I get emails all the time from people asking me to be involved in various projects. Help produce or direct a film or documentary. Write this book or this essay. Be a consultant on an art installation. Give notes on someone’s script. Blurb a new book.
Its very flattering and a reflection of surviving many decades in a media world that has always been unforgiving, and where so many institutions (Village Voice) and professions (music journalism), I loved have been mismanaged into extinction or rendered economically unsustainable.
So any offer, particularly that taps into my old school knowledge, I take seriously. That said, I always go back to the line David Mamet wrote for Sean Connery in The Untouchables. He turns to Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness and asks with his great Scottish accent, “What are you prepared to do?” In that case its about dealing with Robert De Niro’s Al Capone. In my case it’s me wondering how much passion do I have for the proposed idea. To get a feature film made has always been hard. To get one made today, that’s not existing intellectual property or steaming fodder, requires a lot of sacrifice and has a questionable payoff. Writing a book is committing to years of work, long days of solitude and, again, has a questionable payoff. The same can be said of feature documentaries or a television series in the streaming era.
The hoped for equation is Time Commitment + Financial Backing + Dope Idea = Making Something Good + Making A Profit. If any of those first three variables isn’t in place you’re looking at a colossal waste of time. Of the three elements of the equation Time Commitment is now most important for me. As a younger man I was up for working on speculative projects with questionable payoffs. I had time to waste or thought I did (I definitely regret my investment of time and money on an ambitious and unfinished indie film.)
Now, in my ‘60s, I have to believe deeply in the value of a project and the talent of my partners to make the leap. The anxiety and setbacks endemic to any project is not worth the expenditure of energy and hours if I’m not committed in my gut to see it through. I have a feature film I produced, a documentary I’m directing and a non fiction book I’ve written all being released in the next few months. All are the product of, at minimum, four years of work and, in the case of the book, I have proposals for it going back sixteen years. In each case I faced “What are you prepared to do?” moments, where I had to dive in without any certainty in the outcome. But I believed that enough elements of my equation were present to justify a leap of faith.
It helps to have pulled off difficult projects before, yet each new endeavor presents fresh unseen obstacles, the ever changing economic or cultural environment, and the challenge of balancing the work with your personal life. Experience is crucial but it doesn’t guarantee a successful outcome.
Once committed I embrace the philosophy of former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin: “Some people talk. Some people watch. Some people do.” Being a “doer” means you collaborate freely, find an essential role to fill in making things happen and respect your co-workers. Today an essential part of the latter means keeping your work frustrations off of social media. To be committed means managing sometimes fragile people. It requires understanding what the want and why they want it. It requires patience. It requires maturity and strategy. Bitching on line about co-workers or funders undermines essential relationships. If you don’t like a gig or the people involved, you should leave. Just don’t slam the door people as you exit. Reputation is everything. A nasty exit may be briefly satisfying but word gets around. It makes your next possible collaborators wary. Can you be trusted? That’s not a question you want following you around.
That’s clearly not a popular opinion in this era when podcasts feast on disgruntled ex co-workers and business partners litigating beefs. The current culture of grievance rewards venting but undermines the essential bonds of collaboration. Grumble to your wife and closest friends. Its only human. Complaining on line generates clicks. But making yourself into “look at me” digital fodder is not the gateway to the next job or partnership. The quality of any work experience is always dependent on your relationship with your colleagues. “How hard I am willing to go?” is very dependent on how much I believe in the people you’re working with. That’s what sparks the passion that informs, “What are you prepared to do?” I ask myself that question almost every day. It gets me out of bed, get me calculating my equation, gets me excited to see life on the other side of the = sign just a few months away.
