Because I have to! I know it’s not too original, but that’s the honest to goodness truth.
I was just watching The Brothers Warner by Cass Warner Sperling of Warner Sisters, and I got a bit teary eyed.
Back when the film industry began, people got into film because they loved it… and if you ask most people who’ve been around it and survived it… it’s always a love affair.
Nowadays, with the big corporations taking over everything, it’s all about the dollars and cents, as if they could buy happiness, or if the purpose of the game of life was simply to amass the largest amount of money.
It’s not. The secret of life is in the living. It’s the smiles you bring about in other people. It’s in taking crazy risks on big ideas, and doing what you can to help your fellow man.
Making movies is not about making money… it’s about making history… future history. It’s about changing minds and ideas… it’s about telling what’s in your soul.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with making money, but it’s my contention that making money should not be a GOAL of a company. The goal should be to deliver a superior quality product, and then the money may come, when you outsmart your competition, and deliver a better product, at a good price. The goal is to satisfy the consumer, or in our case, the viewer.
We are entertainers. Our goal is to enlighten, educate and entertain (in the words of Harry Warner). Marketing charts and money charts should be secondary.
We sit and dream up stories and themes we hope will make people think. We give them hope, we tell them it’s going to be all right, just as long as they persevere. We help them get over broken hearts and broken dreams, and tell them never to stop dreaming.
We inspire the scientists to build spaceships and nano-bots, and people to forgive and forget. We take ideas from the written page and make them accessible to anybody. We cross language barriers, we cross ethnic barriers…
Why do I write? Because it’s as natural as breathing. Because when I read a good story, or watch a good movie… it gets me going. And I just have to tell stories… just like my hearts keeps beating, my head keeps thinking up stories. I just hope people like ’em as much as I do.
Do what you love, love what you do 🙂