I went to film school with a guy named Erik. He was a
gregarious guy. Didn’t know he was a screenwriter and never saw a movie he did
in school. I knew him peripherally. Ended up working on a small commercial he
directed. Very calm guy. Lotsa’ laughs. I got the feeling he just liked the set
atmosphere and not the actual making of everything. Would it surprise you that
the same guy ended up directing a HUGE star-studded movie? We’re talking Donald
Sutherland and Forest Whittaker type of movie. It got great critical reviews.
Amazing push behind it. Got a ton of press. In 2014 it would’ve probably been
splashed all over social media. In 2000, it moved the needle a tick in the
trades. A nice tiny mention in the trades. But that tick was immeasurable. How
so?
Because it wasn’t measured. I don’t know the details of the
follow up, but his career died on the vine. Heat.
Heat is that thing that will slingshot you across the
universe. It lights fires and burns quickly. Heat is what got stars to read his
script. Heat definitely got it made. Then…nothing. I talked to a fellow alumni
years ago about it. He’d told me a story about how he went to a restaurant one
night on the west side of Los Angeles. The guy who was serving him was Erik. I’m
sure he has a lot of stories that may put the fear of humanity in your heart.
Heat goes as quickly as it shows. I’ve been where Erik is.
I’d be a cautionary tale, had I the career of Erik’s. But I was done by the
time I was 30. As a cinematographer, I didn’t have the stomach for it. People
hate. It’s their business to lay
it in on you. Because you’ve wasted their precious time. They take it out on
you. And it rarely has anything to do with the movie you made. It’s that they
are miserable in general. We’re trying to entertain a masses of people on
drugs. The ones who aren’t have serious mental issues. Imagine trying to tap
dance in an insane asylum. Half would toss their crap at you, the other would
probably tap along. Either way, people will show their disdain for your
existence.
I went to film school with a guy named Tony. He got Harvey
Keitel to be in his movie. Broke HUGE. Took a lot of awards at Sundance
actually. His movies are pretty niche. He loves telling dull lingering poetic
stories ala Terence Malick. But he was no Terrence Malick. You can get away
with pretentious crap if you’ve got Martin Sheen, Brad Pitt or Nick Nolte in
your movie. Forget it if you’re Tony from Loyola Marymount. I haven’t heard a single thing about
him over a decade. I IMDB’d him.
His career stopped roughly around the time I finished school. He had a
second feature, but…nothing. My guess, he’s back to doing what his parents may
have wanted him to do. Take over the family business, which had nothing to do
with movie making.
What am I getting at here? Success, glamour, heat is
fleeting. If you aren’t generating mounds of material enough to bury the town,
you aren’t going to make it. Nitwits at the sidelines say they have ideas, NONE
of it comes to fruition. Because they don’t have enough.
I recently talked to a screenwriting fellow school chum. I’d
asked him if he had any short ideas to make into short movies. He said he only
worked in feature length movies. He has an agent. He works as a schoolteacher. I mentioned that ideas are tough to
come by in the short world, because it’s not easy telling a short. He snapped
“I’ve got plenty of ideas brewing, not worried about that.” No he doesn’t. He
has thoughts while stuck in traffic. None of which would make a good movie.
Been there done that.
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