The Most Important Thing

You know, I've been doing my best to be consistent with coming up with ideas. Any idea. One idea a day since 2007.

It's been rough sometimes.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I like to plan out how the ideas get executed. I always told myself that if I wasn't loyal, the idea well will dry up.

But at this time, I notice that not everything works all of the time. Sometimes, it doesn't work out.

You move onto other things. You live. You learn.

But, I notice that a good eighty percent of the time, you need to work on the idea and finish it when the passion comes in.

That can be hard for those endurance runs. Those multi-day film shoots. Those multi-month editing sessions. Those yearlong distribution deals.

That's why what you're working on has to be good. You have to respect yourself as an artist in that way. You gotta call people on their bullshit when they give you some whack shit that they themselves have no financial responsibility in. Your sanity is not worth giving up for a minor role that probably won't get your foot in the door.

Next time a child star goes crazy, look at the last movie they were in. If I was in So Undercover or Shipwrecked, I'd lose my fucking mind too.

So many people would rather kill themselves than speak in public. Let alone speaking in public when they're ten. 

Not just speaking in public, making people laugh in public. Shit's hard boo.

And you keep doing it until you're in your late twenties. Laugh Factory. Stress Factory. Feeling like a depressed product. Of course you do.

People are full of shit. If you make complaints, I'm bringing up your resume. Complaining about Christopher Nolan when you shoot cell phone videos vertically, go fuck yourself.

Don't give in to validation. Validation is overrated.

Whatever, fuck your friends and your retweets. No one is going to give it, you're going to have to take it.

No one wants to be criticized over a piece of shit they weren't even a smidge passionate about.

And if your friends are doing you a favor and working on your thing, you have to make it meaningful. You have to be Phil Jackson about it. James Cameron, Napoleon. Be in the trenches with your boys.

If you're the leader of a project, you gotta be passionate. This might be my opinion, but I think the passion overrides everything. I think you have to be smart and literate about what you're working on too, but the passion has to come through. It comes through in the little things. You listen to people. You figure out what your team's strengths are and try to accommodate for it.

A lot of people don't care. And then everything falls apart. They don't listen to people. There's something off about what they're working on and they think they can deflect blame onto everybody else. Nobody wants to work on it because deep down they think it sucks, but you're not doing anything to make it suck less.

Don't be offended. I did that too. Learn from it.

Budget is always gonna be an issue. Always will be. But if your enthusiasm comes through, you can overrule that.

Enthusiasm comes from truth.

It's that joke that addresses something "that's so true".

Not a lot of rock stars have gotten in trouble lately. But a lot of comedians have.

Because it's a comedian's job to tell the truth. Truth scares people.

Anything that lasts the test of time speaks to a truth. A vibe.

Something that makes you give a fuck.

Can A Blog Be Finished?

You know,

I've been working this blog for a little bit now.

I actually started a couple prototype blogs back in high school. They were little interesting things, but I discontinued those for a myriad of reasons. Reasons that don't seem significant now. Reasons that I should have walked out of, had I had the hindsight that I do now.

For the last year or so, I've had the trouble of creating content for this blog.

I don't like the current community at large with their hashtag activism and their fake insincere bullshit.

I don't like the term "entitled", but I will say this about my generation:

We're not the kind of people that will play through a losing game of Madden/FIFA/NBA 2K.

When things get bad, we turn it off. I include myself in that.

We try to change the law when it's convenient for us, and change it back when it's inconvenient for us.

Again, this could have been happening for thousands of years, but this is something I've noticed within ourselves.

And being that we (not just my generation, but society as a whole) are sore losers that cannot tolerate different opinions on subjective matters, it's hard to create content in a non-scorn environment.

I remember, I think it was a while ago when the World Cup was going on. A lot of Americans proposed that soccer/futbol have either a shot clock or a smaller field to make the game more exciting. Someone on Twitter voiced their opinion saying that this game should not change its rules, since it would be doing so for people who did not enjoy the game in the first place.

A rant like that is fine, but one must then understand that if you don't want people who despise your sport to change it, you're going to have to live the rest of your life understanding that there's going to be things that you enjoy that other people do not like.

Anyway...

A lot of blogs on the Internet that seem to go for years without any new content do so under the terms that blogs are never really finished. If there's always tomorrow, there's always going to be the need for a new blog post.

That can be intimidating/stressful for an individual that does not write under those guidelines. We are a scumbag inconsistent society. Perhaps inconsistency is needed for society at large to function, but we will complain about movie sequels and yet be angry at a blog for changing its style away from what it originally was.

You outline a novel. You plot a novel. You finish a novel.

You plan a film. You have a lot of meetings. The transition from pre-production to production is the hardest. Once you get over that hurdle, you deal with filming. Kubrick compared it with writing a novel over a furnace while taking a break to write other parts in a blizzard.

Then a film goes out to distribution. The distribution model was different in the 1940s, which was completely different in the 1970s, which was different in 2003, which is an everchanging math problem now. You can't figure out those answers in a book. You can only do it from experience.

Once a book on current film distribution is released, the game has already changed.

But even that's doable. That has a conclusion.

Blogging doesn't have a conclusion. It just keeps going on.

And it's not like a tweet. Tweets are simple. Popcorn is simple. Sugar is simple. Simple carbohydrates. They digest easily.

And most websites about maintaining a blog always focus on businesses that maintain blogs.

Who the hell seeks enjoyment on the niche business examples they use for blogging?

Why are you people creating a YouTube channel for oddity businesses? That's so lame. I feel it in my gut. My inability to care.

Really? An entire YouTube channel about lawncare? And you're angry and looking for ways to create content for this? And you wonder why you can't have numbers that can compete with Austin Mahone? Honestly?

VladTV stretches their interviews, and they're actually interesting most of the time.

Lawncare. A YouTube channel on lawncare. And you're complaining about a lack of viewers and how hard maintaining a YouTube channel is.

I need Sam Kinison to scream "It's fucking lawncare!".

I'm sorry, I'm just whatevered out by some people.

They opened up with a crappy idea.

A lot of times when you pursue something, the idea is the best part and it goes downhill from there. Hitchcock said this, and he's the greatest filmmaker ever. A YouTube channel on lawncare? No, I'm not done, I can't deal with this right now.

Can't you just do a normal sketch comedy channel and that have it be sponsored by the lawncare people? That could work. Why do you go and do things with which you know you're not going to get out of?

Anyway...

A lot of things end. Endings are good. The Lord of The Rings, despite having four endings, concluded.

I plotted Stickup. I finished Stickup. If I made it a once a week thing forever and ever, I would have never started. Finite's how I work. I like to split tasks in half. I can't split eternity without creating a nuclear disaster.

So, in the tradition of many a rock and roll farewell tour, I ask "Can a blog be done?".