So it occurred to me that I only email or call my friend
Wella when I need something. Like
advice on buying a car, or advice on where to take the car when somebody hits
it. But it’s rare that I call or
email just to say Hi! Things are going pretty great, and I wanted to thank you
for being my friend! That’s
it! I don’t need anything! Isn’t that awesome!?
To which Wella promptly responded by asking me to have lunch
with his film production grad students last Friday.
Ha ha ha.
Turnabout is indeed fair play, and I owe Wella ten thousand talks to his
students. But for now, we’ll start
with one talk.
Wella teaches at an unnamed Christian university, and had
brought his group of about 10 - 15
graduate students up to my unnamed movie studio for a tour of the production
facilities, so I scooted out on my lunch hour to meet up with them at the
commissary and drag a couple of tables together so I could share a general
knowledge of what I’ve learned living in Los Angeles and working in this
industry for (cough cough coughing over the exact number of) years.
There’s a quote that Bill Gates said somewhere, I’m horribly
paraphrasing him, but I think he was talking to a group of students, and one of
them asked Bill Gates how someone should break into the industry these
days. And Bill Gates replied,
“Well, don’t do it the way I did it, it’s already been done.” And that’s what I felt like. I can’t tell these grad students how to
break into the industry like I did.
Those ways don’t work anymore. The industry changes at such an
accelerated rate, you can’t do it the way I did it. When I was starting out,
crowdfunding on the web didn’t exist. Crafting a social media strategy to
promote your film on a grass roots level didn’t exist.
So what do I have that’s of any value to say? They’re all looking at me with their
bright eyes, and poised pens, like really well dressed, inquisitive… badgers or
something.
(I don’t know why badgers came to mind just then.
Badger in Wind In The Willows was a
learned scholarly sort, I think.
He also hated society. Moving on)
I tell them what I know. My new job at the Unnamed Movie Studio does afford me a
particularly fascinating and valuable viewpoint of the development process (and
since I signed a non-disclosure agreement, that’s all you’re gonna get from me
online.) I talk to them about the
mistakes that producers on the movies I wrote made along the way, and how you
need to form a marketing strategy not after the movie’s over, but before you’ve
shot a single frame. I tell them
about how the two most important questions about your movie (or piece of
material if you haven’t secured funding yet) are #1 – Who is your movie for
demographic wise (and the wrong answer is to say “everybody!”) and #2 – How are
you going to reach your audience to tell them about your movie?
I tell them to think of their career in this industry as not
a sprint, but a marathon. A
marathon that will take most of your life. So temper your expectations accordingly. Any momentum you get might be fleeting,
so plan your finances accordingly.
And lastly, I tell them that the most important thing I can
say is Always check in with God.
I tell them what turned the light bulb on for me, when I
heard a guest speaker at church say whatever your passion is in life is a
passion that God put within you, because He wants you to pursue that passion
for His glory. So if your passion
is for animals, be the best veterinarian you can be. If your passion is for numbers, be the best accountant (and
hopefully honest) accountant you can be.
And if you are a writer, or producer, or director, or someone who is
convinced that you have to have a career in the movies, be the best filmmaker
you can be.
And that doesn’t mean make horrible Christian dreck movies,
where a main character falls to their knees, gives their lives to Christ, and
their lives improve the very next day.
It means making movies that are truthful to the human experience. And the human experience is so wide and
varied. It can be glorious, it can
be wretched. But a person knows
truth when they hear it, and when they see it. Truth is authenticity.
I tell them God gave them their passion.
Sure, I thought I wanted to be a writer
when I saw
Heathers , or when I saw Blade Runner, or Memento. But the
movies I saw just ignited the passion God had already written into the DNA of
my soul. (and interestingly
enough, I can’t write those kind of movies. I write comedies.
I adore watching things that I know I can’t write. Make of that what you
will. In other news, WATCH
BREAKING BAD! THE BEST WRITTEN TV SHOW OUT THERE CURRENTLY! Ha ha ha.)
God gave me the ability to write, because He WANTS me to
write. I don’t have to hide it
from Him. I don’t have to consider
my career as something separate from my relationship with God. He doesn’t want me to.
So I tell these bright eyed intelligent badger grad students
sitting around the table with their salads and sandwiches, and their poised
pens that are now madly scribbling notes, and HEY GOD, PLEASE MAKE SURE I’M
SAYING THE RIGHT THING HERE BECAUSE THEY’RE WRITING EVERYTHING DOWN NOW, that
above anything else I say, please please PLEASE for the love of GOD, consult
GOD with everything having to do with their career. Do I take this internship? Do I write this script? Do I accept this job? This assignment? This offer of
potential money?
Because He wants you to.
Nothing is trivial.
Do you know that’s a quote from
The Crow? Another one of my favorite
movies.
Check it out (quote
happens around 3:00 in)
Nothing that happens in your life is trivial to God. Nothing. Talk to Him about it.
Scream to Him about it, bitch and moan and shake your fist and stamp
your foot about it. Or, if things
are going well, pop a champagne cork and toast Him with it. I prefer the method of getting good
news and immediately ducking into the bathroom, where I thank Him repeatedly in
the privacy of a bathroom stall. Thank
You God, thank You. Thank you,
God, thank You. Thank you, God, thank You.
God is your champion.
He WANTS you to succeed.
Can you believe that?
So I babble my head off, and give everyone my email in case
they have follow up questions. And
yes, they are starting to pour in.
Over the weekend, I got two separate ones, from two separate people and
they both mentioned the same thing:
“what
you said about God was something that I really needed to hear as I'm
trying to discern my career/life path (you probably saw me taking frantic
notes so I wouldn't forget anything)!”
“Also,
not to get sappy, it was a gift from God that you reminded us that he gave us
skills and desires for a reason, and that he wants to be apart of them.”
Oh, wow. Aw,
geeze. I… I showed up not knowing
what I was going to say at all, and just babbling things as they showed up in
my brain. And now I’m
memorable. I don’t need that kind
of responsibility.
No, no, no, that’s not it. It was God. GOD
was showing through the rambling of my brain, God was showing in between the
lines of me babbling about temp agencies and why you can’t submit a spec script
as a newbie writer to my Unnamed Movie Studio. And God was showing through when
I was being authentic and talking about how, seriously, just talk to God about
what’s going on with you.
People, when pastors talk from the pulpit about how God uses
the most unlikely of people to get His point across – HI! HE DID THAT WITH ME!
I’m nobody.
Seriously. Really. I have three produced writing credits
to my name, and I still have a day job, and live in the Shabby Shack that’s
just shy of 300 square feet. To
the industry, I am nobody. I am
Nobody with a capital N.
But I’m Somebody to God. And He’s gonna use me, in the most unlikely of ways.
Hell yes, He is.
Just you watch.
Does anyone
else ever have that fear that if they don't say "Amen" at the end of
their prayers, that their prayers somehow don't count? Like the
"Amen" is a cork in the bottle of your prayers that you heave up to
heaven and if you don't put the cork on, all the prayers will leak out before
it gets up to heaven and God won't hear any of them?
Maybe that
word is simply “Thanks.”
