I Thought Getting Picked Would Fix Everything

How the hunger for validation keeps filmmakers from making films

Teenage poet Hudson (speaking of “getting picked” if you’re wondering how my high school soccer career went, I played in one game the entire season. For 10 minutes. I touched the ball once.).

Like most sensitive teens, I wrote poetry when I was in high school. Also, like most poetry written by sensitive teens, I can’t imagine it was very good.

But, at that point in my life, I was painfully shy, introverted, and dripping with social anxiety. Writing was my voice. It was how I communicated with the world. All I wanted was to be seen. And this was my way of doing that.

So, when I read about a poetry contest (likely in the back of a magazine?), I thought, Here’s my chance. An opportunity to be recognized. To add some value to the art I was creating. I entered the contest with a poem about the loss of childhood. I don’t have it anymore, but I remember the line, “A stick was a pistol. Bang, I felt no pain.” (Which actually isn’t that bad of a line?)

A few weeks later, I received the notification that my poem had won and been accepted as part of a poetry anthology! I was thrilled. Finally, some recognition!

Then came the follow-up. “You can order a copy of this anthology for $29.99 plus shipping.” And a discount for additional copies. Of course, I wanted a copy of my first published work! So, I ordered a book. And when it arrived, I opened a giant hardback of hundreds of poems.

It occurred to me, “Oh, wait. They just accept every poem that’s entered and then sell it back to the authors.” That’s the model. 500 poems. 500 guaranteed books sold. Do that once a quarter, and you have a pretty good financial model. A model that feeds on the desire of artists to be seen.

And that’s exactly what the film business does today.

If you’re a writer, it’s “Win a contest. Get discovered. Get an agent. Write a Marvel movie.” If you’re a director or producer, it’s “Get financing. Get into Sundance. Sell it to a major studio. Direct a Marvel movie.”

It’s a compelling story. Who doesn’t want to be Cinderella? Who doesn’t want to be chosen? Who doesn’t want to be the exception to the rule?

And let’s be clear. It is an exception. The reason you read these stories in the trades is that they are unique. It’s because they don’t actually exist for 99.9% of filmmakers.

There is an entire industry that makes money off of this model. Screenwriting competitions, Pitchfests. Conventions. If everyone who wanted to make a movie just went and made their movie, this industry would no longer exist. They need us to want to make a movie and never actually make one. Even though they are selling something that, at best, doesn’t actually exist and, at worst, is harmful and exploitative.

We all want to be chosen.

I get it. It’s sexy to be the one picked out of the crowd. We want to write a great script, put together a package, and get the attention of someone with experience or money. We want to blow their minds. We want to get a big check. We want to be linked with a major star. We want to make the trades. We want the Cinderella story that our imaginations have promised us. It will finally validate us.

Spoiler: it won’t.

We all have a deep-seated desire to matter. To be recognized. To have our work mean something to someone. But we get into trouble when we narrowly define who that “someone” has to be.

Why do we give so much power to festival jurors and contest readers? Why does their approval feel more real than everyone else’s? What about the guy who saw your movie on a random Tuesday morning at a local festival, and it became his favorite film? What about the woman who was struggling with depression, and your film helped her find her way through it? What about yourself, who needed to write this particular piece of art at this particular moment in your life?

I’ve won contests. I’ve been on panels. I’ve gotten news features. And honestly, that stuff is fun, but there’s no lasting value to any of it. What stays with me are the personal interactions. The conversations after screenings. The emails from strangers. The moments when someone tells you that something you made mattered to them, not because they were paid to evaluate it, but because it found them at the right time.

That’s the validation the industry can’t sell you. Because they don’t have it.

I’ve been there.

I’ve dropped thousands of dollars on contests and pitches and mentorships and classes that I thought would finally make me a “real” writer.

I’ve even tasted a little bit of that promised validation. Early on in my career, I wrote a script with two friends that sold to Lions Gate. We were “local success stories” in a pre-Hollywood Atlanta. On the radio. In the newspaper. (Yes, I’m old). And then that project fell apart so catastrophically that it ended up being the most depressing creative experience of my life. So much so that my two co-writers stopped writing altogether, and I spent the next 10 years unable to repeat that early success.

Since then, I’ve been hired to write four screenplays, all of which promised that I would finally “make it.” None of which have been made.

But at some point, I had to ask myself: Why are you doing this to begin with? Why are you writing screenplays, telling stories? Why do you want to make movies?

Is it for passion? Because you deeply love movies? Or because you need some kind of external validation? Like that 15-year-old Hudson desperately wanting to be seen?

Here’s the real question:

Do you want to spend your time making a movie or trying to get a movie made?

At our screening of Guacamole Yesterdays at Vidiots in L.A. I had a few writer friends in attendance. Writers of movies that have made hundreds of millions of dollars. You know their movies. And they came up to us afterwards and said, “I wish I could do what you do.”

And I thought, “You wish you could make no money and drop a movie into obscurity?”

But they come from a world where their days are filled with pitching and notes and red tape. Where their art is in the hands of someone else. Where they are still seeking permission to make their art. Where they are still “trying to get films made.” And they were jealous of us because we are just out there making our movies. We’re making them exactly as we want to make them.

If I could talk to 15-year-old Hudson today, I’d tell him:

“You don’t need someone to ‘discover’ you to have a voice. It’s the very creation of that poem that gives you value. You stopped dreaming of one day being a writer, and you wrote. The validation you are so hungry for was realized in the act of making.”