Oscar winner Kaufman got was candid about the state of affairs: “I think the business is in a very, very bad place, and it needs to change into something where people who have idiosyncratic voices can make movies because I think we need that, as a society and as a culture.

I think it is a very difficult road for people who are trying to do that,” explained the writer-director known for such films as Synecdoche, New York; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Adaptation; Being John Malkovich; Anomalisa; and I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

“In no way am I trying to dissuade people from doing it. I think people should do it. I want to figure out how those people can be supported, and movies can be made so we don’t get sort of this cookie cutter version of reality that we’re presented by people who are trying to make fortunes.”

Franklin Leonard, who moderated the Q&A, asked how they navigate a business that is increasingly risk-averse while trying to make original works.

Riley, who followed up his Spirit Award-winning Sorry to Bother You with the Prime Video series I’m a Virgo, offered, “If I’m talking to somebody that’s only trying to be risk-averse, [that’s] probably not somebody I want to be in collaboration with anyway. I’m not just trying to make a movie. I’m trying to make the thing I want to make, and if I can’t make it, I don’t want to make the thing.”

Kaufman said: “I don’t have much luck getting things made, so I don’t know how to answer that question. It doesn’t really seem to be a marketplace that is welcoming to me, and I do think that saying that it’s risk-averse is the understatement of the year, but it is.”

“Synecdoche was made in a very different time,” he said of the film starring Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis, Catherine Keener and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. “That’s when the market collapsed and the movie business changed into what it is now. It was the first movie I directed and it did very poorly commercially. Nobody wanted me to direct anymore. I wanted to direct, so it made things very difficult for me.”

Solomon provided a positive spin for the Zoom audience, which, per Leonard, set a record as the most well-attended Word by Word, with more than 1,000 tuned in to catch the conversation. In a follow-up email sent to attendees on Tuesday, Word by Word said it was only $900 short of a $20,000 fundraising goal for the Entertainment Community Fund and nearing a $15,000 goal for the Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund. (Attendance is free, while guests are encouraged to donate if they can.)

Solomon said that “there’s an incredible amount of hope” out there for writers. “New writers I come across feel that they have to write something that looks like all the other movies in the world to get it sold, set up or get representation. The truth is not one showrunner I know is looking for someone who knows how to structure their show perfectly well. What everyone is looking for is an original voice. It may not be a script that sells for a new writer, but what everyone is looking for is, does this feel like a person who has something interesting to say, someone who has a unique quality to what they’re writing and the way they write it? Your script doesn’t have to be a perfect example of what a risk-averse business is looking for.”

Riley revealed that he’s aware of conversations happening in the industry between individuals about creating a new form of independent studios that could give more power to creators. “Maybe it’s time for collectively run studios. I’m not really an expert on how that would work. There are a number of people talking about those sorts of things. They don’t exist right now, but there are discussions happening about them,” said Riley. “I don’t know how they would be distributed, but those are talks that are happening. People are looking for new ways to make these things happen.”