Brian and Ryan in NYC

Brian Koppelman joins The Influencer Economy as this week’s guest.  Brian is the co-writer of films such as Rounders and Ocean’s Thirteen, as well as the co-director of the Emmy Award winning “30 for 30” film on Jimmy Connors This is What They Want.

He’s also a prolific podcaster hosting a show called “The Moment,” a weekly podcast that is part of the Grantland network.  Brian is interested in the way people accomplish remarkable things and how they process the big moments in their lives.

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Brian was invited to talk about his creative process around filmmaking and how he embraces of social media in the digital age.  As a creator, he has launched many big ideas online, establishing himself as a defining member of The Influencer Economy.

Brian also created the extremely popular “Six Second Screenwriting Tips” on Vine.  The Vine series came out of questions he received from Twitter.  He created one Vine every day, for 300 days, with one Vine reaching over 20 million loops.  The videos were focused on the idea of “giving yourself permission to create.”

Brian is an avid podcast listener and”loves the intimacy of the conversations .” He talks about how Marc Maron’s WTF inspired him to get into podcasting, how he connected Bill Simmons and Dave Jacoby of Grantland, and how The Moment podcast came to be.

He is currently working on a series for Showtime and shooting the pilot in the beginning of next year.  The show, titled Billions, is set is the financial industry in New York.  He is collaborating with his long time writing/directing partner David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Quotes:

“I’ve never calculated one part of my work. I’ve always just led with what fascinates me.  That’s why having the conversations is easy too. That’s what led to every movie… All this came from only being obsessed with chasing down my passions and being unrelenting with the desire to be able to tell my children that I fought to live the creative life I wanted to live and that they could do the same.”

“I want all the things that I say to be things that I believe and have some value.”

“I actually don’t think that there is such a thing as remarkable people; people are the result of the actions that they take and then how they process the feedback from those actions.”

“A blocked artist is probably a bad wife or husband.”

Takeaways:

• How Brian was influenced by Marc Maron’s WTF to start podcasting
• How Bill Simmons and Dave Jacoby helped create Brian’s The Moment Podcast on Grantland’s network
• Where Brian gets his motivation as an artist
• How he prepares for his podcast
• The parallels between researching films like Rounders, podcasting and creating documentaries
• How his ESPN “30 for 30” documentary on Jimmy Connors came to be
• The process in creating his popular “Six Second Screenwriting Tips” Vine series
• How he has never calculated his work and how he uses social media

Connect:

• Brian on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/briankoppelman
• Brian on Vine:  https://vine.co/briankoppelman
• Brian’s website:  http://briankoppelman.com
• He recommends you watch his film Solitary Man: http://www.solitarymanmovie.com

Subscribe on iTunes:  http://bit.ly/InflTune