Lately I've been having a lot conversations with filmmakers just a few years behind myself, about how they're looking for their opportunity to get into production on their first film, get into a leading role, get behind the camera of a music video, or find good representation so they can finally get their career started.
Obviously, I've also been posting a lot lately on the importance of entrepreneurism as an alternative to all that waiting and looking for opportunity. If there's one thing I hope people take from this blog, it's that people create their own opportunities.
In my life, one of the most inspirational and challenging stories on that very subject is the story of how Jacques Cousteau made his first movie about sunken wrecks off the coast of France.
We've all heard the story about how Robert Rodriguez sold his body to a lab for drug-testing to fulfill the budget for El Mariachi, yes? If you haven't, it's a story Mr. Rodriguez used to promote the film, and has since used as an example of how making movies means thinking outside the box.
Robert Rodriguez, I adore your work and support your endeavors. And I apologize upfront - because if you haven't heard it, Jacques Cousteau's story makes you look like a pansy.
It makes us all look like pansies, in fact. That's the point.
When Jacques Cousteau was first building his plan for the production of this film, it was the early 1940's. Over the few years prior, he'd been working with a small group of developers on the aqualung, had been exploring it's uses and limitations, and had successfully shot underwater footage with it.
Then the Nazis marched into Paris, took over his country, and put everyone on government ration programs. Guess what? Underwater movies about shipwrecks weren't high on the Nazi agenda in terms of resources. Strictly speaking, Cousteau's movie was over before it even got started.
Except it wasn't. Cousteau started raiding Nazi supply trains for food and equipment.
Ok, I'm going to say that again. COUSTEAU STARTED RAIDING NAZI SUPPLY TRAINS FOR FOOD AND EQUIPMENT.
Am I suggesting that this skinny Frenchman was stealing war supplies from the single most organized destructive effort ever to mar the face of our little green and blue marble TO MAKE A MOVIE?
No. I'm not suggesting that. I'm fucking telling you.
Here's the thing... They started shooting the film using these stolen Nazi supplies, and it wasn't enough. Literally, with all the swimming these guys were going, it was impossible to steal enough food to make up for the calories they were burning. Shooting this movie was starving Cousteau and his crew to death.
Do you think that stopped him?
Cousteau's reasoning was simple - if the fish can survive without starvation, so could he. Both he and his crew resolved to derive their sustenance from the sea. For a week or two, they tried fishing - but between the work of feeding themselves and shooting the film, they were still deep in the hole calorie-wise.
Seeing that, Cousteau and his crew began to watch the fish more closely. Slowly but surely, they learned to swim and hunt in the sea more efficiently - by mimicking the movements of the fish themselves. Like the ancient masters who invented the martial arts in China, Jacques Cousteau became a student of nature and was saved by it.
All so he could shoot his movie. Under the noses of the very Nazis he had stolen his equipment from, in the face of a horrible death by starvation, in the cold waters of the Atlantic, Jacques Cousteau gave himself completely to the process of creating art.
Are you seriously telling me that finding representation is the key to getting your career started?!! Do you really believe that "playing the game" is the best way to go?
This isn't Nazi-occupied France. Once we build a concrete plan to make our work sustainable, we basically have all the support we need.
If that's too much work for you, then you don't belong in the same theaters where Jacques Cousteau screened his films, or where Robert Rodriguez first unspooled El Mariachi... because that's exactly the level of commitment our audience deserves.
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