Has Anyone In The Film Industry Ever Truly Helped You Out?
Isn't it time for a revolution in kindness, generosity, and compassion?
When I started this post (years ago!), I had recently had something fairly wonderful happen to me.
A couple of people I know reached out to me and offered me an opportunity of a lifetime. They asked me to join them in building an EU-based English-language studio focused on authored cinema. Wow.
I wanted that job — and I knew I was best choice for it too. I had already given it a great amount of thought and had drafts of different plans for it, in different directions. I was ready, but still I was kind of shocked the opportunity had come to me.
It truly was stunning to me because such things are so incredibly rare — both the idea and their offer. When the good acts come from others, they sharpen our focus on what the typical situation is, which unfortunately usually ain’t so great... not even close. The good makes us see how bad things usually are. Which is depressing.
I recognize this may be another situation of how “to the hammer everything looks like a nail”. Our perspective frequently becomes self-fulfilling. If we want to see the negative you don’t ever have to look too hard. But what if we want to see the positive? Why does that need to be a struggle?
I believe that people are good. Honestly, I do. They want to do good. I believe that almost everyone entered the film business because they fell in love with cinema, somehow they had it change their lives or what they thought possible, and they believed they could somehow make a positive contribution to our field. And yet, with all that positivity and faith of their original intent, I find it very difficult to see people in our industry ever doing anything other than looking out for their own self-interest. And that is what has to change.
We seem to overlook the opportunity to make things better even in the easiest way — simply by helping each other.
The challenges of mere survival encourage many of us to suppress our more utopian pursuits. I understand why many participants resign themselves to a pragmatic point of view, accepting that this is “just the way it is” and then putting their head down and plugging away, trying to find a way to get their film made. A life in film is now barely sustainable, after all. And our industry is not a meritocracy, is it? And for all the strides that have been made to diversify our ranks, there remains tremendous prejudice and discrimination everywhere. We too often just fall back on excuses that our desires are “off mandate”. Is anyone willing to strive to better this world anymore – particularly if it doesn’t just immediate benefit themselves?
But what about if we chose to behave differently? What if we actually tried to be nice? Or generous? Or compassionate? I’d certainly like that version of our world I whole lot better and suspect you would too.
Fuck, yeah.
I’ve been in this business a very long time. It has been good to me. I’ve been privileged. I am grateful. I’ve done my best to help others, and think I have done pretty well at that. This is not a pat myself on the back session either, but I want to point a few things out and make sure they land for all of us.
These kind things I do, I do them without expectation that anything will come from them in return. Not only do I try not to let my success limit the opportunities of others, but I work to have it generate new opportunities for others. I want to help others, particularly those that do the sort of work I admire. Yet…. remember how I started by saying I started this post years ago, but didn’t finish or publish it then?
