Sunday Blog: Francis Ford Coppola, Ambition and Learning?

photo by Paul Watson

I read a very interesting interview with Francis Ford Coppola this week.

What really struck me about this interview was this quote:

"I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, “I learned so much today,” that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It’s only 100 years old."

More clearly than any of my feeble attempts to explain why I constantly rail against screenwriting gurus, his short paragraph encapsulates the whole thing. Cinema is only one hundred years old; there is still so much to learn and discover about it; therefore, there are no pat answers, no easy fixes, no convenient truths.

I take great comfort in the fact that we're all working in a profession that is still merely a toddler, finding its feet and stumbling about the red carpet. I take comfort, because it means that there is still so very, very much to be done with the medium.

My question this week, therefore is about ambition. It is, how much ambition do you have as a writer?

Most people assume that the word ambition is solely about money, status and career. It isn't. It is about the relationship between artistic self-confidence and the limits we place on our work.

I know for myself, each time I start a new script, my ambition is to create something astounding. It doesn't matter whether I'm writing a completely original film script, or, if I'm creating a reboot of a very old story. My ambition is always to write something that knocks people's socks off. (Currently I am working on a reboot, and socks are getting knocked off).

I believe it is vital to pour that kind of ambition into every scene. That every single scene can and should be thrilling on some level.

The conclusion I've come to, is that if you are ambitious and focussed on using cinema or TV as a medium at a scene level, then the vast majority of the rules and principles they teach in screenwriting classes become irrelevant. What seems to be important is each moment of screen time, each reaction to circumstance, each opportunity to reveal something wonderful.

Now, I have no idea what Francis Ford Coppola is learning about film making today and on many levels I don't want to know. I'm quite happy learning the things I am learning.

One thing I do know, is that ambition is a good thing. Writers and film-makers should be ambitious. It's just understanding what your personal ambitions are, that is important.

However, there is one other point, which is that once you understand the true nature of your ambition, you're then obliged to live up to that. That actually is the hard part. It's actually easier to not be ambitious. It's actually easier to create a false veneer of humility, because if your ambitions are small enough there is never any possibility of failure.

So, that is the real question... not whether you are ambitious, but whether you dare own your ambitions and take the risks involved in daring to be exceptional?

Now, that is something to think about on a Sunday morning.

keep writing and viva la revolution

 

Posted via email from Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog