# What does "high-concept" mean?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 3, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448 "2005-08-03T18:22:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/1 "2005-08-03T18:22:07Z")
…when applied to books/TV shows/movies/etc? Don’t all things have a concept? What makes one concept higher than another? To me, this has always sounded like one of those phrases marketing people use to make themselves sound self-important, but maybe I’m wrong and it does mean something. If someone could list examples of stuff that is high-concept and stuff that is low-concept, that might help illustrate the point.
(I have personal reasons for wanting to know this; someone said my book is high-concept and I am trying to figure out whether it is an insult, compliment, or neither.)
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### Author:  [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/2 "2005-08-03T18:28:43Z")
I bet there is an official definition, but to me “high concept” means “based on a premise that stretches credulity - it either sucks you in and you are willing to buy it for the duration of the film, or you are turned off from the first scene”
Like, say, the movie Twins - Danny DeVito and Ah-nold play twins - cute, get it? Funny - ha! Or, if you aren’t willing to suspend a HUGE amount of disbelief, it falls flat.
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### Author:  [@Agonist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agonist)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/3 "2005-08-03T18:34:41Z")
Ripped from a web journal I like ([pamie.com](http://www.pamie.com/sept03/17sept03.html)), because I like the definition and the snark:
> [@](#):
>
> Meanwhile, I’m working on a script that’s known around here as “high concept,” which means the opposite of what it intuitively sounds to me. Unlike “high art,” high concept means you can understand it in a sentence, and can see the entire movie without having to need something as silly as a script. “Jim Carrey becomes God.” “An updated Porky’s.” “Sorority Girl Goes to Harvard.” You get the picture.
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### Author:  [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/4 "2005-08-03T18:42:14Z")
I’ve always understood it to refer to films (usually featuring Arnie) whose (overblown) premise can be explained in little more than a sentence, which the [first hit](http://www.screentalk.biz/art043.htm) on Google agrees with (although I wouldn’t agree with quite a few of their examples - _The Godfather_ is high concept?). The idea is that you can pitch the movie in next to no time, making it much easier to sell:
“It’s Die Hard on a plane.”
“It’s big game hunting - but with marines and an alien!”
“They’re stuck on a bus, and if it goes below 50, boom!”
“It’s Arnie - and he’s pregnant!”
You get the idea.
Especially now **Agonist** beat me to it…
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### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/5 "2005-08-03T18:51:00Z")
But that doesn’t seem right because I’ve never heard Bruce Almighty (“Jim Carrey becomes God.”), American Pie (“An updated Porky’s.”) or Legally Blonde (“Sorority Girl Goes to Harvard.”) described as high concept.
On the other hand, the show with the blind cop, Blind Justice, was described as “high concept” in every article written about it. That seems to fit in with **WordMan** ’s definition nicely.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/6 "2005-08-03T19:37:05Z")
“High concept” means that the basic premise can be described in very few words.
Once someone asked me what my novel was about. I spent about thirty seconds describing what the character was ("She a syron – someone with extremely strong intuition, so much so that she gets hunches to do things without knowing why. She hires a ship and ends up finding a lost generation ship, . . . " etc.)
Then they asked John Betancourt. “Pirates fighting giant ants,” he said.
**That’s** what they mean by “high concept.”
Hollywood considers anything that can be easily explained as “high concept.” “Jim Carrey as God” is clearly a high concept idea; once you hear it, you know pretty much all you need to know. Compare it to something like **Sideways** or **Napoleon Dynamite** or **Mystic River** or **The Royal Tennenbaums** , where a short, punchy, one-sentence description does not do justice to the film.
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### Author:  [@Hoodoo\_Ulove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoodoo_Ulove)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/7 "2005-08-03T19:58:04Z")
> [@continuity eror](#):
>
> (I have personal reasons for wanting to know this; someone said my book is high-concept and I am trying to figure out whether it is an insult, compliment, or neither.)
Punch the fucker’s lights out.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/8 "2005-08-03T20:09:45Z")
Books are either high-concept or non-commercial.
Decide which one you want yours to be.
Then you can either get mad or count your money. 😃
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### Author:  [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/9 "2005-08-03T21:01:40Z")
What aids in describing something as high-concept is quickly encapsulizing big ideas. Familiarity helps. A Christmas Carol was a pretty sensational ghost story when it debuted as a Dickens serial in the late 19th century but possibly a bit too complicated plotwise to be high concept. But because six or seven generations all over the world have been exposed to its basic time travelling/Christmas themed/“what-if” alternate life plot, whole new concepts can be summarized and spun off from it just by evoking the name “Scrooge.”
It’s A Wonderful Life = Jimmy Stewart as a likeable Scrooge, Clarence as the Ghosts.
Scrooged = A contemporary Scrooge meets Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Bill Murray as Scrooge.
Family Man = Contemporary take on Scrooge with Nicholas Cage as the Scrooge character and Don Cheadle as the angel.
Etc.
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### Author:  [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/10 "2005-08-03T21:11:04Z")
I’d never thought of “high concept” as meaning “easily summed up in a single line” (although, in retrospect, that’s obviously part of it).
I took it to mean that the plot was driven by a unique quirk. Hence, regarding the list in Post #4, _Speed_ would absolutely be high concept, but I don’t think _Alien_ fits – it’s just a monster movie, and therefore just plain old “regular concept.”
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/11 "2005-08-03T21:30:17Z")
A perfect example was Fran Drescher pitching _The Nanny_ to an exec.
“It’s like Mary Poppins with me as Julie Andrews.”
Another classic example is attributed to then-president of NBC Brandon Tartikoff:
“We need a show like _The Wild Bunch_ and Mr. T drives the truck.” Thus was born **The A-Team.**
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/12 "2005-08-04T00:49:16Z")
Not to mention the classic – “Let’s do **The Wiz** — white!”
The simplier it is to sum up the story, the easier it is to sell.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2005, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/13 "2005-08-04T06:17:56Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> Not to mention the classic – “Let’s do **The Wiz** — white!”
“That means we can bring back Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow!”
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### Author:  [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/14 "2005-08-04T16:41:59Z")
I’ve always understood “high concept” to mean a work (book, tv show, movie, whatever) that revolves around an elaborate, and probably non-realistic, concept. And I don’t mean non-realistic in any negative way, just that the concept is something that would be very unlikely (if not out-right impossible) for a normal person to encounter.
Low concept works are realistic works, in the sense that they tend to deal exclusively with the normal trial of life stuff that is probably pretty familar to most of the intended audience. _Of Human Bondage_ (crippled boy deals with growing up and becoming a man in turn of the century England) is low concept, while _Heart of Darkness_ (man sails down river in Belgian Congo to meet a mysterious trading post chief and encounters savagery) is high concept.
Or to take the example of TV teen dramas, shows like _My So-Called Life_ and _Freaks and Geeks_ are low concept. They’re slice of life type shows where normal teens deal with normal problems. While _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, _Veronica Mars_ or even _The O.C._ are high concept. The latter shows may deal with the same type of story lines, but they have to be adapted to the shows’ central conceits, whether that’s “teen life as a horror movie”, “teen life as a noirish detective drama” or “teen life as an overblown soap-opera”.
I’d say that calling something “high concept” is inherently neither complimentary nor uncomplimentary, though it can be used either way, because of the perception that high concept works tend to be more commercial (which can be seen as good or bad).
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### Author:  [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/15 "2005-08-04T21:30:09Z")
High concept has nothing to do with quality.
High concept has nothing to do with fantasy vs. realism.
It’s entirely about how concise the pitch is. A project that can be summed up neatly in a few words is high concept.
This is quite often a good thing because high-concept projects tend to be easier to advertise. With a really tight core idea you don’t have to work very hard to explain what it’s all about to your potential audience.
“\*Die Hard \* on a boat” (_Under Siege_) = high concept. Five words and you can pretty much imagine the whole movie from start to finish.
“A man meets his friend for dinner and they talk about a variety of subjects.” (_My Dinner with Andre_) = not high concept. There’s really no good way to boil that movie down to one pithy sentence.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2005, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-high-concept-mean/315448/16 "2005-08-04T21:37:16Z")
Legend has it that \*Alien \*was sold to the studio with the high concept, “\*Jaws \*meets _Star Wars_.”