Troubleshooting Life 179, June 27 - Embrace the region you come from
This is 1 out of 366 pages from my upcoming book "Troubleshooting Life."
1 page a day, 300 words or less, focused on education, entertainment, or enlightenment.
8:16pm
Took some videos with my iPhone in my New Jersey hometown.
I thought my camerawork was good.
Now I’m reading Steven Soderbergh’s advice to filmmakers on LA Times.
Soderbergh talks about this Andrew Patterson movie he saw, The Vast of Night, just ahead of its premiere.
He said there are three components to directing that a filmmaker should grasp:
narrative
performance
the camera
Soderbergh says there have been very good people who’ve had very good careers knowing one or two of those things.
But it is rare to see somebody have a grasp of all three like Andrew Patterson showed in this film, especially somebody who’d never made a feature before.
He talks about how one of the first things he did after “Sex, Lies and Videotape” emerged was moving back to Charlottesville, Virginia, to get married.
He felt that hanging out and becoming a social Hollywood person was not going to help his artistry.
So he stepped away from Hollywood, and embraced being a “regional filmmaker” who spends a lot of time living outside of the film business. Though he does now live in New York.
Reader, movies are a disease. The only cure is more movies.
One lesson I learned from watching many great films is, your films reflect you and your region.
Scorsese, New York.
Coogler, Bay Area.
Stallone, Philadelphia.
Rodriguez, San Antonio.
Kevin Smith, New Jersey.
Rajkumar Hirani, Nagpur.
ACTION POINT: Embrace the region you come from
