My First Lesson about movie-making
I need to create a list of the ten most important lessons I learned during the shoot.
The first that jumps out is that you are primarily a STORYTELLER. No matter whether a writer, director, or producer, you are there to tell STORIES. I believe the same is true of actors, cinematographers.
The wonderful Win Rosenfeld told us that many young Hollywood Hopefuls fail because they want to be directors or showrunners for the wrong reasons: money, fame, power.
The trick is to want to tell STORIES. To have a burning desire to communicate something that can’t quite be put into objective words. Where you need the “messiness” of human emotion and the apparent illogic of life.
More, you need to express something from the core of your being. MAGIC’s “C”. Now, what if you get an assignment to do something trivial? I wrote four episodes of BAYWATCH, and in every one of them, found SOMETHING to tell the truth about. In the very first, “Rescue Bay”, it was just “Love Story” on the beach, with a little girl dying of one of those cinematic diseases that kills without wasting. And she wanted to grow up to be a lifeguard, and wasn’t going to have the chance. So the Make A Wish foundation got her into the junior lifeguards. And Hobie, son of head lifeguard Mitch Buchanan, falls for her.
The beats that follow are predictable, but it works, because at the core of it all, there is truth: life is finite. Don’t avoid love: it is one of the only things that gives meaning to existence.
But more specifically, I snuck in one line that relates to my own personal philosophy:
“Love isn’t two people looking at each other. It is two people looking in the same direction.”
That single line came from my heart. And was a sufficiently strong thematic that I could say: “If I could communicate this to enough people, it would change the world. I would be willing to die to communicate this to the world.”
And did I? At its height, Baywatch was viewed by a BILLION people worldwide. That’s not bad. And an energy sufficient to make me want to do my very best. I wasn’t writing for money, or career, or power, or fame. I was speaking passionately to a billion friends I’ve never met. My human family.
Story, then, starts with a passionate spark, something from the “Burning core” as Harlan said. You use the tools of drama to communicate it. An artist with this might go through the following sequence:
- I have a burning need to express something within me.
- Storytelling is my preferred mode.
- I want to explore expressing this in the visual medium, so I will write screenplays
- I want my screenplays to be expressed as close to my original vision as possible, so I will direct.
Can you see how this is INFINITELY superior to just thinking: “Hey! There are babes and bucks in Hollywood! Gonna get me some!”
That, frankly, is a doorway to Hell. You are chasing fool’s gold, and down the road, will wonder why the world is so corrupt, and people so shallow. Why? BECAUSE THAT IS THE WORLD YOU CREATED. We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.
Anyway…that’s just today’s thought. Think of “RPM”: You have to know WHAT you want, but then WHY you want it. If you connect your “why” to the primal urge to connect, to declare your existence, you will out-perform clever but shallow people afraid to actually speak their truth.
Don’t aim at being a director. Aim at speaking your truth, with storytelling as the vehicle, and directing as the driver’s seat. In that way, when you are exhausted, the entire SET is exhausted at 1 in the morning after a 12 hour day, and you have to get that next shot, everyone will look at you, and pray for a spark of inspiration.
Tarantino knows that moment, and he shouts…. “why do we do this? BECAUSE WE LOVE MAKING MOVIES!”
Action!
Steve
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We’ll reflect on this, and other lessons, tomorrow on LIFEWRITING LIVE zoomcast. 12 Noon Pacific, Friday June 27, www.thefiredance.com