Ruthless Yet With A Heart

What I have learned, is that you can't be desperate. Desperation never yields good results. It is unfair and bizarre how life works, yet one can see from extreme examples in the world that those who are the most need rarely never get it and those with the least need usually are the ones who get things for free.

And so being in a room with other filmmakers, people who may call themselves my peers, I felt suffocated by their aggressive desperation. They ate up the air in the room as well as ate up the hope that I would find people to collaborate with. These were not collaborators, these were people who were looking for redemption. After making Woman's Prison I see that so many people come to filmmaking looking for redemption. They seek to right a wrong, for some experience to be lifted from their shoulders. However, they are unaware that once they begin a film, a whole new set of baggage descends. And for me, it was the role itself which brought on the baggage. A director has to be ruthless yet have a heart at the same time. It is like shooting some one and the saying, "Hang on" while removing the bullet.

As many people come to me, telling me their tragedies because they say, want me to turn into a movie. I believe that movies provide universal consul for many bad experiences, however it is the storytelling and the characters that make us pay attention, it is that these tragedies are somewhat resolved at the end. To to be a director is to be ruthless and to have a heart at the same time. The role carries a paradox within it, however, the most important thing is to build working relationships with people, yet I could not with a group of desperate junkies all frustrated, unshaven, demanding, that everyone owns them an audience.

I had to get away. It was overwhelming and it was a place that I had been at once. I jumped in a cab.

My knees started shaking. It wasn't the shaking of too much exercise or too much coffee, it was the shaking from panic. The panic of being overwhelmed, erased. It is what happened when you meet other who are too much like you and want a piece of you. That despair, that weight, burden black hole, was suddenly coming out of nowhere to find me again.

It is the lonesome position that we directors/producers are placed in. That paradox we live. You have to be ruthless and have a heart. It takes a particular group of people to understand how much we have against us as we make films already, that we don't need people inviting doubt or negativity to set. Film sets demand mental discipline. Once the word action is called, your heart flickers on, that word can protect your heart, however once cut is called, shut your heart off, because you will have to deal with the forces of the world once again. Triggers of the pain of shooting starting coming back. I wanted out of the cab, I wanted away from the experience. I wanted away from my ruthless heart that demands results.