This is ours. And yes, that means it is yours and you have to take care of it too. You deserve beautiful things, and cinema is one of the most precious. We’ve all worked very hard to get here, although some have yet to get the opportunity they deserve. We need to fix that. We can make this better for everyone. Does it look like we are really trying these days?
And you know it all starts with love. And appreciation. We have to keep those alive and thriving too.
Let’s be real about it all, though. This creative life of ours is precarious, more so now than at any other time I can remember. It is damn hard. Everyone has felt they should give up at some time or another, and for most it is probably quite recently. I know I have felt that way.
But nonetheless, we are lucky. We are fortunate. We are involved in something we love, something we love making and love sharing. Let’s take that in for a moment. Maybe we should celebrate the tremendous good we are part of even as we keep fighting like hell to fix what isn’t working.
I grew up in a small town, a place where there wasn’t much to do. There were ballfields to play on and woods to explore, but yeah, it was me that Springsteen was singing to: I was born to run. I had to get out, and by the time I was twenty, I had landed in New York. It took thirty-five more years to land in LA, but I’ve been very happy in both places because I was anchored by what we used to call the film business.
And being in it, I needed teams. I needed collaborators and partners. I needed community. But I also needed competitors, people to argue with, things to rally against, and things worth fighting for. Other people have given me ideas, challenged assumptions, opened doors, pissed me off, made me reconsider what I thought I knew, and pushed me to try harder. That list goes on and on and on—and I am thankful for all those effin bastards. Cinema may be an authored art form, but none of us gets very far making it alone, and sometimes we are helped in different ways by those that never learned to play well with others. They can help strengthen our resolve to take the high road. At least that’s what I remind myself when those sorts start sprouting up more and more.
Here’s something I find sorta strange: I think this may be the worst I have seen the film business in four decades, and I also think I may be the happiest I have ever been in it. How can both things be true, you ask, Young Grasshopper?
It certainly helps that my love of cinema has stayed strong. I’ve seen so many great and ambitious films, so many wonderful noble failures. I look forward to seeing so many more. The business may be failing us in all sorts of ways, but the movies haven’t failed me. Neither have all the remarkable people I continue to meet through them, be it to work with or just share with. Or the places I get to, both real and imagined.
Maybe it’s also that I’ve finally learned not to confuse the condition of the business with the value of being part of cinema. Let’s not get bitter. No need to start to take people out. Maybe there’s some acceptance involved too—of people, behavior, capitalism, and all the other absurdities we encounter every day. I can’t control all of that. None of us can. But acceptance doesn’t mean anything close to surrender. What will be, will be, but it won’t stop me from fighting or aiming higher.
And none of this lets the companies, institutions, financiers, platforms, or the rest of us with some power off the hook. Structural problems demand structural solutions. The economics need fixing. Access needs expanding. Careers need to become sustainable again. That will take organizing, shared risk, changes in how resources and opportunities are distributed, and a willingness to challenge the arrangements that benefit some at the expense of others. But waiting for those bigger solutions doesn’t mean we have to surrender the quality of our daily lives to the people and forces making the business worse.
The basics matter. Kindness. Compassion. Common courtesy. Let’s make sure we do not accept the lack of it. We can gently remind each other what makes us all human. And yeah we all make mistakes. And we are capable of forgiveness too.
But let’s also hold ourselves accountable. We can do better. And when we don’t, we can laugh, pick ourselves up, learn something, and try again somewhere else. We are lucky. We are not alone. I’ve found a lot of happiness in recognizing that. Maybe there’s some there for you too.
Lately I’ve been inspired by the little things a city can do that make everyday life better—the equivalent of free bus rides, free opera tickets, or simply fixing the damn potholes. NYC seems so cool these days… Of course, none of these things solves everything, but each makes the place more livable and reminds us that collective action can actually improve our lives. We are all in this together.
What are the film business equivalents? What are our potholes? What can each of us do right now that makes our shared life in cinema a little better?
May I offer a few suggestions? These are things I’ve seen work, things I’ve benefited from, and things I need reminding to do myself. Some take a little effort. Others take almost none. I’d love to hear what you’d add.
-
Speak passionately about cinema. Talk about it with your family and your civilian friends. Share your enthusiasm with the person at the checkout register. Enthusiasm creates audiences, but only if we share it.
-
Connect someone with someone who might be able to help them. Make the introduction. Recommend someone for the job. Put a name forward when that person isn’t in the room. Open a door.
-
Don’t let a day go by without making something easier for someone else. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. Little acts accumulate and compound.
-
Elevate younger generations or those who might not have had the chance they deserve. Share your experience, but also make room. Invite someone into a room they haven’t been invited into before. Opportunity matters more when we pass it along.
-
Tell someone you appreciate them or their work. A comment on their newsletter works. An email is even better. Something whispered in a friendly hug: heaven. We hear criticism easily enough in this business. Appreciation shouldn’t be such a scarce commodity.
-
Make your wisdom and experience accessible. I think you know how much I like newsletters for this, but use whatever works. Too much knowledge disappears from our business every time someone leaves it. We should gather, preserve, and distribute hard-earned communal knowledge.
-
Expand your circle of support. Help somebody you don’t already know well. If all our generosity stays within the same circles, those circles never get any bigger. It is time for The Great Overlap.
-
Get involved in a community effort to improve our ecosystem. Join something. Volunteer. Organize. Share information. Help build the infrastructure we keep complaining doesn’t exist.
-
Show solidarity with people who haven’t had the opportunities you have. Sometimes that means speaking up. Sometimes it means sharing access. Sometimes it means surrendering a little advantage so someone else can finally get through the door. And sometimes it means standing alongside others when doing so carries a cost. Solidarity should make a material difference to the people we’re standing with.
-
Find an operational improvement and enact it. If there’s a stupid process wasting everyone’s time, fix it—or help the person who can. We don’t have to wait for somebody to redesign the entire film business before making tomorrow work better than today.
-
Defend people when fairness requires it. Pile-ons are easy. Judgment is cheap. Before joining the condemnation, examine what actually happened. If someone is being wrongly chastised, say so.
-
Listen attentively. Give someone a chance to be heard. Ask for their opinion. You might discover something you hadn’t considered.
-
Show up. Go see someone’s movie. Buy the ticket when you can. Stay for the Q&A. Recommend the film. Bring somebody who otherwise wouldn’t have gone.
-
Get back in touch with someone you’ve neglected this last year. Say “hi.” Maybe invite them to see a movie with you.
-
Be human. Pick up the phone when you disagree. Don’t just leave a note or a comment. Talk to people. And if someone should be involved, ask them to be involved. So much unnecessary damage comes from treating people as abstractions instead of people.
Little things matter a great deal, particularly when enough of us do them in unison. They give us hope because they demonstrate that our actions have consequences. They remind us that this ecosystem isn’t some distant mechanism controlled entirely by corporations, financiers, platforms, institutions, and algorithms. We are part of it too. And we can make things better.
None of these fifteen things is going to repair the economics of cinema. They won’t suddenly make financing plentiful, distribution equitable, or careers sustainable. But maybe that’s not what little things are supposed to do. They make the place we inhabit more livable while we work on the big things. They strengthen the relationships, trust, and sense of common purpose we’re going to need to change anything larger.
The people who make and sustain cinema deserve a community worthy of their commitment. I think that’s something we should all be able to agree on, however much we disagree about everything else. Let’s look out for each other. We don’t need to make the negative personal. Let’s give each the opportunity to do good things.
Cinema is ours only if we keep making it ours. And if we really love it, part of our responsibility is making room for others to claim it too. We are here. We aren’t going anywhere. So let’s invest in the present—and in each other.
What small thing could someone do for our cinema community tomorrow that would make your life in it better? And what can you do to make someone else’s better?
Maybe these little acts aren’t the fast track out of the crisis. Maybe they’re how we make sure there are enough of us, still together, to find the way out. I think that more than justifies be a little bit more of the good side of human today, don’t you?
