Q&A: How Do You Live the Dream?

It's been almost a year since my last post. I've been doing more producing than writing these past few months, which has been wonderfully taxing! During a recent film shoot, a young actor approached me and asked if he could interview me for a school project. I'd like to share his questions and my answers, less out of vanity and more out of the fact that this young man's questions were exactly what I needed to say to myself.

You see, this year has been equally good and equally hard. At the point of this interview, I was in a very dark and stressed out place, wondering why on earth I didn't take the stable mall job my dad wanted me to.

Thank goodness for other people! It takes an army to make a movie, not only to get the thing made, but to get through it alive.

I'd like to thank this young man for reminding me to take my own advice and keep my chin up. I wonder what all of you would say to these questions? Feel free to respond and comment. Cos I genuinely want to know how everyone else does it.

1) Can you recall a dream for your future that you had as a child?

Answer: I remember everything I dreamed of as a child. I set my goals unrealistically high and never doubted that my dreams would come true. I knew when I was around six years old that I wanted to be a filmmaker. Or rather, I knew when I was six years old that I was going to be a filmmaker.

2) Was your dream fulfilled? Whether yes or no, did this affect your outlook on life?

Answer: Yes, I am now working in the film industry full time. It’s empowering, satisfying, terrifying, challenging, and a constant test of my mental, emotional, spiritual, creative, and physical durability.

3) What did you have to do to attain your dream? What were you willing to do?

Answer: Always remember the big picture. Everything I ever did was in the context of becoming a better filmmaker. I never took a job that would inhibit my creativity, or would lock me down so tightly that I couldn’t just pick up and go on a shoot if I needed to, even as a teenager. Every vacation I took was a potential filming location, or an adventure that would inspire a screenplay. Every class I took, I learned under the context of filmmaking, even though I did not study actual filmmaking. Every book I read was either knowledge about the industry, or a potential script adaptation.

The biggest risk I took was and is instability. You have to know going in that being a filmmaker will not make you rich. It’s just like any other job. Forget about the glamorous lifestyle –it’s hard work, staying in when your friends and family are going out, hours of studying books, blogs, websites, doing phone interviews, watching films, listening to commentaries.

You have to be willing to go it alone.

Your support system will be very small. You will meet the lowest of the low and the best of the best. You find out very quickly what you are made of. I was willing to be true to myself and stick to my ideals, confident that like-minded and like-valued people would eventually come my way.

I was willing to stick it out. Giving up was not an option. I was 21 years old when the reality dawned on me that I might not make my first movie until I was 40 years old! Was I really willing to stick it out and wait a lifetime to fulfill my childhood dream? I decided back then that, yes, I would commit to it.

The most important thing anybody can do to reach a goal is never give up. Commit to doing it. Do the time. Learn the ropes. Get a mentor. Make mistakes. Fail forward. Take the hits. The wins will be fewer and far between, but they are worth it.

4)What are some of the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals? What did you see as the most difficult obstacles for young people hoping to achieve a goal today?

Answer: The biggest obstacle you will ever face is yourself. You will doubt yourself, hate yourself, make mistakes and not forgive yourself, you will be afraid of failing, you will be afraid of success, you will sabotage your own progress and your own projects, you will forget your true spirit and settle for the easy things instead of the right things, you will feel guilty if you have a social life or fall in love or raise a family or take a break.

Your biggest obstacle will never go away. You will wake up with it, work with it, live with it, sleep with it. It’s unavoidable. It’s you.

It’s also a deception. These things are not really obstacles. Plan on the hurt, the struggle, the mistakes. Ultimately, you are defined by how you live, not by how you make a living. Dreams can change, goals can change, game plans can change. Some people are lucky enough early on in life to know what they want. Others can take a lifetime trying to figure it out.

If you know yourself, your path will become clear. The bad will always equal the good. The road to success should be hard. Movies exemplify that. The films that have the biggest struggles are also the films that have the greatest success. The characters that have it the roughest are usually the ones that are the most memorable.

The hero’s journey is supposed to suck. But the payoff is usually worth it. There’s a universal truth in that, it’s why we keep putting it in the movies. Live like that, and you won’t go wrong.

5) Do you have a dream right now? Are you willing to share it?

Answer: The day I stop dreaming will be the day I die. I have several passion projects in the works. One is a film that I know will cost tens of millions of dollars to make. I know I am not ready to make that one yet, but I am building my street cred, my industry reputation, my skill sets, and my team. Every project I take on is related to that film one way or another. Slowly, but surely, I am headed in the right direction. I knew that it would be one of those “this took ten years to get off the ground” kind of stories. I’ve been working on it for two years now, and I’m right on track.

6) What is considered success in our society today? How do you define success?

Answer: I think society defines success in terms of materialism, which is unfortunate. Popularity and wealth seem to always be a sign of success. A harsh reality, especially in the film business, is that you need money and fame in order to succeed.

I wrestled with that demon some time ago. I’ve always wanted to make art for art’s sake, I’ve always feared that money or fame would corrupt me if I wanted them. But what I realized is that those are goals, not THE goal. They are pieces on the chess board, nothing more.

To me, success is an ethereal thing. It’s intangible and almost unobtainable. Or rather, it’s such a fleeting thing that you have to keep obtaining it every minute of every day.

To me, success is not giving up. I don’t really know what success tastes like. I know what failure tastes like and it’s bitter. But I learned that the only way to really fail is to stop trying. Quitting while you’re ahead, quitting when you’re behind –you quit, you fail. But if you get knocked down and you get back up, then there’s something to that.

You have to get up every day. Like I say, fail forward. Mess up big. Do it again, but do it differently. Make different mistakes.

Keep going. Know that you deserve to win, to succeed. But no one is going to hand you your dream. You have to take it, and grab it, work for it, keep it in sight, protect it, nourish it, educate it, and feed it.

You have to do it. Every day. Make the Energizer Bunny look like a freaking couch potato. That’s what separates the men from the boys. The so-called winners from the so-called losers.

As Dory says in ‘Finding Nemo’, “Just keep swimming.” And when things break down, do what Jennifer Connelly says and maybe try again tomorrow.