the love...

I'm on-set this weekend, a huge screen backing me, wicked graphics filling it.  I turn around between takes.

"Yo, Lawrence!  Can you grab me Karl's SLR real quick?"

L-stat (Lawrence's nickname) brings the cam, I turn 'round, widen out, snap this.

Cool right?

Another reminder to keep your eyes open--you never the coolness that's all around you 'till you start looking.

On that...

I was made aware, again, this past weekend of the process involved in making it in this business (film and TV) or any entrepreneurial endeavor.  Here's what hit me.

You need to love EVERYTHING you do because it's only things that reek of love that will get noticed, and...

Most of the things you try to do won't work no matter how much you love them.

In order to truly LOVE something you must fully open yourself up to it, give yourself to it, making yourself vulnerable in the process.

Like a relationship.  You can't have love without risk.

So, if to make love you must be vulnerable and if most of the things you make--despite the love dripping from them which is the thing that gets you 'in' the door--will ultimately be rejected for no particular reason that means--if you're looking to live a life less-ordinary, a life that makes an impact--that you are setting yourself up for a life of pain.

How you like that?

Nice right?

But I just can't see a way around it.  

I was reminded of this commercial featuring the man MJ.

Failure.

It hit me that I need to remember to embrace failure.  We tend to avoid anything that's likely to fail but it seems to me--the longer I do this show-biz thing--that it's THROUGH the failures that the open doors come.

You keep at it, keep loving, keep giving, keep staying enthusiastic, keep getting hurt and keep getting back up and--slowly, slowly--things start happening.

Like today.

A call out of the blue looking to have me produce/direct a documentary on the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.  Looks like I'll be flying to Vancouver April 7th to meet with representatives of the Chinese government.  Looks like they'll pay for everything--I just have to pay for post. We're calling Networks as I write this.

Heavy right?  Yesterday I had no idea this was coming today.

But yesterday I was deciding to keep working the love, and today I'm keeping at it working on things that I LOVE that are likely to fail.

But not everything fails.

See?

T