|
MY KIND OF MOVIES:
The end product is always better when 'real' vs. 'not real.'
The gravest lack in the multitude of mainstream movies is a lack of real-ity, however fantastic or mundane the plot. I don't refer to any particular genre, gender, age or target audience. Westerns (The Searchers, The Unforgiven, High Noon) Sci-Fi (The Left Hand of Darkness, ET, Frankenstein) even horror or spatter stories can be real. What is Macbeth if not both, and more?
Real touches the heart, and invites identification with the characters as beings, not merely ideas, political postures, cardboard caricatures, or marketing propositions. I strive for that feel of real.
Kermit the Frog is real (It's Not Easy Being Green), My Little Pony is meretricious marketing crap. Hemingway said, "The essential gift for a good writer [is] a built-in, shock-proof, bullshit detector." and William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything.” It takes real guts to bet on hundred-million-dollar-stakes-games – guts or absolute insouciance about Other People's Money. For a Thalberg, Powell, or Pressburger, personal conviction was the decision-making criterion.
Passion, the pervasive, persistent buzz word, is an attempt by industry execs to detect real from the smells simmering in the souls of creative types whose pitches they hear all their working day. So, to get a project made, be real (or a convincing liar.)
I seek to make films that will touch people, and do it at a cost that enables a rational expectation of profit, even if targeted at the highest denominator, our common humanity, instead of merely our animal instincts. Some of my 'little' films, targeted at people's hearts, will turn a serious profit, like American Graffiti, Rocky, and Monster’s Ball. Some will simply make a few (million) dollars and be relegated to the category of inconsequence by those who can only read a bottom line in billions.
|
|
