I think that this is something that anyone, no matter what field they work in, should strive for, and it is something that I have rarely felt after finishing a film. I want to be satisfied as a filmmaker, but I'm not with any of the films I have currently made. While there are some films that I'm more satisfied with than others, as a whole none of them really speak to me 100%, so I've been sitting around recently, mulling over this question as to why I have no personal satisfaction with my work, and I recently had an epiphany.
I had let the whole process of filmmaking and my perverted artistic delusions of grandeur mire my own work, and the results is that I had lost the zest that made me want to make films in the first place.
All of these thoughts of dissatisfaction were sparked from my latest two films: Lost & Found and Heaven's Touch, neither of which lived up to my expectations at all. So for months upon months I've been scratching my head, and searching for the answer as to why I was not satisfied as a filmmaker, and this morning as I was reading the latest issue of Creative Screenwriting, it just hit me like a bolt of lightning.
Screenwriter Scott Caan was talking about how a few years ago he wrote a script for filmmaker Werner Herzog, but when Herzog read the script, he liked it, but felt that he wasn't right to direct it. Caan told Herzog he could rewrite it to let it fit Herzog's style and vision more, but Herzog merely replied, stating, "There is no such thing as rewriting." Caan went on to re-iterate that what Herzog really meant was that if you alter your story to appease someone else, then it ultimately is no longer your story, and for some odd reason, this article had a profound impact upon me, as if all those gears that were just grinding away in my head, finally got clicking for real.
The reason I was dissatisfied with Heaven's Touch was for the above-mentioned reason that Caan ran into. I changed my initial vision, my initial story to do two things: to make it more in keeping with the style of things my producer liked doing, and to transform a fantastic feature length story into a cheesy, short subject. My dissatisfaction all stemmed from the fact that I had forgotten what I initially wanted, and when I had remembered what it is I wanted, it was all but too late. Of course, that is not the only reason I was dissatisfied, Caan's comments was just the springboard to the real meat of my recent epiphany.
In my deep thought, I had come to the realization that I had forgotten the reason as to why I wanted to be a filmmaker in the first place. To remember, I had to go back to why I loved movies, to remember how a film can magically transport you to a different time and place and sweep you away within the raw emotional power of a fantastic story. I had forgotten that, this is why I have no satisfaction as a filmmaker.
In a way, I had developed an ego. As I've gotten older, I've tried to broaden my range as a filmgoer in terms of what I watch, and while I have done just that, I had created a touch of an ego having seen many films that a great many of my peers had never seen, so I felt as if I was elite, and knew more than they did. In a sense, I had become the very thing I wished to never become, pretentious. But I've never wanted to be the student of Jean Luc Godard, but the student of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I had forgotten about entertainment.
Through an ego, I had become obsessed with these artistic fantasies, I thought myself an artist, an auteur (which I had made a post a few weeks back deriding me as such), and now I just see how full of it I was. I had this thought, that even if the film didn't match my initial story idea, I was artistic enough to take whatever I had and make it into a film, and that is how I wound up with Lost & Found and Heaven's Touch. My ego had gotten the best of me and I had made two films that I am not satisfied with and are not entertaining.
To me, all of the best films are entertaining. I've never watched movies to fuel my thought, I watch movies cause I wanna laugh, cry, or cheer the hero. I had forgotten. I just want to be entertained, and I was not making films that were entertaining me, so that is what I want to do from now on. In a way, it's not about me moving forward as a filmmaker, but in all actuality, it is about me moving back, back to the film-obsessed teen who declared he wanted to be a filmmaker after doing a report on George Lucas in the 9th Grade. Back then, I came up with film ideas that entertained me, not film ideas that I thought would make great artistic statements, but film ideas that I knew if I made 'em, I'd laugh, cry, or cheer. That is what I want.
So my point. I'm not an artist, but an entertainer, and I must never forget that again.
I think that's probably one of the truest things ever. You have to make things that you want to make and when those things change too far from your original direction it becomes easy to become lost in trying to get back to a point of origin. It's a near impossible feat to see a script go exactly from paper to whatever you envisioned it looking like. It has to exchange through so many hands in the process it's a wonder it comes out looking anything like the script at all, but it does. To be a film maker you have to be a collaborator and that's something that's really hard to do. Everyone has ego problems in this industry. You just need to figure out where you need to stand up for yourself and your ideas and where you can afford to compromise. It's not possible to make anything worth anything with 100% of both. So pick your battles and fight well!
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