Apocalypse of the Inner Empire: A Work in Progress

The Inner Empire of a twisted mind that I deliberately created with my own bare hands finally resulted in a huge Apocalypse, now and here. This rabbit hole of insanity, I call a work in progress, drives me mad day by day. I chose it to lead me there.

Every day I wake up and can’t sit still, so I move forward, powered by ambition, energy, life, anger to fight, bills to pay, and creativity. Without creativity, which brings it all together, it would have been impossible to wake up — or so I wishfully think from time to time.

But reality tells me, it’s not necessarily about me being able to write my witty thoughts down in a playful, bubbly way full of metaphors and ideas, or it is not about editing films or taking photos, so my ability to tell the story can be translated into any language we collectively don’t speak. By the end of the day, it’s more about me pushing that button “transfer money” over and over, every time it is required. But it rarely works the other way around. Creative work seems to be a wonderful outlet. Why can’t I find the transactional entrance to it?

Last year, I worked on a couple of films. Some of them were very low budget, which means for free, or for the love of cinema, if you want more poetic wording. I worked on the weekends, at Christmas, and in the evenings after my regular, also not very high-budgeted work in film. This week was different. I spent more than 16 hours in the hospital. Two hospitals, to be exact. Just waiting to be told I should rest and everything will be fine. “Are you stressed?” I could cry on the spot, just from hearing that word — an admission I can’t make to anyone but myself. I know that if I say it out loud, I will be dismissed. But stress does not make me cry anymore; it makes me angry. If my anger had paid off, I would have been rich by now. But instead, I go around and ask for medical help that I am being immediately asked to pay for. Which makes me work harder afterwards, so I can ask to be paid, so I can pay for that medical help before. That’s the rabbit hole. So I answered: “I am stressed to be here and now.”

How could I not be stressed? I was put in a hospital room that looked like a prison cell, where I sat on my own for six hours, voluntarily. No book with me — not that I could read through my headache — no internet, no connection at all, like it was a bunker. At some point, I thought they were trying to test my pain, or perhaps to give me a room for a massive thinking process, like a self-therapy. Once I started having a few signs of my own life coming back again, I remembered that I had a download of a three-hour making-of interview with Francis Ford Coppola on my phone. This is when his Apocalypse Now collided with mine. In that crucial, given moment of my helpless misery. And it actually started helping me. But maybe it was just a painkiller. Let’s not pay too much attention to that anymore. My headache madness is not the main character of this little piece of a truthful essay.

But Francis Ford Coppola is. He is ambitious, angry, and creative. On top of the fact that he knows how to transfer money, he also knows how to make it double. His Apocalypse made him go insane and broke, but he came out of there stronger and richer.

Francis Ford Coppola wanted to make a film about the Vietnam War, the first film right after the war ended. Working with a Hollywood studio meant boundaries; he wanted freedom. He wanted to go grand and powerful, sending the message without the limitations of a system that has too many voices. After his earlier success with The Godfather, it was clear his own voice was very strong and exact. If you heard his directions to the crew from the making-of, you would know what I mean. He knows exactly what he wants and nothing less than that. So that was one of the reasons Coppola decided to invest his own money into his new project — Apocalypse Now.

Imagine the numbers: Marlon Brando alone asked for a million dollars upfront, plus another million for each additional week of filming. Coppola spent 238 days in the jungle. His team built the set from scratch with hundreds of people — twice. After Typhoon Olga destroyed the set completely, Coppola simply said something like, “The first one wasn’t even built the right way.”

When he ran short of money, he asked for support wherever he could; he put his house and his car up as collateral for a loan without regret. At least, that’s how it seems, because the easy way he talks about it says it all:

“I believe that filmmaking — as, probably, is everything — is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you’ve got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have.”

The way he spoke about money and his work is impressive to me. He knew his value at the very moment he was taking the highest risks. He put everything on the map, knowing that even if he lost it all, he still made the film he wanted. And by tomorrow, he would just go and earn the money all over again.

If I were to live a single day in his head, I would go insane on the spot. Right now, I am just in the midst of making myself mad about my creative work and money — slowly. Coppola was stepping onto the set, driven mad by the jungle. Or was the jungle just a convenient trigger for the real madness of his ambition? Anyhow, his ambition was fluent in the language of profit, moving in transactional ways in both directions.

It’s inspiring because my own ambition also works as if on steroids. Non-stop, without breaks, and I know exactly what I want. And yet I don’t want to blame my gender, my immigrant origin, or the time I am living in for my financial misery. I don’t want to blame anyone or anything. But why do people tend to disrespect payment for creative work? Why am I agreeing to low-budget film projects just for the sake of making them happen — and for the sake of me happening within them? I know the answers, and yet I am still going for it, because of the ambition and energy I have in me. And I am building this crooked empire with my bare hands slowly. It is inside of me. But it is angry today.

It brings my grand headache to this bunker room in the hospital, where it felt like, the quiet white room was deliberately trying to wash out my chaotic state of mind for six hours. Trying to blend me in and resolve me into something I can’t ever be. But six was just another blank number with some empty space in the middle, resolving into higher numbers that I don’t like to face. Like the face of Marlon Brando, who would probably back then drop dead laughing about my “girl math.”

There I was, just hoping this situation is not going to turn into the nightmare of some kind of a cursed film production, like what happened to Laura Dern’s character in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. By the way, Inland Empire and Apocalypse Now should be put together in one room and studied, if it hasn’t been done before. Any volunteers?

Those two films together make a perfect, nearly six-hour screening. But before I do anything with that idea, I will try not to lose the sense of my own self. As long as my painkillers are staying low-dose, I think I will be fine. Or, as all the doctors I saw this week said: I should not be stressed. So I will try to get there by watching the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse about the making of Apocalypse Now. I’ve heard it’s amazing. And I really want to see how Coppola was filming his insane — in the most admirable way possible — body of work.

Because there is a lot to learn. From both, actually — Coppola and Lynch. In many ways. But that’s a story for another time, once my headache apocalypse is over and I’ve found my way out of this rabbit hole of bills that my whole low-budget film situation created. It’s a work in progress, I would say, with lots of positive things on my mind.

Buy me a coffee