The Artist's Way (19 page)

“Gain disguised as loss” is a potent artist's tool. To acquire it, simply, brutally, ask: “How can this loss serve me? Where does it point my work?” The answers will surprise and liberate you. The trick is to metabolize pain as energy. The key to doing that is to know, to trust, and to act as if a silver lining exists if you are only willing to look at the work differently or to walk through a different door, one that you may have balked at.

“In order to catch the ball, you have to want to catch the ball,” the film director John Cassavetes once told a young director. Hearing this, I took it to mean, “Stop complaining about the lousy curves you get thrown and stretch, reach for what you
really
want.” I have tried to follow this advice.

For years, I played studio roulette. Repeatedly, original scripts were bought and not made. Repeatedly, fine work languished on studio shelves, the victim of revolving studio doors. Go pictures became dead overnight, except in my filmmaker's heart—which was breaking.

“That's just the way it is,” I was told repeatedly. “If you want to see your films made, you must first sell yourself as a writer and then
if
one of yours scripts is made and
if
that film is a hit and
if
the
climate warms up a little,
then
you
might
get a shot at directing….”

I listened to this conventional wisdom for a long time, racking up loss after loss, writing script after script. Finally, after one loss too many, I began to look for the other door, the one I had refused to walk through. I decided to catch the ball: I became an independent filmmaker.

I left Hollywood. I went to Chicago, bought a used camera and, using my
Miami
Vice
writing money, shot my own feature, a romantic, forties-style comedy. It was in the can for
$31,000 and it looked good. Then, incredibly, my sound tapes were stolen. I finished the film anyway, dubbing it in its entirety. (Yes, crazy, but so was Cassavetes, my role model.) The result won foreign distribution and fine reviews abroad. And I learned a lot.

Because I asked “How?” instead of “Why me?” I now have a modest first feature to my credit. It might have happened if I had not taken matters into my own hands, but it might not have, either. Since 1974, I have worked vigorously and exhaustively as a film writer. I have written—and sold—features, short films, documentaries, docudramas, teleplays, movies of the week, and that bastardized movie, the miniseries. I have directed one feature and a half dozen short films. Less visibly, I have labored as a script doctor, credited and not, for hire and for love.

To boot, I have written a hundred–plus film essays, film interviews, think pieces, trend pieces, aesthetics pieces, more—all as I toiled as a writer for such diverse publications as
Rolling
Stone,
the
New
York
Times,
the
Village
Voice,
New
York,
New
West,
the
Los
Angeles
Times,
the
Chicago
Tribune,
and, most conspicuously,
American
Film,
where I served as a contributing editor for many years. In short, you might say I have done my dharma to my favored art form.

Why all of this diverse, hydra-headed productivity? Because I love movies, love making them, and did not want my losses to take me down. I learned, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: “What next?” instead of “Why me?”

Whenever I am willing to ask “What is necessary next?” I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck. I have learned that the key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choice.

If you look at long and successful creative careers, you will see this principle in action. The distinguished videographer Shirley Clarke began her creative career as a dancer. She first became a filmmaker so that there would be some properly made dance films. Distinguishing herself next as a first-rate feature director, winning renown in Europe if not directing jobs in American studios, Clarke became the first American
director to shoot a feature in Harlem, the first American director to explore the range of hand-held camera, the American director that John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Shrader all credit as seminal in their own artistic formation. Alas, she was a woman and she lived in difficult times. When her filmmaking revenues dried up, she became one of the first video artists, working with Sam Shepard, Joseph Papp, Ornette Coleman. Clarke clearly took to heart the idea that it was harder to hit a moving target. Whenever one avenue for her creativity was blocked, she found another.

Film annals abound with such stories. Elia Kazan, out of favor as a director, wrote novels. The director John Cassavetes, also a fine actor, used his acting to fund his directing efforts, which were too eclectic for studio backing. “If they won't make it as a feature,
I'll
make it,” Cassavetes said, and he did. Rather than allow himself to be blocked, he looked for the other door.

We would not enjoy the wonderful series
Fairytale
Theater
if actress-producer Shelley Duvall had stayed home complaining during acting droughts instead of turning her creativity elsewhere.
Non
illegitimi
te
carborundum,
the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is “Don't let the bastards get you down.”

Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes
any
action difficult.

When faced with a loss, immediately take one small action to support your artist. Even if all you are doing is buying a bunch of tulips and a sketch pad, your action says, “I acknowledge you and your pain. I promise you a future worth having.” Like a small child, our artist needs mommying. “Ouch. That hurt. Here's a little treat, a lullaby, a promise …”

I have a director friend who tells me that on his worst nights, when he is about to open a new film and he awaits career catastrophe, sure that he will never work again, in the dark, alone, he cajoles himself to sleep: “If I can't shoot 35 mm, I could still shoot 16 mm. If I can't shoot 16 mm, then I can shoot video. If I can't shoot video, I can shoot super 8.”

“I'm too old for that” ranks with “I don't have money for it” as a Great Block Lie we use to prevent further exploration. “I'm too old” is something we tell ourselves to save ourselves from the emotional cost of the ego deflation involved in being a beginner.

“I'm too old to go to film school,” I told myself at thirty-five. And when I got to film school I discovered that I was indeed fifteen years older than my classmates. I also discovered I had greater creative hunger, more life experience, and a much stronger learning curve. Now that I've taught in a film school myself, I find that very often my best students are those who came to their work late.

“I'm too old to be an actor,” I have heard many students complain—and dramatically, I might add. They are not always pleased when I tell them this is not the case. The splendid actor John Mahoney did not begin acting until he was nearly forty. Ten years into a highly successful career, he is now often booked three films in advance and works with some of the finest directors in the world.

“I'm too old to really be a writer” is another frequent complaint. This is more ego-saving nonsense. Raymond Chandler didn't publish until the far side of forty. The superb novel
Jules
and
Jim
was written as a first novel by a man in his seventies.

“I'm too old” is an evasive tactic. It is
always
used to avoid facing fear.

Now let's look at the other side: “I'll let myself try it when I'm retired.” This is an interesting side trip on the same ego-saving track. As a culture, we glorify youth and allow our youth the freedom to experiment. And we disparage our old-timers but allow them the right to be a little crazy.

Many blocked creatives tell themselves they are both too old and too young to allow themselves to pursue their dreams. Old and dotty, they might try it. Young and foolish, they might try it. In either scenario, being crazy is a prerequisite to
creative exploration. We do not want to look crazy. And trying something like that (whatever it is) at our age (whatever it is) would look nuts.

Yes, maybe.

Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless. We discover that as we engage in a creative recovery. “I felt like a kid,” we may say after a satisfying artist date. Kids are not self-conscious, and once we are actually in the flow of our creativity, neither are we.

“How long would it take me to learn to do that?” we may ask, standing on the sideline of a longed-for activity.

“Maybe a year to be pretty good,” the answer comes back. “It depends.”

As blocked creatives, we like to pretend that a year or even several years is a long, long time. Our ego plays this little trick to keep us from getting started. Instead of allowing ourselves a creative journey, we focus on the length of the trip. “It's such a long way,” we tell ourselves. It may be, but each day is just one more day with some motion in it, and that motion toward a goal is very enjoyable.

At the heart of the anorexia of artistic avoidance is the denial of process. We like to focus on having learned a skill or on having made an artwork. This attention to final form ignores the fact that creativity lies not in the done but in doing.

“I am writing a screenplay” is infinitely more interesting to the soul than “I have written a screenplay,” which pleases the ego. “I am in an acting class” is infinitely more interesting than “I took an acting class a few years ago.”

In a sense, no creative act is ever finished. You can't learn to act because there is always more to learn. Arguably, you cannot even direct a film because you will always be redirecting it, even years later. You will know then what you might have done and what you will do next if you keep working. This doesn't mean that the work accomplished is worthless. Far from it. It simply means that doing the work points the way to new and better work to be done.

Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren. We inherit the obsession with product
and the idea that art produces finished product from our consumer-oriented society. This focus creates a great deal of creative block. We, as working artists, may want to explore a new artistic area, but we don't see where it will get us. We wonder if it will be good for our career. Fixated on the need to have something to show for our labors, we often deny our curiosities. Every time we do this, we are blocked.

Our use of age as a block to creative work interlocks with our toxic finished-product thinking. We have set an appropriate age on certain activities: college graduation, going to med school, writing a first book. This artificial ego requirement asks us to be done when what we truly yearn for is to start something.

“If I didn't think I'd look like a jerk next to the young guys, I'd let myself sign up for an improv class.”

“If my body looked anything the way it did twenty years ago, I'd let myself take that jazzercize class at the Y.”

“If I didn't think my family would consider me a stupid old fool, I'd start playing the piano again. I still remember some of my lessons.”

If these excuses are beginning to sound flimsy to you, good! Ask yourself if you haven't employed a few of them. Then ask yourself if you can acquire the humility to start something despite your ego's reservations.

The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner's humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step.