Nobody Knows Anything

I finished the rough cut of Klepto. I enjoyed doing it. I haven't enjoyed editing for a very long time. At first I thought it was because I'd done a better job shooting Klepto than I had earlier films. There's some truth in that, but it's not entirely the reason for my new found joy in the process. I'm learning to pay attention to my eyes -- what they really see rather than what I direct them to see. Usually what I direct my eyes to see has a lot to do with the logic of making things work in terms of continuity. Yet Walter Murch puts continuity on the bottom of the heirachy of an editor's concerns. I've known this for a few years but I couldn't let go of it when editing until recently. It requires a certain degree of faith. Editing is less mathematical than sensual, it turns out.
Or maybe not, because as William Goldman says, Nobody knows anything.
Yesterday I learned a few more things about the movie business that confirms my advice to the aspiring actors at my studio: Do this because you love it and for no other reason! For years many told me I was crazy to try to direct a script I'd written. Now it's hard to get people to get behind it becuase I've said I don't want to direct it. For a long time I thought it had to do with the nature of the material. It doesn't. It's just a bloody tough business to break into.
I'm not discouraged. I still want to see that film get made. Maybe I will. There's other stuff in front of me right now. Really awesome stuff that needs my atention. I'm going to pay attention to that and have faith that when the time is right, the time will be right.
Billy Wilder says he tried to make pictures that he liked and hoped others would like them, too. I was a very successful club promoter for a number of years in San Francisco and New York. Basically my formula came down to this: I threw parties that I would want to go to. So I'm going to stick to writing and making films that I want to see, and we'll see what happens.
One last thing. An acquaintance of mine has a film in competition at Sundance this year. When I heard the news I was both a little proud and a little envious. His film was reviewed a couple of days ago. Something to the effect that in Cannes people would have thrown stuff, but in America they just laughed at all the wrong places. Voila! Good-bye envy, hello shadenfreude! By the way, I'm not particularly proud of being envious or taking pleasure in his misfortune, it's just the way it is. For now.
Besides -- NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING -- and that includes me.

Umanemente,
Signore Direttore