I’ve spent the last three years just tumbling through the things I’ve done. I love directing, I love writing, I love the art I’ve created over the past three years but I realized tonight that I have never felt that I owed any of it. I’ve always been afraid that I’m going to be “found out”, that somehow, some day, everyone’s going to realize I’m a fake and a phony and not really able to do anything that I say I can. I’ve done projects because they were there and focused more on completing them than making them good. Luckily, I usually have a terrific group of people around me who have made the pieces strong while I tried to figure out what the hell I’m doing.
I’ve spent a great deal of time pretending that I know what I’m doing. I’ve gotten really good at making everyone think I’m in control of every situation and that I have a handle on it. And I do – partially. I do the producing thing well and the organizing thing well and the motivational thing well. The piece I think I’ve been missing is that I’ve never believed I’ve done the artistic thing well. Because of all the other skills I have and do well with, I often get caught up in that and lose the artistic side, looking back on projects thinking “if I had only focused more on the directing than the producing” or whatever. I’ve never had faith in myself as an artist.
This has led me to make choices that are motivated by trying to make those around me happy. I realized that I went out of my way trying to find things I could put the OOMA in, partially because he is most definitely one of the best actors I have ever worked with and because he’s easy to work with and we have (had?) an incredible shorthand that made working easy, and partially because I wanted him near me all the time. He was also (and maybe still is, hard to say) one of my biggest supporters and one of the first people in my life who saw me as an artist, not as a lump of clay to form. But I let my desire of pleasing him get in the way a lot of the time, in weird ways. If I finished a film and he liked it, I was in heaven. I could not own it because I have been taught throughout my life that I cannot own my success. So, if OOMA liked it, I was worthy (wow, I meant to type “it was worthy” but I typed “I was worthy” – interesting). As he faded from my life, I wondered if it was the work we were doing that made him pull away because maybe, somehow, I was disappointing him with the work I was doing. How twisted is that? Because I didn’t own my own work. I had to have validation from someone – obviously, needed validation from a man.
With OOMA out of my life, I had no partner left. I had no one who I could turn to and deflect the attention off me. I had no one to steal ownership of my work, not that he did, but I had no one to give ownership of my work to. Even when I started writing the script of “The Wraith” and the lovely and talented PRS was starting working with me, I found myself wanting to give him lots of credit for things that he didn’t do. He was available when we started and then his job changed and he was only able to act as kind of an editor – I would write and send him pages and then he would give me notes or occasionally send me short passages of dialog. But I worried and I struggled over what kind of credit to give him on the script. I felt that I had done the majority of the work but wanted to acknowledge him so I put the credit as “story by” both of us and then promptly felt like, again, I was letting him down, I wasn’t giving him enough of my credit, I was being selfish and not giving away my ownership of the script.
I finally felt like I began taking ownership, weirdly enough, when I started writing with Ranger Smith and Madame H. Maybe it was the combination of working with a man and a woman but I no longer felt like I had to give away all the credit for the first film we wrote together. I felt proud of the work we did but I didn’t feel compelled to say, “no, it’s all them.” Maybe it’s that they let me sort of spearhead the way we write or what we write and maybe it’s that they make me feel like I know what the hell I’m doing. They give me a great deal of respect and, when we’re writing with the Moderately Successful Comedian, they turn to me when decisions have to be made and they let me drive our sessions, when we’ll meet, what we write. It’s still very much a collaboration and very much a team, but I no longer feel that I have to give away my ownership in what we do.
That being said, and this was a very roundabout way to get here, but I finally feel like I’m about to do the best work of my life. That’s my goal for this year. THE BEST FREAKING WORK OF MY LIFE… so far. To really, truly own what I am doing, not just do it because it’s there and I said I would. Make choices that will make the work worthwhile and not just going through the motions of it.
I think that’s what drove me to make the difficult decision of firing an actor recently. It was an extremely difficult decision because it was an actor I had a great deal of respect for but the role was not coming together. The actor just didn’t seem to get the role, find the meat of it, and the actor also came into every rehearsal with an attitude and an excuse. I found myself wanting to make the actor happy, not wanting to rock the boat and yet I would go home from every rehearsal frustrated and angry and aggravated because I didn’t feel like I could say, “hey, I expected more from you, and you need to step it up because you’re not doing your job.” But I want to make everyone happy and this particular actor is very popular and I knew that any discussion that questioned their ability was going to bring on a whole world of hurt. But, finally, I could no longer let it slide because the work was suffering and I love this piece and didn’t want to do it halfway. I fired the actor after the actor handled a situation very flippantly and I decided that I would not tolerate this, that my work was suffering because I felt like I had to make the actor happy instead of focusing on getting my best work done. And I fired the actor. And a whole world of hurt began for about three weeks. Hurt that bled over to my Birthday Twin, hurting her in ways she should not have been hurt. And I had a brief moment of wanting to give in, wanting to do a less than stellar production because I had upset a couple of the popular people. I was almost willing to give up doing my best work just to make someone else happy.
Then I woke up. I figured, fuck it, it’s my show, I’m the director and this show is not coming together the way I want it because this actor is not doing their job. That’s it, that simple. I don’t owe anybody anything when they are not holding up their end of the deal and when their performance is preventing the show from growing and becoming what I need it to be. If my name is going on something as director, I have to know that I did everything I could to make it the best show possible. I’ve walked out of shows before because I didn’t think they worked and I didn’t want my name on them. I need to embrace that and know that I must take ownership in what I do.
With that in mind, this is going to be the year of the best work I’ve ever done. That means making sacrifices and making hard choices and maybe letting some projects go because I’m too busy to do them right. I want to take my time and make sure I’m happy with what I’m doing. I need to take ownership and be confident that I’m doing every single thing in a way that isn’t rushed, isn’t pushed, and isn’t just slammed together because I want to make something. I want the films and shows I do from now on to be so strong and so much mine that I won’t look back and wish I had done something different. If something is bad, it’s because I didn’t focus enough on it and I didn’t give it a chance. Or maybe it’s just bad and I have to own that, too.
I need to stop giving away my ownership without losing the sense of collaboration I so treasure with those in my repertory company(ies). I want to share the credit and share the wealth while still being able to say “that’s mine.” I need to show myself that I am good at what I do and that there is a reason that I am here. I need to ignore the clowns (“with their little red noses and their big floppy shoes”) and embrace that I am good at directing and writing and art and anything in that ilk. Sure, I’m going to screw up and there are going to be things that suck, but until I can embrace and own the good, I cannot allow myself to own the bad. I’ve been owning the bad for a long time, earned or not, and now I want to make sure I can look at my work and say, “I did the best work of my life.” No excuses, no apologies. The best work of my life.
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