itch. You’re writing movies you wish existed.
Looking at successful filmmakers — in particular, writer-directors — it’s pretty clear who is doing this. Tarantino makes movies to fill a special shelf at his fantasy video store. Wes Anderson makes movies his own characters would dissect over canapes.
If you have more mainstream taste, great. Embrace that. Scratch your own itch. But forget about “commercial” or “high concept.” If you’re writing a movie you yourself wouldn’t buy a ticket to see, you’re wasting everyone’s time.