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What kind of brain can keep a zillion moving parts of *different types* in its head with auteur rigor like this? Story, vast laboring crew, actors, top creative lieutenants, props, fx tech, capital raising politicking, schmoozing governments, field infrastructure...
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I can keep fairly big piles of ideas and thoughts in my head, but it's... just thoughts, and even with that least forgiving of material, I can't reach these scales of mental heavy lifting. Even with the best project management discipline.
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And note the sheer time pressure. Many CEOs run more complex empire, but they do so one quarter at a time at a steady tempo for years on end, with no definite expectations. This was an intense 438 day heavy lift where 90% of the complexity was being wrangled all at once.
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I'd say during that one core production year, Peter Jackson was probably operating at like 3x Steve Jobs or Musk-level. A one-rep max, but still. I'm surprised he didn't break down into a screaming nutjob by the end of it.
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It's easy to get into flow if you mainly do 1 kind of thing in 1 kind of workflow. And once you get into flow, output is a simple function of raw physical energy/stamina and your leverage scaffolding. But doing it with 10 kinds of thing in 10 kinds of workflows is 1000x harder
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There should be a term for this. Something like breadth-first heavy-lift architectural intelligence. It's not IQ, it's a different trait. I've met people with genius levels of this, and they tend to be above average intelligence in trad terms, but not geniuses.
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"Architecture" is not quite it though. There's a full-stack, end-to-end quality to the thinking that architects of any sort typically lack. Talented architects are good at laying out strategic contours and key tactical details. But not heavy lifts like this.
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Like Tolkien himself would count as an excellent architect. But he worked primarily in a single strategic medium, the text. Closer to mathematics than epic cinema. On balance, I'd say making the films was a greater achievement than writing the books.
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