The Cinema of Me

This is part three in a series where I explore what other avenues to making money we have as filmmakers.

Part one is about building sustainable creative careers. Part two is on shooting things alongside your projects. Read them here:

There’s this line in The Usual Suspects:

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

That film is so unsettling to think back on now, because at the time I thought it was amazing. But now I see it as emblematic of a certain period of Hollywood. Brilliantly made, extremely clever and utterly hollow. And a film made and released by reprehensible dickheads.

So let’s do the opposite of what it suggests is the greatest trick. Let’s tell the world we exist.

I’ve recently redone my whole website. It’s now my entire filmmaking world in one place - you can watch, read and book me all directly on the site.

The films I’ve made (including links to rent and buy) are there. The best branded work I’ve directed, the talks I give, my consultancy, a store with products like this book I made, and highlights from this Substack.

It’s now all in one accessible, coherent place.

Want to buy a poster from one of my films? You can. Book me to give a workshop on interview techniques? Yes. See my trailers? Certainly.

This shouldn’t really be revolutionary, I know. And it isn’t. But so much of my career has felt fragmented, or in service of others. I’ve been so focused on trying to get films made that I haven’t nurtured my audience well enough. And not only that, I haven’t made it easy for people to get to what they do want.

To make this site, I had to merge a few domains, build a structure out of a very spontaneous process of offering consultancy and talks, and make new products.

I haven’t spent ages designing it, because it was more important to make it accessible and available. This site does not have the graphic beauty of the titles for The Brutalist.

But it is clear, and clean, and aesthetically coherent.

And that makes things possible that just weren’t easy enough before. Or, that the world didn’t know they could do. In all the thinking about how to keep surviving as a filmmaker now, I’ve realised that I need to make it a bit easier for the world to access the parts of me that I want the world to access. And that process helps nourish and build my audience.

So the site is a world of me, written by me.

It’s built to grow, too. I’ve got some digital courses that will be downloadable for people who don’t live near where I can give workshops. Can I build a financing model? An eclectic, profitable store? I don’t know. But everything I do will be mainly there from now on.

My film series Little Scraps of Paper will live there and only there, for example.

All this is not an argument for sharing your life or for sharing everything, everywhere (all at once). It’s an argument for sharing what you want to share and letting the world know you exist.

Thinking of ideas for how to do that in between making films — things that aren’t Instagram, ways to keep the site feeling like an organic, evolving place — has led to some creatively fun things. Like this book called East 10th Street we released.

I have this archive of 35mm negatives and transparencies that I shot whilst making my film with Saul Leiter. I thought now might be a good time to share them, along with some stories. So we made a book and people can now actually buy it (it’s almost sold out). That makes me happy — it’s in some book stores I love, and I’m giving a talk about it soon. That’s not a new film, but it’s all part of my world of making films and allows me other ways to be creative and engage with audiences.

I have always thrived off this combination of willing things into existence, and making things for the joy of making them and getting them out into the world.

Even if it doesn’t lead anywhere, you’re learning and expressing and growing. And you never know who is paying attention and what becomes possible. Sometimes all the world needs is for you to tell them that you do this thing.

Part of all this is my kind of contract with the world. Saying what you’re doing and making becomes a promise. I like that pressure. It’s how I’ve made anything I’ve dreamt up become a reality. As soon as I shift the tense from ‘I’d like to make’ to ‘I’m making’ then I get a blast of confidence, and whoever I’m talking with is engaged and expectant.

It locks me in and it starts to build a positive feedback loop. Because I’ve been going on about it for a while, with all sorts of people, I can’t NOT make this bird film. I would have nobody left to talk to.

And let’s remember that that is the point of all this extra stuff.

I’m doing it and exploring this because I want to continue to make films, to make them financially viable and to live off them.

I get it, it’s a lot. It’s a lot if not making films, just to be able to make films.

I used to always think my spirit animal would be a fox (doesn’t everyone say something like that — because who would say Tiger and mean it?).

But maybe I’m actually a duck, frantically paddling under water, just to look like I’m not moving forwards. And trying to keep not letting things affect me like water off my own back.

Do we really have any choice though? It’s insanely hard to finance films and it’s insanely hard to make a living off them.

Maybe I just need to reframe all this work mentally so that it feels ok and vital and vibrant. If I think of it as having my own cinema where people come to watch my films and chat to me, buy my books, ask for advice and be part of my community — then maybe it all feels positive and full of future potential.

It’s my space, I’m in charge of programming and everyone who wants to come is welcome.

(Apart from Trevor, he’s a dick).

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I think I’ll make the next episode of this series about physical media and having things people can hold.

But for now, I’d love to know - how are you sharing your work, your world?

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