To Live and Die a Filmmaker
The Necessary Disillusionment of the Artist
The only time you’ll ever see me utter anything resembling quitting as a filmmaker is when I'm severely sick, when the mind loses its fortitude. It is a temporary utterance revealing my inevitable humanity. On any other given day, I have the resolve of a demigod, willing to withstand the greatest adversity, willing to persevere. Very early in my career, filmmaking brought me to the brink of death, having developed a severe illness in the middle of post-production for a film I was directing. To think after all that I had sacrificed to be an artist (the family members I couldn’t say goodbye to before they died, the years that have passed that I have not spent with them, and the financial cost) that I would now die in the corner of a hospital room with the doors closed and the lights off, thousands of miles away from home, was a profound moment. This was my reality before I had even graduated from film school.
I had encountered the darkness of Los Angeles, the loneliness of surviving in the shadows of this city. I remember the many times I would arrive at LAX airport with no one willing to pick me up, and how I would have to take an expensive rideshare or take the train home with my suitcases for hours. I remember checking myself out of the hospital and having to order a car home because I had no one willing to pick me up. I remember not being able to afford medication out of pocket, and eventually getting so sick I had to call an ambulance two nights in a row. I know what it’s like to party with celebrities and come back to a towed car, or to feed your crew and come home to an empty fridge. I remember being lost on the train with the homeless. I remember being homeless and seeing Dr. Dre, a billionaire, across the street, on set shooting “Straight Out of Compton.”
I remember wandering in this city for years, knowing that if I had a film to make, people would call me out of the blue to collaborate, but also feeling that if I died, it would be at least a year before my friends would ever inquire about me. I remember how painful that felt. At the same time, I remember feeling such a sense of camaraderie with my peers that had then withered into competition and every man for himself. I remember having suicidal thoughts and then losing a friend to suicide, who I would have least expected. When I recovered from this dark place, I knew there was no returning. I have given everything but my faith in God to fulfill what I believe my divine calling is on this earth. I remember the foundation of my faith being shaken to its core, and somehow being recovered again. When I returned to the East Coast to tend to my younger siblings during the pandemic, they were carrying on, living their own lives, and so I knew I had to return to LA and fulfill my own destiny.
I will never quit being a filmmaker. I know what it is to live and to be brought to the verge of death for the sake of my craft. I know what it is to be a starving artist with a negative balance in my account. I know what it’s like to be in debt to make a film. I know what it is to bet on myself. I’ve been there. My craft is a weapon that I wield solemnly. It is a mantle that I carry, knowing what potential it holds. Many nights have I questioned the purpose of movie-making. “Does all of this really matter?” I would ask myself.
I witnessed my doctor and engineer friends get married, start families, buy homes, and do meaningful work that affects society. However, when I thought of them doing their respective jobs, I realized that they, too, could struggle with a sense of meaning. I remember hearing that the career with the highest suicide rate is dentistry, a high-paying career with incredible benefits. What good is it to cure a disease when we know humans will all eventually die anyway? What good is it to build a piece of technology that helps the world, if it is ultimately used for the world’s harm? What good is it to spend years of my life making movies that people watch for 2 hours only to say “Meh, it was cool,” before returning to their social media feed. Meaning evades all of us in this life.
Disillusionment is a necessary stage on the road to mastery. On the other end of this chasm is something profoundly meaningful, dare I say even within it. I have witnessed my role models die, and the void that was left in their wake. I know what it is to survive not only circumstantial devastation but also existential turmoil. Through all this, I have protected the little flame of my inner child that ever burns. The same six-year-old child who knew that he wanted to be a film director when he grew up, yet couldn’t fathom what it would cost him to become that version of himself. The child who wondered and imagined.
Then I remember the first night when my parents left me in my college dorm, how I was trembling with fear of failure. I had opened my bible and read the very first page I landed on. Like a divine sense of comfort, these words of Christ met me in my worry, which I have lived by ever since. It read:
John 15
The True Vine
1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
It is these words that give me the courage to put pen to paper, to proclaim my work boldly in the world, to live with integrity and stand on my convictions, and to be an artist despite my life not looking the way I thought it would. I will live and die a filmmaker, but most of all, I will live and die doing what I know more than anything else in this world I am supposed to do. Maturity is knowing that life is not always about your own wish fulfillment, but about the fulfillment of something much greater than you. I know that my art is meant to inspire someone greater than me, someone from the coming generations, maybe not born yet, who will have the same courage to answer the calling on their lives.
I have reached the end of myself more times than I can count. I know I am mortal. I know I am frail. I know my time is limited. But not by my might, but by God’s might I fulfill what He has called me to do with the time I have on this earth, so that when I see Him I can hear Him say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Amen!