How to Fail at Filmmaking

It's easy if you try.

“Life’s fucking hard, and you need to learn to deal with it.” So said my father nearly twenty years ago. At least, that’s how I remember it. Confrontation was rare with him; swearing, more so. But during high school, there was usually a 50/50 chance that I’d cut school on a day like today; late-April sunny weather preceding the oppressive heat of an Alabama summer. It was a short window, and I didn’t intend to waste it.

On that occasion, in the spring of 2005, I’d cut class for a week straight. Oops. No denying, my father’s ire was well-deserved. Later, he came to me tearful and apologetic. Said he didn’t want me to end up like him- stuck in a job that he hated, in a career he never intended. What does that have to do with failing at filmmaking?

My relationship with the f-word is complicated. No, not the one my pop lobbed like a hand grenade after getting a call from school. FAILURE. Sort of makes your skin crawl just to say it. Or, is that just me?

You wouldn’t call me a competitive person. In fact, you might say I’m anti-competitive. Early on, I adopted an almost nihilistic view of anything win/lose, pass/fail. Grades? Not worth the effort. Sports? Don’t matter. Games? Waste of time. Relationships? You get the idea. I suppose it was a defense mechanism; if you don’t try, you can’t fail. But, over the years, fail I have. Tremendously. Spectacularly. Despite my least best efforts. Because therein lies my other defense mechanism: self-sabotage.

Close to a decade and a half I’ve spent chasing the carrot of a feature film; became a college drop-out at nineteen. Paul Thomas Anderson made his first feature at twenty-five. Better get moving, I thought (*laughs*). That first year out, I worked and saved up money to move to L.A. Figured I’d ride into town with half a dozen feature scripts under my belt. Surely someone would want to make one of them. Problem was, I’d never written a feature before. Or a short. Or much of anything.

By the time I got out there, I had a half finished script that I was somewhat proud of. Six months in, I’d been lucky enough to find steady work and had banked enough of a financial cushion to take a few weeks off. I hammered out the rest of the script, then immediately took it to the local Kinkos to print it out. Rookie mistake. Fifty dollars later (money I couldn’t afford to spend), beaming with pride, I held a physical copy of my script. It felt good. I immediately gave it to a writer friend to critique. Another rookie mistake. Never hand someone a loaded gun and ask them to graze you. It was a gentle flogging. But I wouldn’t finish another feature length script for nearly a decade. Instead, I cut my teeth writing shorts.

My twenties were marked by several false-starts and unfinished projects. I won’t bore you with those here. All the while, I indulged no less than ten creative hobbies and interests at any given time. I was rudderless. Two breakthroughs occurring roughly the same time-frame got me out of that pattern: I read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, and we had our first child.

Regarding The War of Art, Pressfield writes about the “resistance” that plagues every artist and creative endeavor. More heartening is when he describes his own battles with the resistance- preventing him from completing a novel until his 40’s. I didn’t have to be Paul Thomas Anderson. 

But more significant by a country mile was the birth of our first child. Nothing will laser-focus your attention more than adding a kid into the mix. That said, precious moments still get frittered away. Gold is spent like there will be more in the vault tomorrow. But the extraneous hobbies and distractions fall to the wayside- at least, they did for me. If you actually want to accomplish something- to create something- you have to let things go.

Despite the breakthrough, there was still a creative itch I could never fully scratch. It was then that I partnered up with a friend, Dan King. Years earlier, he’d been one of my partners in a less-than-successful production company that went belly up. We’d kept in touch. He had an itch, too- an itch to direct. But he needed a script.

Said I’d pen a short for him if he provided me a logline. He gave me: “A man on his deathbed confronts his high school bully.” That turned into Last Request- a dark comedy with an absurd ending. I went for broke. There were no inhibitions because I was writing it for someone else; no expectations, other than to create something to build Dan’s reel.

But it became a success. Our first true success. Successful beyond what we could have imagined for ourselves. It enjoyed a limited festival run, including Fantastic Fest in 2022, where it played to packed houses. The audience would howl and we lapped it up like thirsty dogs in summer. It wouldn’t have happened without Dan. That’s the other secret I’ve learned: partner up. Strength in numbers.

Fantastic Fest 2022 (Tim Casper, Dan King, and RK)

Now we’re making a feature film. A script is written (by yours truly), roles are cast, and the best crew in Alabama is assembled. Strength in numbers. I’ll divulge more about that project in the coming weeks, but for now I’ll just say it’s a throwback to 80’s Amblin movies. One of the central characters is a practical puppet creature created and fabricated by KreatureKid out of Denver, CO. You’re going to love it. Hell yeah, movies!

We’ve had some setbacks. Pushed our start date multiple times, mainly because the script wasn’t ready. There’s a bit more riding on it than a short for a directing reel, ya know? And we’ve already received some rejections from potential investors. Their loss. There are going to be bumps along the way. That’s to be expected, and part of the process. Sometimes, that feels like failure, but so what?

I’m not afraid of it anymore- that f-word. The only way to truly fail is to never try at all. Sounds like fortune cookie wisdom, but it’s true. The fear of an unlived life- of a story never told- THAT is what keeps me up at night. Here’s to experimenting and making something worthwhile with my friends.

A slight tweak on my father’s earlier aphorism: “Filmmaking is fucking hard, and you need to learn to deal with it.” Amen, pop.