"the biggest edge I live on"

“The biggest edge I live on is directing. That's the most scary, dangerous thing you can do in your life.... It's the fear of failing, the loss of face and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through.”

-Tony Scott

Anyone who's ever made a film can sympathize. RIP, Tony Scott.

Read the full article this quote comes from here. 

no excuses

I heard this talk by Economist Larry Smith on yesterday's Sunday Edition and found it both entertaining and revelatory.

In a nutshell, his argument is that the only things holding us back from realizing our full potential as human beings are our own excuses. It is much easier to rationalize not following our passions than it is to actually risk the financial sacrifice, isolation and rejection that often come with pursuing our "destinies".

It's a reminder that once we've found something to be passionate about, we must never limit ourselves in our pursuit of that passion; let the outside world do that for us if it will.

movie miracle

Since I haven't been posting much recently, I thought I would update you all on why. I am getting ready for a shoot! A friend is directing, my husband is producing, and I am doing art direction so it is something of a family affair.

Sure, we are still short some crew and extras, and the list of details to take care of seems to grow longer instead of shorter, but when we had our tech visit to the locations on Sunday the panicky feeling subsided and I was able to get a sense of the magic to come.

It's true--auteur filmmaking is absurd. It is a monumental effort and expense for something that will be seen by few people and that usually ends up costing you (instead of making you) money. But when it all comes together (and it usually does) it can be exhilarating and tremendously rewarding.

The hair-pulling frenzy of pre-production is a reminder that every movie is a miracle, even a bad one. Just to succeed in coordinating the amount of talent and resources required to follow one unified goal through to the end is an astounding feat, let alone producing a finished product that is actually good. The variables are infinite and the obstacles seem insurmountable.

Why do we do this again? No time to think about that--all we can do at this point is put one foot in front of the other and try to enjoy the experience.

bummed out*

Tonight's première of the RIDM documentary festival reminded me of what a rich city Montreal is when it comes to cinema. In his hilarious introductory speech, board president and indie producer Mila Aung-Thwin joked about how they will not be announcing a merger with Montreal's other film festivals, since certain journalists have been complaining that there are TOO MANY in this town. Too many film festivals? Sheesh! I think that too many festivals is a great thing for cinephiles (although it's not as great for filmmakers, since they usually don't make any money from having their films shown at them).

Anyway, that is a discussion for another day. Today I'm going to talk about....asses. Yes, that's right. Bums. Or, as world-renowned choreographer Philippe Decouflé refers to them in Frederick Wiseman's new doc Crazy Horse, "les cocos". Of the film's 2h15min run-time, there is probably an hour and a half of close-ups on women's bare tushes--floating in the air, being waggling at us, stroked by other dancers and at one point, multiplied by mirrors to look like waves atop the ocean (eye candy in its purest form, even for me, a straight woman). The remainder of the film shows us the excruciating tantrums at production meetings, the brutal evaluating of dancers' bodies at auditions and all the less glamorous aspects of what it takes to put on the world's "chicest" strip show, revered by intellectuals and oglers alike.

After the screening, someone actually yelled out "Sexist!! BOO!!" and I was disappointed because this person had completely missed the point. Although it may look like soft porn, you need to read between the lines. Underneath the disguise this is actually a film about the collaborative creative process: the inspiration, the obsession, the egos, the hopes and dreams and most of all, the hard, hard work. These people are not just in it for the money, they don't do it to exploit women--they do it because they view the striptease as High Art. And I agree. The infinite variations they've come up with on a woman taking 5 minutes to remove her G-string are indeed a sublime accomplishment.

While watching the film, I had a realization about cinema in general: the point of cinema is not to just to get to the point. The point of cinema is to draw out a moment for as long as possible, to create a reverie during which we forget where we are, who we are, and even what we're looking at. In this, what he calls his "most abstract film yet", Wiseman has done just that.

Crazy Horse plays once more at RIDM on Saturday the 12th at 5:30pm, and opens at Cinema du Parc on November 25th. 

*Thanks to friend, filmmaker and pun-master extraordinaire Ameesha for that one!

jour #1

Well, it's been just over 24 hours and already we've already managed to score tickets to the opening night party (along with all of Toronto) talk our way into an industry event, and attend the opening screening of the Canada First! program. We also got some business-related good news, some bad news and a taste of the fear and self-loathing that creeps up at some point whenever we come to TIFF. In all, a pretty full-on first day.


In the morning we attended Telefilm's "Canadian Talent to Watch" panel, featuring Simon Davidson (The Odds), Guy Édoin (Wetlands/Marécages), Anne Émond (Nuit #1), Ivan Grbovic (Romeo Eleven/Roméo Onze), Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas (Amy George) and Nathan Morlando (Edwin Boyd). Atom Egoyan gave a thoughtful, self-deprecating introductory speech about starting out in the industry and how the panelist's first features are "much stronger than my own". The panelists had some interesting advice for emerging filmmakers including "work with your friends, because shooting a film is very hard and you need friends on set" (Anne Émond) and "the biggest challenge as a director is preserving your naivety and intuition within the confines of a shooting schedule" (Ivan Grbovic).


Next, we attended the much-anticipated North American premiere of Guy Édoin's Marécages--another example of raw, powerful Quebec cinema. The film tells the story of a farm family facing bankruptcy and other, more serious setbacks in the midst of a drought. There is a scene in which a calf is torn from its mother by the desperate farmers, only to die; the brutal reality of farm life is rarely portrayed on screen with such honesty (if at all) and it hit very close to home for me, being from a rural milieu myself. Édoin obviously qualifies as "talent to watch" and although I'm still reeling from the emotional kick in the stomach, I look forward to his future offerings. 


We shall see what tomorrow brings....

tree of life

Like Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick is another film mystic and favourite director of mine. His work is deep, mysterious and, whereas Tarkovky's tends to be dour, joyful. He eschews making worldly entertainment in favour of meditating on life's big questions like "what is love?" and "what happens when we die?"  In his relatively small body of work as director (only six films in 42 years, of which Days of Heaven is still the best in my opinion) he has managed to give us a clear and unique worldview in which nature and grace are the dominant forces. You don't just watch a Malick film, you experience it; you have to enter with an open mind and check your habitual film viewing expectations at the door--never more so than with his latest, Tree of Life.

The "story" (I use quotation marks because the film is less of a narrative and more of an experience) is about a boy growing up in a straight-laced small town in the 1950's; his mother teaches him and his brothers to love and be joyful, while his father trains them to be manly and cruel (he is not portrayed as a heartless villain, but rather a product of his environment and the times, and is redeemed in the end). The younger brother dies in Vietnam, and each family member prays, in eloquent voice-over, to be reunited. Here's where the cosmic montages come in: from the big bang to the dinosaurs, to the glass-towered cities of today, they long for each other until the end of time when their prayers are finally answered.

Malick truly goes out on a limb here, both stylistically and thematically. In our jaded times, educated people often look down on religious faith as the domain of naive fundamentalists, while in this film it is restored to what it once was: humanity's most sublime pursuit. We saturated, savvy viewers may interpret cosmic montages as the language of advertising and the image of a man in a business suit wandering in the desert as a well-worn cliché. Such is the dilemma of releasing a modernist oeuvre in a postmodern world.

Were it not for his hermetic isolation, Malick would perhaps have been more wise to some of the pitfalls he ventured into. But would he have had the insight to capture so compellingly the perspective of a new-born child, to linger so lovingly on all the small lessons given to the baby by its parents? Would he have had the patience to film the secret life of boys in their backyards and alleys in such detailed and life-like complexity?  His monk-like approach to his work makes it an honest expression from the bottom of his soul and I for one would never encourage him to "get with the times". Kudos to the producers (Brad Pitt among them), who didn't either, for simply trusting his unique vision and standing behind him in getting this elusive film made.

exteriors

As you may have noticed lately, my posts have become a bit fewer and farther between. I have to admit, I've been doing less writing in general for the past few weeks. The thing is, summertime in Canada is short and sweet and we have to get out and enjoy it while we can.

It's not that I'm blocked--I have more ideas bubbling away than I can keep up with--I simply acknowledge that there is a time for everything, and, as a creative type, taking care of the body is just as important as taking care of the mind. In fact, as Mark Fenske, associate professor at the University of Guelph and co-author of The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success writes here, physical activity and periods of mind-wandering are now known to propagate spontaneous thought (and often, creativity). I am a true believer in this, since I often get my best ideas while jogging or going on long walks in quiet, familiar surroundings. Furthermore, there are few things worse for your body than sitting at a desk for hours on end, as explained by this alarming article.

So, instead of feeling guilty about it, I have resolved to get out and get physical on nice days, and save the hammering at the keyboard for rainy ones. Who knows--perhaps it may even improve my work. Either way, it's an experiment I'm willing to try.

dark night of the soul

"Upon that misty night
in secrecy, beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
than that which burned so deeply in my heart
That fire t'was led me on
and shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where he waited still
it was a place where no one else could come"

- St. John of the Cross, from Dark Night of the Soul 

The weather couldn't be more beautiful today, but the blue sky and bright sun couldn't clash more with the way I'm feeling. I am having an artist's dark night of the soul, or what I like to call a "why bother?" day.

A "why bother?" day goes like this. You get up, you go about your routine, everything is fine. Then you get to thinking. About your life, your career. You ask yourself, Am I wasting my time? You get stuck on that question and it plays in your head like a broken record. It saps your productivity, spoils your mood. Everything you've done seems worthless, you suddenly feel lost. In a previous post I made a list to remind myself of why I make films, but when I'm really in the doldrums, no rational argument will help.

I once heard a celebrated author say he wishes he hadn't spent the last 40 years of his life writing. What a crushing realization to come to in the sunset of an illustrious career! Think of all the people out there clamoring for the very life he regrets. The idea chills me.

Like mystics, artists too can have crises of faith. I think it comes from spending too much time in our heads, blindly chasing abstract concepts. These moments are just part of being an artist--they are the price we pay for the privilege of making art. I've found that there's no other remedy but to wait them out, and go outside for some fresh air and physical activity. I suppose maybe an ice cream wouldn't hurt, either. (What would St. John have said to that?)

life experience

Alas, my last days at Stegner House were such a whirlwind I hardly had time to write. But that's ok, since part of the craft is spending time out in the world, getting life experience.

On Saturday I finished a rough draft of the treatment I had come to Eastend to write, so I felt it was time to celebrate. The hockey playoffs were on, and with no TV in the Stegner House, we headed to the Cypress Hotel bar to have a few caesars and watch our team (they lost). It could have been a dismal evening, but in came a huge group of locals for a birthday party and things started to look up.

The town mayor, a large, gregarious man, broke the ice by buying us a round. We joined their table and he introduced us to everyone. There was a wide range of ages, from 19 to 70; all the men over 40 were ranchers, and all the men under worked in the oilfield. All the women worked in health care, except for two: an agricultural scientist and a petroleum engineer. They were a lively bunch and regaled us with heated political debates.

But as the night wore on, they opened up more and more. After jokingly calling me a "commie" for my left-leaning, big city politics, one young rigger told me that although he has all the money he could ever want, he is deeply unsatisfied with life. As he looked me deep in the eyes, I could see that under the tough exterior was a sensitive soul trying to live up to the manliness of his rough surroundings.

Fifty years ago, in Wolf Willow, Stegner wrote about the role-playing masculinity of his day, calling it "the code of the stiff upper lip. [....] An inhumane and limited code, the value system of a life more limited and cruder than in fact ours was." He was referring to the life of the wild frontier before the land was settled, when "men were men" as the saying goes. An aftertaste of that brutal period still survives.

Among these young men, the political creed may be "every man for himself" yet they all band together to save their neighbors' homes from the rising flood. They love to shoot guns yet, as one confessed, he feels terrible whenever he kills an animal. I've never known a people so rich in contradiction, so steeped in subtext.

No matter how imaginative you are as a writer, you can't hope to conjure all the complexities of life from scratch; little details absorbed from conversing with strangers, or doing things you wouldn't normally do in places you wouldn't normally be can come in handy when trying to add depth and character to a story. Fiction is often grown in the fertilizer of fact.

As I closed up the Stegner House in the bright sunshine of long-awaited spring, I was thankful for both the peaceful reflection and the colourful encounters I experienced during my time there. Not much has changed in this town since Stegner's day, and my secret hope is that it never will.

a monastic routine

There is a glut of light in this house. With windows on all sides, the upstairs is bright from sun-up to sun-down. In the big city, a space with this much sunlight would cost a fortune, not to mention the view.

Since coming here, I've settled into an almost monastic routine: up early and at my desk until lunch, out for a walk, back in for a nap, and at my desk again until suppertime when the study gets too hot from the sun. The evenings are quiet, with no TV (the selection of VHS cassettes left behind by previous tenants leaves something to be desired) and barely enough radio reception to break the silence. We spent the last two nights walking, listening to music and playing Scrabble until we got tired, and went to bed early.

Some people might think us crazy for spending our holiday in such an isolated place, but I can feel myself getting more and more "unplugged" each day. After losing yesterday afternoon to a sore stomach, I had a very productive writing day and my emotions are settling down. I could stand another two weeks of this, easily. Maybe a lifetime, who knows?

getting started

As any writer knows, the hardest part is getting started. After looking forward to this trip for months, today I found myself struggling for a number of reasons.

First of all, I chose to get started by re-writing instead of writing, which was a bad idea. Re-writing is a soul-sucking, discouraging process because it's all about judging yourself. After spending the good part of the day nit-picking the screenplay I've been working on for the past year, by mid-afternoon I had the blues and decided to get out of the house.

It doesn't take long to familiarize oneself with Eastend; all told, it probably has only a half-dozen streets and a half-dozen avenues. On my way to the drug store to pick up a new notebook, the few people I crossed gave me the three-finger wave from their pickup trucks. It made me realize how disconnected I had become from this pace of life; although I had spent almost 20 years of my life in a small town such as this, it suddenly felt alien to me. That in-between sense of displacement suddenly became acute. I decided to go back to the Stegner House and recharge my batteries.

After a nap, a meal and a long evening walk down a gravel road, I felt much better. Tomorrow I will start fresh with a change of tactic. I am here to write, not re-write. Perhaps I can use the strange emotions percolating in me as fertilizer for my brand-new screenplay.

viewing distance

Please excuse my absence these past two weeks--I have been extremely busy in all spheres of my life, both the day job and the filmmaking (travel, grant deadlines, frantically rewriting in order to shop the script around, etc.). Anyway, hopefully the busy-ness will pay off with some opportunities down the line.

In the game of endless second-guessing known as rewriting, there comes a time when you have to step back. At this point, you cut things out only to turn around and put them back in, you rearrange things only to realize that you've killed the momentum, you endlessly say to yourself "what if I did _____ instead?" and follow dead leads until you drive yourself crazy. You absolutely hate what you've written and can't imagine why anyone would want to read, let alone make, your script. This is when it's time for a break, some viewing distance, so that when you come back to it after a while, you can make objective judgments or maybe even feel a sense of pride over that pile of paper you slaved over.

This is where I'm at with my latest project. But it's ok; I've got another one that's been calling my name for some time now. After a couple of weeks of resting my weary brain (and hopefully getting outside for a change), I will sit down give it the attention it deserves.

resolutions revisited

One month into the New Year and fully back in the swing of things, I figure it's a good time to remind myself of the resolutions I made during the holidays when I was feeling well-rested and ambitious. Here they are: 

Be less practical. This doesn’t just apply to my choice of shoes. I have a tendency to self-censor and let concerns over logistics get in the way of a good idea. (Stuff like, “Oh, I can’t write that scene because it will be too expensive to shoot…”) I should let others tell me that something can’t be done instead of thinking it myself.  

Trust in my imagination. Taking the first resolution one step further, this means forgetting about what seems “believable” or “realistic”, and embracing the ideas that seem far-fetched. As good old Robert McKee puts it, “Think the unthinkable, then rationalize it after.” All good fiction is at least a little bit far-fetched, after all. The audience will believe it if it’s well-motivated and makes emotional sense. 

Be more patient. Yes, this applies to grocery checkouts and such, but more importantly it applies to my chosen art form. Making films is not a race; it is a glacially slow process, especially if you have a day job like me. I tend to be overly goal-oriented and get discouraged if I don’t meet my self-imposed objectives. I have learned it’s more satisfying to set goals on short-term basis instead of trying to look years into the future. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in six months if you just keep chipping away for a few hours a week! 

Be more positive. This one explains the quasi-motivational angle of this blog (and the third resolution). As I explained in the very first post, I tend to be the type to question everything, and like many artists, am in the habit of drifting towards negative thoughts. My new outlook leaves a little space for this, but focuses on trying to “snap out of it” at will. The thing about melancholy is that although it can be a source of inspiration, it is also a huge productivity-killer. When you only have one day a week to work on your art, you need to be able to force your productivity into high-gear.  

So, how have I been doing with these so far? Not too bad. Of course I still think things like, “If I had only bought a house ten years ago instead of spending all my money on films…” or, “Who am I kidding? Do I really have it in me?” but I’m trying to retrain myself to forget all of that and focus on the way ahead. Regrets and insecurity will get you nowhere.

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.

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.

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.