Orientation: "Just Do It!"

One move and several hundred shamelessly voyeuristic photos later, I am yanked rudely from my slumber by the familiar sound of Bob rummaging through the dumpster outside our bedroom window.  Finding my glasses, I notice he’s wearing two different shoes and recall with a twinge of regret that I gave three pairs away before leaving Alberta and, calculating his feet to be roughly the same size as mine, I now wish I had held onto at least the Adidas runners, and what time is it anyway? 

Seven-fifteen, my phone tells me.  August twenty-second.  VFS Orientation day.

Having stacked everything I need to bring on the dining room table the night before, I stare at the ceiling for five sweet, luxurious minutes before scratching my ass and rolling over to kiss Melissa gently on the cheek.

“You want to come today, hon,” I whisper.  “It’d be great for you to meet everyone.”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.” 

We stop at a grocery store along the way for a pack of gum to ensure good first impressions and to give us something to do while we stand in the inevitable line leading us to the inevitable table where we will process still more paperwork securing my enrolment in the writing program at Vancouver Film School.  I’ve been waiting for this day for six years.  For the moment, I straightjacket my natural impulse to douse the red tape in starter fluid and move slowly through the massive crowd of restless new students like me, shaking warmly the hands of strangers who will soon be colleagues and closer than family.  

Eventually we shuffle into cinema 7 and take our seats near the front.  It takes several minutes to sink in, but I’m finally here, finally standing inside Wonka’s factory and not merely peering jealously in through the gates.  I’m surrounded by students of all ages from seventy-two countries, each having forsaken other pursuits, proximity to family, and some degree of financial security to embark on the riskiest, bravest, most important of adventures: the satisfaction of a lifelong passion, the realization of dream.  As the last of us file in, I grin stupidly and bask in our collective hope and anticipation, knowing I will never experience this particular moment again.

The lights go down and we are treated to a video montage of the school’s recent successes. VFS graduates participated in all 10 of last year’s highest grossing films, as well as top-rated games like God of War, Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption.  Student works have been featured in up to 200 international festivals annually, garnering nominations or wins that include Leos, Golden Globes, and Oscars.  Graduates have gone on to work for Disney, Weta Digital, and George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, to name a few.  I’d discovered most of these realities in previous presentations, but it was good to hear again.  

Then out walks Stephen Webster, VFS’s marketing director.  He’s from Dublin and somehow this makes the whole presentation cooler and more ingratiating.  He welcomes us by continent and country then gets straight to the point: At VFS, results matter.  Not sales pitches, not ego, not talent alone, but actual results.  End product.  Accomplishment.  Perusing the student handbook, I land on a similar sentiment expressed by founder and president James Griffen:  “The culture of Vancouver Film School is the culture of doing – doing every day, with relevant knowledge, relevant tools and relevant outcome.”  


This is, for me, the final nail in the coffin for those (few) critics who suggest VFS is a kind of puppy mill simply looking for student numbers and dollars.  From my own experience as an educator and college administrator, "graduate factories" simply don't (and can't) talk like this unless they plan on putting their money with their mouths are, and pronto.  In the long term, no school can maintain its credibility or sustain its success unless it produces a notable number of quality graduates who succeed in their chosen industries, and demonstrates a genuine commitment to hold students accountable for their own success while supporting them to that end.  VFS has clearly aimed at and achieved both.  No school can guarantee a specific outcome, and it would be naive to expect this.  What I am super jazzed about at this point is the idea of walking into an environment that will force me to produce, and help me get better and better at what I produce.  Now that's what I'm talking about.         

Next, the school’s student services manager takes the stage and tells us the entire faculty is here to serve and help us.  It’s a promissory note I have faith in, and not blindly.  I’ve simply had too many personal conversations with my academic advisor, admissions people, housing director and department head to believe otherwise.  In every conversation thus far, I've been spoken to like a real person everyone seems sincerely interested in helping.  And I’ve never felt it necessary to be disingenuous or kiss anyone’s butt to get direction or answers.  Clearly, this isn't a favourites game; it’s about how effectively we’ll all be able to build industry relationships, and fundamentally, how good we are at what we do.  Which is, of course, the way school should be.  I need guidance and a relatively level playing field more than I need special favours.  So far, so good.

Other takeaways include help for international and ESL students, a vendor fair (CIBC, Car2Go, medical insurance providers, etc) and most instructively, a review of the school’s six requirements:

• Professionalism (reliability, respect, quality)
• Communication
• Bringing my “full game” (health, focus, energy)
• Commitment to myself
• A sense of humour
• A joy for life

It’s a reminder to me that VFS is as serious about me achieving my goals as I should be.  For the next year, I get to live and breathe film, full-time.  Vancouver Film School’s commitment to me is clear.  The rest is clearly up to me.  

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Gotta-Read: Making Movies (by Sidney Lumet)

He's been one of my favourite filmmakers for years and someone I'd wistfully hoped to meet one day, so it was with a genuinely heavy heart that I learned Sidney Lumet had passed away in April at age 86.

Director of a bundle of personal favourites like Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and The Verdict, Lumet represented that old-school mix of irrepressible passion, inexhaustible work ethic, and an unrivaled ability to troubleshoot production problems while still bringing films in on time and often under budget.

I've soaked in the sunlight of his movies for years, but I fell in love with him this past spring by reading his memoir, Making Movies.  Admittedly (and unapologetically) an actor's director, Lumet always cared as much about the co-creators of his vision as he did about the original material or the finished product.  At once a diary and a technical analysis, the book moves through the various stages and elements of filmmaking in a style so comprehensible and intimate, a reader could easily mistake himself or herself as being on set and part of the process.

Nothing essential gets missed.  Not only directing, writing and acting, but art direction, costume design, editing and scoring receive the full-chapter treatments they deserve, breaking the sum into its various parts so respectfully (and helpfully to an aspiring filmmaker), there is simply no room for ego by the time he is done.  Films are so clearly a collaborative effort, and Lumet is so clearly willing to share glory where it is deserved, one cannot help but appreciate the sheer magnitude of the profession he chose and the kind of individual he needed to be in order to execute his vision so well, so often.  Lumet was a skilled and talented director to be sure, but more than this he was a truly authentic, deeply personable, refreshingly honest human being committed to transferring his experiences and insights to anyone willing to learn.

I particularly enjoyed his rationale for determining which ideas deserved cinematic treatment: "I'm not a believer in waiting for 'great' material that will produce a 'masterpiece.'  What's important is that material involve me personally on some level. . . As long as the theme is something I care about at the moment, it's enough for me to start work."  Of course, years of theatre and television work prior to entering Hollywood undoubtedly helped educate his choices regarding what was both intuitively satisfying and commercially viable.  Nonetheless, it is always refreshing to hear a filmmaker talk as much about a story's human impact as it's technical achievement or box office potential.

Punctuated with anecdotes featuring actors like Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and his obvious favourite (and mine), Al Pacino, Making Movies strips the filmmaking industry, if only temporarily, down to its most basic elements: a process and a community of people deeply invested in making that process work.  This is not a book by an "expert" who writes about film; this is an enthralling and highly personal guided tour through a career with no guarantees and no end of adventure by someone who's been there, over and over again.

"Nobody knows what the magic combination is that produces a first-rate piece of work," wrote Lumet.  "I'm not being modest.  There's a reason some directors can make first-rate movies and others never will.  All we can do is prepare the groundwork that allows for the 'lucky accidents' that make a first-rate movie happen."

Would love to have heard more about those "lucky accidents", Sidney.  But thanks so much for putting some of them down on paper before you left.

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Missing My Kids

Saw Sade last night with Mel at Rogers Arena.  Was magical.  Rocked out to "Smooth Operator" and "Soldier of Love", slow-danced to "Moon & the Sky". Wonderful to see her for the first time!

Missing the kids a lot today.  Bit of a rough morning.  Maybe it was all the Sade the night before.  Just want to touch them and hug them, getting those same panic attacks I feel when I'm stuck on a plane for too long.  I thought that was claustrophobia, but apparently it has more to do (at least partly) with an inability to access the people I love, the inability to leave where I am right now and easily move to where I want to be.  In this case, to move into the next room so I can hold my children.

I'm glad we came to Vancouver.  I remember all the reasons why this was a good idea and, of course, we never could have done this unless we really believed that.  But, man, sometimes it`s a bit unbearable being this far away from them.  Not being able to watch James play the Dubliners on his penny whistle, listen to Jenni sing a song she just wrote on the guitar, or enjoy a new drawing by Ricky of some mythical creature accompanied by one of his richly-detailed explanations.  Run down to 7-11 for a Slurpee, drive to the city limits to make a quick movie, buzz over to the mall to check out hunting gear at Bass Pro.

Not being able to do those things - to watch them grow up day by day, to meet their new girlfriends or boyfriend: you know, the big stuff - that's one thing.  But sometimes all you want to do is walk into their bedrooms and watch them as they sleep.  Just to make sure they're okay, that's it.  Just to stare, mystified at how they managed to turn out so well, and in awe at how grown-up they look now.  I used to do that all the time with them, right up till the morning before we left: sneak in and listen to them snore, think about how small they once were or how big they'll soon be, send up a little prayer to who-knows-who to keep them safe, plan what we'd do that day once they wake up.  I'm really, really missing that today.

I need a coffee.

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The Journey West

I questioned whether we'd pull off the move to B.C. with a 14-foot Uhaul trailer, but we did it!


Well, once we sold or gave away two-thirds of our earthly possessions.  That and a solid week and a half of packing, two straight all-nighters' worth of cleaning and painting, address changes, tearful goodbyes, and an eleventh-hour BBQ move (thank you, Tom Hannam), before handing the keys back to our landlord and finally hitting the highway around noon on July 31, bound for Vancouver via Penticton.  There, Auntie Barb and Uncle Bob wined us and dined us while Finnigan (our cat) eyed Tika (Barb's dog) suspiciously and flirted with disaster on the deck of their seventh-floor condo (closest I've come to coronary arrest in years).  As coincidence or the Universe had it, it was also our one-year anniversary, so we celebrated with spirits from not one, not two, but three Okanagan wineries!  Delish!



Retaining enough presence of mind to hire two movers, we arrived in Van on the afternoon of August 2 and let them do all the dirty work.  Thank God.  Vancouverites would have read about a double murder next morning had Mel and I tried to unload everything ourselves.  Good thing we didn't realize at the time that the unloading would prove a cakewalk compared to the unpacking, or the headline would have read "murder-suicide".  I tell ya, the math has to get downright Euclidean when downgrading from 1300 square feet and a basement to 650 square feet and no storage space.  Boxed in, wiped out, and feeling like two players caught in some nightmarish hybrid of Tetris and Tron, we spent ten claustrophobic days trying to position furniture we had no room for, and nick nacks we could now admit we had no use for.  When the dust finally settled, the tenants of 1122 Haro Street had inherited 22 moving boxes, four boxes of books, a coffee table, and an unopened box of Feline Pine cat litter.  The vultures picked it all clean in three days.

But we were in Vancouver!  And nothing says "welcome to your new home" like a sunny afternoon at Kits Beach.

That and morning coffee at Granville Island Market.  And a Locarno Beach reunion with old high school friends.  And fish and chips with Auntie Betty at Rocky Point Park.  And receiving a warm reception from my academic advisor and the head of my department at Vancouver Film School.  And the fact that "downtown" is a mere step out the front door and around the corner.

And something happened to Vancouver since I lived here last.  (Actually that's a lie, I never lived in Vancouver.  I lived around it, close to it, but never in it.)  It seems cleaner, quieter, safer than it was in 1992.  We've been out on the street nearly every night till midnight or later (everything is open late), and have felt completely comfortable every time.  It's like Paris that way.  Yes, we know anything can happen (we shoulder-check instinctively), but I feel safer here than I did in Calgary.  As big and busy as it is - as many times as car horns honk, all-night partiers sing, and eyes avert my gaze -, there is an unexpected sense of community here, a politeness that seems to go beyond the simple Canadian stereotype into something more inclusive and intentional; an informal social contract that goes something like, "You watch out for me and I'll watch out for you.  Let`s all work together to keep it clean and safe, and we'll get along just fine.  And by the way, I hope you're not going to leave your cigarette butts on the street."

Maybe it's a post-riot thing, or maybe it's just me.  (I've determined to smile at or say hi to the people I pass on the street.  Call my Paullyanna.)  I'm sure time and familiarity will give us a fuller picture, but I don`t believe it will give us a wildly different picture.  Maybe it's just a West Coast thing, and I get that it's not for everyone. The laid-back, health-conscious, beach bum, can't-smoke-in-the-park thing might drive some people crazy.

But as far as we're concerned, we're home.  And we love it!

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The Checklist

30 things to get done in prep for Van Film School:

1.       Assess personal finances (can we afford it?)

2.       Determine whether 2011 or 2012 works better

3.       Talk to the kids, make sure they’ll be okay with it

4.       Ensure their mom will be okay with it (staying with her while we’re gone)

5.       Build a “Plan A”, “B”, and “C”

6.       Put aside some money (2-3 month cushion)

7.       Apply for & get accepted to VFS

8.       Apply for & get scholarship

9.       Apply for & get student loan

10.   Apply for every other bursary, scholarship, grant or funding we can find

11.   Find & apply for housing

12.   Confirm housing (first month’s rent + deposit)

13.   Mel – Find work

14.   Give notice – Work

15.   Give notice – Landlord

16.   Give notice – Kids

17.   Secure moving truck

18.   Secure movers (move-out, move-in)

19.   House – Pack

20.   House – Clean

21.   Notify billers, cancel utilities

22.   Address change > Canada Post, family, friends, billers, etc

23.   Utility deposits on new home

24.   Find out re: B.C. car insurance & medical

25.   Finalize any legal paperwork

26.   Wrap up medical appointments before current health benefits run out

27.   Sell my car

28.   Sell/give away everything we can’t bring

29.   Say our goodbyes (kids, family, friends, work)

30. Write a list of all the reasons we’re doing this so we don’t lose heart (or our minds!) later

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The Yay-Sayers Speak Up

How important is having someone in your corner?

While it's essential to have the courage of your convictions and know for yourself that what you're going after is worth it without anyone else's say-so, it's always nice to get a boost from the people you care about. 

Here are some of the wonderful voices that have put wind in our sails as we prepare for school. . .

”Great stuff!”

”Break a leg!"

 “Best of luck with your move!  I’m so excited for you! Keep me posted. J”

“Good luck on the new adventure Paul. Change is good!”

“Yay dude....I knew this day would come!”

”Wish you all the success a person could have!!!”

”Congratulations Paul!! All the best to you!! ”

 “Take the bull by the horns...good on you too, and good luck!”

“I love it Paul, and looking forward to meeting Melissa. So happy for you!”

”This is tremendous! I'm so happy for/ proud of you! ”

”Hey Paul, I am so happy that you are following your dreams!!! Congrats and best wishes to you!!!”

”That is so perfect!! Congrats and wish you the best Paul!!!! Miss you!!”

“Paul, you will be truly missed.  You are remarkable at writing and will no doubt blow everyone away by the sheer talent you possess at Vancouver Film School.”

“Best of Luck Paul! It’s great to see someone with the courage to chase their dreams. Best wishes for your success.“

"You will both be sorely missed!  I wish you both much happiness in your future."

"I am really happy to see that you are following your dream. You have so much potential in this area and I know you will have success.   I wish I had such a clear view of what I want to do with my life. I have been really struggling with it to be honest with you. I too feel the immense power behind a well told story, and part of me is wondering if I should not pursue a career in the Television/Movie industry myself.”

“Well I wish you the best of luck in your future efforts.  Sounds like you are returning to your area of passion and I am sure it is a very exciting time for you.  Good luck and best wishes.”

“All the best pal. When you walk the red carpet in a few years, don't forget us!”

”Paul, I hope that you are not in the puppet program as their funding just got cut from the VFB , as the last semester students produced a banned lock-dance compilation depicting a nude Finnigan. I hope this helps you out cheers and good luck! ”

”All the best in your new career, I'll be watching for you on the Oscars one day.”

”The very best to you both! I know you will succeed, no time to second guess that would be counterproductive so giv ‘er! Show ‘em how it’s done! ”

”I wanted to tell you before how great it is that you are following your dream!”

”Good Luck in your new career and adventures. ”

”This will help me get a nudge into the world of blogs and figure out how to subscribe and comment and stuff, ignoramus that i am. So, Spielberg never responded. He shat on your dreams. Well, you'll show him! I am happy you have found the time and the drive to make a huge change. It will jump you into hyperspace.”

”That's really amazing Paul!! I'm so excited and happy for you to follow your dream. It's never too late, is it. :) YAY!! :D”

”I'm speechless reading this Paul . . . surprised, yes, but blown away by your courage to follow your dream! I know Mel will be at your side all the way and I can only wish you success and happiness in every step of the way. Love and my prayers for a wonderful future are sent to you both.”

”I'm thrilled for you and your new adventure! I agree with the kiddies and Mel, start as you mean to go on. You are not only going to chase that dream, but catch it! All the best! Xo”

"I wish you all the best in your future.  It takes the kind of courage that most people don't even know exists to pursue your dreams.  I admire your drive to follow your passion.  Good luck in Vancouver.  I know you'll be successful and you guys will have a blast!"

"WOW!!! What a story, I've seen part of it and I wish you all the best in the continuation Paul and Mel!”

"Well, as one who has missed you for a long time and hasn't lived near you for about 20 years, i say YYYYAAAAAAYYYY!!! I am looking forward to seeing both of you way more. Awesome times ahead!”

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My Big Fat Reading List (Summer 2011)

Currently Reading:

Film/Writing:

Making Movies - Sydney Lumet
A memoir-ish walkthrough of the various stages of film production, heavily laced with anecdotes from Lumet's filmmaking experiences.  Easy to read, honest, insanely practical and deeply personal.

Screenplay - Syd Field
One leading theorist's breakdown of how to construct a story from start to finish.  Represents one of several prevailing approaches, but a great starting point. (For fun, see Chris Huntley's "A Comparison of Seven Story Paradigms", in which he juxtaposes the story models of Field, Vogler, McKee, Linda Seger, and John Truby with his own ‘Dramatica’.) Side note: I was recently cautioned by Michael Baser against getting too enamored of those who teach but don’t write.  Point taken, but will let Mr. Field keep the floor till he's done.

Dreaming in the Rain - David Spaner
A history of Vancouver’s evolution into Hollywood North.  Just starting.  A bit dry so far, but hopefully it will pick up.

Fiction

The Confession - John Grisham
A man on death row for murdering a teenage girl a decade earlier has maintained his innocence all along, and his lawyer must beat the clock to save his client.  Can you say “The Chamber”?  Not his best, but not his worst either.  A good e-read whilst treadmilling.

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Just starting.  Loved The Corrections and heard this one’s better. Johnny, don’t fail me now!

Other

Too Big To Fail - Andrew Sorkin
A play-by-play account of events leading to the global financial disaster of 2008-10. Hands-down the most compelling non-fiction I’ve read in years. A richly-detailed political/economic expose that reads like a Shakespearian tragedy.

You: The Owner's Manual - Roizen & Oz
Undeniably, the mother of all how-tos on the subject of health and fitness.  Sassy, practical, and doing wonders for my bowels.
___________

Recently Finished:


Film/Writing:

Story - Robert McKee
Like Field’s “Screenplay”, a textbook-style exploration of screenwriting that borders on spiritual journey, made famous by Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, and McKee’s own perennial travelling workshop. My copy has been thoroughly defiled by all manner of pen and highlighter, and is still in once piece thanks only to scotch tape and sticky notes.  

The Writer's Journey - Christopher Vogler
Rooted religiously in the Hero’s Journey model of Joseph Campbell, I found this book by accident.  A bit choppy and disconnected, but hugely insightful and easier to apply than McKee’s Story, especially with respect to characterization and plot design.   

Al Pacino - Lawrence Grobel
You can never get enough Al, especially when he’s this funny.  A catalogue of intimate interviews spanning nearly four decades.  Always insightful to enter a giant’s thought process at multiple stages in his career.  

Fiction:

The Millenium Series (Stieg Larsson)
The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo had me at hello.  I started the series pre-hype and with no idea what it was about.  Ignore those who say the first hundred pages are boring, that’s pure drivel.  My heart hasn’t raced like this since I met my wife.

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Only Franzen could keep me spellbound in a three-page description of breakfast.  No one skips through space and time as deftly as this guy, except maybe Audrey Niffenegger (Time Traveler’s Wife).  The research alone required to write a book this big and broad and borderline prophetic should normally take two or three lifetimes I would think, so my guess is that Franzen is either an alien or the Son of God.

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The Cost of Not Answering Your Heart

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards.
They try to have more things, or more money,
in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse.
You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do,
in order to have what you want.
- Margaret Young


I’m funny sometimes.  By funny, I don’t mean “hilarious”, “witty” or even “generally entertaining”, but rather “mildly pathetic”.  Where does this self-judgment come from?  From an observation I’ve made over the years that goes something like this: I think I really want something, then when I get it, I discover it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and I don’t want it anymore.  I know, I know.  In this regard, I’m like everybody else, which I suppose makes us all mildly pathetic at times.  But in a good way, since that’s apparently how we learn anything at all about the way life works.  Now I’m judging you.  Bear with me.

Though never a money-chaser, and deeply committed to doing some good in the world regardless of what that meant for me economically, I always suspected that a decent paycheque (or perhaps even a really, really good paycheque) would, to some degree, fill the void left by not having pursued what I wanted to do when I was a kid (i.e. make music or movies, whichever came first).  For years, I did what was good for my heart but not so good for my wallet, allowing myself to slip slowly into the belief that achieving both happiness and financial security was neither possible nor particularly important. 

Then, just like that, I discovered I’d hoodwinked myself. After years of struggling, I suddenly had a job that was personally satisfying and paid well.  Who knew?  In a field completely unrelated to my real passion, mind you, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t worrying on a daily basis about being able to pay my bills.  I could take care of my kids and still go out for supper wherever I wanted, buy the clothes I wanted, go to concerts I’d always ached to see, take vacations I’d always dreamt about.  It was like finally walking out of the desert into a seemingly boundless oasis.  Anyone who’s been there knows what I’m talking about.  I don’t care how much you can make do with Kraft dinner, there’s nothing like the occasional filet mignon to put a little colour in your life.

But eventually, after a prolonged soak in the hot tub of a “good life”, that cool, refreshing pool in the distance called “The Life You Should Be Living” begins to beckon.  And you can only avoid it for so long before your skins begins to shrivel and bake. 

Felix Dennis, one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs and founder of Maxim, speaks often of the tyranny of a regular paycheque, comparing it to a cocaine addiction.  It’s the old frog in the pot idea (turn the heat up slowly enough and he won’t budge till it’s too late), just way more specific.  There’s a lot to be said for being financially responsible, making sure your children are taken care of, and preparing for you future. And there's no denying that a good, steady paycheque (however it comes) can go a long way toward helping achieve that. 

But how exactly does one measure the value of following (or not following) his or her bliss? 

As I’ve struggled with whether to take the leap and finally go after my dream to make movies, the naysayers have abounded.  “You’re too old.  You’ve got kids.  You’ve got a great job.  You make good money with benefits, RRSPs, advancement opportunities. And what if it doesn’t work out?  What’s that you say, following your dreams?  Come on, Paul, that’s a bit flaky, isn’t it? At your age?”  Luckily, unlike when I was nineteen and gave too much ear to such criticisms, I no longer give a shit.  That’s the pleasure and the privilege of being “my age”. 

And as I’ve discovered, the real question is never, “What is the cost of following my dreams”, but rather, “What is the cost of not doing so?” At some point, it’s neither selfish nor irresponsible to dedicate yourself to what you were always meant to do.  Rather, it's a matter of integrity and survival.  Interesting thing, by the way, about the naysayers: they’re usually 20- or 30-somethings who have little real-life experience, relatively small ambition, surprisingly limited imagination, or who simply have not yet reached that point of now-or-never desperation that drives ordinary people to do extraordinary things.  Having not yet fully coalesced a passionate, burn-the-bridges-behind-you vision of their own, they feel strangely compelled to advise others on matters with which they have little experience, all the while masquerading as the “voice of reason”.  I don't blame them.  I just don't listen to them. 

Having said that, it's important to recognize that naysayers do serve an important function.  They force us to examine our plans from an outsider’s point of view. “Am I doing the right thing?  Have I thought this through properly?  Is this the right time?” Sometimes naysayers have a point, so long as we recognize that their opinions are just that: opinions - often uninformed, uninspired, uninvested.  

Naysayers also help us identify how truly committed we are, how much we actually believe in that thing we keep saying is so important to us.  They bring us squarely into the “no bullshit” zone, compelling us to be brutally honest with ourselves above all.  My observation is that this often seals it for people.  If we know we’re right and are confident about that, we tend to be relatively bullet-proof to pessimism.  If certainty or confidence are lacking, we’re more likely to crack.

Finally, naysayers force us to consider worst-case scenarios which (as long as they don’t overwhelm us) tend to echo our own fears, play themselves out in our minds, then ricochet us back to a place of determination that is stronger for the exercise.  Whiplash never hurt so good.

Of course, there are also the “yay-sayers” who, thankfully, tend to show up in greater abundance.  They’re usually older and possess more blood-and-sweat experience in actually following (or not following) their dreams.  They’ve been there.  They’ve lived with the consequences of their actions or lack thereof.  Which tends to make their input more real-world, and ultimately more helpful. They are often family members and close friends, business colleagues or complete strangers, generally willing to provide honest opinions that reflect a nice mix of cold, hard reality and warm, hopeful optimism. 

It’s especially meaningful when the yay-sayer is someone like Randy Becker, a senior vice president of the company I currently work for who has achieved a substantial level of success (financial and otherwise) yet still harbors a wish that he had pursued the dream he cherished earlier in life, and who I count as one of my genuine supporters.  When I asked my sixty-four year old father what he thought, his response ran along similar lines:  “Even if nothing comes of it, for the rest of your life you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you gave it an honest shot!”  Money can’t buy that kind of yay-saying.

There’s no way around it: the cost of following a dream, big as it seems at the time, is miniscule compared to the cost of not following it.  It’s just a matter of hitting that point in life where the whispers of frustration, disappointment, and desperation become such loud voices that ignoring them becomes an impossibility without performing some kind of bizarre auto-lobotomy of the soul.  Once you get there, it's time for the party you've been waiting years for to begin.

But it’s still up to you to light the candles.

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The Journey Begins, Twenty Years Later!

When I was twelve, I wrote a letter to Steven Spielberg telling him how E.T. had changed my life.  (These are the things that alter the course of your existence when you’re a pre-teen.)   


I sat at my Gramma’s dining room table, nervously gnashing away at a grilled cheese sandwich and thinking of what to say.  (I remember the sandwich because of the greasy fingerprint of planet Earth I left on the envelope addressed to Universal Studios.)  

I was careful to clarify that the change in question had nothing to do with hoping I’d meet an alien one day, or deciding to launch my BMX bike off the edge of a cliff (though I thought about it, trust me), or even aspiring to become a secret government agent assigned to lurking through neighbourhoods on behalf of Area 51.  The change was much more down-to-earth, yet no less fantastic: simply put, E.T. had inspired me to want to make movies. 

“For the rest of my life, by the way, Mr. Spielberg.”

Direct them, star in them, score the music, guard the bathroom key – I didn’t care, just so long as I was anywhere in the rough vicinity of where movies were being made.  I’d loved films before E.T., of course, but that one triggered my first conscious realization that movies were more than just entertainment, more than just a way to whittle away the hours on a boring, rainy afternoon.  (Growing up, our black-and-white T.V. only had two hit-and-miss channels, so there wasn’t much happening on that screen.)  For the first time, I recognized the power - the adrenalin-pumping, heart-wrenching, mind-altering power – of a good story, well-told.  I recognized that good stories can rock people, indeed had been rocking people since the beginning of time, changing the way they think, the way they feel, the way they treat others, the way they choose to live their lives.   

But E.T. revealed something else to me: if I wasn’t mistaken, that bit of magic onscreen appeared to be the result of some special combination of acting, writing, directing, special effects, music and other stuff I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  (I mean, how else could you possibly get people to cry over the “death” of a mechanized puppet covered in grey rubber?)  I imagined a lot of people must have put their heads together to get a movie like that made.  And I wanted in.  Badly.

Beside my signature, I drew a picture of myself holding hands with the aforementioned extraterrestrial, and thanked Mr. Spielberg again for being so awesome.  (I believe I also P.S.’d that I’d be available for his next picture if he was scouting for a blond, blue-eyed wunderkind from Canada.)  Then I stamped it, mailed it, and thought about nothing but making movies from that day on.

In the years that followed, I bought soundtracks (LP records back then), watched Entertainment tonight (pre-satellite), did research (pre-internet), read biographies (pre-Wikipedia), eventually bought screenplays (when they became commercially available and I could afford them), and auditioned for plays, hoping to find whatever “in” I could into a business that seemed to exist in a galaxy far, far away from Port Moody.  There was no “Hollywood North” in those days.  There were no film schools in Canada - none that I knew of anyway.  I was lucky to have a family that stoked my passion, teachers that furthered my technical understanding (including a brief foray into stop-motion animation in grade five - thank you, Mr. Spring), and an unflagging hub of creative friends (Glen, Craig, Graham) with whom I wrote my first short stories and laid down original skits on our parents’ tape recorders, including classics such as “Omega” (total Star Trek rip-off) and “Booger Nuggets” (engendering nicknames that would last a lifetime). 

But how could I break into the film industry itself?

Unable to find answers and unwilling to stall, I redirected my energy toward other creative pursuits like songwriting, graphic illustration, and writing fiction which culminated in a children’s book-CD combo incorporating all three.  Then, for reasons both known and unknown to me now, I decided to chuck the whole works for a life devoted to God.  In hindsight, a yoga class and a good self-help book probably would have done the trick, providing the organizing principle I was looking for.  On the other hand, I can see now that I was also drawn to a holy life because, in the end, I simply love a good story; and, frankly, the Bible struck me as the best damn collection of stories I`d ever come across.  Eventually I’d go about telling those stories to my church members in an honest attempt to bring meaning and direction into their lives.  And eventually I would stop because it was obvious they were taking those stories a bit too literally and trying to interpret “the will of God” a little too zealously, and I really wasn’t the right person to facilitate that, at least not anymore.  During that time, I rooted and uprooted six times in towns from northern to southern Alberta.

Then James was born, the first of three, all Albertans.  (Incidentally, this province was where it all began for the Donnetts back in the early 1900s, when my great grandfather moved his family from Scotland and took up farming on the Canadian prairies.  After eventual moves to Winnipeg, Toronto and Vancouver, where I was born, a part of the Donnett clan has finally come full circle.)  Jennifer and Richard followed in relatively quick succession, and through them I would recall the letter I’d sent to Spielberg all those years ago, and my reasons for writing it.  In their artwork and stories and wide-eyed imaginings of their own possibilities, I felt twelve again.  (Not that I've ever needed that much help, let’s be honest.)  When the Lord of the Rings trilogy hit theatres and the inevitable parade of merchandise marched into stores, I told them I was buying the action figures “for them”.   When no one was looking, I’d fly two toy spaceships over my head and into my field of vision with one eye closed, replicating the opening minutes of the first Star Wars film, imagining what it must have taken to make a scene like that work so well in the prehistoric era of modern cinematic special effects.  At night, I’d become a living audiobook in their bedroom doorway, reading the Chronicles of Narnia to them and carefully logging each character in my head so as not to get the voices wrong.  Next day, I would listen to them tell me their stories and love every minute of it.

In other words, I was busy imagining, hearing, telling, editing or dramatizing a story just about every minute I spent with them.  The three of them functioned like muses, and hopefully I functioned as one to them.   In 2004, I heard about Vancouver Film School at a travelling road show (where had it been all my life?) and decided to make up for lost time.  The whole idea of finally doing what I’d dreamt about my whole life felt like a rebirth, a resurrection, a reclamation of my true self.  I don’t care how that sounds, that exactly how it felt.  This was it.

Then came a divorce, not entirely from left field, but with its accompanying stages of demolition, devastation, reconstruction, and underneath it all, of course, postponement.  Everything took a very necessary backseat to making sure the kids (and I) were alright, including that year’s hopes of film school.   It would take five years for those hopes to regain traction.

In 2006 I began working for an oil field safety company called United Safety, and found my legs again, both financially and personally.  In 2008, I met Melissa Devolin, a lady so beautiful, so smart, so positive, funny and good-hearted, I knew I didn’t stand a chance.  Two years later, we were married.  In her I found the truest and sassiest pairing of my soul - my best friend, my sounding board, my muse, mentor, and constructive critic.  I’ve never loved anyone the way I love that woman, never felt so safe with anyone, never so completely supported.  It was no surprise, then, when she asked me this past spring when I was planning on getting my ass back to film school.  As they continued to sprout, blossom, and bear the fruit of their own opinions, my kids started asking the same thing.  “How do you expect us to chase after our dreams,” they asked matter-of-factly, “if you’re not chasing after yours?”  

I think it's safe to call that a sign.   

I don’t know everything and I can be pretty dim about a lot of things, but I do know this.  When I’m 80 and looking back, I won’t be nearly as concerned about the state of my bank account as I will about the state of my hopes and dreams, and the degree to which I answered the callings of my own heart.  Failure won’t haunt me nearly as much as the knowledge of not even having tried.  That’s got to weigh pretty heavily on a person at the end of their days.  Frankly, I’m not interested. 

So, having measured the risks, planned the moves, prepared for the huge financial and lifestyle shift to come, and above all, made sure the kids will be okay with us gone for a year, Mel and I will be on our way to Vancouver at the end of this month to pick up where I left off in 2005.  To document the experience, I’ve started this blog with the hope that it will help keep me on track right through to the end, remind us why and how we did it, and possibly inspire others as they take those gutsy steps out of their comfort zones and be true to their own souls.  Nothing holier-than-thou here.  No psycho-analysis or preaching.  Just one couple taking the plunge and charting their progress as they remember what their twelve-year-old selves knew all along.  Use our experience if it helps, discard what doesn’t work for you.  Above all, enjoy! 

As for me, I’m off to make movies.  “For the rest of my life, by the way, Mr. Spielberg!”

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