During this Fast Company interview, the fantastic and fantastical director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, Hellboy, Blade 2 etc) talks about the experience of being hired by Peter Jackson to direct the Hobbit, working on it for two years and then Peter Jackson deciding to direct it himself. He is inspirational in his no matter what, I am going to keep forward, I am going to prevail attitude.
‘Embrace Failure
I think it’s essential to fuck up. I think of failure as latent success. Any experience in life is neutral. You can tint it as a piece of learning or you tint it as a piece of misinformation.
I thank God for the two years I spent in New Zealand working on The Hobbit, scouting, designing, breaking bread with the geniuses at WETA, having afternoons of elucidating stories with Peter (Jackson), Phillipa (Boyens) and Fran (Walsh). I can not measure it only by: ‘Did I direct the movie or did I not direct the movie?’ I grew up as a filmmaker.
Now, is it a heartache? Oh yeah. It’s huge. It’s painful. But you learn from it. If all you think about is success rather than fulfillment, that’s a dangerous coin you’re dealing with. That kind of success has a horrible exchange rate of currency. Horrible. It’s never going to be enough to pay the debts you have in your soul as an artist.”
Find Yourself in the Story
We tell stories because we have a hollow place in our heart. You don’t fill that with success.You fill it by finding yourself in the stories you tell. They can be viewed by 10 people, or they can be viewed by 10 million people.
When we showed Cronos to the head of the Mexican film Institute, he said this movie’s going to go nowhere blah blah blah. I memorialized that day in my notebook because I said “I have to out live this day.”
Everybody reads the reviews; it’s inevitable. But how you end up filing that in your heart is very important. Don’t file it under “I must stop.” File it under “Fuck it, I’m going to prevail.””
Link to full article Guillermo del Toro Shares 14 Creative Insights From His Spectacular Cabinet Of Curiosities Sketch Book | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce.
Have a great weekend everyone ;-). I did a very interesting couple of workshops this week: one with a casting director and one with a very experienced British Television director. As always, you realise that your view on a character may be millions of miles away from what ‘they’ are envisioning and this can be both a good or bad thing.
I realised that television, even more than film, is full of stock characters and if I want to do a lot of television I had better learn to take the stock characters and then add. Stock characters such as the Comedia ones so the frisky maid, the grandfather etc. To take this further, for example in playing a lawyer, to use some of the standard lawyer TV tricks can really help (pencil rolling, paper shuffling etc).
I am not sure how far I want to go in this, it is that trade off between being an ‘artiste’ and a commercial actor and why lots of actors and directors chose to make their own work. TV has to tell the story quickly and the audiences do not want to think as much, they just want to engage (yes there are notable exceptions eg the TV series LOST, but that very confusion as to what was going on was it’s USP.)
I guess we all get to chose where we want to draw the line on this. So I have some thinking to do!
What is the project you are hiding from because of the work involved, the possibility of failure, the possibility that you are not good enough, technically or mentally able to pull it off. I have one such project staring at me down the barrel of a gun. However I know I have no choice but to start the process of brain storming about it at the very least.
Tags: Becoming successful, Commedia, creative techniques, creativity, director, dream and take action, Film director, Fran, Guillermo del Toro, It's 'Show Business' not 'Show Art', J. R. R. Tolkien, Lost TV series, Master Class Guillermo del Toro, New Zealand, Pan's Labyrinth, Peter Jackson, pick yourself up, Ron Perlman, showing your work, Stock characters, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, TV directing, Walsh, WETA
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