"Eighty Percent Of Success Is Showing Up" - Woody Allen

Have you ever waited seventeen months to return a phone call that could lead to a great opportunity?

Have you ever said "I'll definitely come and see your play!" and then not bothered to go?

Have you ever fought and battled for an audition only to not go on the day?

Have you ever called yourself a writer but waited five years to write anything?

Have you ever let someone down because you were 'really busy and had no time' when really you were not doing much of anything at all?

Have you ever promised someone that definitely, yes, this week I will sit down and watch your film, and then not done it?

I think we all have this destructive and lazy side to us. The worst part is the guilt you feel afterwards (towards others if you let them down, or to yourself if you pass up an opportunity.)
The fact is -- the most successful people in the world can always find the time. To be 'too busy' is, in my experience, a sign of bad organization, a sign of laziness, a lack of professionalism and a lack of self-discipline.

I have been that guy many, many times. One of my favorite writer/directors agreed to do an interview for this blog. I stalled on setting up the call for six months. That's not cool. I can't be doing that anymore. When we complain about how our careers aren't going right, or how we're not getting the right opportunities, we rarely mention that "oh, yeah, a Producer is interested in hiring me for a big project and said I should call him - but I haven't and fourteen months have gone by."

I think it's about discipline. I now make myself sit down and read, I make myself do paperwork, I make myself do whatever it is I need to do to get the things I am doing done (wow that was a mouthful).

"Decisions are made by those who show up."
-Aaron Sorkin

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Watching Movies With Girls

I invited her back to mine. I wanted her to see 'Anatomy Of A Murder' as it really is one of Jimmy Stewart's finest films and the way Otis Preminger handled the material is incredible. She had been saying how she wanted to see more of the films I liked, so I was excited to be starting with this wonderful courtroom drama. We sat back on my bed and I hit play - and so it began, an absolutely perfect black and white film.

He asked me to his house, to his room! It was all under the pretense of an old movie or something. Yeah, right, 'I want to show you my movie collection,' I've heard that one before. If this is about movies then why am I on your bed and why is no-one else home? I snuggled up to him closely. At first I was concerned that he wasn't into me, but the way he was fidgeting around, trying to get comfortable was really sweet; and the way he pushed his foot onto my leg sent shivers through my body.

Her knee kept sneaking into the bottom of the frame, what the fuck? Does she not know I'm trying to watch? She mistook my searching for the remote as me trying to snuggle, which was fine, as we moved swiftly onto that 'touching each other' stage, which allowed me to gently push her knee downwards so I could actually see the film. Jeez. Wow, Jimmy Stewart is really something.

I whispered to him that I loved how passionate he was about films. He said, "I could stay up all night long watching movies." "All night?" I said. "yeah," he said, with a smile in his eyes, as he again caressed my leg with his foot.

I think she has some kind of issue with her legs? She keeps stretching them and raising them upwards, it's pretty bizarre. And she keeps asking really dumb questions like "Is she the killer?" "Does Jimmy Stewart die?" and "Do you want me to stay with you tonight?". I mean, it's good that she's interested, but now that she keeps blocking my view, maybe her staying over to watch the 'Three Colours Trilogy' is a bad idea.

He gently stroked my kneecaps with his feet; it was like a slow, sensual massage, it was really getting me in the mood. As I lowered my body under the pressure, I saw his cute face light up with a smile. I like how dominant he is. Every time I try to speak he tells me to be quiet, I like being talked to like that. And I know he knows it too because he keeps doing it more and more every time I open my mouth. He's driving me wild. I subtly brushed my hand across his jeans and said "Maybe we should concentrate on something else for a while."

I suddenly realised how stupid I'd been. There was me trying to watch a three hour courtroom drama when she CLEARLY had other things on her mind. "Can you guess what I'm thinking?" she asked. She had barely finished the question before I had quietly slipped 'Notting Hill' into the DVD player.

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Criticism and Rejection.

A couple of years back, I met this musician. We were getting along really well, talking about each others projects. And we were both into the whole 'positive thinking' thing, and we were talking about how we hate all the negative people and all that stuff. We were like, y'know, everybody the day after they've just read 'The Secret.' It was all very inspiring and touching to have found a friend -- and I remember telling her how I hate the way that people can be belittling. What always really pissed me off was when people would say "how are your little films going?" and "Are you still doing the filmmaking? Still giving it a go?" It would always get to me. The musician woman agreed, she hated all that too. And then she said "what are you currently working on?"

"I'm just doing this little short film, nothing serious," came my reply.

"Aha!" she said, "just a LITTLE short film!" I was doing to myself EXACTLY what they do to me.

How could I expect others to think of my work as important and brilliant if I myself saw it as 'little' and 'nothing serious.' That's not how I see my work, it's not how I feel about my work - but I realised that, so often when talking about it, I put myself down. I started thinking back to screenings where there have been Q+A sessions. I always handled these Q+A sessions really well, I guess I was quite likeable because I'd always do this "I'm a little nobody making films and having fun" schtick, but it didn't really serve me that well, really, because I was putting myself down needlessly.

If you observe what you hate about the judgements and criticisms you receive, you can be pretty sure that you give them to yourself far worse. Just ask any actor heading into an audition. The Casting Director really doesn't need to judge the actor's acting, because the actor already has. In fact, most of the time, after auditioning for only six minutes; an actor will have, in their head, a definite perception of what the opinion was of their acting talents, height, weight, look, voice, personality. When rejection inevitably comes, it's usually because the person wasn't right for the role. But the person rejected knows the 'truth' - that it was because they're overweight, too short, with small breasts, weird eyes, a deep voice, and because they were boring. No-one else can really reject us when we're like this, because we do it to ourselves, over and over and over again.

The seeds of rejection get placed every day, moment to moment, in really subtle ways. I think we all have this successful version of ourselves that we dream about who sits on the Letterman couch, and playfully talks about their work like they're Tom Hanks promoting their latest flick. Yet we see this version of ourselves as who we'll be when we're ready/better/successful/had surgery/gained confidence/got rid of rustiness.

Not that the when-I-am-famous version of you is a complete waste. You should fantasise about it, really FEEL it. Feel what's it's like to have the role, be holding the award, spending the money. You'll probably feel relaxed and at ease now. You need to take that back with you to your audition/first draft/interview, because that's part of you, that's who you are -- you need access to that now rather than the self-hating, nervous-wreck you've become.

Take a moment to think of the criticism or way of being rejected that hurts you the most. And then notice how you do it to yourself. Criticism is painful. Really painful. But when someone tells you/implies that you're a wasteful, talentless, no good piece of shit - it's not really them that's hurting you, it's you, because deep down - you've feared those very things all along.

It doesn't have to be this way. Spot that voice in your head, the one that criticises you and second guesses you. It's like this.

I want to play that role.
You're not attractive enough. You're not interesting enough.

I am writing a screenplay about the NYPD.
What the fuck do you know about the NYPD? You're pathetic. Everyone will see the holes in your script!

I want to get back into acting again.
You're not ready! You're too much of a mess! You're rusty!.

I want to direct a feature.
you're not quite ready.

I want to think about directing a feature.
you're not quite ready.

I want to be a costume designer.
you're not quite ready.

Nobody is quite ready. You're only ready when you do it. It's just getting over that belief system that is the tricky part.

I speak like I'm an expert, I'm not, I am more than capable of smashing myself to pieces every single time. I guess all I'm saying is, to the rest of you, you're not alone, and we should talk about this stuff. And perhaps we should realise; it isn't earthquakes, genocides and terminal illnesses; it's film & TV. We should get up off the floor and go to the stuff that our inner child's demand.

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Lesser Known Inspirational Quotes - A Short Story.

There are few things in life better than an inspirational quote. History is full of wise men and women who have managed to use their imaginations to inspire the world by reducing the wisdom of the Universe into single sentences. For example, everyone remembers Winston Churchill's “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” We can even go back to Epicurus, who was alive when all the other old Greek people were. He said magical things like "The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it," and "You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity." The great thing about the Internet is that we now have all this wisdom at our fingertips - Mark Twain, Socrates, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bernard Shaw, they are all just a Google search away.

However, today I would like to focus on some of the lesser known inspirational and motivational quotes from throughout history. For example, in 336 BCE, Quaqulus, a part-time swimming instructor, had big dreams - he wanted to inspire the world with his wisdom. Unfortunately, he was not as gifted as Epicurus - and his legacy is not quite as impressive. He is perhaps best known for, "The world is really big, and that's why it's difficult to go everywhere." He tried to better this a year later; when he penned "The value of friendship is quite high." He finally gave up inspirational quotes the year before his death, when the best he could come up with was "Sometimes things are really difficult. The key is to not always have times that are really difficult, if possible."

One of the biggest tragedies from the Ancient Greeks, apart from the Greek Tragedies, was that of Dyslexicus. It was known throughout Greece in 325 BCE that Dyslexicus was a greatly gifted writer and philosopher, but unfortunately; due to being unable to afford a proofreader, many of his greatest quotes make little sense. For example, "The greatest in life difficult is when of love challenge believing," and "All men have the power power of change was."

Afred. B. Plimpton was an extremely gifted writer and businessman in the early nineteen hundreds. He was believed to be way ahead of time, a true visionary who could inspire dozens of people. However, his speeches never quite reached the masses. Looking back over his transcripts, we can now see why. Although he had a great imagination, he could never quite find the right wording. It wasn't until much later that other big thinkers were to take his ideas and improve them. For example, during a speech to members of Congress in 1910 he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do inside of your own home," and "You may say that I'm a dreamer, I am not only a dreamer." It's interesting to see how agonizingly close he came to inspiring the world.

In August 1933, only months before his death, Plimpton released his Autobiography. His writing had matured, and he was now tackling bigger subjects. On talking about the rise of consumerism, he said - "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know which shop to buy them in." At the end of the book, he wrote about witnessing the invention of the automobile. "That was one small step for man, one giant leap for the people who made the cars." History has gone on to forget Plimpton and his almost-genius -- but I think we can all see the potential.

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Screenplay First Draft Complete

The script may be genius, it may be awful. Right now, it doesn't really matter. 101 pages later, this baby is complete. The pressure has literally been lifted - I can feel it floating away into the ether, where I'm sure it will stay for at least a few hours.

A bath and a book to free my mind are now in order, before reading the whole thing through - before sending it off to my selected group for feedback.

I would write more but I have used up my allotted brain capacity for thinking of, and typing up words this week.

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