How To Know If Your Friends Really Support Your Creative Career by Mark Gantt
Film Courage: You had sent us an email (I think we’re on your email list). You don’t seem to send them too often, just sparingly. You had an article in one entitled “Surround Yourself With People Who Hold You To A Higher Standard Than You Hold Yourself.” What does this mean?
Mark Gantt, Actor/Producer/Writer/Director: It means it’s easy to be around a whole bunch of people who are miserable and frustrated with their careers and so they will tend to be in their own stuff.
I try to do my best to surround myself with people who are trying to better themselves. That are doing the risky things that I want to be doing, so that when I’m feeling down I can call them.
For example I just had breakfast with a writer/producer friend of mine who is on a TV show and I had sent him an email saying, it’s so funny, he didn’t event remember responding to the email. It’s just his life is so busy but he responded. And it said “So I have this pilot that I wrote. I got notes from tons of people and I felt really good about it. Then I got notes from this one person and it’s sort of a rewrite (a bigger rewrite) but in my process I got this other idea and I’m thinking this other idea is better than the pilot. Do I do this rewrite on the pilot or should I start working on the new show?”
And so he wrote back “Oh man…how many times have I been in this position! Finish rewriting the pilot then go to the new story.” It was that kind of thing.
Then he sent an email a couple of weeks later “Hey checking in. Did you start working on the pilot?” He totally forgot that he checked in, he forgot that he responded…he remembered after I told him but it wasn’t something where he was walking in. For me trying to surround myself with people that hold themselves to a higher calling or sort of responsibility, that helped me. And that’s how I am with my friends.
I studied with Milton Katselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. One of the things he used to say when people were late to class is “Man you’ve got horrible friends in this class.” To the person who walked in and usually the person would be like “What do you mean?” And he said “Well if I’m your friend I would have…”…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
