The Genius Species

If you were going to bring one of the great American novels to life on the silver screen, you’d want to hire a genius to do so, no?

A genius book demands a genius screenplay.

And that’s exactly what the producers did in 1972 when they brought on rising cinema star Francis Ford Coppola to write the script for F Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

In fact, on a recent episode of the Tetragrammaton podcast Coppola said,

“…I believe we're a genius species and we all get talents.”

A “Genius Species.” That catches my attention.

Humans are a genius species. How else can you explain our evolutionary survival? Dinosaurs should have crushed us. Jungle cats like lions and tigers should have mauled us. The psychotic among us should have destroyed the rest of us.

And yet, here we are. On top.

Why? Because of what FFC says, we are a genius species.

It’s funny, Francis goes onto to say we don’t always get the talent we want. In the telling of his Gatsby moment, he says he was a good writer with stamina and able to grind a project out, as he admits, “…willing to rewrite the script a hundred times if each time makes it 1% better.”

But he also confesses that writing is not his genius. And while he wished it was, he says his talent is, “imagination.” And “a lot of energy.”

Noted and seen. :)

This, of course, brings me to you. What’s your genius? Not what you wish was yours, but what’s innately in you?

Find that genius. Tap into into. And then, there’s no telling what you’ll be able to do.

Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Encyclopedia Brittanica.