Please don’t!

Dear reader,

often at the end of a movie, while the end credits are rolling, you see the sentence “No Animals Were Harmed”, that the producers put there because they are decent human beings, they care for animals and they want you to know that everything was nice and safe during the making of the movie. Being able to put that sentence is not small feat: you have to work with the American Humane Association and follow strict rules. More details can be found at https://www.americanhumane.org/initiative/no-animals-were-harmed/.

If you are allowed to put that disclaimer, you should feel proud, and rightly so!

Let me ask a question: how do you, the watcher of the movie, feel about it? Does it make the experience so much better? Doesn’t it feel so expected that the real excitement would come from not seeing the disclaimer?

Motivated by my recent listen to “Leap First” by Seth Godin (a delightful two hours listen, chek it out at Amazon or http://www.soundstrue.com/store/leap-first-1.html) and by the wonderful quote:

And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too.
― Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art

I have some proposals that would work for having better art, or at least for letting us know that everyone involved in the filming tried to be their best possible artists:

  • No shortcuts were taken in making this movie
  • No corners were cut writing the script
  • No actor was cast only because of her appeal to the general public, but because we thought more about fitting the role
  • The stunts were performed again and again and again to avoid crazy editing and shaky cam (this video is worth watching: https://youtu.be/yfAH4CcFgSQ)
  • No musician was robbed of his income because we preferred cheap samplings over an original score
  • No night was slept entirely by the director since she was so obsessed with every little detail
  • No fu**s were given to naysayers during the making of this movie
  • No deadlines were respected if that would have created a low-quality product. Oh, by the way, that’s why you are getting a Santa movie at Easter.

Do you think it would work?

Until next time, don’t harm your art.

No excuse for procrastination was left unused during the writing of this post.