There was a time when I wanted to be a big movie director.
I cherished escape into the big stories of the screen in my adolescence and young adulthood: ET the Extraterrestrial; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Color Purple. Steven Speilberg made me think I wanted to be Hollywood. I was pretty good as a creative writer and if life required a career, I could think of nothing better than directing movies: telling stories and sharing dreams with the world of movie-goers. In college, my tastes focussed and congealed. I discovered the subtleties of the art film: Brazil; Blood Simple; Birdy. My heroes were Terry Gilliam, the Coen brothers, Peter Greenaway, and Louis Malle.
In the late 80s, after a few years in school pursuing filmmaking, I lived in Los Angeles and worked in the film industry, copying and delivering scripts for a screenplay development company which had had success getting movies like Short Circuit made. While trying my own hand at writing, I felt tension between my own instincts to write spontaneously and creatively and the demands of my mentors, who were married to the Hollywood formulae (i.e. plot point: create an obstacle to the protagonist's intended goal on page blahblahblah.) While my efforts were encouraged, I felt the results were disingenuous.
At a time when I was becoming politically and environmentally aware through the International Green movement, I began to see the film industry as an incredibly resource-dependant and wasteful operation. The compromises I was encouraged to make by those who wished me success in the film-making world were antithetical to my new objectives: to remind humanity of our co-creative relationship with fate, and to convince individuals and industries to take responsibility for the resources we borrowed and ease the burden of our debt to future generations. Film seemed like it should be able to communicate ideas like this to the people who saw them. But that isn't how it works. Rarely are audiences moved to action by stories of bravery, courage, and resistance. Most come and go with their points-of-view intact, entertained or not, they return to the patterns of their lives, which will probably include going to see another movie next week for another $8 bucks. I ultimately stopped trying to come up with something creative and original with which to revolutionize an entrenched and profitable beast.
Through this whole experience, I unashamedly still found movies to be my favorite form of entertainment. New filmmakers appeared on my radar which challenged and moved, entertained and nourished me: Pedro Almodovar; Wes Anderson; p.t. anderson; Jane Campion; Richard Linklater; Steven Soderburg; Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I could count on the arthouses and video stores to get me what I couldn't always find at the local multi-screen cinema. I still see movies that encourage me and offer me hope, (most recently, I loved Stardust and Two Nights in Paris) but I'm dubious of the reasons why.
Today, watching a few previews online for films out now, I recognize myself in a frustrated attitude toward the medium. I generally have not been a fan of outright conflict-oriented films. High-action; romantic comedies; horror and slasher movies. The genre material routinely churned out by the industry are the very formula-driven stink-pie that drove me out of a career in that industry in the first place. But today, I am even more keenly aware of how our storytelling and mythmaking shape our culture by speaking to the individuals who go and see the movies.
As we sit in a darkened room staring at a wall of light and the shadows cast there, we invite our subconscious out to absorb someone else's dream of the world. It is a world made of pre-packaged, scripted, sweetened, and addictive elements; imaginative, stirring, riveting, and made only because an executive in a hi-rise on the west coast knew you'd buy a ticket or rent the video. Movies *have* changed the world, in exactly the way they'd hoped to. They're exciting to keep you coming back, without much care about what you do between now and the next time you send money to their accounting office. The markets have had their hand at co-creating us.
My interest now is in media that truly nourishes: that helps me become an agent of healing and compassion and sharing in the world. Stories and music and images that contribute to the construction of Paradise for Life on Planet Earth.
See ya at the movies.
