The Unbeatable Power of a Flexible Mindset
Lessons from Weezer's Rivers Cuomo and writer/director Diablo Cody
In 1994, Rivers Cuomo and his band Weezer released their first record, The Blue Album. The record was a megahit that went platinum three times over. Cuomo went from a bespectacled nobody skulking around Los Angeles to a bespectacled rock star selling out arenas.
The lyrics on The Blue Album had a very stream-of-consciousness approach, (which I personally loved), but other people critiqued it, saying the songwriting lacked emotion.
In response, Cuomo decided to open up about his life in his next album, Pinkerton.
Boy, did he ever!
Cuomo WENT THERE on Pinkerton. His lyrics were raw and vulnerable, as if read verbatim from his diary. Like from the song “Across the Sea”:
They don't make stationery like this where I'm from
So fragile, so refined
So I sniff and I lick your envelope
And fall to little pieces every time
I wonder what clothes you wear to school
I wonder how you decorate your room
I wonder how you touch yourself
And curse myself for being across the sea
Dude. Duuuuuude.
In OOF news, Pinkerton was a critical and commercial failure. It was panned and ridiculed. In fact, it was named one of the worst albums of the year in a Rolling Stone magazine readers’ poll. Yikes!!!
Cuomo had taken a big risk and was mocked for it. In response, he picked up his bindle, went to Harvard for a few years and retreated into himself. (Sad Harvard Rivers Cuomo is my favorite version of him although he sounds like he’d be a handful to date. More on that later!)
He even wrote about this fraught time at length in his letter to Harvard titled “What I’ve Been Up To Since I Left School”. It’s quite a read!
After the initial failure of my band’s second album, Pinkerton, I decided not to return to school in the fall of 1997, instead setting out on a mission to develop creative methods which would allow me to be more consistent as an artist. Above all, I wanted to cure myself of the Romanticism which I believed was to blame for my failure.
Oh man! That’s heavy. He even says:
At first, I maintained a relatively normal social life, playing and coaching soccer and continuing my classical piano studies with Bruce Sutherland. Eventually, however, I became more and more isolated. I unplugged my phone. I painted the walls and ceiling of my bedroom black and covered the windows with fiberglass insulation. I disciplined myself to the extreme. My goal was to purge myself of all weakness so that I could write “perfect” songs as reliably as a machine.
As an aside, if you’re in a relationship with someone who starts talking like this, girl, RUN. This shit is above your pay grade!!!
Years passed before Cuomo released new songs, and this time, the lyrics were impersonal, vague and detached, which he hoped this would make him less susceptible to ridicule.
His strategy worked. Weezer’s third album, The Green Album, went platinum, thanks to the singles “Hash Pipe” and “Island in the Sun." Look at these lyrics:
We'll run away together
We'll spend some time forever
We'll never feel bad anymoreHip-hip
These lyrics are 1000% less creepy, sure, but they also do feel written by a machine, which was his stated goal. Congrats to the team!!
Oh, Fuck
However, to his horror, as Weezer reached the top of the charts again, Pinkerton was having a resurgance. He was not stoked about this development. He was like, “Um, guys. This record was a personal low-point for me and I don’t want to think about those songs ever again. K thanks.”
But his fans didn’t relent. The clamor for Pinkerton only got louder, which was painful for him. However, Weezer went on to release several more studio albums, selling millions of albums and enjoying a spate of chart-topping singles.
Failure is perception, not fact
Weezer’s story is interesting to me because ultimately, the Pinkerton album wasn’t a failure, despite being misjudged at release. Its confessional lyrics are now seen as ahead of their time. Some even credit the album for soft-launching the emo genre.
Pinkerton felt like a failure for Cuomo because The Blue Album was such a soaring success. But feelings of failure are not a fact; they’re relative. They exist in conversation with past feelings of success.
Stunningly, (is that a word?), the deluxe release of Pinkerton has an impressive 100% score on Metacritic.
People legit love this album!
Cuomo’s feelings about Pinkerton have mellowed. He recently said in an interview he’d even be open to playing the album live again, something he swore off for literal years.
Meet Diablo Cody
As Cuomo was navigating these feelings of failure and success in the music industry, another artist was about to make waves in the film world.
In 2007, Diablo Cody (real name: Brooke Maurio) was on top of the world. She had just won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Juno, a movie about a pregnant teenager starring Elliot Page. She was hailed as one of “the most original voices that Hollywood had heard in years”. The film grossed $143.5 million and scored 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
If you’re not familiar with
, here’s an old bio I found online:“Diablo Cody penned her screenplay debut Juno while working as a phone sex operator/insurance adjuster in Minneapolis. She did not attend Harvard. She is the author of the infamous and critically acclaimed memoir Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. She lives in Los Angeles."
Clearly, she has spunk.
Her follow-up film to Juno, Jennifer’s Body, was released in 2009. It grossed $16.2 million and has a 45 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Listen, it’s not Pinkerton-levels of underperformance, but it was definitely a decline from her Oscar-winning debut.
Cody was unfazed by the unfavorable response to her follow-up film. She knew the movie was more niche than Juno.
To protect herself from the impending critical blowback, she said she stopped Googling herself the day the movie came out in an effort to buffer herself from criticism. Still, she wouldn’t change anything about working on the movie, she said.
What I love about Diablo’s attitude was that she didn’t retreat into a ball, sell all her possessions, and drop out of life *cough, like Rivers Cuomo, cough* She rolled with the punches and kept working!
She fought for Jennifer’s Body and was alarmed when she saw that the movie was being incorrectly marketed to appeal to boys who liked sexpot star Megan Fox, not savvy girls who liked satire and horror films. Regardless, she didn’t let her sophmore slump-y kerfuffle sink her. Look at her professional track record:
· Young Adult (2011) starring Charlize Theron grossed $16.3 million and scored an 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
· Her directorial debut, Paradise (2013), grossed a paltry $6,000 and scored a dismal 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
· Ricki and the Flash (2015) starring Meryl Streep netted $26.8 million and scored 64 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
· Tully (2018), grossed $9.2 million and scored an 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
These are a lot of numbers and figures I just tossed at you. The point is that you can see that her career has had its peaks and valleys. That takes real bravery!!
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
What sticks out to me is that Diablo Cody has steadily kept working. She cranked out projects every few years, expanded her role from writer to director to producer. In her career, she’s evolved and thrived. To do this, I imagine she had to redefine success on her terms.
Bustle even asked last year, “Are we finally ready for Diablo Cody?”, where they laid out her impressive achievements:
She’s built an enduring career in Hollywood, having created one award-winning TV show with the help of Steven Spielberg (United States of Tara), another with Tig Notaro (One Mississippi), and tried her hand at directing (Paradise), though she didn’t much care for it. She picked up a Tony for writing the book for an Alanis Morissette jukebox musical, Jagged Little Pill, and she’s written five more movies, too, two of which were directed by Reitman: 2011’s Young Adult and 2018’s Tully, both starring Charlize Theron.
And, strikingly, Jennifer’s Body has bounced back in public perception too. It’s now called “iconic” and “a feminist masterpiece”.
Where are you going with this, Anna?
What do Pinkerton and Jennifer’s Body have to do with friendship?
These examples illuminate how our perceptions around success and failure impact our motivation to keep going.
We need to update our expectations about what success in a friendship looks like, too.
Sure, you might’ve had some hiccups in your friendships before, maybe even some spectacular fallouts, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t keep going and evolving as a friend.
Imagine you had amazing friendships in your youth. Your Blue Albums and Junos, friendship-wise. Then you hit a pothole, and the wheels came off the bus. You could retreat and vow to never put your whole self into a friendship again. You could decide to keep friends at arms length from now on. To be less human in your relationships, to be a machine.
OR, you can learn from the heartbreak, pick yourself up and keep going.
Not every friendship is going to be a chartbuster that reaches stratospheric heights. Some are going to be fun little projects that teach you about yourself and the world. Some are going to be deeply meaningful and change you forever in ways you can’t predict. Most will be something in between.
And, more importantly, friendships might look differently as you age and your priorities shift. Your closest friendships might come in different packages than you expect, like with different genders or people of different generations or pets or children.
Rigid Friendship
Dominating. “If it doesn’t look exactly as I picture it, it won’t be worth my time.”
Black-or-white thinking like, “We’re either best friends or nothing.”
Flexible Friendship
Open to things looking different. Maybe it’s more coffees and walks instead of dinners and clubbing. Maybe it’s enjoying time with different ages and genders (or species!).
Curious. Seeing if there are ways to become closer that make sense for both friends today.
My hope is that books like mine will help you on your quest to keep going so you can have lifelong success by staying true to who you are while making incredible friendships along the way, whatever they look like today.
Well, you had me at the Weezer hook! I've been to DOUBLE DIGIT Weezer concerts. I can't even count them all. The circling back and resurgence of Pinkerton is incredible. Weezer is such a part of my identity. 🤣 We've been there for arena shows and the tiny Blue Album/Pinkerton shows. Here for it all.