What's Really Good? #2

Ok, so as I’ve stated previously, I am a filmmaker. Because I am an upcoming filmmaker, I felt it would be a great idea to meet and associate other up and coming filmmakers. After all, isn’t that what is suggested in any field you want to go into? Find someone who does what you want to do and get in touch? Anyway, I found this guy a while ago and seeing as he is also a young black filmmaker from Detroit; I thought it might be in good interest to contact him, not for advice or anything, just to hear his experiences and just talk to each other as colleagues.

So, earlier this week, I sent out a note on facebook telling all of my “friends” that my movie was going to premiere and if they were interested, they could come see it. From there is when we really started to talk and only a few minutes in did I realize what a horrible mistake it was to ever contact him.

He asked me if I wanted to be a director when “I grew up” and if I knew that’s what he did. First of all, I’m 19; I’m as grown as I’m ever going to get, don’t patronize me. Secondly, that was the only reason I asked to be his friend, him being a director. Maybe he thought I was on some groupie shit or something, I dunno. He asked me if I was going to school for it and thinking he too went to Wayne State, like I do, I made mention of the intro class and one of the professors. I had made this assumption because in some of his videos, I had recognized some Wayne State landmarks and it never occurred to me that anyone who didn’t go to Wayne State would come here to film a movie, especially since one of them is centered around a gung-ho security guard.

After he had straightened me out on where he did go, I casually began to talk about how when I was in production, I asked over 100 people if they were interested in being in my film and out of the 20 who said they were, only six showed up. At this point was when I felt the hostility started. He then began to talk to me as if I was stupid and I felt as if he was steamrolling over me whenever I said something. He went into how he spent 2,000$ setting up a showcase of his films at a theater, asked 7,000 people to attend and only 30 came. He said he scoffed at my disappointment.

He then went into how he got out of Detroit because it’s a “crabs in a barrel” city that he had to leave because unless you’re shooting something major, you’re just “a nigga with a camera” and that he puts his faith in “women and white boys” to show up in his movies while it was just the opposite for me: I asked damn near EVERYBODY I knew and only five black guys came.

Anyway, deeper into conversation, he started telling me how hard it would be for me to be a successful filmmaker, since I am a black female, AS IF I didn’t already know. (And apparently, he’s never heard of Kasi Lemmons, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Maya Angelou, Euzhan Palcy, Debbie Allen, Neema Barnette, Troy Breyer, and of course, many more) He was saying I could never bomb and all this other pessimistic truth. I agreed with him by saying, “yeah, it’s not very encouraging”, referring of course, to the way things are, but then he must have misconstrued what I said because he replied with something like, “this isn’t supposed to be encouraging”, like, I ever asked for HIS encouragement.

Deeper still in conversation, I told him how my intro instructor was a woman, but the best one to take was this other lady. This is when he told me that I had to learn filmmaking from a white man. That’s so much bullshit; I don’t even know where to start. He told me that when someone said that to him, it offended him too, but it must not have offended him that much to the point where he took their advice and then turned around and repeated it as if it were the gospel truth. Just because white men are usually the ones who get the most opportunities to make the films they want doesn’t make them the end-all authority on the subject of filmmaking. He told me that I should “stop trying to fight the power,” spoken like a true King Crab Tom.

The only way to change things is to fight, revolution is evolution.

He went on to say that women were good at the small aspects of production, like costume design and script supervisor, but weren’t the ones to see about “behind the camera work.” Again, apparently he never heard of Dorothy Arzner, Jane Campion, Asia Argento, Virginie Despentes, Sofia Coppola, Alice Guy, Agnès Varda, Julie Taymor, and of course, a whole score of others.

He also never seemed to know that major studios used to only hire women to be their editors, as editing was seen as women’s work since you had to weave and piece together the film, like sewing. Editing is, arguably, the most important part of filmmaking, perhaps second to directing. Women edited Jaws, American Graffiti, Paper Moon, Bonnie and Clyde, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, a woman edits every single one of Quentin Tarantino’s films!

He would also tell me that racist cliché of “Jews run Hollywood”, a page taken straight out of the gospel according to Mel “sugartits / sonuvanazi” Gibson. Now, although there is truth to this, I don’t think this is an important thing to bring up since Jews do not implement their religion or lifestyle into anything Hollywood produced and it’s hard to actually find creditable evidence of this without something reading like propaganda commissioned by Goebbels.

SIDE NOTE: Jews also came up Superman, The Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, and Spider-Man.

This led to a brief discussion about Megan Fox, an “actress” I neither find attractive, (to me, she bears an uncanny resemblance to Nic Cage) or a decent thespian. He defended her beauty, but not my point that her acting was weak. He called me a “hater”. Well, if wanted a so-called “actress” to do her damn job and be more than some pretty plaything, then I’m a hater. But from a directing standpoint, if you can’t do a damn thing for me, I can’t do a damn thing for you. He must be the same kind of person who would go on and on over how beautiful Halle Berry is and then tack on at the last instance, “oh yeah, she’s a good actress, too,” but that’s another story.

So, cut to when I was finally able to put my film on facebook and youtube. All of the people who saw it gave me positive feedback, even my mother, who I honestly didn’t expect to dig it so much. Then he sees it and gives me some comments / issues he had, that I never asked for, by the way. And first of all, he, for some reason, had a hard time finding my video on my facebook page, which is strange because all of the people who did see it before him, never expressed their difficulty in finding it. He made mention of this on the note I used to tag everyone so they could see it and I said, “there’s always one person…” (meaning there’s always that one who is difficult. Y'know, like the kid who can never open his milk carton by himself or tie his own laces. It seemed to me as if I was wasting his time, but I’m not apologizing for that) and he came back with, “who wants to help you?” HMM!

Mostly, it was little things, like, “why does the first professor look like he’s twenty?”, “lol @ 'But We're Married On FaceBook!'. And all that stuff that the 2nd teacher was talking about sounded MAD confusing. Was it real information?”, “The main actress has REALLY BIG breast though! MMmmmmm.” (apparently, my poor sister only has one huge tit and of course he would only be concerned with her physical appearance), and “I LOVED THE ENDING!!”, but then, he also got on how I cut the scene between Seth and Dolores, how the classroom scene goes on for “too long", and how I chose to get rid of the audio for some scenes. I would later go and explain and answer all that he raised in the most polite way possible, even though his suggestion that “If you wanted the shot @ 1:14 to last a long time, speed it up by showing a clock moving forward really fast” sounds so laughable bad and corny that I cringed, and I thanked him for his comments, though I didn’t ask for them, didn’t need them.

He then came back saying that the things he said about my cutting/editing, long shots, and no audio were not questions or concerns, but “FACTUAL ERRORS.” These things were all style choices that I made and when I responded with, “I thought the director could make the film they wanted,” he came back with basically “no style can excuse bad filmmaking.”

Oh, for real?

I wrote out a response to him, but decided against sending it because if it’s one thing I learned it’s never argue with a fool, especially a Tom.

Now, wait, let’s go back. First of all, there is no such thing as FACTUAL ERRORS in filmmaking, it’s not a science, it’s an art. A filmmaker can do no wrong when it comes to their art. Someone can show you how to use a camera, but whatever you do with it is all up to you and I’m sorry your white man never taught you that.

Where is it written that cuts or edits have to be a certain way, that a scene should hold for ‘x’ amount of time, or that there such be music/audio in every shot? I don’t think it’s written anywhere and if it is, it’s not a law, and if it is, I don’t have to follow it.

I don’t say this a lot, I try not to, but NIGGA, PLEASE!

I’m the filmmaker, I can do whatever the fuck I want with MY art.

You want to work with things that are set in rules, go into engineering, calculus, or even journalism, (which, have also experienced there own rule breakers), you should probably get out of filmmaking because nobody follows “the rules”. Unless you’re my producer or studio and you’re paying me for a job, you have no right to tell me what I can and cannot do.

If I wanted, I could walk on the warpath and totally tear his work to pieces, but as an artist, I have no right. Who am I to say that his artistic view is wrong just because I disagree?

The thing that really burns my grits is how absolute he said that my style is bad filmmaking, like he’s the GOD of cinema. Why? Just because I felt the scene needed to draaaaaaaaaaag and that I thought no sound was a much better touch than Skittles rattling around in the bag or the annoying hum of an air conditioner and I didn't want to slather music all around it to fill the void?

So, was it also bad filmmaking when Martin Scorsese opted to use black and white in Raging Bull when color had been around since the 30’s or filmed his fight scenes in slow motion when regular or faster motion might have been better choices, all in the sake of style? Was it bad filmmaking when Jean-Luc Godard broke the rules of classical Hollywood cinema with the way he edited Breathless?

Film is an art, saying there are rules is like saying a painter is limited to a certain kind of paint and brush, singers have to sing in this note, actors have to act like this and this way only, sculptors can only use this clay, authors have to write novels and poems like this or like that, but not both.

You sound like a fool and ultimately, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

You have your ways and I have mine and neither is incorrect, in contrast, to whatever you think or whatever the white man taught you.

Now, I don’t want to be called racist or make it seem as if I’m discrediting the accomplishments of white directors. I’ve learned from the white man as well: Quentin Tarantino taught me that I can have ridiculously long takes of dialogue that may bore the audience (see Death Proof), or that if I so choose, I can mutilate or kill someone to some obscure happy pop song (see Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Death Proof). Martin Scorsese taught me that I can freeze frame my shots and put character’s narration over it (see Goodfellas, Casino)and that I can use super slow motion (see Casino, The Departed, and Raging Bull) and use fast jump cuts when I edit (Goodfellas, Casino). Wes Anderson says I can use an entire soundtrack of David Bowie songs performed by a Brazilian artist to narrate my film (Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) and that I can have someone commit suicide in a highly glamorized way or have a too long scene of someone getting off a bus (Royal Tenenbaums). Jonathan Demme showed me that I can show extreme close-ups of people talking or listening (see Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia).

But, I also learn from the black man: Spike Lee showed me I can have people float down the street and preach throughout an entire three hour feature film (just about any Spike Lee Joint), black brothers: The Hughes Brothers taught me that I can make a movie about urban crime (Dead Presidents, Menace II Society) and then make a movie about Victorian crime (From Hell), the asian: Wong Kar-wai showed me that I can be very visual and stylized, even if it draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags the story out (Happy Together, Days of Being Wild, 2064, Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love), the Jew: Steven Spielberg (the mightiest Jew in all of Hollywood) proved that you can make an excellent film with an all black cast that will get you nominated for eleven Oscars, but not only will you not win a single one, not everyone will be pleased with the film (The Color Purple), the Frenchman: Luc Besson taught me that I can be diverse and I shouldn't want to be labeled (view his entire body of work), the Frenchwoman: Viriginie Despentes taught me that I don’t have to be afraid to be graphic (Baise-Moi), the Italian: Dario Argento showed me that I can glamorized my horror (any one of his films) and if I want, exploit a close family member by showing her naked or being raped (Trauma, Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of the Opera, all with daughter Asia).

Who are you anyway to say my techniques are “bad filmmaking” just because they go against your school of teaching? It reminds me very much of what Liz said about English teachers (or at least, Hollywood Shuffle).

My shots were in focus, no booms in the shot, acting was more than decent, my lighting was pretty good, my sound was pretty damn good. I spent a week, every day, five hours at a time editing this. For my first ever film, I think I did a better than decent job.

Do I have more to learn, sure, but please don’t come at me like I don’t know what I’m doing.

I don’t do this film thing because someone told me this is the way it is supposed to be or I must do this exactly like this, I do this with my heart and if that’s not good enough for you, I won’t even have the decency to apologize.

I was raised by two stubborn people who told me that there was nothing I couldn’t do so you can’t tell me nothing.

And if I am a perpetrator of “bad filmmaking”, so what? Uwe Boll is NOTORIOUS for his awful movies, but yet, bold as sin, he defends his films and has an audience, as evident by the producers who continue to fund his projects. And also, I appear to have an audience since the feedback I’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. So, irregardless of his nitpicking of my so-called FACTUAL ERRORS, I, and my audience, like it. He could bring an entire army of white male filmmakers to shout me down to say I’m wrong, but I’m standing firm.

Do what you do and I’ll do what I want. Though I disagree with his style choices, I would never critique him and write it off as bad filmmaking.

OH, and he also picked issue with the fact that in IM conversations when I misspell a word I correct it with a plus (+) and not an asterisk (*). He obviously has a pattern, do it his way or it's wrong.

Funny how, when you’re not trying to please people, they think you are and complain like you care. And he might say he's just honest and I’m making something out of nothing and he’s just trying to help me, but it’s help I never asked for. There are two sides to every story and neither is incorrect.

All I can do is let a Tom be a Tom and let my art be mine.

And if you want to avoid bad filmmaking, never watch movies by Ralph Bakshi, the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Gregg Araki...you know what, you're probably better off not watching movies at all.