Insecurity, Part 3: Question Yourself

My apologies to any regular readers I may have who were disappointed that I didn’t finish the “series” yesterday. I have no excuse, it just didn’t happen. I hope today makes up for it.

Anyway, back to it.

I believe that when it comes to creativity (I hesitate to say “art” just because of the hoity-toity connotations), there is a good insecurity and a bad insecurity. On Tuesday I talked about the bad insecurity, where you try to gain validation for yourself or your talents by way of comparison with others. Today, as I hinted at the end of that entry, I want to talk about the good insecurity, where you seek to always improve yourself or your talents by way of comparison with yourself.

It’s possible that insecurity isn’t the right word for it. A better, less loaded-sounding word might be “introspection”. Whatever you want to call it, what it boils down to is the question “Is what I’m doing the best I can do?”

I’m going to pick on M. Night Shyamalan one more time, since that’s become a theme here. I think MNS has lost a sense of introspection (yes, you COULD call it a “sixth sense”, but you shouldn’t, because I will slap you). I think he was successful with his first film, and he has decided he can do no wrong, and just throws his first ideas onto the page and onto the screen.

I could make the same comments about the Wachowskis, or George Lucas. Success becomes laziness when you decide that anything you touch is gold.

I mean, in the case of George Lucas, it’s sadly true. As I’ve often said, Lucas could have shit on a blanket, filmed it decomposing for 2 and a half hours, called it Revenge of the Sith, and would still have broken box office records with it.

(Some would argue that that’s kind of what he did, but I digress.)

(It still would have been better than Episodes I and II. Okay, I’m done now.)

Now, on the other hand, you have a filmmaker like Spielberg. I know I keep bringing him up but if nothing else, everyone knows who the hell he is so it’s an easy example. Plus, whether you love him, hate him, or are indifferent, I really do think he’s the single most influential director the American movie industry has ever known, second perhaps to Georges Méliès (but some of you had to check Wikipedia to find out who that was, didn’t you? So you see my point).

Even though Spielberg’s name will instantly make a movie successful, I don’t think he’s resting on his laurels. It seems like he’s always trying something new, always trying to make the best movie he can. He asks others for their thoughts, he allows the input of others to inform his decisions. He doesn’t surround himself with yes-men.

If you are a filmmaker, it is important that you are capable of looking at what you are doing, stepping to the side for a moment and asking yourself “Is what I’m doing the best I can do?” Not only that, but I think it’s important that you have at least one person on your team that you can trust to ask you that question if you don’t ask it first.

I mean, if ONE person George Lucas respected had stood up and said “Now hold on here, George. Where are you going with this midichlorian thing?” and forced Lucas to explain it to him, it would have accomplished one of two things. Either Lucas would have realized that there was a better way to accomplish what he was trying to get at, and changed it, or he would have thought it through and made the midichlorian thing important to the story. Instead, he just kind of dropped it after the middle of Phantom Menace and hoped no one would notice.

I’m not saying you should have a no-man, either. But you need at least one person that you know is looking out for the story. That should be you, but for when you get all caught up in the excitement of a new idea, you need someone else to pull you down to earth and ask “Where are you going with this?”

If it really is the best idea possible, then you should have little trouble explaining why and convincing them. But listen to their objections, because answering them will only make your idea more solid.

Question yourself. Answer yourself. And if you wouldn’t accept the answer from someone else, don’t accept it from yourself. There’s a better idea. Keep looking.

One last thing about insecurity, and this one is mainly directed at the…er…directors.

A common mistake a lot of beginning directors make is thinking that a movie has to be 100% “their vision”. They have to come up with ALL the ideas no matter what and it has to be theirs theirs theirs. This again is all a kind of insecurity.

What you have to realize is that you’re the director, not the dictator. You have to be able to make a decision about everything if no one else has any ideas, but you should also be open to hearing the ideas of others if they DO have them.

Basically, as the director, you decide the destination, and you make sure you keep going in the right direction to get there. That’s where the name comes from.

What is the movie you want the audience to see? That’s what is meant by having the vision. You don’t have to have all the ideas, but you do have to decide whether or not the ideas presented to you will get you to the destination as well as, or hopefully better than, your own ideas. And most of the ideas you hear WILL be better than yours. There’s no reason to insist on going down Avenue A when Avenue B goes in the same direction and will get you to your destination just as well or better.

If it won’t work as well, be able to articulate why. Don’t just say “Nah, we’re going to do it my way.” Explain. Explain to yourself as much as you’re explaining to them, because being a director isn’t about HAVING the best ideas, it’s about KNOWING the best ideas when you hear them. If you’re open to your cast and crew, they will help you make a better movie than you could make alone, and everybody wins when you do that.

One of the comments to the first post in the “series” brought up a good issue with humility. I’ll touch on that in my next post.

Insecurity, Part 2: The Better-Than Fallacy

Today we continue our conversation regarding insecurity, and what I refer to as the Better-Than fallacy. To wit:

To the less mature mind, the only way I can be good at something is if you are not good at it. Since good is seen as being a dichotomy, only definable in relationship to bad, if I am going to make myself look good, I have to make everything else look bad. So when you’re talking to other people, or about other peoples’ work, you tend to be overwhelmingly negative. This sucks and that sucked and look how clever I am to know the better way to do it.

The expectation, so laughably absurd that even the person himself doesn’t fully admit it at the time, is that the world will fall at your feet in awe of your majestic brilliance. Which, of course, is not the case. You just seem like a dick. And usually, an inexperienced or uninformed dick.

As in any walk of life, the more you know, the more you discover you don’t know, so in ignorance, you think you know EVERY damn thing. It’s interesting to me to be on the other side of it now (albeit only JUST on the other side) and see all the statements people make about what I’ve done. Most of the time my reaction to people’s comments is “Yeah, I can see how that makes sense knowing NOTHING about how this project came about. But from my perspective, that’s not how it would have or COULD have worked out at all.” I like to believe I have more patience for those situations, remembering when I was the ignorant one.

Let me give another example of this kind of behavior. On message boards discussing the new RED camera (plenty of posts to come on that, you betcha), there’s a lot of talk about “the death of film.” Recently there was a thread about Spielberg’s refusal to switch to digital, preferring the look and workflow of film.

Well, there was a fucking UPROAR about it, I’m here to tell you. People calling Spielberg a no-talent hack and saying “fuck him” and going on about how he and everyone else who refuses to switch to digital is going to get steamrolled by progress.

What the fuck?

Let’s not kid ourselves. If Spielberg had come out and embraced RED, all that talk of “no talent hackitude” would not have ensued. No, Spielberg would be a genius and a pillar of filmmaking history — even though the content and quality of his body of work is utterly unchanged.

No, what really instigated the “backlash” is that these are people who are insecure about being on the bleeding edge, they need validation that they’ve made the right choice, that they’re talented and special, and Spielberg rejecting digital is a slap in the face to their egos. So they have to try to bring down Spielberg (good luck with that) so that they can be “good” by being “better than” him.

Of course, as I say, “Better-Than” is a fallacy, because you do NOT have to be better than anyone else to be good at what you do, at least not in a creative industry. Is Michel Gondry better than David Fincher? Is Peter Jackson better than Steven Spielberg? Mix and match to continue the line of questioning?

I’d much rather re-watch Eternal Sunshine twice than re-watch Zodiac once (and could do either within the same running time). But I’d watch Fight Club five times before I tried to sit through The Science of Sleep again.

It’s damn hard to compare Jackson and Spielberg, and hard to think of a “bad” Spielberg film, but I tell you what, I’d rather watch Lord of the Rings than The Terminal. Though I’d still rather watch that, or one of Jackson’s schlocky early pieces like Dead Alive, before Science of Sleep.

Are these better filmmakers than each other, then? I couldn’t say that. In my examples, is one a better film than another? I don’t think you can say that either. All I can say is which I LIKE better, which I ENJOY more, and as I learn more, I’m more capable of articulating why.

I took a dig at M. Night Shyamalan yesterday, because I think he’s been in a steady decline since The Sixth Sense (which I maintain is goddamn brilliant and a perfect film). But does that mean I think I’m “better than” him as a filmmaker? Would I make “better” choices? Not exactly. It just means I would make different choices. I still cross my fingers for good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes every time M. Night puts something out, because I want so much for him to blow me away again.

All of this, again, comes back to insecurity, and whether it’s externalized, or internalized. The younger, and less experienced, feel that they have to be better than everyone else in order to be any good at all. The more experience I gain, the more I realize that two people can both be good at something in different ways, and the only person you ought to worry about being better than, is yourself.

I’ll wrap this conversation up tomorrow (at least, I expect to) with a discussion about what I believe is the artistically healthy internalization of insecurity.

Had some great comments on yesterday’s post, I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts today.

On Insecurity, Part 1

As of this writing, I am 24 years old. That’s not that old, but it’s fascinating to me to look back even from here. It should go without saying that I’m a much different person than I was when I was 14, and I was different at 16 than at 14, and different at 18 than at 16, etc. What amazes me, though, is how different I am at 24 (about halfway to 25 at the moment) than I was at 23. How much different I am likely to be at 26 than I am now. And I can’t even fathom who I might be at 30.

The older readers of my blog (if I ever have any) will be thinking “Well, duh.” The younger readers of my blog may not believe me. I know when you’re younger it seems like at a certain age you get it “figured out”, and you don’t HAVE to change because life is smooth sailing. Whether or not that’s the case, you change. Every experience you have changes you.

The main thing that changes — at least, hopefully — is insecurity. Now, this is not to say that you will never be insecure. As a filmmaker (and therefore an “artist” in some sense) you will probably always be insecure. And, I will argue in this “series” of posts, you SHOULD be insecure to an extent, because security leads to laziness and laziness leads to the death of your art. What’s important is not eliminating your insecurities, but channelling them.

Now, first a little bit about where I’m coming from on this:

Where filmmaking is concerned, at least in terms of this generation, I’m what you might call a “late bloomer”. Most of my generation started shooting with their family’s VHS camera when they were 10 years old, or younger (Ryan made his first short film — which he refuses to show me — at the age of 9).

M. Night Shyamalan likes to put his crappy childhood films as special features on the DVDs to his crappy adult films. I could bore you with a list but I won’t. The point is, the fact that it didn’t actively occur to me to make a film until I was about 17, makes me a relatively “late bloomer”.

Looking back, it seems the obvious choice, and it seems like it was “destiny.” I never picked up a camera, but I would put on little skits with my siblings, and I always thought of them as “movies”, not plays. I always loved movies, and especially visual effects fascinated the bejeezus out of me. I started “directing” my family’s Christmas videos when I was two years old (“Okay, so you record the door, and I’m going to burst out going ‘It’s Christmas!’ and run for the presents!”). So it all makes sense to come to this.

Now, also among my generation, there’s a common bit of hubris. The phrase is “the next Spielberg”. Usually said in the first person. People say it to each other sometimes, I’ve had it said to me. I don’t know that it’s true, but it sure would be nice.

Here’s the thing. I don’t do the false humility bit and I don’t like it when others do, either. I know that I am very talented, and very passionate, at what I do. I make no bones about that. But am I the BEST at what I do? Or will I be, when my skills are sufficiently developed? I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t really think so. I think I can make good films, I hope I can make great films, but no one bats 1000, and even Spielberg takes the occasional misstep.

Still, as I say, I am aware that I am talented, and have been since I was young. And when you’re young, knowing you’re talented tends to make you a dick. When I was younger, and first starting out in filmmaking, I was a dick about it (some will say I still am, but I’ll address that later).

Why? Insecurity.

See, at that stage you still rely on the validation of others to define you (no matter how much you say you don’t). So even though you know you’re talented, it means nothing to you unless the REST of the world knows you’re talented. And this leads to the Better-Than fallacy.

This entry is really freaking long already and I’ve barely even gotten to my point. Still, I don’t want to bore your pants off (at least not unless I’m paying for dinner) so I’ll stop here, and we’ll pick up tomorrow with the Better-Than fallacy.