It's Your Life

I was talking to a co-worker about his ambition to do things in life. He’s a data ingest guy. Basically he takes what people want him to store and categorizes it into a machine, and into the ether somewhere. Hardly the glamorous position of someone who wanted to do much more in the movie business.

I told him that people come out to L.A. for two reasons. 1) to do something they can’t do in their hometown 2) to work in the movie industry in some way.

There might be a few here and there that are sent here for corporate or whatever but you run into more people wanting to work in movies than anywhere else. Duh!

The one thing people do forget, if they’re here long enough, is…they stop doing that. I would say over half of the people who started wanting to do it, realize they DON’T want to return to their hometowns and prefer to find some existence somewhere here. That means doing whatever it is to stay here. The weather is nice. The dream still within eye shot.

Those who do opt out by opportunity (or lack of) linger a lot of time. Falling what typically becomes the same schedule they would have had had they lived in their hometown. Making a living to…live. For some, after a while, that tinge of boredom slips in again. I tell my co-worker what I do to keep that feeling at bay. He vamps openly about wanting to do something creative. I think he’s like a girl in the sense that if you gave him a solution, he gets excited about the potential, drives up his interest, but the reality of it would stifle him. He doesn’t want answers. He wants someone to bitch to. The nuts and bolts to do anything usually stops many people dead in their tracks. Because it IS boring. And stupid, most of the time. With a shitload of odd stress. If you put yourself in that place. See, that’s the quandary…in order to have some stake in working in movies, you HAVE to dive into it deep. And that pool is full and pissed in repeatedly.

This is not to sway anyone from wanting to make movies. It’s just that the normal brain finds it much more…oh, let’s say non-glamorous as portrayed. The reality is that it is work. And walls to which most aren’t accustomed to. While the rest of the population struggles to raise a family, build onto their home or whatever, the one who wants to make it in movie is sitting in a lonely dark room trying to piece together their story. And most of the time, they lose track of pretty much…what the real world deals with. This is not a simple thing for anyone to deal with (if you so happen to be connected to this person in any way). Making movies is a needy co-dependent bitch. When you’re young, energy is limitless, when you’re older…limited.

I do say one thing though…as he frequently reminds me the football season is about to begin, that time watching this sport or any sport where you’re invested deeply in, takes time away from pursuing the “dream.” If working so you can supplement watching football and drinking is the fun you look forward to, then by all means, this is a life worth living. I rabidly follow pro football, but I realize that I don’t want those hours to eat into the time I have left to do anything creative. I remind myself that win or lose, the team goes back to their homes unaware of my time wasted watching it. And I’m left with a bill for all the wings I eat, and a memory I can’t really share with the people I meet in L.A. We can recount stats and drama on the field, but does that push you forward in why we got into the movie business? No it doesn’t. That is the tradeoff these days. I also tell him, and I’m sure this is true of everyone who is successful in making movies, there is no substitute for commitment. The bitch of it is that you have to get nauseous with movie making. Learn new things since movies are malleable. Why things work, how things work, how to do things, everything. You can’t simply sit on your hands and wait for things to come to you. It won’t.

The simple thing in life is treating life like a stream for which you can take an inner tube town and watch lazily as you pass things. Unfortunately, if you are ambitious, life can’t move like that. You have to start paddling like the devil is chasing you. Push past the current, move with the current, force yourself to the end, because nothing propels you forward without effort. Most of us love sitting in that inner tube. I don’t blame you. Less stress, less pain, less inner turmoil. Because if you have passengers, now you have added risk to make sure everyone gets there in one piece. The oddest part about it all, and not to sound completely like an old fart, is that this ride is available to all and made easier through technology.

If you consider the ones who wrote classics did it on typewriters with ribbon or on a yellow legal pad, we’re fucking morons for not doing better…or more. Words are cheap, but we still find reasons not to produce them. For what reason? I’ve no clue. Only that we’ve conditioned our brains to believe that numbing it to stimulus is good enough. That we have a lot of life to do this. And time in front of us. Bullshit. We have to live life like tomorrow is no longer there. What if it weren’t? Would you waste it watching the newest Netflix original? We really don’t have as much time as you think. Even if you’re in your 20’s…think back to the moments you heard a song, and what feeling that elicits. From your days standing next to a keg somewhere wondering what your future held. How long ago was that? Seemed like a lifetime ago. Would be a blink. In the years I’ve come out here in 1998, the landscape of the world had changed so much. Now consider that life that didn’t have Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or SnapChat or whatever. It’s ridiculous to some that we even functioned. How did we do it? We moved on. Whilst I don’t criticize these things (as they are only invented to make us feel better about ourselves) it does hinder the reality that people will die around us. We will die. And we hadn’t made a mark. Does it matter when you’re young? Probably not. As you’re older, it seems to be the experiences that we value over money. Shit, I think back on small moments (if I can remember them) and painfully dissect where I could’ve done better. We’ve been conditioned to move on rather quickly instead of get introspective about it.

Maybe we will look back on these days, and just remember them based on timeline. I think there’s something pretty insidious about allowing machines to log in your memories and regurgitate them to you. But before I’m called out for being a hypocrite, as I work on projects that rely on your viewership, I just want to make projects that make us better people. Maybe it makes a statement on how we can function better. Whether or not you feel the message is worthwhile, I think the effort is worth it. Am I a crusader? No. Quite honestly, I could care less what my co-worker does. But I do feel when you do take the first step in a marathon, there are people lined up on the streets with support and cheers wanting you to just finish the race. And that is pretty cool.