The Negative Elements Of Ambition

Ambition is good, I'm certain, but only when it's handled consciously. Otherwise, if you're not careful, it becomes this repetitive thing cycling around in your brain which gets more and more meaningless.

It's important to remember who you are, where you've come from and what you are capable of. But the key thing is:

Enjoyment.

If you're so busy trying for success that you go to bed unhappy every night, or if you're so restless that you can't sit through movies, then something is wrong.

And yes I speak from experience.

On my better days I'm a Kid In The Front Row, loving cinema and life and everything in between. Other times I go months spiralling downwards in my head because I feel I should be achieving way more than I am.

Enjoyment.

Come on, that's why we're here. This is our passion and we need to be in love with it.

The stress of failure and rejection stings like crazy, you fall into burn out -- but you need to heed that message, take a trip, rest up, spend a whole day in the cinema dreaming.

I see it a lot when I audition actors. They seem tired of the process, of the rejection. So what happens is I reject them, based on rejection residue they've built up in the last seven auditions. It's the same with writing -- we figure we'll rest when we've succeeded, so we follow complete failure up with two new screenplays.

And of course they suck too, because there's no life flowing into them, no art, just bitterness and disappointment.

Film is a harsh business, and you've got to be focused and ambitious. But more importantly, you've got to be fresh, energised, and passionate.

Go rest.

Go watch Forrest Gump and The Godfather back to back.

Go hang out with the family for three hours without checking your email.

I am writing this advice for you but mostly for me.

Creativity needs rest, sleep, imagination, dreaming, randomness, unexpected experiences, love, a functioning mind. And many more things.

Ambition is good, but used blindly as an all consuming force, you strangle so many things in your life and your work.

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I Will Talk And Hollywood Will Listen

Yeah.

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Bootlegs, Mistakes & Accidents

I've always loved the mistakes. So many of my favorite moments in movies tend to be the accidents they left in. They're the most real, and I usually spot them a mile off, as happened this week with 'Going The Distance'.

I guess it started with the radio. I was so in love with music that I'd sit there with cassettes and tape everything I liked. It's just that the sound quality was so bad, there was always interference. Months later I'd buy the clean record and I'd miss the interference.

Most of my favorite bands, I don't listen to their records. With Counting Crows, people remember 'Mr Jones' from the radio, but I remember the version from Woodinville 2001, or the Viper Room 1995.

At one time I was collecting bootlegs obsessively. Some guy would be muddled in with the crowd recording everything, and then weeks later you'd be laying on your bed listening to Springsteen or The Who, hearing all the mistakes, the cheers, the rare tracks.

The best artists have great albums, but it's the live stuff which really grabs you. And I never knew how bad the sound quality was. I'd make a friend listen to a track and they couldn't even hear it.

But that's what I love.

It carried over into film. I like imperfection, spontaneity, roughness. People try to do it as a 'style' but it's so false.

You can't plan it.

But sometimes you capture the weather, the moment, the insecurities of the actors -- little bits of realness that bleed out onto screen.

It's so hard to get, but occasionally you do.

It's like with blogging. I have no censor. No stop button. I let the words fall like rain, you get my off days and my on days. But when someone loves something from an off day, it's amazing, because you're more vulnerable when you give people access to the bad stuff. When they find value in it, you feel they really get you personally.

Ever heard Bob Dylan's 'Blood On The Tracks'? Or the outtakes sessions? It's his best stuff, and he just did it and disregarded it. Same for Springsteen when recording 'Darkness Of The Edge Of Town'. The discarded tracks were all genius.

'A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints' is one of my favorite movies. Listen to the director's commentary, Dito Montiel and the editor, Jake Pushinsky, continuously talk about doing things cause they 'felt right'. They kept in continuity errors and mistakes because they felt right. That's why I connected so strongly to it.

My favorite moments in 'Garden State' and 'Almost Famous' are mistakes. They're the moments that really let you in, where you make the human connection.

As I wrap this up I'm listening to 'I Will Be There When You Die' by My Morning Jacket. This version is so raw, you can hear the life around it, all the sounds you weren't meant to hear, but you do. And it's everything.

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Poem

Life is short
Life is short
Life is short
I like you.
Life is short
Life is short
I really do.
Life is short
Life is short
Life is short

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Together

You never really realise, when you start out. The years tumble by and people fall to the side, but some stay.

You're in it together.

You have those people at the top and the people at the bottom, and you find yourself somewhere in the mix struggling to get by.

And the geniuses pass straight to the top, as do the ones related to the big shots. Everyone else shuffles through the fields trying projects and finding themselves and losing themselves.

Sometimes it's like everyone is succeeding, other times it's just rejections and failures and let downs.

One by one people go down one lane or the other. Someone lands a big role and another lands a pregnancy and life takes people on their unique journeys.

It's not a race, you realise. The most talented ones often struggle the most. If you have something new or interesting, no-one is going to get it. People on reality TV rise because they're exactly what we already know, no surprises. They soon fall away.

You find yourself surrounded by the most talented people in the world, yet only seven people know their work and collectively you barely earn enough money for lunch.

But it's not a race. It's a journey and one by one you take a step forward. The audience gets bigger.

You surround yourself with talent and passion and you wait to see the day the world gets clued in, and eventually they do. It's not just talent, it's luck, it's life, it's serendipity. You gotta work at it and hang around long enough.

You never know when or why it will click. 'Jaws' wasn't even going to be a good movie; but the shark broke, and Shaw hated Dreyfuss, and A-listers turned down the Brody role, and Spielberg nearly got sacked 50 times. Dreyfuss came out on TV and distanced himself from the film, said he was embarrassed by it.

But "Jaws" came along at the right time, and cinema changed. Thank God they stuck by it. You see it on a smaller scale every year. Someone breaks, they fall into sudden relevancy. It's not about big breaks, it's about destiny. Its about staying in the game.

Your friends start to succeed, and it's the sweetest feeling in the world. All those people who told them to keep it real, to stick to the day job.

You surround yourself with artists who resonate with you. A mixed bag of writers, actors, musicians and directors. You whittle it down to the people who really have an impact on you. Because if they can reach you, they can reach the world. It's all about the personal connection. Eventually, they succeed, they land the deal and find the audience. But as the world sits there, surprised at their success, you are comforted by the knowledge that you knew it would happen all along.

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