Willful Madness

"But I don't want to go where there are mad people!

You cannot help that my dear. You see, we're all a little mad here."
                                            - Alice & the Cheshire Cat

Hollywood is full of crazy fuckers.

You've heard that, right? Everyone has. The tales of irrational behavior bordering on sociopathic. The compulsions, the excess.  We're all a little mad here.

Yeah, well, you have to be. Really.

Willful Madness becomes a critical tool in any creative's box if you want to make it in this biz. This biz requires you to have a unbreakable belief in your abilities. That you, above all others, can do this, and that you above all others have something to add to the creative lexicon in a fashion that no one else can. Even as assponies and gadflys and naysayers all poke and deride and take swings at you and your work.

At the same time, however...

You have to be completely dispassionate and objective about your work, as if you are not the person who created it. If you get notes, you have to be able to compare them against the work in a purely analytical manner. "Does this scene suck? Why yes... yes it fucking does." and treat it as if you were editing the work of someone else.

You have to be able to do this, at the flip of a mental switch, every. Fucking. Day.

It is the hardest skill you will learn in this biz. The one that you will spend your entire career trying to master, and the one you will struggle to maintain constantly. But being able to do it? That means the difference between being a flash in the pan, and someone with tooth and fucking claw who is here for the long goddamn game.

So then...

Welcome.

We're all a little mad here.