My Further Case For Optimism (in cinema)
Why I still have tremendous hope for film, and find it growing daily (as of late).
I was asked to give a talk as part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Storytellers. And I was super glad to have Sanjay Sharma be asked to moderate it. Sanjay is the sort of producer who finds ways to get things done, regardless of the circumstances; he understands that producing extends beyond just getting it made though, and that we have to work to make sure the larger ecosystem is built fo the goals we have. We can’t just accept things as they are.
This past Friday, Tribeca, the attendees, Sanjay, and I got to it. Sanjay and I had a good chat beforehand and we had it well organized, but alas, we only got through about 40% of it. I am definitely someone who’s reach extends beyond my grasp.
It probably didn’t help that I kept adding bullet points to each section we had mapped out though. We broke it up into five sections to begin with:
8 Recognitions
“Governing Principles:”
What I learned
“Systems Thinking”
Futurecasting
And we really only hit the first two sections. Once again: alas. But the best windfall of that failure is I now have five posts I can share with you here. Pretty cool if you ask me. It is a much greater reach here in Hopeforfilmland. Tribeca is a for-profit festival and they don’t compensate us beyond access to the great audience they produce, so this is the pay out I get and then I get to distribute it out to you. Double win, perhaps?
You may have recognized that the case for optimism has become a favorite topic for me. You may have also recognized that I use this newsletter to develop and refine my thinking on issues of the cinema ecosystem (and a few other things too). Before I headed out to Cannes this year, I did a rapid fire brainstorm to capture all that I was feeling good about ( I hit 20 points in the initial sitting, and managed to add two more in the final round).
This is a bit of attempt to harness all those reasons in and give them to you in a logical order so my enthusiasm for what’s coming can more easily flow from me to you. Optimism is a feeling. Feelings blossom from recognitions and they grow when married to principles. It’s nice to have a special sauce for them to dance with, even when we can’t truly call it our own. They are rooted in the past and help us sense the future. That’s the logic recipe at least that I concocted for our talk. Read it again. I think the logic holds.
Going forward, I think I should demand at least two hours for each talk I give. I am not a sixty minute man
Today I am going to examine Part One. Stay tuned for the next four.
Why do I have so much optimism for cinema?
I have eight recognitions that help me on that. Let’s explore them a bit for you, ‘kay?
My initial two points might feel like they are in opposition to each other — but I find that with many things these days: they can be both sides of something simultaneous. The yin and the yang. The cat is both alive and dead. Yup. And then some.
In fact the thing that gives me so much hope for cinema is the colossal amount that is bad. I am not a grievance counter but I do think the careful examination of our situation is a necessary action to know where we must go. Recognition of the details will show us where to walk, and sometimes that is how we find the stones that allow us to move across the water. In 2024, I tried to chronicle all I found wrong in TheFKATheFIlmBiz. I got it to 224 things.
What do you have on your list? I encourage you to keep a list too; I won’t suspect you of being a Grievance Counter either. Just someone who wants to see the world clearly free of those rose-colored spectacles. My massive list of 224 things fell into 8 categories (different from the ones shared here). For some, the sheer volume might have been depressing, but it brought me joy. Seriously. I found that it gave me peace to recognize and accept we were at rock bottom. It meant I could stop feeling I deserved anything. How you can expect any outcome other than failure when everything is broken? There was nowhere to go but up. Welcome to where we now find ourselves.
Fortunately this muck-coated hole we are living in is filled with so many deeply passionate beating hearts. And passion changes everything. Passion is our eternal foot in the door. Passion is the thing that breaks open the cracks so that we all get in. Passion doesn’t take their passes as meaning very much. We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone to say “yes”. We are doing it because this what we love. This is what we do. This is what we must get done. When love is at the heart, we will always find a way.
So when I take those two sort-of conflicting observations, I then step back and try to understand why it isn’t working, this thing of ours. In our talk at Tribeca, I had a different order to follow those initial two points, but I don’t think it was correct. This order may not be right either, but I am going to try it out and see how it sits, fits, and flows.
Although I have always been a bit fascinated with how the system we are influences what we make and do — as well as how we have to both recognize and overcome the systems of thought and belief that we hold within ourselves —I credit Vanessa and the life we have shared that has helped elevate “the system we are in and the system within us”; it is now a lens I examine everything through.
In my first forty years, I tried to see “systems” in the how and why we did things. I used it to see where I might have an advantage or see a need I could fill. As Vanessa and I began to discuss the world together, I started to see systems within systems and all the traps they set for us. This then revealed more challenges for all of us, but also new opportunities and needs for me. There is so much we can do. And even more good than can come with us. As someone who likes to leave things better than I found them, and happily spent many afternoons in my youth cleaning up the street we lived in back when drivers felt their windows were that “away” we could throw our trash to, the mess and the system we are in both give me a sense of purpose and meaning. We can make each better if we are willing to work together.
