Your Big Break In The Industry

"There's people around who tell you that they know

The places where they send you, and it's easy to go

They'll zip you up and dress you down

Stand you in a row

But you know you don't have to

You can just say no"

-Big Star

The minute you have talent, they tell you what to do with it, where to go. They say "you could make a living directing commercials," they tell you "you should get your breasts out on screen, that's how you make it", they tell you "you have to give us your script because we're the only people who will make it."

But you get to choose. When you're starting out, you're at your strongest, because you're you. You're doing your thing. And the minute you have something they can strip down and turn into profit, they'll be onto you. And they'll call it your big break.

The big break isn't what you think it is. You shouldn't try to skip the journey you're on. It's like blogging. You guys come here because you like what I do. But the minute I have a sponsored article saying that I love 7-Up, you'll know I've lost that one thing I have going for me. Right now, this blog could end up being anything. Five years from now it could be the best film blog out there, or it could be a specialist blog focusing only on The Apartment, who knows! It's exciting. But if I did a deal with Suite101.com to post their content in exchange for $0.06 per word, you'd all see me differently. And I'd lose the unique thing this blog has, just like yours does. We have ourselves, and who we are, and it's the strongest thing we own. But when you give it away, it's gone.

I'm not talking about taking jobs for the pay cheque. I'm realistic enough to realise that none of us have any money and we need to get paid. But I'm saying, don't give up your dreams, don't sell your babies, just because you're worried about dying. Some idiot producer who wants to give you $50 to buy your screenplay because "it'll get you recognized" is not your journey, neither is starring in some softcore porn film because the director says he has "contacts." You all know this, it's obvious, but I think sometimes we need to remind each other. Commit to doing the work that you're proud of; the work that made you want to do this in the first place. It's hard -- and fifteen years after starting acting you're still playing to tiny theaters in front of nobody and you're still getting rejection letters from production companies. But that's the price your pay for staying true to yourself. A 'big break' lasts for fifteen minutes and a sex tape, but if you create art, it'll live forever.

"We don't know what it can be, we don't know what it will be, we just know that it is cool."

-Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network'

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Watching as your baby drifts violently away. The Soul-Destroying Job of a Low-Budget Film Director.

"That's why I think you should turn, go back, and be a lawyer or something. But I can tell from your face that you won't." -

Lester Bangs, in 'Almost Famous'

It's a day before the shoot on your zero-budget short film, or the feature you've strung together for about four dollars and a pizza. You've managed to get this far despite ten or fifteen or thirty years of people saying 'but what do you really want to do with your life?' and 'film director, right. yeah. that's nice.' - and 'have you got your big break yet?'

Here you are, it's the night before the shoot. And you realise that directing a film with no money isn't really directing. It's managing and it's sprinting and it's negotiating and it's compromising and it's being in thirteen places in one day. You realise there are things you wanted to do that you can't afford. There are people you wanted involved who couldn't be there -- and the conditions of your shoot are ever changing and will continue to do so until you say 'That's a wrap'.

And when a non-industry office worker friend says to you "when are you going to get a real job?" you want to smack them in the face. In a 'real' office job, you might work hard - but you work hard for somebody who doesn't care about you. And you might technically, day-to-day, work harder than the film director, I agree.. but you have never felt the pain that comes with being a Director the night before the shoot, knowing that things you had planned and things you had dreamed of are not going to come to fruition in quite the way you had planned.

We don't direct for the glamour. Fuck, there is no glamour. We don't do it for the money, even though we do want to earn lots of it. We do it because we have to do it, we were born to do it. And when problems amount and lights break and daylight fades -- you are left feeling your baby drifting away from you. The film that was meant to show everybody your HEART and TALENT and CREATIVITY instead is just a battle to do something adequate- you are fighting to do something that will at least be able to not totally suck.

And you battle. You really battle. You fight with yourself constantly. You work out how to do things. You work out how to wrap at 4am and transfer the footage at 5am and return the equipment to the rental company at 8am when you haven't slept in forever. And meanwhile, an actor says to you 'why are their no tea bags left? do you not even have tea?' and some production helper apologises profusely for accidentally making a huge hole in the wall of the location you borrowed from someone who was scary enough to begin with -- and you bump into someone you know just moments after wrapping -- and they say "but what if you don't make it? what if you don't get discovered?".

You bite your tongue and you say "I don't know. I'm just trying to make a good film." But what you meant to say was "Go fuck yourself. I don't want to 'get discovered' I just want to keep making movies. I want to find a way to get what's in my heart and put it on the page and then put it on the screen. That's it. That's what I'm doing and that's what I'll always do. I could just go get a real job but then why would I want it so easy?."

The way your heart breaks the night before a shoot; the way you come close to a mental break-down when an actor loses faith in you and looks to the AD for what to do in a scene, the way you want to smash up your home when you realise your final edit is not fit for viewing-- these are experiences that are more painful to your spirit, to your soul -- than anything anyone in a 'real job' ever experiences.

And the dumb thing about us filmmakers is that despite driving ourselves to the brink of insanity - we'll come back around a few months from now and do it all again. Meanwhile we'll smile politely when somebody judges us, our work and ambitions. Because the sad truth is -- there is no way of anyone but yourself ever truly understanding the pure pain of creative underachievement.

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