Ang Lee. “Life of Pi”.
Zen of making award-winning movies and life.
Have you watched a Golden Globe awards winning movie “Life of Pi”?
If not you definitely must!
Yesterday I had an opportunity to meet Ang Lee, the director, in person and listen to his life stories, stories about mastery, movie making art and industry, stories about inspiration, creation, passion, calling. It was a rare opportunity to see what kind of thinking is behind genius that created “Life of Pi”. It was a part of mini-internship series organized by Samsung, an event that anyone could attend. Lots of students inspired to become next Scorsese. I was mistaken for one too (taking too many notes), and got interviewed at the end of the talk.
How can I advance fast it in the movie business as a director or an actor? The industry seems to be so biased. How can I get noticed fast? Get awards for my work?
“Make good movies”
~ Ang Lee
That made me laugh, and made me realize how stupid that question was. Question, that all of us in one form or the other ask ourselves, trying to make it in any field professionally.
We want to get noticed, to advance fast, to have accomplishments and titles, awards of some sort we can show off. But…what about work? We kind of forget that the best and “fastest” way to get any acknowledgement from the world is to do the best work we are capable of. It’s really simple. Maybe we forget on purpose to avoid the hard work that’s required? To have an excuse to stop the work that matters? The uncomfortable work.
We think someone gets lucky to get where they are, they get a chance given by some Universal lottery, and they are THE star of the day. But in 99,9999…% of the cases luck comes only to those who put in hours and hours of work into getting really good at what they love. And then the luck strikes. Luck comes to those who prepared. If it comes to anyone else it’s short lived. Very short lived. And who truly wants that luck without being proud of the work we do, the work we want the whole world to see?
When you and your work is ready for the world — the luck will come too.
You are worried about never getting your lucky ticket?
It’s a waste of your life time. Spend it getting better every single moment at your craft and seize opportunities when they come into your life — the rest will take care of itself.
“I’d like my career to be a very long film school. I love learning.”
“When I work I like to go where I don’t know. I’m curious.”
“Every movie has to have something impossible, something new.”
Ang Lee at 61 is still a student and he loves it! He doesn’t think he is a pro because he got an award. Ang Lee doesn’t think that now he can sit back, relax and tell people what to do, working on his genius ideas (Although he did admit he enjoys to tell people what to do). Ang Lee is so humble. He wants to express what’s burning inside, and he wants to learn as much as possible about his craft, about life through his craft. And that is his sole purpose.
“I love it [movie making] more than I love life. I am a movie maker.” — said Ang Lee.
I truly believe, that is what it should feel like when we work on our thing, on THE project. For some people it might be a lifelong project, like movie making has been for Ang Lee, for some it might be a project for a few years or months or days. But that is what it should feel like when we work on anything that is worth our energy and focus. It should feel like life itself. Like it’s the purpose of life for the moment.
Maybe it’s a creator’s thing. But I don’t believe any of us is anything but creators.
“You want to share with the world that urge inside to make something. This is the most genuine reason to make anything. You got to find your thing.”
“Where do you find inspiration for that thing you got to do?
I absolutely loved Ang’s answer, “People don’t look for inspiration. They can’t stop it.”
Life is so interesting and amazingly rich and beautiful. Every experience is like a gem stone that I can write a poem about watching all its facets playing with light.
Relax. Let the life flow through you like a river and you’ll get more inspiration that you’ll ever know what to do with.
It’s kind of ridiculous to think we need to look for inspiration. We got to live life fully without holding back. We got to be present for life in every single moment — the inspiration for our work and whatever else we might need for our work will be provided then. Ask any artist, how they find inspiration — they allow themselves to wander and stumble upon things, people, experiences. They are present. And stuff to make us feel inspired comes.
A true discovery moment for me during the talk was the moment when Ang Lee talked about the purpose of movies, cinema as an art.
Before, I used to think that movies are here to mostly entertain us, make us experience something, emotion or some part of the world, movies are meant to engage and stimulate our imagination, to show us cool stuff, to tell a story visually. And that is a part of the purpose, but Ang Lee sees the purpose of the cinema much deeper.
“Movies is the way to show true nature of things, of us, of the world. A side of ourselves that we can’t express in the real world because of the way society works, rules, constraints.”
“In life what is obvious is not always truth. Truth can be a complete opposite of what is obvious.”
Ang Lee sees movies as the way of us to communicate that other part of ourselves, other part of our world that is not obvious, not seen, but the one we want to express, to share, to explore. Movies is the way to connect to each other through that more genuine part of us that is not on display in the “real world”.
That was a profound realization for me.
It changed my mind about what cinema and movies are.
Movies became more of an art form for me than entertainment. And also I got to understand better why some movies get awards and are timeless masterpieces and some are just a thing you watched once.
I was really touched, when Ang Lee said, that no matter what we do, movies or anything, we got to always ask ourselves, “What can I give? How what I do can be useful to others?” We all want to serve, to feel useful and meaningful, we want to help, to matter, to make the world better for others.
It was such a beautiful moment. And it’s so true. There is no other purpose for anything we do.
We want to serve in some way the world we are in with everything we do — then we feel the happiest.
Don’t you think so? Deep down, what is the truest reason for doing what you do?
And the last thing, on delivering our best work.
Very Zen thing. Like everything that Ang Lee said.
To deliver the best work, to do the great job, “Prepare the best you can and then forget about preparation. Be in the moment. Work with the flow of life. Preparation ends when work starts”
When we are in the process of delivering any work, there is no place for rationalizing the work, for following formulas and plans, rules, trying to fit life into some pre-defined imagined structure of circumstances — we can’t control that.
Prepare well.
Work.
Allow your work to come through you.
A dancer practices moves millions of times but on stage he/she is in the flow. There is no thinking. Only doing.
A writer takes classes and workshops on the structure, writing craft, style, good story-telling, and then there is writing. The work. Doing. Living.
An entrepreneur learns all the tricks of the trade, rules, techniques, then the work comes, real projects — take what life gives you and do your best with everything you learned. Life will never work according to our rules and schedule, our learnings.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” — comes to mind the saying by Mike Tyson.
What a fascinating human-being Ang Lee is.
I learned so much about life. About delivering the work worth mentioning. About the mastery of the craft, mastery of living. About learning. About creativity, inspiration. And passion. And calling. And mission.
I left inspired, grateful, ready to indulge in making, creating, living life. Every moment of it.
Go. Make something.
Sorry for not talking about health much these days.
But maybe this is more important?
Have you seen many sick fulfilled artists? The ones who truly enjoy their creativity and making?
And you know what’s even more interesting?
I got so many ideas for the project I was thinking of for so long, health project that has nothing to do with movie-making but has everything to do with creativity, inspiration and fulfilling the urge to make stuff, to be useful, to matter, to serve and make the world better through the work I love, work that hopefully will make someone’s day a bit better, a bit brighter, a bit happier.
You never know where you get the idea you’ve been waiting for.
Learn. Be curious.
