I’m going to make the greatest football movie ever. I think it could win me an Oscar.
I may have delusions of grandeur, but I know I’m a better director than Tyler Perry dog, be for real.
I left for Butler, PA for a wedding this past weekend (Congratulations Mason and Megan). Before I left, one of my roommates came and said some kind shit to me, about me. It was unprompted, it was out of nowhere, it was cool. I rarely stop for small talk, because I don’t have the privilege of time. All my seconds have to matter.
Last week and for the past few weeks, none of my seconds mattered. Another 100 applications, with no emails in response. It has been a bad collection of days. When that happens, I start trying to find messages. I always find something to keep going, because that’s all we keep doing. It’s the truest definition of life I can give, “Finding a reason to keep going”, or “Hope” or whatever. So I got a message that I was seeking, but it didn’t stop there.
I’ve been shaking hands with people and they keep asking, “What’s my next project?” I can’t help but feel like that’s a big deal. During the small run we had with Brian’s movie I would say, “I didn’t think I’d get to this point”, but that’s dumb. That’s why I’m doing this shit, because I believed I would eventually get to this point. I’m in a really weird position now, due to taking this huge risk that (I think) is going to pay off. The feedback I’m getting is telling me to keep going, but the most important piece of feedback I got was through an indirect review.
There were a lot of growing pains in film school, but I had a good experience overall. I had a few professors who were really invested in our program and one in particular I kind of bumped heads with while filming A Little Help Here. I sent him a copy of the film (in an attempt to help find someone to do post-coloring on the project), and the review he gave was the stamp of approval. Nobody else’s opinioned matter to me as much and I don’t know why, but it was another message and another reason.
One of my friends text me a video of Ryan Coogler telling people, dreamers to “Keep going”. Another friend said, “That’s big!”. The stories you tell yourself aren’t real, just find some facts, empirical data, that shows you cold as fuck and keep going. It took me a long time to believe what I believe. I spent a long time believing that I wasn’t good enough, instead of just looking at the data. I started using facts to progress forward and when finally getting the feedback I so desperately crave, the message I’m getting is to move forward.
Everything is crazy until you do it. I think I’m powerful enough to will things to happen, because it’s worked before. Seeing things before they happen, manifesting destiny, visualizing success. Everything is crazy until you do it. I had a dream, a vision, and I’m trying to put myself into a position to fulfill what I unconsciously saw, because if my mind was powerful enough to formulate the thought, then it exists in some capacity. It’s math. Everything is just math and the day I discovered that I just did math all day, I was pissed, but it’s continually given me an equation to work for.
In May, the film was in France at the Cannes Film Festival. Not as an official entrant, but in any capacity, that’s a step in the right direction, a confidence builder, and I think that’s a big deal. The thing I’ve learned in this process is that, “Everything is crazy until you do it”. I used to go out every Saturday and just make plays because I believed. I did the math all week, I created empirical data, and used it in application. Five years ago If you told me being at Cannes was a tangible thing, I might’ve believed you. After Profile, I would’ve laughed at you. After the last few meetings I took, man WHAT?!
That’s the empirical data. Watching Instagram likes is ego shit. Please don’t get caught up in that. STOP WATCHING THE VIEWS, JUST COOK!
I don’t have any serious solutions to my problems right now. I need a gig (rent-a-producer), hire me. I need good news to come in from overseas, and I need a dub. A string of dubs, like let me go on a 20-0 run, like the Pacers in the last 5 minutes of games, it would be greatly appreciated. I launched the Qwan-a-thon, it’s an attempt to raise funds for my next two projects, The Draft Process and Undrafted. So, donate towards my next project, do it.
Please remember, it’s not crazy if you do it, so do it.