Filmmaker Foils

I really love to waste time online, and especially i love to read the unofficial bios of people on Wikipedia. So today, I happened to read both Christopher Nolan's and M. Night Shymalan's and here is what i found out:

DID YOU KNOW?...
1. ....that both Nolan and Shyamalan were born in 1970?
2. ....that both wanted to be filmmakers from a young age, having played around with 8mm as kids?
4......that both were heavily involved with film in college and first shot films while in school?

They have similar backgrounds and similar dreams, and almost--almost!--a similar career arc. As is well known, they had early career breakout hits. With Nolan, it was Momento in 2000, and with Shyamalan it was Sixth Sense in 1999. After this, they were both anointed and given a certain amount of carte blanch and respect by studios for being so young (barely 30!) and so talented. And rightly so! These were both extremely creative, groundbreaking movies.

Now look at this:

Here is Christopher Nolan's filmography......

.........and here is M. Night Shyamalan's.

Notice that their film releases basically coincided--2000, 2002, 2004/5, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012/3. But as Nolan just got better and more respected every year, Shyamalan's career was in a spiral (at least the 'respected artist' part of his career--all of his films since Sixth Sense, even the bad ones, have been commercial successes and very profitable). Batman Begins vs The Village? The Prestige vs. Lady and the Water?!??!??? DARK KNIGHT VS. THE HAPPENING????????!!!! and we won't even talk about pitting Inception and The Last Airbender against each other, that's just cruel.

So why? How? Why and how did this happen?
It's easy to take a look at their filmography of Nolan vs. Shyamalan and just say that oh, it's because Shyamalan was doing too much, and had no creative oversight to help him out--in all of his films from 2000-2008, he was the director and producer and writer and he acted in them. I think this is totally a contributing factor for why Shyamalan fell from grace, he was trying to do too much, and didn't have enough input from other people--like another producer or director or co-writer--to help him out and say, every once in awhile, "hey, you know, this is actually kind of mediocre and crazy, maybe we should work on this some more." That totally should have happened, and it didn't.

But I think there's more to it than that.
First off, Shyamalan's career took off with Sixth Sense, but he'd experienced success before then. His 1992 film was screened at Toronto International Film Fest, which is kind of a big deal. He was 22. He was an NYU student. A 22yo NYU film student with his first feature at TIFF? He already thought he was a big deal, and other people were telling him that too, according to wikipedia. Next, he made a 6 million dollar movie that only grossed $300,000 and was in post-production for 3 years. I'm not knocking movies that don't make money, lord knows that will happen to nearly all filmmakers. But what i'm saying is, he made a film in college that made him feel like hot shit and then had his parents produce his next film.

What did Christopher Nolan do? He made corporate videos for 4 years. He shot his first film on weekends with his friends and it cost him approx $5000. I'm biased by my own experience, but even based on those first 5 years they were out of college, Shyamalan's career foreshadows "will go down in a flaming blaze of glory and hubris and disappointment" and Nolan's predicts that he will be a patient, masterful storyteller with an extremely solid career ahead of him.

So there's that. But also, Nolan works with a tight knit group of people. His wife produces his films, his brother co-writes many of his scripts, he's worked with the same cinematographer since Memento, and he often works with the same actors in film after film. So, though he has been writer/director/producer for most of his movies, he was not as susceptible to the hubris/lack of oversight kiss of death that Shyamalan was in this same situation. It's my conjecture that because of this group of people he routinely works with, Nolan has built up a trusting network of advisors who probably give advice and criticisms and keep him out of too much trouble.

So lessons for you: work hard, don't act entitled, and surround yourself with trusted advisors and friends who will tell you the hard truth.

I just hope that Nolan's next project after Dark Knight Rises shows that he is able to bounce back from mediocre.....fingers crossed, i want to see more good movies from this guy.

Liberals Arts United: shedding some guilt

Ugh, it drives me crazy that there are so many articles that are like “social sciences aren’t important” and “literature isn’t important” and always emphasizing STEM STEM STEM!

I totally think STEM is important too. In fact, I wish that I had taken way more STEM classes. I wish I retook calculus in college, and that I’d taken a statistics class. I regret my dismissal of science and my assumption that a greater understanding of science is irrelevant to my life. I wish that I’d taken more basic computer classes in high school, and maybe some handy electives like automotive tech. As a liberal arts major who has struggled off and on with unemployment and underemployment since graduating two years ago, I know very well the value of these “hard skills” and technical knowledge.

But reading between the lines of this recent article continuing the drum beat of STEM STEM STEM, the simple STEM solution is not as simple as it seems. One of the most telling lines is this:

“Hans-Herbert Jagla, executive vice president for human resources at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, said finding workers with both technical skills and people skills was proving more difficult than predicted… [Jagla says,] “In manufacturing, you have to be able to calculate things — and express yourself."”

I have found that despite my “unemployability” as a nearly skill-less, non-technical worker, I actually have invaluable skill set—my people skills and communication skills, particularly interpersonal communication. And where did I get that? From reading books! From taking sociology and psychology classes. From going on “useless and frivolous” study abroad programs. These are some of the things that the social sciences and liberal arts have to offer, and their contributions to the workforce should not be ignored. They have been soundly blasted for nearly a century now as being useless, baseless skills, but that is simply not true. The above article quotes an economist say “It’s better to get a C in chemistry than an A in literature.” This is an awful pithy statement, but it is a frivolous and irresponsible thing to say, especially because it sounds like just the kind of latchkey phrase that a politician would cling to when trying to get rid of liberal art and social sciences and replace them with engineering.

I mean, I love engineers. Some of my best friends of engineers! But the thing is, every engineer thinks that if they and their engineer friends ran the world, everything would be perfect. This is clearly not true, because Herbert Hoover is the only engineer president and everyone agrees that that guy was no good. I don’t deny that engineers are smart and that they have really good, logical answers and solutions to many of todays problems. An engineer would probably make a great VP, actually. But there are many, many other skills that make up the world of useful skills, and as a proponent of the liberal arts, I am tired of their contribution being marginalized.

That being said, I do agree with many of these alarmist STEM articles that it is a growing and worrisome problem that so many jobs are going overseas, not just for the cheaper labor but also because there are just not enough qualified workers  in the US (I think that biggest illustration of this was in This American Life’s Retraction episode, where Ira is talking to the reporter about Apple’s supply chain in China? In the US, it would take 9 months to find all the industrial engineers they need. In China, it only took 15 days—and they were working slow. That’s crazy!!!!). But, I don’t think it is a simple matter of valuing STEM over all the other subjects. I think that this problem reflects definite cultural shifts in America. And culture is an unwieldy, multi-faceted thing that is hard to figure out, solve, define, or change. So we have our work cut out for us. 

And, just as a further disclaimer and caveat, I would never say that all you need are soft skills and a liberal arts background and you are prepared for the job market. That is untrue as well, and anyone who says otherwise does not have your best interest in mind. But to say that liberal arts or social sciences is a death knell for your future professional life is just as wrong as saying that STEM careers are the way to professional fulfillment and jobs for everybody. Both of these assertions only tell part of the story.