Folk Wisdom 021

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure -- try to please everybody.

Herbert Bayard Swope

Folk Wisdom 020

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have wholehearted enthusiasm.

Hannah Senesh

The Master Says 075

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

Orson Welles

Folk Wisdom 019

Do you want to know my secret?
I don't mind what happens.

Krishnamurti

Folk Wisdom 018

You've gotta be slightly stupid.

Joe Strummer

The Master Says 074

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.

Sidney Lumet

The Master Says 073

Once you label me you negate me.

Soren Kierkegaard

Pilgrim's Scallop

Yesterday I enjoyed a brief chat with a fellow amateur filmmaker. I was renting some gear to him for a shoot. Wishing him luck and expressing a desire to see the finished product, he replied with a wary premonition that as always he would finish the shoot wishing he had done it differently. He asked if I often felt the same way.
I could honestly reply in the negative. I don't always like what I've done or how I've shot a particular scene or set-up, but I know that it was the best of which I was capable at the time. I realize more and more that it's the journey rather than the results. As I told my peer, for many years I agonized over the quality of what I desperately wanted to be my oeuvre. What a poseur I've been! Thankfully the sting of hollow posturing has begotten a measure of humility, rendering the list of what I've long referred to as 'my films' (harumph) the designation of visual exercises.
I long thought that, as on the pilgrim's scallop, all roads led to one point -- the indie filmmaker's Compostela: Hollywood via a brief but glorious stopover in Utah. I've known many filmmakers that make films in order to earn the mantle of director, rather than fulfilling a burning desire to express something vital. As I know many student-actors that yearn for the title of professional actor. I no longer want or need such external recognition, nor do I want to associate with those who strive for conferment.
I've reached my goal - I have become a storyteller commited to discovering ever deeper and more effective ways of revealing my humanity. My pilgrimage continues on a road growing ever wider as it narrows.

The Master Says 072

My only goal is to have no goals. The goal, every time, is that film, that very moment.

Bernardo Bertolucci

The Master Says 071

In carrying on my own humble creative effort, I depend greatly upon that which i do not yet know, and upon which that I have not yet done.

Max Weber

The Master Says 070

I have been perhaps slow to realize that the facts are always friendly. Every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true. And being closer to the truth can never be a harmful or dangerous or unsatisfying thing. So while I still hate to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up old ways of perception and conceptualizing; at a deeper level I have, to a considerable degree, come to realize that these painful reorganizations are what is known as learning, and that though painful they always lead to a more satisfying and more accurate way of seeing life.

Carl R. Rogers

The Master Says 069

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all art and science.

Albert Einstein

The Master Says 068

I see no dividing line between imagination and reality.

Federico Fellini

The Master Says 067

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police, but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship'; we call it 'concern for commercial viability'.

David Mamet

The Master Says 066

Cut for proper values rather than for proper matches.

Edward Dmytryk

The Master Says 065

So quite a lot of people who've come into cinema from the commercials world have had to learn the very fact of what cinematography is over again.

Nicolas Roeg

The Master Says 064

I just always think, "Do I like it?" And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.

Billy Wilder

The Master Says 063

The real truth is that I didn't want to (advance his filmmaking career). As an assistant I could drink all I wanted and spend my time talking. As a director I'd have to stay up all night working on continuity. Still, my friends told me to go ahead and give it a try.

Yasujiro Ozu

The Master Says 062

And that's what I hate, you know. Talking - it's real dangerous.

David Lynch

Folk Wisdom 017

Life has no meaning, but we must give it one.

Charlie Chaplin