The word passion gets thrown around a lot in this industry. "You've got to have a real passion for filmmaking" they'll tell you. It is an easy phrase to use and looks real good in print but the rancid alleyways of Hollywood Boulevard are full of kids who came to this town with a belly full of passion. Passion blinds you, and it is only your unyielding death grip on reality that will guarantee any measure of success in this business.
There are other gratuitous cliches that get thrown around like, "have faith in your abilities." As though with faith alone you can surmount all obstacles. Well, get off your knees unless you're going for my zipper 'cause there is no cosmic external force that will turn a bad script into gold or make the clock move slower so you can catch up with your production schedule. There are no new stories to tell, no angles to exploit, no trends to follow.
The path through Hollywood was worn smooth long ago by people wearing shoes much bigger than yours or mine. Craft is important in making a quality movie, but without a firm grasp of the realities of the market and industry, you're just another slab of meat spread out on the deli tray.
Jeff Dowd is a prominent and outspoken Hollywood producer who drags his long, unbroken string of successful movies around like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Here is a man hard to impress. Perhaps it is his unyielding devotion to the fundamentals that has allowed such a gregarious character to flourish in Hollywood. "Last year in the United States alone there were thousands of movies shot on [miniDV]" he told those in attendance at a recent IFP seminar, "they all sucked!"
This whole wave of independent moviemaking is about to collapse on itself like the truckload of rotten tomatoes that it is. With so much easy access and hype, it has festered into a vast amalgam of self-indulgent mediocrity.
The "Indie look" has become more of a marketing strategy than alternative methodology. The irresistible lure of instant 'hip' has caused a growing number of directors who should know better, to prove they don't.
I recently attended the Cannes Film Festival orientation and it was quite an eye opener. Of the thousands of applicants vying for the four American spaces in the festival, there were only a dozen of us sitting there. That's thousands of lives that were put on hold, houses mortgaged, life savings drained, marriages strained, and I'll bet every one of them thought they were a shoo-in for the Palme d'Or.
The assault of thousands of semi-literate people with their half-baked, get-rich-quick schemes has taken its toll on the motion picture industry. A few well connected kids with famous parents might make a ripple here or there, but the odds are stacked against you and they are simply overwhelming.
To make a living as a moviemaker in the digital age, you need to have good communication skills, a good eye and an above average understanding of the desktop production environment. You also need to understand what motivates and engages people, and how to push their buttons.
Next, you need balls of steel (or ovaries as the case may be), and skin as thick as old shoe leather. A strong persistence of vision that borders on 'Jackass stubborn' will also serve you well as you continually forge past those who feel the urgent need to add their dos centavos to your little gem of a project.
Above all, you'll need an inspired point of view as well as the will and determination to get your project made. Even IF you posses all of the previous abilities, without consummate people skills you've only got another pathetic side show looking to hitch a ride with the grandest circus of them all.
To quote the always acerbic Dennis Miller, "From Balinese shadow plays to bullfighters in Madrid to the porn studios of the San Fernando Valley ... the only human desire more universal than the urge to put on a show is the urge to get paid for it."
So welcome to the freak show my friend. I sure hope you're wearing your bullet proof, Eddie Bauer safari-slash-director's jacket because there's nothing that this industry loves more than a well-dressed corpse.
~ Scott Billups