Finding Yourself As An Artist and Surpassing Blocks and Disturbances

Your agent is sitting on his ass. Your producer is strangling your creativity. Your co-writer is making negative remarks about your dialogue. 

Regardless of your success levels, everyone has these problems. The problem is that these issues come home with you, they eat away at your energy, they affect your life and creativity in a big way. Too often we forget about the dreaming behind our creativity and focus too much on the disturbances. 

Your dreams and aspirations are the guiding principle behind why you are an artist. It's important to get in touch with them as often as you can, because they really help keep you on the right path. 

We all have peak experiences -- when we are firing on all cylinders, and nothing can stop us. We feel happier, lighter, and our artistic selves are prospering. And there are other times when we're refusing to get out of bed, we tell everyone we're thinking of quitting, and we convince ourselves that we're talentless and that our work is embarrassing. 

Focus on your peak experiences. Can you remember a time when you felt fully alive and full of possibilities? FOCUS on that experience. Fully bring it alive in your memory. Stop reading for a second, and truly visualise it. 

Where were you? Who was there? How did you talk to people? Did it feel like there was a presence or a force supporting you? (Call it God, call it a good caffeine rush, whatever it was, for you). If you are able to strongly visualise this pleasing memory, it will make you feel good, you'll get some of those feelings back.

I have had many of these experiences. Many of them are from when I was a teenager and began making films. I was full of possibilities, extremely experimental, and everything made sense every time I wrote on a page, or pointed a camera at actors. 

Another time was in New York a few years ago. I felt super-powered. Like New York is my spiritual home and the world wanted me to be there. I would walk out of the apartment I was staying in and within five minutes I'd make a new friend, a new creative soulmate, it seemed to happen nearly every day. It was a magic time; the world seemed to work for me in every way. 
When was your peak experience? How did it make you feel? 

When you feel that you are fully in that experience, that you are not only remembering it but you are feeling some of its essence in you now --- how can you use that feeling in your work right now, today? Does that energy help you overcome some of the blocks and resistance you have been feeling? 

Let me know how it goes. 

What we have a tendency to do, is focus our energies on the roadblocks, whether they are external problems (i.e. investors, landlords, YouTube comments) or internal (lack of confidence, second-guessing, depression). This exercise is to help you get back some positive energy, by focusing on the dreaming processes that shape who you are as an artist, and what your goals and intentions are).

As a way of ending the exercise; it is good to write down a few words about yourself and your work, and the dreaming behind it. For example, I could write, "I have always strongly related to the work of writer/directors like Chaplin, Wilder, and Woody Allen, whose work as artists created meaning for themselves and the world around them. I believe that art lives forever and that my dream is to create work that will last, that will cheer people up and brighten their days for a long time to come."

Don't allow yourself to be critical or embarrassed about what you write, because it's a part of you and it's important to bring it out in you. An actress friend of mine yesterday was telling me about how she wants to work with disabled people to help give them a voice by using drama, another friend of mine was telling me a few days back about how books helped him understand the world when he was a kid, in a way that nothing else ever had -- and he wants to be an author so that he can bring that same feeling to future generations. 

Our dreams are important. When we fully access them, own them, and believe in them, we are able to step forward with more purpose and confidence. 

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KRISTEN WIIG In BRIDESMAIDS

Believe the hype. The film is great.

Kristen Wiig steals the show. It is her show. She deserves it. Undeniably one of the most talented actresses and naturally gifted comedians in the business; this film showcases everything about her that is awesome.

And she's not just funny. She pulls at your heart in this movie. There are times when she communicates giant pangs of loneliness or intense and heartbreaking vulnerability -- and she's able to do it with just a look. A moment.

That's what great acting is, capturing a moment. The best actors can do it in a millisecond by doing something or making a decision to not do something. It's like Tom Hanks in 'The Green Mile' when he's listening to John Coffey through the prison cell. He just sits and listens, but somehow he also communicates pretty much every emotion known to man. I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. Great acting is when they make it look simple. They turn nothing into everything.

Wiig is beautiful, too. Not beautiful in the way that all the women in the movies are. Just beautiful in the way that women are beautiful. She's real. It's so much more interesting than looking at Megan Fox bouncing around in Transformers. I'm aware that women's looks always get mentioned when they're acting; I never review a Kevin Spacey film and then talk about his looks. But I guess my point here is --- in this film, and not just with Wiig, but with all of them -- they seem real. I can relate to them. They don't look like some insane and unrealistic 'dream girl'. And as a result, the women in 'Bridesmaids' are more appealing.

There are moments when Wiig will break your heart in this movie. There are times when she's jealous, resentful, lonely; in fact-- for most of the film, she is really lonely.



Yet she's also hilarious. Truthful pangs of loneliness but with big laughs. That's not easy to do. You just have to see her in this movie.

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WHO'S ON FIRST? Great Comedy Lives Forever

This is an Abbott and Costello sketch from the 1940's. It doesn't get much better than this. Take the time to watch it, it'll be worth it! This is what comedy should be like. 

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SENNA, Again

I went to see "Point Blank" today. Two screens away, in the same cinema, my friend Nora was watching "Senna".

A few hours before that I was having breakfast with Nora in a cafe just west of Covent Garden. We were meant to be talking about a project we're doing, but instead I kept talking about 'Senna'. I demanded she see it. She agreed to do so. We left the cafe and we walked directly to the cinema (Cineworld on Haymarket). I'd already made plans to see "Point Blank" with Marcus, a fellow film director, so was unable to join her for the experience.

My review of Point Black: It's decent, cool, it's like all the other movies. But it's not the reason we love cinema.

"Senna" is the reason. It's a life-changer. It's one of those that takes over your mind and shapes your thoughts for the next five days. 

Nora was gone by the time my movie finished. So I text her, "how was it?".

Here's her response:

"Brilliant. It was brilliant. Sort of dazed out right now, but thank you; well glad I went!"

And she didn't even know who Senna was. She doesn't like motor racing.




'Point Blank' finished and Marcus and myself were soon in Cafe Nero. We talked about Ayrton Senna. We talked about how great he was, we talked about how the film was edited. We talked about Alain Prost. Turns out Marcus saw Senna racing in Monaco in the early 90's. Marcus was just a kid then, but he felt the magic. Everyone wanted Senna to win, he had that something. 

Brazil had a three day mourning period when Ayrton Senna died. That's how much he meant to people. One man who races cars can really change the world for the better. 

One person can do anything. That's what this film shows us. You've just got to show up and dedicate yourself, become an expert in whatever you're passionate about.

They always take the geniuses away from us when they're young. Ayrton Senna, 34, Tupac, 25, Martin Luther King 39 , Bill Hicks 32. Maybe its meant to be that way. You can dribble on till you're 98 but it doesn't mean you'll mean anything. Senna did more in 34 years than most of us do in a lifetime. He put a sport into the consciousness of the world, became a Brazilian hero, and left his impact on the world stage.

When people are good, they're good. When they're great, they're inspiring. When they get even better, they transcend. Chaplin became more than a tramp, The Beatles became more than rock stars, and Senna was more than a racing driver. 'Senna' documents that. It shows us someone crossing over into greatness, becoming one of the Gods.

People like Ayrton Senna don't come along very often. Give him two hours of your time, go see the documentary. 

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SENNA

"I was already on pole, and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel."

I cannot put into words how I feel about this documentary. Ayrton Senna is more than just a man who drove cars. Go watch it. It'll inspire you. It'll break your heart. And it will change your life a little.

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Clarence Clemons

"And the miles we have come

And the battles won and lost

Are just so many roads traveled

So many rivers crossed."

-Bruce Springsteen

I hear the sounds of Clarence Clemons every single day. When people talk to me about music, barely a second goes by without me saying "Bruce Springsteen". It's on sad days like this when I am reminded that Springsteen's music is not just one man. The songs I love the most he created with the E Street Band. Some of the greatest moments of my life have been in concert venues around the UK at the very precise moments when the Big Man has stepped in with his saxophone.

My all-time favourite song is "Thunder Road". I listen to it every single day. The best part of the song is the refrain that comes after "It's a town full of losers and I'm pulling out of here to win"; and the beautiful, uplifting sound of Clarence Clemons is all over it. I remember after my Aunt died a few years back, my Uncle repeatedly listened to "Secret Garden"; and it was that last minute he was craving, when Clarence Clemon's sax somehow manages to break your heart and heal your heart all in the space of a minute.

You don't always get to hear "Jungleland" in concert, but when you do, you are suddenly reminded of what it is to be alive. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band aren't just a band, they're something more. Their music is a way of life, a belief, a window into who we are. They're heart and soul. You feel it when you hear them play Jungleland. So do a hundred thousand other people. I don't know whether they'll ever play it again. "Jungleland" without Clarence isn't 'Jungleland'.

There will never be another E Street Band. I'm watching 'Live in Barcelona' as I write this. They just step into the arena, pick up their instruments, and play. These guys know all of their songs inside out. And they tour and they tour and they tour, playing three hour sets every night. These guys are hitting seventy. I work for seventy minutes and need a break. But the E Street Band put the work first and you see that the work doesn't wear them out, it gives them energy.

Clarence Clemons was the soul of E Street. But what does that mean? Well, for me; it means being in some arena or stadium, and you're enjoying yourself but it's just a concert, just some music. It's better than being at home on Facebook, but at the same time you're aware of your tiredness and your personal problems and the aching pain in your bad knee. But then Clemons would launch into something on the saxophone. And it wouldn't necessarily be a showstopping 'look-at-me' moment. He'd just sneak in there, do his work. But it would grab you. Take you in. And suddenly you're not in the same world as everyone else. Your life isn't about petty problems and pains in your joints and break-ups. You're with the Gods now. You're floating up in the skies yet somehow you're deeply immersed in life and all of its possibilities. That is what music can do when it truly reaches us.

That's why fans of Bruce Springsteen get so disheartened when they can't get their kids to sit down and listen to "Born To Run". Because they know the reward if you put in the work. They know why the ticket prices are worth it. There's magic.

"We learned more from a three minute record baby, than we ever learned in school."

-Bruce Springsteen

I listen to Springsteen every day. And I'd say 70% of that music features Clarence Clemons. Just yesterday, I was playing "Thunder Road" in a friend's car, and later that night when I was walking back from another friend's BBQ in the pouring rain I had "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" in my headphones. It was as fresh as the first time I heard it.

The loss of Clarence Clemons is a big one, and a part of me is truly heartbroken. But he lives on in the way that only the true greats can. That moment I was talking about, when a piece of music lifts you up into the stars --- that's outside of the ordinary plane of existence. That's bigger than the street you live in. That's the stuff of the soul and the spirit and some big giant essence that is love and heaven and whatever it is that somehow, sometimes, makes life just so fucking worth it.

Clarence Clemons will live forever.

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An Important Film To Watch: One Of Her Own (1994)

"Everybody is backing Charlie up, all the guys are."

"Welcome to the boy's club."

Rape. That's what this film is about. That's not something we talk about much. And it's not the topic of many films. Sometimes films do broach the subject, but it's usually done because it makes the plot more interesting, or because some male filmmaker things it will titillate and drum up more publicity (The Human Centipede 2 is art? Really? Do women have to be raped throughout? Couldn't they just do oil paintings of boats instead?). Films rarely delve deeply into the topic. In part, it's because films are mostly made by, and cater to, men. But also, even for people interested in looking into the subject -- it is a sensitive topic, the cause of much trauma, for a large proportion of society. That makes it difficult to get right and be made in an appropriate way. 

In 'One Of Her Own' we get to see it from the perspective of the victim. The screenwriter, Valerie West, made the clever choice to have this story play out between the staff of a police department -- which you could say is the ultimate boys club, where people don't rat on each other, they stick up for one another. But what happens when a woman is in the mix? And what happens when one of her own rapes her?

This film addresses the harsh realities of rape. How men will often question a woman's motives for claiming she's been raped, or how they'll question her sex life. It's often the case that people's natural instincts are to ask "Why would she claim he raped her?" rather than ask "Why did he do it?" Criminals are rightfully seen as innocent until proven guilty, but the sad fact is; victims of rape are often seen as lying until proven truthful. I wonder why that is. This film gives clues -- as we see issues play out between the genders. 

Women are alone when this happens. In the film, Toni's first concern is can I tell my boss, or will I lose my job? Especially as she's new at her job. What a scary world when a victim of such a disgusting crime has the very real concern that telling her superiors may lead to her own demise. 

Everything in this film is heightened, because it's the police force. But the same dynamic plays out in more mundane settings.

Less than half of all rapes are reported. Every three minutes a woman is raped in America. Every minute in Africa. This happens to men, too -- but for the most part, on a day to day basis, men are the perpetrators. 

The silence of good people plays its part, it's part of the problem. We see that throughout the film --- the male characters shy away from being involved, from being supportive, from standing up for what's right. Female victims are also silent -- because of fears of the repercussions.

'One Of Her Own' is a moving film. It's heartbreaking to see her pain, her inner struggles, the difficulty in navigating through the relationships and conflicts she has with her friends, and her colleagues.  This particular film is fictional, but what it represents isn't. A lot of people who see this film will relate to it. That's why it's important to watch; it has a lot of truths which people like myself have the privilege of not having as their own reality. Films help us see the rest of the world --for better or worse-- they help us understand it, and to see what is really happening.

This topic is often ignored. Or, when it's brought up, it's quietly swept under the rug. It's something we need to be less uninformed and ignorant about, because it permeates through the society we live in, and the people we know.

"I loved being a police officer. I was a good officer. But I made a mistake, I kept quiet about something that I shouldn't have. And I convinced myself that was the only sensible thing to do. Something happened that made me realise that I was wrong to keep quiet. It occurred to me that there were probably hundreds of thousands of women out there, who at one time or another had kept quiet about something equally horrible or perhaps even more horrible. And that they did it because they were like me. They were frightened, frightened for their jobs, frightened of their husbands or their boyfriends. Frightened by their community. And I thought fear is not a good reason to keep silent, it is wrong and it is selfish and other women might get hurt. So I am glad that I came forward, very glad, because it has made me realise that I can never again afford to be afraid."

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