How To Know If Someone Isn’t Cut Out To Be A Filmmaker by James Kicklighter
James Kicklighter on which filmmakers last and which fall away
You were just talking about the people you started with, and how slowly some of them stay and some of them go, in terms of making films. It reminds me of a line, and it might have been Edith Ivey in Followed, about how the strong will rise and the weak will falter. It's a harsh look at social and economic structures, but it's similar to nature, and nature is harsh. I'm paraphrasing, but I thought that was a great line. So it reminds me of a filmmaking Darwinism, basically. If we were to label some strong and some weak, and I realize that's a harsh statement, when it comes to filmmaking, what would you term the weak and what would you term the strong?
That is a very good question, actually. I hadn't really thought about that before, but you're exactly right. It's not harsh. It's reality. There are people who are strong and there are people who are weak. If you're trying to determine what makes a strong filmmaker and what makes a weak one, I think it really has to do with whether people see their career as a short-term thing or a long-term thing. That is the differentiator.
When you make a project, it's not just about that project. If you're thinking long-term, you're thinking about how this project is going to enable you to make the next thing, and then the thing after that, and the thing after that. It's about climbing that ladder, ascending the staircase, because each piece you make, assuming you do a good job and people like it, will enable you to do something different in the future.
But suppose you see your career as a short-term game. You just see it as, "I have to make this project." You make that project, and then you have no idea what you're going to make next, or what kind of film you want to make next, or whether you can identify what kind of films you like to make. As I said earlier, I'm drawn to films that are about loss and identity. If you're a filmmaker who can't say very succinctly what kind of projects you make, no one will take you seriously, because they don't know what to hire you for. So I think it's very important, if you want to see yourself as a strong filmmaker, to not only have an identity for the kind of films you like to make, but also to have a plan, a progression, to jump off from.
Let's take two filmmakers, A and B. Both of their work is amazing. They're incredibly creative, talented people. What would be the telltale signs that one is probably going to fall off in some sense and the other is going to keep going?
I think the telltale signs, honestly, have to do with your motivation. A lot of filmmaking is stamina. If you're in the middle of production and you're already exhausted, or tired of the film you're doing, that's a sign. I'm always astounded when I talk to filmmakers who are in post-production on a film and they're saying, "Oh, I can't wait for this to be finished." I understand. Editing is hard. Filmmaking is a hard, long, strenuous journey. But when you aren't engaged in the process you're actively involved with, and that can be post-production, production, prep, or even publicizing the film you're making, you're not going to make it as a filmmaker. It's about that long journey.
It may take you three or four years to make a feature film. I don't mean shoot it. I mean develop it, shoot it, edit it, publicize it, release it. It's a multi-step process. I think that is the indicator of whether you're going to make it or not: whether you can make it across each of the finish lines, not just one.
And not tire easily.
And not tire easily. You've got to constantly be fighting. If you're not an advocate for your own film, no one else will be.
Were there times when you were tested in that, when you wondered, "Is this really for me?", and then you got back on course? There are a lot of things that are surprising. Everyone thinks being on set is going to be a long day, but it's cool, and you feel important, glamorous. But then there are those long hours in the editing bay, or problem solving, when things aren't working out and something's wrong with the mechanics of the project. Were there times when you were tested and had to right yourself?
Unless someone has some incredible piece of luck, I think on every film there's a moment where you question yourself. You ask: can I do this? Do I have the capacity to do this thing? What separates you from other filmmakers, if you're successful, is that you have the capacity to troubleshoot and get past the roadblock.
It may have to do with a location. Perhaps you're filming somewhere and a location doesn't work the way you thought it was going to work. Perhaps someone's late. Perhaps an actor's having a meltdown. That happens on film sets. I've had experience with that before. You can't stop the entire production because any of those things happen. You have to figure out a way to chart a course forward, because especially when you're working in independent film, you have neither the resources nor the time to stop because something doesn't work.
So I think for most filmmakers, and even for me, you've got to be able to say: okay, here's my problem. Here are some outcomes if this thing doesn't work out the way I think it will. What path is going to be the best way for me to fix the problem? That's what you've always got to do. I've never had a moment where I thought, "I don't want to do film," or "This is not for me." But I have certainly had moments where I questioned my capacity to do it. What I think has made me successful professionally is being able to figure out what the solutions are.
There's a term in self-help called low frustration tolerance, which I think all of us suffer from, from time to time. Being able to move through these tedious things that would really get a lot of people down sounds like the secret to a lot of it. A lot of the people I hear about who give up, it's over some incident that happened, and they say, "You know what? Forget it. I'm done with it."
I think about my grandmother a lot. She died a few years ago, but one of the things she always used to say about her husband, my grandfather, is that she never went to bed angry with him. Whether or not that was true in their sixty years of marriage, I don't know. And while that doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, I think it can certainly be applied to your professional career, and not just your personal life.
If I get frustrated or angry, as we all do on a film set, it may be with a person I'm working with. It could be an actor, a producer, someone on the crew. If you go to bed angry with them, and you hold on to that anger, it's very easy to lose sight of the big picture. So I think you almost have to take a Zen approach and say: things happen. You deal with it, and then you move on from it. Because if you're constantly holding on to the bad, you can't focus on the good.