At this level, Momentum is success
Posted on December 18, 2008
Consumption isn’t production. You don’t develop any skill at any portion of media production from watching. Sure, you can learn a lot from observing the process and products of your peers, but only in context, stark juxtaposition against your own experience. That, of course, is the chief word: experience.
My old acting professor gave me this widely held mis-perception: “You too can be a great actor, all you have to do is watch enough television.”
Stephen King repeatedly relayed his exasperation at people who would express a great desire to write and be a writer, and would then ask him how it could be accomplished. His answer to them: write.
Ron Howard said to Tom Hanks, “Don’t be afraid to shoot.”
It’s true. Shoot anything. The budget doesn’t matter, the format is irrelevant, the content, cast, location, the medium; all of it doesn’t factor as long as you’re working. Working is doing, doing is learning, learning is being a fim-maker. The least you could be doing is a worth a million times your empty words, your useless bragadocious machismo.
The water coolers across the globe resonate with loud conversations the amateur brilliance of people like Derrick Comedy, Waverly Films, Good Neighbor, Poykpak, Fatal Farm, Olde English, Brittanick, hell anyone on superdeluxe, stumbleupon, funny or die, college humor, and the youtube de jour.
These artists are loved and respected contributors to our national identity.
Compare that to the work of other… voices who elicit… different opinions from the audience:
Who’s career would you rather have? Collum A: Friedberg and Seltzer’s, Boll, Emmerich, Schumacher, Dugan, Carr, Bay, Levant, Shankman, Brill, Robbins, Ratner, maybe the Wayans?
No, clearly you’d prefer Collum B: Apatow, Anderson (the other one), Lynch, Scorsese, Cohen, Soderbergh, Morris, Cronenberg, Lee, Linklater, Fincher, Boyle, Scott (the other one),Van Sant, Nolan, Cuaron, Bird, Reitman, Wright, Greengrass, Eastwood, Forster.
Who would you rather be?
Well, right now you can’t be in either category. (By the way, why would you be content with being either a fraud who produces nothing but hot air or one of the sell-out hacks who’ve plateaued and crashed?) Anyway, thankfully, there’s a third option. So, why sit there as a loud mouthed jerk with no reel, when you could be an American garage troupe viral video a la mode darling.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Never confuse motion with action.” I saw that sentiment bastardized in the most cynical motivational poster. It was hanging in some douche-bag’s office. it said, “Never confuse motion with success.”
I need to disagree. Any momentum at the independent level constitutes success. Go get some.
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