Some Art Is Not For Sale

Make it anyway.

This is a personal essay by Alice Stanley Jr. She previously wrote “My Year of Bragging” for this newsletter.

It’s a brutal time in entertainment. For many of us, it’s been difficult to keep the spark that made us artists alive. I know I’m not alone in feeling like I’ve been toiling for years in hopes of achieving a professional stability that may simply never exist again (lol). “Nothing is selling,” has become an unofficial motto of Hollywood. In response, I’ve huffed, I’ve puffed, I’ve cry-screamed “Bad Blood” on the 405. …But sometimes I’ve felt free. Sometimes a quiet little part of me hears nothing is selling and whispers back, “Oh? That’s okay. Some art is not for sale. So maybe now is the time to make that art.”

STATE OF THE (COMMERCIAL) ART

Most of us began our artistic journeys as indie creators, hoping we might eventually become “professional” artists, meaning, most simply, our art would one day sustain us, financially.

I gratefully made the transition into a full-time artist about six years ago. Of course, I was excited to spend all my time making art, with no survival jobs to distract me. But more significantly, I had been making my own art for many years. While I was proud of my projects, I often felt they were hindered by my limited resources. After I got my first TV/film credits and reps, I was optimistic that my future art would finally get the actual production it deserved. Of course, I was naive about how compromising that road could be.

I personally make art to advance progressive values in society. (I’m FUN!) I learned early in my career my values did not often align with production company mandates, which trickled down from studio mandates, which trickled down from whichever random tech CEO owned the umbrella company. I had multiple go-arounds with projects I deeply believed in, only to learn they were outside the box of “what audiences want.”

It’s amazing how many subjects I’ve been told there’s zero audience demand for. Allegedly, audiences don’t want anything too dark, too political, too queer, too feminist, too anti-racist, or too realistic. I won multiple awards and got multiple jobs from a climate activism show I pitched for years. Almost every exec I met from that script would praise it, then say of course they would watch it…but as a general rule, they couldn’t develop climate stories because no one wants to hear them. I would nod but want to counter, are you and I no one?

Pause here to say that incredible art does get made through these hellish systems. It just often requires an outrageous amount of star power. It’s also often “progressive”…for what it is. See: Barbie, which I loved and do consider wildly progressive…for what it is (a beautiful toy commercial). That movie was also, according to a million Margot Robbie interviews, a beast to get made. For Margot freaking Robbie! My example here isn’t meant to discourage, but more to prove: If your progressive art keeps hitting obstacles, it’s likely not about the art, or you.

So, after a few development heartbreaks, I learned to water down my voice. I began to see the pursuit of certain projects as a waste of time—before I’d even fully imagined them! How could I ever justify writing yet another climate script when I should be writing something responsible, that would actually forward my career? …But where has that landed me? I've developed at least a dozen projects in the past two years that were never made or paid. Last summer on the picket line, I began to wonder, so what exactly is the bigger waste of time? Unpaid development that dies as a PDF or making my authentic art, even if it’s teeny?

UNDOING OUR INDIE ART SHAME

There’s a lot of shame in making indie art. Honey, I get it! It’s humiliating to be an artist at all! And then to be an artist who just, like, puts their work out there? Without first grasping external institutional validation?! Sociopath alert! …Or is that judgment actually an internalized capitalism alert?

Of course, making art with/for benefactors is deeply complicated. That’s not new. Didn’t Mozart compose whole-ass operas he didn’t like to placate his rich patrons? Noah Baumbach wrote on Madagascar 3, and I doubt it’s because he loves lemmings. But what is new is the extreme lack of diversity of benefactors, plus the accompanying extreme lack of commercial distribution routes. Thanks to the endless vertical mergers of mega-corporations over the past decade, commercial art merely presents the illusion of diverse entry points. There may be many artistic rivers to jump into…but most flow to the same few oceans. And those oceans are largely controlled by billionaires.

I am scared by the collapse of diverse artistic channels. Not just because I’m personally part of the system that is collapsing (again, lol), but because I believe art is vital to our culture. Imagine me in a damn beret if you want, but I think art is the bedrock of all humanity! A fantastic window or mirror that allows us to see and be seen! Maybe our reason for being! I’m sorry, but I do not want all that power held by, like, six rich guys!

Related, I feel gaslit by media lately. Times are tough. War, unchecked regulations for AI, endangered reproductive rights, the climate emergency. Last night I was compelled to watch a five-minute TikTok of a woman crying, begging for likes, so she could rack up enough pennies to pay for her cancer treatment since Amazon recently laid her off. Like, dystopia isn’t coming, babe—it’s here! Yet when I attempt to take part in the ancient tradition of healing through art, it’s hard to find said art. I mostly find well-lit bland content about hot rich people who don’t even acknowledge they are rich?

It’s time I accept this weird limbo of art not necessarily imitating life anymore as a feature, not a bug, of the current entertainment industry. To pretend, for the masses, that our current moment is normal is practically science fiction. I’ve got to ask, does no one develop climate stories because audiences truly don’t want to hear them or because billionaires don’t want them to be heard? I must summon Audre Lorde: “For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.” …Maybe the most powerful art we can make, by capitalist nightmare design, must be small. I mean, when I think about it, I've often been more radicalized by a tweet than a box office hit.

So what do we do? I was asking myself this very question last fall, and what I did, was make my indie art.

MY INDIE NOVELLA: A CASE STUDY

Lightening stuck me in October—an idea for a movie that was splashy, but also rooted in queerness and anti-capitalism and climate activism! I was excited for about ten minutes before chucking the concept into my brain’s trash can. Obviously, the movie would never sell. No need to spend the next several months writing the script just to have it rejected. …But the idea kept nagging me, so I started an outline. Without being fully conscious of it, I kept amending my ideas before I even wrote them down. The ghosts of a hundred execs echoed in my mind: add a few more straight people, not so much about Marxism, what if there’s a car chase! Wouldn’t you know it, I started resenting the piece before it was anything at all. And that’s when that little voice inside me whispered, make it yourself.

I do not have the resources to self-produce an indie movie. I don’t even have the resources to find the resources to produce an indie movie. So I decided to write my idea as a short story—no resources needed! I scrapped my notes, cleared my head, and started from scratch. My only goal was to write the exact piece I wanted to read. The next few months were exhilarating! And scary! No boundaries, no bumpers, full throttle on my own point of view! The piece surprised me. It went deeper into my shame than I anticipated, so I let it be vulnerable! It was a little more experimental than I planned, so I let it be weird! The narrative became too complicated for a short story, and more like a novella, so I let it be a novella!

I trained myself to treat the piece with the same care and respect I treat my “for-profit” projects. I got feedback from writers I trust, instead of buyers. I started plotting a public life for the project, however small. I believe in financial transparency, so I’ll share that I took two commercial gigs, chipped away at those on weekends, and hoarded that money ($2,400 total) to fund a small print publish and reading series. I know 2K is a lot of money to sink for some artists. It’s a lot for me! It would have been too much two years ago. I could have absolutely released the piece for zero dollars, but I had the means to do a bit more. My main expenses were a professional copy editor, the printed books, the reading space, reading entertainment, and refreshments. I ended up spending $3,600 and recouped $1,200 through sales at local bookstores and on Etsy. (I didn’t want to do business with Amazon because I am a foolish idealist!) I broke exactly even. (So far!) I consider this a tremendous success.

Is my sapphic pop culture mystery novella the best work of my life? Haha, who knows? Maybe! Or maybe that’s just a horribly judgmental question to ask of one’s precious art! More importantly, I love the piece and all it brought me! I love that I got to have the first and last say about my own work for the first time in years. I love that I got to bring people together in celebration. I love that by supporting my own work, I got to support so many of my artistic friends! I got to rent the space from my art dealer friend, my graphic designer friend made promo materials, an actor friend played live music at the readings, and I hired two young writers to associate produce. I love that I got to fully enjoy my art! I had almost forgotten how.

Could there be a “bigger” life for my book? Possibly! But I’m so satisfied with what it has been. After the final reading ended, although I was sweaty and hefting rental chairs into my trunk at 10 PM on a Thursday, I was on cloud nine. With my whole heart, I am sure that feeling could never be eclipsed by a fancy red carpet premiere.

IN CLOSING: MAKE YOUR ART

As I wrap up this essay, I’ll briefly take off my beret to say, there is nothing wrong with making a big, fat, happy unoffensive movie, or whatever! The world needs silly, goofy joy! And sometimes progressive ideals can be distilled beautifully in broad art. A play need not be explicitly about labor unions to express the importance of community, you know? And to be clear, I am more than open to writing big, fat, happy things if they come with big, fat, happy checks! I’m just saying if I never get to make a big fat thing (or get a big fat check) that doesn’t diminish me as an artist. The only thing that would diminish me as an artist would be refusing to make art, refusing to contribute to the most unifying force in the world. Put my GD beret back on—there is nothing humanity agrees on more than our love of art! To express ourselves, even into the void, is to shout, I am alive, and so are you!

SO MAKE YOUR ART! EVEN IF YOU DON’T GET PAID. MAKE YOUR ART! EVEN IF IT’S EMBARRASSING. MAKE YOUR ART. EVEN IF BARELY ANYONE SEES IT. MAKE YOUR ART. EVEN IF ONLY YOUR BEST FRIEND SEES IT. EVEN IF ONLY A COUPLE STRANGERS SEE IT. EVEN IF ONLY YOU EVER SEE IT. MAKE YOUR ART! MAKE YOUR ART! MAKE YOUR ART!

• Shop Alice’s sapphic pop culture mystery novella at GayLoreStore on Etsy

• The book is also available at Skylight Books in Los Feliz and A Good Used Book in Echo Park

Logline: A sweet millennial librarian falls down an online rabbit hole of attempting to prove the biggest pop star in the world is secretly queer, but when the lines between fan fiction and reality begin to blur, her research veers into obsession. “House of Leaves” meets “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.”

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