I started writing my
first script when I was 10. It was pretty bad. Really bad actually. But in
retrospect it was the good kind of bad. The project was called Mixed Movies and
essentially it was a mix of different characters and themes from popular
franchises to create something for everybody. So basically, I came up with the
idea for the Lego Movie decades before
it was released.
I never did finish that project. But I did complete a novel shortly
after. Orion was a story about teenagers saving the world in the future. It was
also pretty bad. Better. But still bad.
I remember giving Orion to a few of my mother’s friends to read. They
gave encouraging and altogether positive feedback. But they also mentioned the
things that I needed to improve as a writer. I’d never had that happen to me
before as a kid. Or not to that degree anyway. Having adults read your
innermost thoughts and outright tell you that they’re not good enough?! Daamn.
I was crushed. Literally stunned. I lay in the car without moving for
hours. It felt like my world was crashing down. Rejection redefined my
experience of what it was to be an artist. Before that, storytelling was only
about expressing myself. Now it was about finding something deeper than what I
already understood. To really write I needed to grow up and experience the
world. Rejection was my initiation.
I wrote my second book over the next two years as I moved through junior
high school. My parents got divorced, general teenage anxiety and adolescent discomfort
ensued, but on the whole, things were ok. Nintendo was great. I was the fat kid
so I ate a lot. And most importantly, my dreams of being an author/filmmaker were
still plentiful and possible. I put everything I had into writing that second
book with the full intention of being taken seriously as an author.
It still sucked. But it did have a few decent parts…
In my mind, book three was my final shot to prove once and for all that
I wasn’t a total crap writer. Book three (at age 16) was the be all end all
defining moment of my life! This was it… I’m coming world and you better be
ready! I feverishly wrote that third book over the course of the next couple
years. I poured everything I was feeling and thinking into it!
And then… when it was finished… it was by far… without a doubt… the worst
thing I had ever written.
I kind of gave up on being a writer for a couple years after that. Kind
of a ‘Screw it, I suck at this, I’m done’ sort of deal. But I kept thinking of
stories all the while… slow cooking ideas in the back of my mind just in case I
got struck by lightning and suddenly developed talent.
High school ended in an anticlimactic residue of moving on to college.
No lightning. Just life.
And then… a few years after my catastrophic third book… I decided to try
writing again. Just… throw something on the page and mix it up, you know?
It was good. Actually good.
My fourth novel (age 19), Popped
Culture is the story of a woman named Joan, formerly a woman named John.
It’s about her life, the people in her life and… her former penis in a pickle
jar. The book tackled themes of identity in a complex, absurd yet mature way.
It helped me realize just how important writing was for me.
For the first time, expressing myself wasn’t something that hurt. Now writing
was something that helped me to grow. That transition marked an important shift
in perspective and drive. I was officially a writer again. And with that, I was
going to submit my work to publishers.
Part of rejection is feeling like a failure. It turns out it doesn’t
matter if your work is good if nobody publishes it. I tried submitting
repeatedly as everyone does but… nope. A few hundred rejections and a couple of
replies but… nothing materialized. So… I tried writing another novel! Reverie,
my fifth book (age 20) and submitted that to publishers too! But… nope. It
still wasn’t on the level that it needed to be. Close but no cigar.
Frustrated and discouraged by relentless rejection I decided to make a
bold move and produce a local graphic novel. I orchestrated a two-month
photoshoot with dozens of locations, actors, friends, costumes and effects to
unfold all across Edmonton. I then drew overtop of those photos in photoshop and
created a unique cell painted style. This took months of production,
illustration and assembly.
I then took a Flash Web development course at NAIT. I was going to
design my own website—self-publish my fourth and fifth novels as well as my new
graphic novel! I needed to think bigger… that was the key to finally breaking
through! I needed to aim higher… and that website (age 23) was my road to
reaching the world! Ready or not here I come!!!
Nothing. Nobody. Zip.
In retrospect, my site barely had anything on it. The graphic novel I
made with my friends was juvenile and poorly presented. I didn’t promote or
publicize my work at all. It was just… me wanting to be all grown up as a
writer without actually being there yet. But it felt like I was onto something.
Like there was something really there… deep down… beneath the surface, hidden
in the words.
It felt like there was a distance between people that writing had the
power to amend. Rejection was just other people telling me that I hadn’t
succeeded in communicating with them yet. I viscerally longed to articulate
things deeper than what I understood. It drove me. It fueled me. And in a way
it consumed me. My once pastime was now my sense of purpose.
I worked two years lining steel pipe with fibre glass to save up to go
to the New York Film Academy’s intensive one-year filmmaking program. I wrote
my sixth book, The Collection—18 shorts stories—in that time as well. I
submitted that book to publishers too. Nothing. So I published it myself on my
website again. I submitted grants in my spare time while working industrial
labour. Nothing. Nobody believed in me. Not yet. No publishers, no grants. Just
me and the dream I clung to.
My expectations about my art were always overzealous, rushed and
entitled. Like an arrogant kid. I wanted to reach a point of understanding so
badly that I insisted I was already there. But the truth is you never stop
reaching. Even if you’ve fallen and especially if you’re falling. Desire’s like
that. And as bad as desire is, dreams are worse. My dreams were haunting. I’m
sure you know what I mean.
I went to film school (age 25). I graduated. I made multiple short films
that I wrote, directed, produced or edited. I learned to do everything I needed
to do so people would finally listen.
My short films were good. They got into mid-range festivals, not top
tier. They won a few awards. The feedback was very strong. It felt like a shot
of hope on an otherwise bleak path. I finally had a stage to speak from. The
value of my work was clear and apparent to everyone. Finally!!!
And yet… it was only shadows and whispers. Fleeting applause in sparsely
filled theatres. No job offers, opportunities, paycheques or conceivable paths
forward. The road of fifteen years that I had already worked to be a
writer/filmmaker was only now beginning. Reality wasn’t as warm as my naïve
imagination had been.
And so… I put my short films online for free.
All three short films focused on relevant real-world issues in a unique
non-confrontational style. I wanted to use narrative to encourage conversation.
To take what I had learned from my previous inability to articulate myself and
transform that into a means of helping other people overcome conflict.
The decades that I had been a bad writer, combined with the amount of
rejection that I’d received slowly refined my ability as an artist. I finally
understood what was previously beyond my understanding. Writing held an
invaluable secret. Combinations of words contained a long-lost way to traverse
discourse and compel bitter enemies to bury the hatchet. That was my mission
now. That was the purpose behind my art. I was going to use my words to
confront controversy.
Coming Home premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival
and shed light on negligence surrounding elderly care. 3 Needs premiered in Montreal a year later and was a short film
about homelessness in New York. Blindfold
was nominated for the Edmonton Film Prize and was a short film about the strong
unconscious resistance people have to confronting controversy. All three films
invited deep nuanced discussions. Not only were those films vessels for me to
be understood as an artist, more importantly, they were water cooler events for
other people to gather around and discuss deeper concepts by.
A good story is a reflective lens to view reality. It offers perspective
and compels deeper thought. It’s not simply a uniform, linear, three act
monotone romp. It’s a vibrant, lush awe-inspiring ballet. And because of this,
narrative and artistic storytelling are uniquely situated to delve into the
most heated of controversies. Even those controversies that people would
normally want nothing to do with. That’s the power of storytelling. That’s the
power of words. A turn of phrase can upend a concept.
Fans of my short film Blindfold
created foreign language subtitled versions of the film just because they
wanted to help get the word out about it. That’s how much community spirit was
behind the idea. I was featured on popular online podcasts, Big Breakfast,
Edmonton Film Festival, had 10’s of thousands of views and penetrated the
conversation of activist circles all around the globe. Even the editor of the National Post personally wrote an article
about my film. Blindfold struck a
cord with people who were tired of pleading to deaf ears. It told their story
in a way that everyone could understand.
Through Blindfold’s brief success
I met a local activist named Bruce who was willing to invest $5000 into my next
socially conscious project. That project just happened to be Hold Me, the script I had already written
for my first feature film.
Hold Me is the story of an end of life caregiver whose
job it is to hold and console people being voluntarily euthanized. The film was
written to shed a light on grief in a way that helped the audience overcome
their own grief. Hold Me was designed
to be a tool that people could use to heal themselves in their real lives. The
film was my first feature length project (age 28-33).
Bruce’s $5000 investment was soon met with a number of other smaller
investments from my friends and family. The support that I had always lacked
and never been able to pull together from the outside world now came in from those
closest to me.
I managed to raise $25,000 dollars between friends, family, crowd
funding and a public screening of my short films held at the Garneau. It wasn’t
enough to make the movie. Not by a long shot. But it was enough to lighten the
load.
I couldn’t raise any more money. I tried. I pitched the project to a
couple of people to collaborate with, but they didn’t understand the underlying
motivation behind my work. I didn’t just want to make an entertaining movie. I
wanted to re-contextualize the application of filmmaking for therapeutic use.
Entertainment wasn’t the point. Helping the audience was. That was my vision
for my work.
Without raising the money that I needed and accustomed to having to do
things on my own I did the dumbest thing anyone can possibly do for a film they
believe in. I decided to go into debt to fund the feature myself. The rest of
the budget was now my responsibility.
I moved forward with independently producing Hold Me for five full years. In that time I also wrote two other
books that publishers snubbed, Rise
and Play Reality: How Videogames Are
Changing Everything! All of my work was now exclusively focused on
cultivating deeper conversations and encouraging compassion in response to
controversy.
Financing a feature film on your own is kind of like tangoing with a
guillotine. If anything goes really wrong, it’s on you to fix it… that is,
assuming you survive. If you run out of money, you have to find more. It’s a
really, really awful feeling. I managed to scrape by. The shoot went well,
principle photography wrapped without incident. The film was half complete. I
had managed to get what I needed.
It wasn’t until post production that it all finally became too much for
me. Much to my dismay, in the window of time when Hold Me was being produced
there was a change in policy unfolding in the city. What once would have been
$17-$20,000 returned to me from local production expenses on Hold Me suddenly vanished. The tax
credit no longer applied. And that $17-$20,000 differential was now my personal
responsibility to make up for. I appealed the decision. I did everything I
could. But they wouldn’t listen. They only heard paperwork not the fact that I
had actually done the work.
That broke me. Completely.
This time, it wasn’t just rejection. It wasn’t just failure. It felt
like the world was trying to kill me and everything I valued and had worked so
hard for. Being an artist was just too hard. My energy was fading. After
decades of work… I was losing my dream.
But then, while working industrial labour again to chip away the debt of
the film, I decided to try writing another grant for Hold Me. Maybe the entire world wasn’t against me? Maybe I just had
to keep trying? No matter how much it hurt. I had to keep trying.
I opened the envelope on the toilet expecting the verdict to end up in
the bowl. But to my amazement, this time I actually managed to get it. The
Edmonton Arts Council, after previously rejecting Hold Me twice in
pre-production, gave me a grant. They approved a $6000 investment to help me with
editing costs. It literally kept me alive.
And yet… receiving that grant in the face of concurrently losing far
more money because of production woes left me viscerally changed. I wish I hadn’t
felt that way. I wish I were just grateful and nothing more. But a queasy
uncertain feeling of everything crashing down around me had crept into my veins.
The film had been too hard to make. The marketing budget was now gone and I was
up to my ears in debt. But even worse than all of that, I had completely burnt
myself out.
Burnout is brutal. I won’t go into details. I’ll just say that I learned
my lesson.
Taking that film on myself was a stupid decision. I should have made
sure everything was what it needed to be before producing Hold Me. I should have been more pragmatic and cautious—understood
just how insanely long and hard an independent feature film is to pull off! But
I didn’t. I had stubbornly only cared about the opportunity to share my work. And
as much as it hurt to keep struggling all the time, I remained proud of the
work that I had done. Hold Me was a strong film. For that at least, I hadn’t
failed.
After the film was completed I was invited to sit on a grants review
board and pass judgement on other people’s projects. It was tough. There are a
lot of very talented people in this province and they all deserve a hand in their
pursuits.
After one of the meetings I remember walking with a woman who had been
invited to represent the literary arts. I was there as a filmmaker even though
fundamentally I identify as a writer.
As we walked she talked about her work and her experiences learning from
rejection. She brought up the fact that she had a part time job teaching
creative writing to the next generation of people just like us—the next
generation of artists with looming initiations. She said to me: “I don’t know
why I encourage them to write. You know what it’s like.”
Her posture was fragile. Her pupils were wide.
She moved with an elegance and grace of someone who had once danced on broken
glass. She knew what it was to plant her heels too firmly on unwelcome ground. She
maneuvered herself as if she had learned to fly. Anything to keep that weight
from setting in again. I could see in her delicate and tortured mannerisms the
scars and war wounds that I myself had come to acquire. From writing. From trying
to be an artist. From rejection after rejection. And despite it all, to keep
reaching.
