Why Would A Filmmaker Stop Making Films? by Jack Perez
Film Courage: There is this saying in the entrepreneurial world “Don’t die today.” And I guess this means try to keep the lights on for one more day. Why do you think so many filmmakers don’t make another film? How do they get their first film made and then go onto their second and then their third and then their fourth?
A lot of them it seems like don’t go past the first. I can understand why. They are tapped out financially, exhausted, they didn’t see it have the kind of distribution that they wanted obviously. But you can ask the same why do people [serial entrepreneurs] keep starting companies over and over again and then go onto another one if it doesn’t work out?
Jack Perez, Filmmaker: That’s a really good question. I think it’s different for everybody. I think there are people that only have one movie in them. Or in the making of the movie they realize it was enough, I don’t need to make anymore movies or want to make anymore movies.
But I think most people who are genuine filmmakers, if they make a film regardless of what happens whether it did well or it never got distribution, regardless of what happens, you are constantly searching for the route to make the next movie whatever it is. And so why they don’t make a second movie may just be that they don’t have the financial means to make it independently, that perhaps maybe they’ve gone up for jobs that they didn’t get. I mean I’ve been up for millions of jobs that I didn’t get. I don’t know, I have a lot of empathy for filmmakers who don’t get the next movie made because I’ve been one of them. Because I just know what that’s like, it’s a very painful thing to really want to work and make something and not have the means or maybe the psychological, emotional foundation to carry forward because there’s a lot of damage that gets done if it doesn’t work out and often most of the time it doesn’t. So there has to be something inside of you that somehow pushes you over all of that damage to make the next thing. And I think those of us that are able to do that are lucky. But I’m not sure? I just know that there are a lot of people who want to make movies that don’t get a chance…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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