Inspirational words on filmmaking by the great Joe Bob Briggs (John Irving Bloom)
There’s always that one guy who wants to talk to me about his movie and then he gives a hundred reasons why he can’t make the movie. He has no money, he can’t afford a fancy Film School. He doesn’t know anybody in Hollywood. His friends and family roll their eyes every time he talks about his movie because it’s taken so long and they don’t really think he’ll ever make it. He’s not really a writer or director, he works at an auto body repair shop and he hates his job. However, he has to keep doing it because he has a kid to support and a ridiculous amount of student loans and so, how could he ever find the time to work on his film.
This gives me a chance to say to every “aspiring” filmmaker who watches my show because that’s what they call themselves “aspiring” filmmakers when they talk to me. I’m gonna say right now what I say to every one of them. Here’s how to make your movie, first of all stop being an “aspiring filmmaker. Never again use the word “aspiring”. When you wake up tomorrow morning and every day after that you’re a director.
You may do any number of jobs to make money but the first thing you do every day is you plan your writing and your directing and your producing work for that day. I don’t care if you only have ten minutes of free time you devote that time to your movie because you’re a filmmaker that’s your real job. You’re not an auto body repair man. Call yourself a filmmaker and make filmmaking decisions.
Oh it’s not 1970, you don’t need a fancy film school. Anything you don’t know is on the internet or at the library. We no longer live in a world where you have to go to USC or NYU to get noticed. If you can afford film school, there are at least 30 outstanding ones. If you can’t, don’t sweat it, you’re gonna homeschool yourself. You’re gonna know everything there is to know about lenses, aspect ratios types of cameras, lighting schemes production design, acting, art direction, screenwriting, story structure, and all the other aspects of film that were once such well guarded secrets that you had to apprentice in a union to learn them. All that knowledge is yours just go get it. There’s no excuse for you knowing less about filmmaking than Quentin Tarantino or John Carpenter or Martin Scorsese.
There is no Hollywood the worst thing you could do than move to LA and get lost in the crowd of confused seekers out there. Lloyd Kaufman has been involved with a thousand films but he started with a cheap comedy about a women’s softball team that nobody in Hollywood wanted. When you make your movie you’re already standing at Hollywood and Vine. You don’t need money, stop using that as an excuse. Great scripts don’t cost anything. Learn to write one. Cameras cost 1% of what they cost 20 years ago. Editing software is free. Professional editing software is so cheap you can probably skip one night at the bar to pay for it. There are great actors in your community. Scour the college drama departments and you’ll find them. When people start seeing your devotion to the project more money will appear. Field of Dreams is not a film about baseball. It’s a film about building the stadium.
Finally, be prepared to fall on your face. Be prepared to fall on your face over and over again. Be prepared to write a crappy script and then rewrite it into a crappier script and then rewrite it again before you start to discover what’s wrong with it. Be prepared to be unprepared until you figure out how production planning works. Be prepared to fail for a day or a week or a year but don’t ever say I’m not a filmmaker
You’re a filmmaker. That’s what filmmakers do, they fail until they don’t and then send me your movie because believe it or not I’m dying to see it. We all are. We just didn’t know it until you made it, ok.
Joe Bob Briggs
