Every Artist Has A Calling - Dr. Ken Atchity

Film Courage: [What are] your thoughts on work-life balance? Dr. Ken Atchity, Author/Producer: Well if you don't see a difference between work and life it's hard to figure out how to answer that question but I guess my basic view of it is that work is what you get to do when you're not living and so therefore whenever life interrupts work it makes me happy because you know grandkids are coming this weekend and what could be better but you know if it weren't for work life would just kind of swallow you up and spit you out at the end of the day so work is what I do when I you know when I get to and the balance is simply to let life do what it has to do like the other day of one of my friend's father died and although I didn't know him I I just decided I had to go to the to the funeral even though it was the day where I had you know a couple of pitches at the studios and so on but I just drove out to to the food to the funeral because that's okay and I didn't think about work all day and and I didn't complain there is I usually do that I didn't get any work done that day because once in a while you do have to pay your your regards to life and recognize that it's there but when I think about how many people who say they want to work and do work and don't do it and I go what are you doing they go well life just keeps happening and I don't quite understand that because that person says the same amount of time that I do and that we all do and it's matter of choice at a certain point I mean you can I mean we travel we love to eat out we love to do home things we love to cook we love to do all the things that people a lot of people like to do but we both you know my wife and I both work very hard because we love what we do and so I don't know it's a very interesting question but I I'd love you to be more specific about what you mean by it I'm thinking of an interview I heard with Alice Munro and she says she felt like she had missed out on a lot of life because even though she became a writer later on in her life I guess she just had spent so much time writing and so she was gonna finally get to a point where she was going to stop and she stopped for a year and she went right back to writing so her feeling like maybe so much of her life had been dedicated to work and then feeling like she'd missed out on life but then realizing that the work was really the life I don't know maybe I'm sounding again like my no that's that's exactly that's exactly the right kind of complication when it comes to asking that question because the people who love their work the type C personalities like Alice Munro their life is their work it's like a vocation you know it's like a calling and if you don't do it you're not living when you're not doing it you are alive but if you are not doing it on a regular basis and you are not living your life you're living someone else's life where you're living you know anyone's life but the artist is somebody who lives their life you know their own specific life that that she's shaped for herself and and and that's why it's an interesting question to anybody who's involved in in the creative affairs because have I ever thought that way and I'm missing out on life you know maybe for a total of six or seven seconds in my life I thought that I have had other thoughts like I could be I could spend more time suffering it's a strange thought right but I had three sisters and they all stayed in my hometown and I didn't and so they did a lot of suffering with the family and plenty of occasions for it with 40 relatives around and something was always going on and I felt like I could really be part of that but then I remember very distinctly that's the reason that I wanted to leave because I didn't want to be just doing that which I saw around me as I growing up I thought you know nothing outside the box is happening here people are just being and there's nothing wrong with that I'm totally all in favor of you know people and families who are on the phone all day with the latest persons accident of the latest person diagnosis of this Ravana and what are we get to do on the plans for this that I actually love all that stuff and when I'm there I'll be in the kitchen you know with mostly the women talking about this rather than the men watching a game on the in the other room I'm torn because I love that but I also distinctly knew that I had to get away from that that I that they that I couldn't let that consume me because at the end of the day I always believed with those people say the one thing that you can't live with at the end of the day is the things that you might have done you know the wishing that you had done a lot of stuff that you didn't do I will never have that problem you know all of my dreams have become plans and and or movies or books or trips you know they I just always did something about them and somehow it's all worked out they go to family reunions but I'm not I'm not gonna stay for four weeks and I'm not being drawn into all that except at the big moments and maybe it's total selfishness I think there is an element of selfishness and creativity and selfishness is maybe it's just an ordinary word for it but there might be more you you've euphemistic words for it self-determination or something narcissism would be the worst word for it because there are a lot of narcissists in the creative world who are mostly unbearable I think but you do have to be willing to be yourself which a lot of people are not prepared to do a lot of people are nervous when you do it and try to keep you from doing it because they really wish they could do it but they don't have the courage to do it because there aren't any there aren't any railroad tracks that mark it out clearly you know how are you gonna get to where you're going I don't know well then that's that's very no don't you think that's very troubling I think it's very exciting yeah I don't think it's troubling I think it's exciting I think I can do it and that makes people nervous you know people who are doing their thing in a continent way a continent of reason traditional way they're nervous when people are gonna live above a garage and practice you know the drums until they're famous that makes them nervous and probably well it should I mean if my own daughter had told me she won to be an actress I would have you know no please I would try and not have said that directly but I would have had the same feelings that people have so I think that you you have to be willing to be yourself and my justification or rationalization for that is that you know the universe if you believe in any kind of a higher force did create you and if you're not doing the thing that you're dreaming of doing then you're failing not just yourself but the whole universe the rest of us too like if you're a storyteller and that's what you're meant to be and you're not telling stories because you're afraid of this or that then you failed yourself you failed your dream and you failed all of us to whom your story might be life-saving or the funniest story they ever heard and you failed the universe that created you to dream about telling stories I used to have students who would have weird things like this I I really want to go to junior year in Paris but I'm I'm afraid of feeling guilty if I do it and I go why would you feel guilty well because my parents will have to pay for it and and my my brothers and sisters didn't get to do that and so I go wait a minute let me think this through with you you're afraid of guilt right okay what is guilt what do you mean well it's isn't guilt a kind of mental thing isn't it kind of imaginary I know it's powerful but it is imaginary like most powerful in human life right yeah well so isn't it fear of guilt also imaginary yeah so either way you're gonna be dealing with an imaginary problem right you're gonna go to Paris to feel guilty and the path in the future which is speculative anyway or you're gonna stay here and feel bad for not going so it seems to me the choice is obvious go there feel guilty if you do and deal with it and that kind of thinking is what makes somebody decide to break out of the pack and pursue a creative life if they can't think their way through that then they just should stay home and you know do the job at the grocery store or whatever it is that that will make them feel not challenged by that lastly what about the fear of I think Norman Mailer said fear of mediocrity was talking about how a lot of colleges train people to want sort of a mediocre existence I'm not sure if that's true they just maybe stability but then there's a mediocrity with some of that I know Flannery O'Connor said that the problem isn't that colleges aren't you know inspiring people to become writers that the problem is that the colleges are inspiring too many people to become mediocre writers I'm not sure whether Norman Mailer was influenced by her she was influenced by him but mediocrity is a is a retroactive judgment it's not something you strive for right so it's something you if you're talking about artists he's a meteoric mediocre artists well that's you can't make that judgment until it's all done in the case of Melville for example you can't even make it ten because when it was all done he was buried and nobody knew who he was but then 20 years later he's had become the greatest American novelist so what that tells you is that the artist can't think about things like that you can't think about whether you're what you're doing is excellent or not you have to strive for excellence because if you don't strive for that you'll never get anywhere near it but you don't judge yourself based on any of those criteria because that's not your job your job is to do your art and do that as well as you can at the moment the best you can at the moment and let the world judge it or not judge it who cares your joy and your mission in life is to do the creative work and and that's all you have to worry about let everybody else make up their minds and the fear of doing that I mean the strength to do that means you've got to have a sufficiently healthy ego not a huge ego or a little ego which causes people to be egotistic but you have to have a sufficiently healthy one to truly not care what other people think I once was getting divorced and you know was worried about my children and you know what the world would think and everything else and and I was standing on I'm talking on the phone looking out City of LA I had a million lights right and my uncle was saying just remember that nobody is really thinking about you most the time there are some people out there who you know know who you are and of them there are some who love you and they're probably some who hate you but most of the people out there don't even know who you are so relax you know and that is very relaxing is to think that you no matter who you are there are other people who don't know who you are it constantly amazes me that people today haven't heard of half the great artists of the past but so what just if you do something great a focus on that and it will make sense out of the rest of your existence and that's all anyone can really manage I think is their own existence you

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 215,651

Keywords: screenwriting tips, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting 101, screenwriting advice, screenwriting help, ken atchity, writers lifeline, story merchant, movie producer, creativity, being an artist, creative mind, filmcourage, film courage, interview, soul, inspiration, goals, success, motivation, motivational

Id: jzg7EfKXWh0

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019