We need to work this hard to find something that's going to grab people. But we need to be humble enough to know we don't have it yet - that we need to work for it rather than doing what we do all the time, which is appealing to the people who already agree with us. It's tough to find a creative way to reach the mainstream. That's where entertainment comes in, because entertainment has to reach for the middle. You need to be funny, or you need to be powerful, or you need to reach for the tears.
Great writing can change the world.
Let's take smoking as an example. Not long ago it was just fine to smoke in somebody's house, in their car, and certainly in a big group. UCLA is becoming a totally non-smoking institution. I'm dying of lung cancer caused by being an inveterate smoker. This is ethos pure and simple.