rising tide

My artist mother likes to tell the story of the most talented students she went to university with. She said that they seemed so brilliant they didn't even have to try; everything they made was good. But after school, as they began to meet with the setbacks and hardships that all artists must face, they lost their drive and eventually stopped making art. Thirty years later, the classmates with successful art careers are not the most brilliant ones, but the ones who wouldn't give up and outlasted everyone else.

Sometimes we filmmakers feel like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll down again. But after a while, you make a bit of headway, and then a little more, and then you start to sense a change in the wind, a rising tide, the ground starting to level off.

You can't force the change, you just have to keep doing your thing. Then, all of the sudden, you get a bit of luck or good news and it goes a long way. You just have to hang in there while waiting and look at your boulder as a conditioning exercise. You need to be in good shape for the journey ahead.

why make films?

Sometimes we artists lose sight of why we spend most of our spare time, our hard-earned money and our creative energy doing something that will bring us little or no reward. Here are a few of my reasons:

-       To travel to another time or place

-       To make thinking people feel and feeling people think

-       To remind people that things could be better

-       To remind people that things could be worse

-       To remind people they’re not alone

-       To forget your own problems and worry about someone else’s for a change

-       To revisit your greatest regret and make it right

-       To experience something that will hopefully never happen to you in real life

-       To say and do things you wouldn’t actually be able to in real life

-       To ask questions, not to answer them

-       To expose the beauty and the ugliness in humanity

-       To see something that was once a scribble on a page come to life before your eyes

What are yours?

over-analysis

 "Just think about it, deeply. Then forget it. That’s when an idea will jump out at you."

-Don Draper 

Mad Men Season 1, Episode 11

Since I’m on a big self-improvement kick these days (I guess that’s natural for January), a while ago I decided I should read more non-fiction. 

I'm normally a believer that good fiction can teach us things reality can’t, but I have to admit that the two non-fiction works I recently tore through taught me more valuable life lessons than the last 10 or so novels put together. 

One of these books was Malcom Gladwell’s eclectic but compelling treatise on the power of snap judgment, Blink: Thinking Without Thought. His thesis is that, “In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.” That is to say, decisions made in two seconds can be just as effective as those in which the pros and cons are laboriously weighed. As creators, we spend all day every day making decisions, so you can imagine how great it would be if we could only spend two seconds instead of two days (or weeks, or months) coming to a conclusion.

Although Gladwell’s argument is sometimes a little shaky, his case studies are fascinating. Ranging from marriage counselors who have learned to tell within three minutes of listening to a couple’s argument whether they will still be together in 15 years, to art historians whose instincts instantly alert them to the presence of forgery, Gladwell’s “experts” have harnessed the lightning-fast power of their subconscious minds.  

The only problem is that it takes a long time to get to the point where your snap judgments become reliable. These people worked for years, training their brains through repetition and study. In other words, it takes extreme patience to reach the point where things become effortless. You can’t become the Don Draper of your field overnight, but you can get there someday with practice.

non-judgment

@ maya glum: Thank you for calling me on another of my bad habits: endless self-editing.

Allow me to publicly explain why I removed the movie ratings from Tuesday's "monthly viewing" post.

I have decided that this blog will be a space where I practice something my yoga teacher calls "non-judgment". (Sorry to get all new-age and flaky on you.) 

As a filmmaker, I know how heartbreaking it is to be dismissed by a scathing review or a mediocre star rating, so I would rather not do it to others. If I have something nice to say about a film (or maybe a constructive criticism) I will say it, but if not I will keep quiet--just like mom told me. 

film mystic

The son of a poet, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky was the original film mystic, seeking communion with a higher truth he saw possible though art. Here is a small snippet of his philosophy, taken from his influential book, Sculpting in Time:

"The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good."

Tarkovsky was so dedicated to his work that he shot the same film three times (due to technical glitches) and, in one location, exposed himself and his crew to so many toxic chemicals that he and two others eventually died from the same form of cancer.

Tarkovskian devotees are responsible for the "slow cinema" movement lingering in festivals for the last few years. Although I don't consider myself a devotee of anyone or a part of any movement, I do subscribe to the belief that films can and should provoke profound, meaningful experiences in the viewer.

monthly viewing

Films I’ve seen lately that I liked (in no particular order):

Winter’s Bone
Black Field

Mad Max

The Hustler

Back to the Future

True Grit

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

The Black Swan

to blog or not to blog

I am normally a private, borderline secretive person. So why contribute to the noise when thousands of people around the globe are already yammering 24/7 about every conceivable topic, cluttering up the collective consciousness until it all loses meaning?

My reasons are selfish. As an artist, one of my resolutions is to get better at sharing. You'd think that would be second nature to creative types like me; otherwise, why create? The reality is, instead of sharing, we tend to spend more time cowering in the corner, hoarding our ideas and second-guessing ourselves (or at least I do).

To me, sharing means not taking yourself too seriously, learning to cope with feedback, and being brave enough to go out on a limb. It’s about admitting you’re vulnerable instead of trying to appear impenetrable. These are all things I could stand to work on.

Like most writer/artist types I have filled thousands of notebook pages with stream-of-consciousness over the years, describing every malaise in minute detail, clinging to it like a precious badge of honour. In the past few months I have discontinued this unhealthy habit, and feel a lot better overall. My hope is that sorting out my  thoughts on filmmaking and the creative process in the public eye will distract me from the neurotic state of melancholy that I might otherwise wallow in. 

Welcome to my open meditation.