Thoughts On Why I'm Doing Film and/or Writing

With all of the twists and turns my life has gone through recently, I started re-evaluating what it was about film making or novel writing that makes me want to be involved in it. I mean I can watch movies and read books and evaluate and appreciate the nuances and subtleties of each form and each piece without devoting time to creating new content. Additionally I’m not going to count on or pine for clawing my way into the blockbuster/tent pole arena that seems like a natural ‘pipe dream’ of an aspirant film maker. So why do it?

I’ve thought a lot about this from a philosophical and a personal satisfaction viewpoint. I’ve been writing off and on for over 20 years and actively expanding my knowledge and participation in film making for the past five. Both activities have elements that are solitary and elements that are social. Writing is solitary, reading is solitary, being on-set is social, showing a film is either social or solitary, interacting with people who have read your stuff or seen your film is social.

Without going too deeply into a personal philosophical treatise on external motivation, self-awareness, the indoctrination of cultural norms and how these affect the relationship of the individual to society, mediated reality, and the question of free-will, I can say that I get a great deal of personal satisfaction creating stories and characters and settings and scenarios and would do this even if I were alone on an island (or space station) for the rest of my life. But I also enjoy the social aspects of debate and feedback and egoboo (ego boost) of others appreciating that you’ve done something well or at least in a way that made the experience fun for the group.

I also am a geek that likes to learn about, study, replicate and tinker with hardware, software, and techniques used in writing and film making.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try to tell some good stories in an interesting way and work with fun people to create stuff we can all be happy about. And if that makes money or becomes a full-time endeavor, that’s OK too.