What do I really want?

An eternal question I always avoid answering

what business is it of yours?

For over forty years now --other than my dream of a perfect relationship -- I have never let myself even consider that there may be something more fulfilling than making a movie. Perhaps I am now finally ready to consider that.

I think if I romanticize anything it is the benefit of putting something positive out into the world. I like to think of positive outcomes that make intense efforts worthwhile. Or is it dream?

I find it helps to realize those large efforts by seeing all the little wins on the path forward. And to see those little wins, I find I need to often celebrate those little wins along the way and that shifting my vision to find and delight in the most minuscule things we can, helps me tremendously. So, from a distance it may look like I am romanticizing the inconsequential, but I see things a bit differently than that too. It is how I have learned to manage my disappointment that things are not better than they are: I celebrate all that I can. And I want to do that better too. I am trying to do so here.

Nevertheless, I often find myself asking if any of it matters. I ask myself this most about the real work I have given my labor to: cinema. Sure, I know how great – and frankly even just good – cinema has improved and changed my life, as well as the life of others. I don’t want to diminish the impact the work potentially holds.

Yet the degree that cinema matters to the culture at large seems to have diminished significantly in my lifetime, and certainly during my career. I have been feeling this decline over at least the last two decades now. And if my feeling that cinema’s cultural impact is diminishing is accurate, my desire to dedicate so much of my labor, thought, and emotional toil to it, is also now declining. And perhaps now that desire is declining for the first time significantly.

But maybe there is that something happening here that can turn that around. I hope for that. I suspect you may hope for that too.