Burning the house down
Hello, friends!
In the last public issue of this newsletter, I mentioned that the startup for which I’d worked was closing down, and that I was a bit distracted/weary from the resulting job search. Happily, I found a safe landing with another very exciting startup, and negotiated an early October start, to give myself a bit of time to rest and reset. I’ve slept in. I’ve taken many naps. I’ve had movie marathons with Felicia and Squish. I’ve completed another part of The Dark Age, or at least a first draft. I’ve gone for long drives, and read a lot of books. And I still have about two weeks of downtime remaining.
I’ve started listening to podcasts again. I’ve been catching up on two in particular: How I Built This and The Director’s Cut. In the former, Guy Raz has long and interesting conversations with entrepreneurs and founders about their businesses and how they succeeded; I love stories like this, despite not being a founder myself. In the latter, which is sponsored by the Director’s Guild of America, two film directors sit down to chat about one of their latest movies; the ensuing conversation leads to a lot of interesting insights, as directors ask each other questions that are very different from what a typical interviewer might ask.
In the Feb. 3 episode of How I Built This, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan talks about self-doubt and anxiety about whether he’s actually good at what he does:
I don’t know if this is healthy or not, but every single time I go, ‘This is the last movie that they’ll ever let me make. This is the one’ and ‘Is that okay?’ So…Make it so that it’s okay. That if this was the last one, you put it all there. Wow, I’m ready to burn the house down for this value system that I showed artistically in this movie. And if that means that’s the end, then…no problem. And so each movie is like that, that anxiety.
It’s a common notion, right? “Leave it all on the field”. Or, as Felicia said when I shared it with her, “Live each moment like it’s your last.” We’ve heard it before, but it’s always pretty great to hear it from someone with a significant track record.
Shyamalan’s a director who experienced a large amount of success early on (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, etc.), then endured a lot of critical and commercial failure (The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth, etc.)…and actually seems to have examined that failure and extracted real lessons from it. His comments here reminded me of something he said a couple of years ago:
Failure is very cleansing, and success is very confusing.
That comes from a Vulture interview he did in 2019. There, and in the podcast, too, he also talks about how he organizes his thoughts and process into columns. One column is filled with things he has control over, while the other includes things beyond his ability to truly affect. The words he writes, for example, are in the first column; how many distributors are interested in making a deal for the movie, or how many theaters his movie will open in, that’s in the second.
If you, like me, make things and struggle with whether the things you make are worthwhile, then I suggest checking out the Vulture piece and the How I Built This episode. Guy Raz says this in that episode:
I’m often asked what makes a good leader, and one of the first things I say is ‘self-doubt’ and the ability to interrogate yourself and your own wisdom. … Your films have grossed three billion dollars. So people watching this…are looking at you and saying ‘Thank you for saying that’. It’s amazing to hear somebody whose films have grossed three billion dollars who still constantly has anxiety about whether he’s good at what he does.
Maybe the anxiety part of it all doesn’t sound so great. But that bit about interrogating yourself. That’s just essential to basic growth as a person. The ability to uncover the very hard truths about yourself, your abilities, your actions, and then put those realizations to work for you, instead of letting them demolish you, is part of gradually becoming a better human as well as a better artist.
Hey, on another note, if you haven’t yet subscribed to the members edition of this newsletter—every other week I share my process of writing my current novel, The Dark Age—I recommend jumping in! I’ve shared a few excerpts of the novel-in-progress so far, and starting with next week’s issue, I’ll be sharing some exercises I did to help me understand the characters and their role in the story I wanted to tell. It’s messy, useful stuff, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Here’s how to get it!
Have a terrific week! I’ll be back in your inbox soon.
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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