"The Point, Ted, Is They Don't Want To Fix Hollywood, or Indiewood, Or The System. They Like It As It Is."

And so be it... but...

are the palm trees dying just for me?

For the longest period, I said my dream was to make a film that wouldn’t leave you alone.

The thought of making something that people talked about, and wouldn’t stop talking about… that they would talk about for years, decades, eons… was where I liked to have my mind wander. If I could live that dream, I could speak across the ribbons of time, live in the past and the future, and maybe then, finally, I’d be satisfied.

I aim to make cinema that compels you to talk about it. And has impact, even if it is primarily to entertain. Beyond buzz, I want to generate engagement. Connection.

I started in New York, and stayed in New York for about thirty years. I only moved when I felt that I couldn’t afford it any longer. The World Financial Collapse of 2008 meant I could not make my nut for year upon year for far too long. I felt banished from the city I chose as my home. But that was what I had to accept as my truth.

I am hoping the current financial crisis is NOT going to again force many of us filmworkers to pack our bags and find new homes… but…

Granted my initial choice to move to New York aligned with the relentless hunger I had for something new, but I think such seeming alignment may be a trick we play on ourselves to get two such things to just occur. I picked NYC because I felt one with the city’s attitude, particularly when applied to the type of film I wanted to make. And because I was there, there was a specific type of film I tended to make.

During my term in Gotham, and as I got more and more movies made, I felt a bit less of the culture and more of my own thing. I may well have been fooling myself, but I stopped feeling part of a centrally-located filmmaker community; people felt in it for themselves, not for any sort of bigger picture — even if that wasn’t because they were or were not in NYC, but because it just was. How can you be truly community, if the basic slog is just to stay afloat?

There was another challenge brewing too, one that was perhaps even greater. We no longer needed to be based in the same space; we could be based anywhere. Lots of things sound good initially, but then become something else altogether.

I miss NYC now for the sort of random-access-inspiration it (and most large cities) delivers so well, but now my favorite practice is the long quiet walk lost in my own head, and that’s not so easy to do in the city that never sleeps. And that promise of continual virtual connection helped me cut the proverbial cord as much as the cost of living did.

A close friend once commented to me that I was at my best when I had something to fight against. They may have been right, but I see it more as that I like to have something to dream towards.

Another friend once encouraged me to organize my newsletter around all that was broken in our industry and how to fix it — and to me that is a bit closer to my method: as opposed to fighting things, I like to repair things. Some of that comes from a general desire to be helpful — probably because that is one way to be appreciated or have a purpose— as I have always thought most of us wanted things to be better.

And as we left the movie, that is what I was talking to another friend about, how shocking I find it that so few in our industry try to fix things, that we let the broken stay broken, the mediocre stay mediocre, and the dysfunctional remain in power. He looked at me like “when will you get it through that thick head of yours, Ted?”.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day. Barely a cloud.

We had seen an excellent film for free. And been fed by its studio. Met and mingled with some talented and beautiful people. There were movie stars amongst us. So what if the hotel’s valet system was a total joke — shame on us for not parking on the street! His point was clear: those in LA are happy to be in LA, those employed in what is left of the Film Biz are happy to be employed in the Film Biz. What is the problem?

Okay, I get it.

And then I really got it. And in a different way than I got it before. My shock transformed.