I got off the phone very recently with a friend in something of a crisis, a writer whose movies show up on televisions and big screens all over the world. Hugely successful, hugely talented. Frustrated. He got off the phone with a girl he knows from the uber agency. Frustrated. She told him stories of writers behind some of the iconic films of the last 20 years, dudes with Academy fucking awards. Frustrated. I've been trading e-mails with a friend of mine, an auteur director and brilliant writer. He just made a movie with a lead starlet who here gets more press than any other starlet I know. Having trouble with distribution. Frustrated.
Artists frustrated with their representation. Representation frustrated. Phones aren't ringing. Nothing is happening...
I've been in something of a panic lately. Just restless I guess now that I'm back in town and settling. I'm working on plenty of things I care about - so the balance is fine. I have work, great work out there and floating through consideration, somewhere. I keep on thinking that if I came through the same way I came through but 10 years earlier, I would have a major career. I have the talent, the work ethic, the heart, the desire for growth and discovery. Things would have been different if. I'm frustrated now but I'm fine...because I can't know which path I would prefer, success or this, because this...life is pretty fine. Today, I was cleaning up my apartment and thought back to an opportunity I had to work for a showrunner/writer - a massively successful one who had 2 separate network shows pumping out and out and out. For a thousand reasons but mostly having to do with time and money and personal creative sacrifice, I declined. That was maybe 3 years ago. I remember someone told me I was an idiot, which may have been true, but at the end of the day, my decline was based on the faith I had in myself, that someday, somehow, my course would take me exactly where I want to go. And even after 5 years out here and thousands of stumbles and hundreds of rejections and a few victories, I still feel that same way. Looking back, if I would have taken the job, which was a peasant's salary at the time, I'm sure I would be writing for one of those shows or another show - approaching producer credits, moving up and up and up and making money, so much money. That's exactly how it would have gone, because I'm the groomable type and because out here, nothing fills holes of abuse endured like mentoring. Fact. We are all so abused. So fucking abused.
Instead I'm sitting in this apartment on Kings Road, rested, body rocked from the endless fights I pick with heart and muscle and I'm just thinking about it all, taking it all in. Reflection often comes November, December, I find. It's fine as long as you don't hang around in it. But I've been thinking of a lot lately, like that in 5 years, for this industry, the golden age is coming. Nothing is getting made, bought or sold. Actors are starving, artists are stumbling. The doors are tight, so fucking tight. The weak fall away and the strong adapt, because we have no choice. Get better, undeniably better. Get fucking tighter. Give more, go deeper. The old tricks don't work anymore. If you want to play, you have to fight, fight real fucking hard. Everyone. Top to bottom, front to back. And if you're not willing, then you're done and you're dead and no one cares. No one fucking cares. And if I get held out of that tiny door because someone else gave more, saw clearer, shot further, then I'm fine with that. And we'll either push and elevate or everything is going to go to shit. I believe in the former, fear the latter...sitting here on a Wednesday night trying to figure out who is going to publish my book, who is going to make my movie, who is capable as being as relentless as I am in the face of this shit, all of this shit.
