The second stage of a filmmaker’s career
One of the things they always talk about in film, or with acting, is that when it rains it pours, and when it dries up it dries up. So it sounds like you've had quite a rainy season.
I've had a lot of work, which is great. Droughts aren't fun, I know. I much prefer rainy season. I would prefer it to be a little more sprinkly than thunderstorm season. But it's been great. I'm in the middle of directing The American Question, my documentary about American value systems, and we had planned to finish shooting that this spring and summer, because we think it needs to be out before the 2020 election, for marketing reasons, for personal reasons, a lot of reasons. When I was getting ready to do that shoot, I got a phone call from the producers of the Lucia Lucas film, and they asked me if I wanted to come to Oklahoma for a month in April. This was somewhere around the first or second week of March. So once they decided that they wanted me to direct this film, I had to totally reconfigure my schedule for the summer: prep for that film in March, go to Oklahoma in April, come back here to LA in May for the first assembly edit. I have an ad campaign in Singapore next month that I have to go do, and I'm coming back to finish shooting The American Question in July, which will be in the Northeast and in Israel.
Wow.
I'm also running post-production on Lucia's film, because both of those films have to be delivered for a 2020 release. So it's a lot of juggling and time management. And mind you, even in March, when I was having negotiations on Lucia's project, I was working on three other films at the same time that had nothing to do with those two projects. So I was having to get those things done while also doing negotiations, planning, and realigning the other film. This is not typical. This is not my daily life. It's the first time I've dealt with having to do two films at once. It's a wonderful problem to have. I'm glad I have this problem, because I've been in that drought before, and it's no good. But you have to really understand how to manage your time and make sure everyone you're working with feels like they are getting adequate attention. The second they don't feel that, the more complicated your life becomes.
In what way?
In the way that they don't think that you can do it. It's really about confidence. They have to understand that you are focused on the project you have been engaged for. So even if I am working on three or four things at the same time (even now I'm working on two or three future narrative films, one or two of which are getting quite close, and probably one will shoot next year) I still have to make sure things are happening on that. It's making sure that everything has the resources it needs to get going, that what needs to get done gets done, and also making sure that the people working on them know that you're focused on it. They don't necessarily have to know that you're working on those five other things. They just need to know you're working on theirs.
Any tips on how to balance your time? Because it is interesting how you can go through a drought, and then all of a sudden all these great things happen at once. In some ways it's like, no, I wanted to spread it out and enjoy this, and this, and this, but I can't.
Yeah. I'm in an interesting place in my career, because I'm not starting out. I'm in that weird middle space where I have lots of work, I live comfortably, I've done a lot of the hard work to get where I'm at, but I haven't done, you know, Avengers 20. I think that when you're in that space, you don't have the luxury of saying no, because you're trying to get to that other space. Not that I want to do Avengers 20, but if I do, great. You've got to say yes to the things that you know you can do well, to the things that you know are going to help you, to the projects that make sense to you creatively. If you can juggle and do all those things effectively and do good work, that only helps you ascend the broader mountain chain you're trying to climb. It also gives you better skill sets, because when you can manage lots of different moving pieces, the bigger your films become and the higher your budgets get, the more adept you are at being able to do that.
Was it Shonda Rhimes who talked about saying yes to everything for a year? Maybe I'm getting it wrong.
Yes, Year of Yes. And Shonda also has this crazy schedule with how she delivers on multiple television shows and the way that she works. I've read a good bit about it; I don't know her personally. I think there's a way to do that. She's right: you have to say yes to all of these things, but then you also have to learn to manage what makes sense for you and what makes sense for your personal life, making sure that you have what you need. Because if you're not satisfied creatively, or if you're so exhausted that you can't manage it, it's probably not going to be good work. So you've got to find a balance. But as long as you can balance all those things, or if you have the power, like I fortunately did, to have some say over your schedule, you can make things work. We'll see how it comes out. You guys can find out. To be continued.
That's an interesting problem to be sitting with, in the middle there, knowing that you have to say yes, because maybe you feel like it's not time to turn stuff down. You're not at the point where you've got an assistant and twenty people coming in, handlers and so on, but at the same time you're not starting out. So I was wondering, did you ever envision being in this place, wrestling with that dilemma?
No, I don't think you ever envision that space. It's a space that happens with time. When you're first starting out, you think, if I can just get that first feature, everything is fine. But that's not true. It's then about proving that you're not a one-trick pony. So that middle space is maybe the most critical, because you have to show a couple of things. One, you have to show that you've got the stamina to keep going, that you're dedicated, that you're committed, that this is what you're going to do. But then you have to put out good work. As long as you're doing consistent good work in that middle space, I believe that is what helps you get to that next space. But it really is about saying yes to the things that make sense. It's not saying yes to everything, let's be very clear. There are things I turn down all the time. But if it's something that makes sense to me creatively, if it has a budget on which I know I can make a good film, if it has the right talent involved, if it has people that I want to work with, then I'll do it. I will figure out how to do it. I say no to things if I don't care for some of the entities involved, or if I think there's no way to make it on the budget they want. I'll say no to that, because that's not helpful. If you're looking at your career in this broader way, you have to say yes to the things that make sense and say no to the things that don't.
That is another interesting thing: taking a job that could actually hurt you down the line, because maybe you did everything you were supposed to, but for whatever reason the other party didn't. They're playing by different rules, or they don't know what they're doing, or you just don't like the way they work, or maybe you have opposite processes of working.
Which is okay. It's all right. There is no one way to do a film or to have a creative process. I think that sometimes people, especially in interviews like this, perceive that somebody like me is saying this is the only way to do this thing. That's not true. That's false. I read the YouTube comments. That's false. There is no one way to do something. There's the way that I know how to do it. Even expressing how I do it is just how I do it. So then it's finding other people who share congruent or similar processes to collaborate with, and then you tend to have a more fluid process. But if you find that someone's process is so opposite, or that person is so odious or toxic or whatever it may be, I can now, at this point, have the luxury of choosing to say no, which is something I may not have had six or eight years ago. Now I have that luxury. So that's the weird middle: you have enough experience that people come to you with projects and say, here it is, here's the budget, great, you go do it. But that doesn't mean you always want to say yes.
And it's about self-preservation, of course, if you say yes to someone you're not on the same page with, and then there's a fiasco for whatever reason that you have no control over.
And then it's the longevity thing. If something is a fiasco in the middle of this middle space, I don't think you can afford to have many fiascos. You might be able to afford one. You can't afford many. You have to have as many things as close to perfect, or as good as you can make them, as possible.
It's a formative time.
I think it's formative. That's the space. Because if you make one good film and then you make two or three bad ones, you're a one-trick pony. If you make one or two good ones, three good ones, and one's off, it's, oh, it's an off day. But you can't afford to make bad work. You've got to make sure that you're making the best work that you can make if you want to continue proceeding, especially in that middle ground.