Past mistakes
Now that you look back on your career, what was the single biggest mistake or wrong assumption you made early on that someone else could learn from?
–Damion
From the moment I got to Los Angeles, I felt I didn’t deserve to be here. I was never a classic movie buff; I didn’t have a favorite director; my Honda was rusting out, but not in a glamorous, beauty-in-poverty way.
I felt like a fraud, an imposter. Worse, I was taking up a slot that some genuinely deserving person should have gotten. Working in Hollywood was never my childhood dream. It was almost a flip-of-the-coin decision. For all I knew, the next Spielberg was stuck flipping burgers in Wichita because I had taken the last available opening.
Honestly, I felt this way for about three years. I kept waiting to get found out and sent back to the Midwest.
Thinking this way was easily the biggest mistake I made. When you don’t think you deserve to be in the room, no one else will, either.
But the truth, which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, is that all of the smart, confident people I was meeting really didn’t know any more than I did. Okay, I had never seen Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS. But I had seen every episode of "Bewitched," and that was just as valid.
And I could write better than most of them. That seems like an egotistical statement, but considering I was marking myself lower in every other category, that lone bright spot was a beacon of hope.
It’s hard to synthesize this advice without making sound like insipid pabulum, "just believe in yourself." Perhaps it’s best expressed in the negative: "you’re no stupider than everyone around you."
Articles