You wake up one day and you think, “what is life without happiness.” You pull the covers up over your head and attempt to go back to sleep. You then think, “why am I not at that place? When I can get back to shooting”. Shooting. Not a helpless animal, film. A small little family of filmmakers all there for the greater good. Well, our greater good is not the way you’d imagine. It is so much simpler. It isn’t about leaving behind those you love or forgetting life’s responsibilities – it is about tapping into a very secret world that exists between a small group of men and women. A world where color can tell an emotion or an angle can interpret loss or a smirk can mean the world is about to shift on its axis or the eye line that says, we’re going to make this work. A single editing choice that can tear out your heart or make you root for the protagonist. Then there is makeup and hair and wardrobe and the set designers and the incredible beauty they all create in order to invent a world otherwise nonexistent. Throw in music and well, your heartbeat now has its pulse. Even in reality, reality in the world of film is almost ethereal. It doesn’t matter if the story is about solitude or loneliness or grief of murder or war or angst or comedy or love or muse or art or family or intellect or spatial boundaries. The story is absolutely and utterly intoxicating to those behind the scenes. Now, I can’t say we haven’t all worked on films that were total crap and watched a story unfold that was lacking any conceivable sense of talent but it’s still strange how that family finds something to unite them. Film is a powerful medium to both show and affect an audience and bring together a group of artists that would otherwise never be understood.
As a writer, film is perfection. You can sit down and put words to paper and feel and see every fragment of what you write and then you generously hand it over to a Producer or a DP or a Director and then, when given to the right people, those that can understand and embrace the art of story, you see your words come to life – and they can be twisted and turned and made to be even more beautiful or impacting. You give your soul to the hands of someone else who then trusts their soul to another and so on. The wheel of filmmaking is all interconnected. No one survives without the other. Every part is equally valuable and in the end the result is the world you see on screen. A world that exhausted at least a hundred people, broke a budget, pushed the boundaries, told a tale, made you cry or laugh or smile or think, and really, that world – that world is the reason any one of us involved continually give up what hides deep inside. Those secret spaces within us only truly breathe when we hand them over to our film family.
And so then I beg the question once again: “what is life without happiness”. Nothing. Happiness is your form of happiness, not the definition of someone else’s happiness. Happiness is finding your voice and expressing it in your own way WITHOUT HARMING ANOTHER SOUL. Happiness is that moment when wake up with a smile on your face for no apparent reason. Happiness is when you know the dry spells will evaporate and in its place will be love and creativity and the fundamental truth that yes, human beings are often tangled up in a web far more distorted than seems logical but we are also capable of incredible understanding and truth and the ability to see through someone. Happiness is truth. Happiness is not the lie we tell ourselves, it has no circulation if you cannot feed it. Happiness is an idea. A wonderful, beautiful idea that can bring us together. Think about it. A film. You go to a theatre and you don’t care who’s sitting next to you. You don’t scan the room, you sit in your chair and you patiently watch as the screen inundates your mind with images and sound and you get lost. Whatever is happening outside of that room isn’t even possible because in that moment, all you want to do is watch. THAT IS TREMENDOUS. For me, I am going to get back to the business of writing. I am going to finish my screenplays and I am going to watch them get made. I am going to contribute to this phenomenal world of filmmaking. I will remember why I was a makeup artist FOR film and remember how much joy it brought me. I have two talents and both allow me the incredible privilege of diving into a world so few understand or accept. In that world, I believe I am free.
Don’t let go of an idea that feeds your soul. And ask yourself, what makes you happy?
