There are so many reasons to find your own route rather than stick to the traditional and expected. Every day, I hear about a new book, movie or TV show coming down the pike that makes me scratch my head. Not that the idea is necessarily bad, or that it won’t sell, because as you know these things are not mutually exclusive. But more to the point of leaving me thinking, “They are making a book of that? Really? An entire book?”

Consider: you can buy “I Can Has Cheezburger?”, a book based on the outstandingly popular LOLCats website. Consider: there are currently feature films in development based on board games and toys such as Ouija, Monopoly, Candy Land, Battleship, Magic: The Gathering, and Stretch Armstrong. And this just in, there is a TV show in development based on a Twitter stream – Sh*t My Dad Says. Yup. Not based on a book. Not based on a screenplay or a script. Not based on a website. But based on a Twitter stream, golden nuggets of wisdom served up 140 characters at a time.

Now lest you call me an intellectual snob or some other accurate label, I am first and foremost a pragmatist. I don’t see these things as evidence of the Creatively Bankrupt Hollywood Machine, though I do believe Hollywood need some new, better ideas. Nor do I see these things as the death knell of Literature at the rough hands of the Evil Book Publishing Monolith, although I do wonder if the already limited shelf space occupied by novelty books wouldn’t be better spent on something a little less faddish.

But make no mistake, these decisions are being made by folks who are definitely following the money. Can you make a successful movie based on a toy? Didn’t they just make a boatload of cash with G.I. Joe? Sure they did. Was it a good movie? I’ll leave that to your taste to decide, but for my money, Toy Story – a movie based on a toy that didn’t exist when the movie was made in 1995 – was the better way to go. And that was John Lasseter, taking a chance, finding his own route. Zig, instead of zag. Of course, not every chance taken leads to a Toy Story, and not everyone is John Lasseter. But maybe there are degrees in-between.

The fact is, something like LOLCats has a huge audience. If even a tiny portion of that audience buys the book, it’ll be a success. Same with the other head-scratchingly questionable creative decisions out there, the decisions are always made with an eye toward the market, a calculation as to whether enough people will buy the thing to justify the production costs. It’s gambling. In the case of something with a huge, built-in audience, it gets easier to say YES. In the case of something or someone a little more obscure, or – leave us face it, virtually unknown – it gets easier to turn it down. No sense crying in your spilled Milk of Amnesia, it’s just the facts, baby. Books, movies, and TV shows will be made, development deals will be struck, that leave you wondering about the sanity of the Suits, when really they’re just making safe bets.

Luckily, if you’re independent, you don’t have to play it as safe. As much as it would be great to be part of a big machine, the great thing about NOT being part of one is that you are free to go where you please, and better yet, you are nimble enough to go there quickly. Big ships take a long time to turn. I would encourage anyone with an honest-to-God Idea to go ahead and develop it, and see what you can do with it. It’s your prerogative, it’s your right, and it’s your duty as an Artist. What are you waiting for? Choose your route and go there. Sure, you might crash on the way, but what an adventure!

Anyway, that’s my reaction to books based on websites, movies based on board games and TV shows based on Twitter feeds. It simply makes the argument that maybe it’s OK to stay independent.

Uh-oh… is that an iceberg up ahead!?