Carney
Excerpts from:
The Difference Between a Career and a Life
Making a Life
In this time of economic hardship, what do you recommend for people just entering a career in filmmaking?
I'm always uncomfortable with the notion of a "career" in anything. American society is structured so that it opulently rewards certain roles (lawyers, doctors, celebrity actors and athletes, wheeler-dealer businessmen, con-man stockbrokers, big-talking producers) and ignores or financially penalizes others (teachers, nurses, mothers, caregivers, ministers, artists). That never changes, in good times or bad.
We focus too much on the financial side; that's Hollywood thinking. If you are a real artist, you can make art with no money. Red Grooms used house paint and plywood to make his art. Paul Zaloom sets up a card table and moves toy soldiers around. Todd Haynes used Barbie dolls. I know a guy, Freddie Curchack, who made finger-shadows on a sheet as his art. An artist who complains about not having enough money is not an artist, but a businessman.
The only reason to make a movie, paint a painting, or write a poem is to try to understand something that matters to you that you don't understand. God knows, it's only the reason I write my books. If I were in it for the money, the fame, or the glory, I would have thrown in the towel and declared bankruptcy a long time ago! [Laughs] You do it for the challenge and fun of picking your way through a jungle of unresolved ideas and feelings. The filmmakers I know who don't have the twenty thousand dollars it takes to make a movie are busy writing short stories or putting on plays with their friends. The beauty of that is that when they are able to get things together to make a movie, they already have a head start on something to film. They have tested it by tinkering with it and writing it out. They have workshopped it and seen where it needs to be revised. I tell students who say they can't afford a digital camera and sound equipment to put on a play in their living rooms or hide out in their basements and write a novel. If they tell me they're not interested in doing that, then I know they're not artists. They are more interested in having a career than a life.
...but they have to make a living.
I know that, but all I can deal with is the education side of it and education is not about making a living, but making a life, a deep, spiritually meaningful life. It is a time for exploration and discovery. You're right. Every day after my students graduate, the world will be demanding its pound of flesh from them. There will be pressures placed on them to compromise, to put their values aside and do things the established way, the way that makes money, the way that makes for worldly success. That's why a university is such a special place. It is their one opportunity to do something for truth, not for money, not to get ahead, not to curry favor with someone, not to please anyone but themselves. It is a special time of life, a unique opportunity to go as far as they can, to dig as deep as they dare into the meaning of life. It is a time to study their hearts and souls and not worry about the ridiculous, wasteful, stupid things the world wants them to care about. To go to school to try to build a resume or to learn secrets about how to get rich or famous is to waste this glorious opportunity to break free from that oppressive system. The only right reason to go to school or to make art or to study art is to begin to understand truths the world suppresses and denies, and eventually to be able to share your understandings with others in acts of love and giving.
Just this afternoon I just spoke at a Boston U. open house "visiting day" for grad students who were visiting a number of different schools and told them if some teacher or Dean stood up in a meeting and told them that if they got a degree from their school they could be rich or famous some day, they should run for the door. I told them that the only reason to go to grad school was to have a chance to explore themselves and our crazy, messed up culture so that they might begin to understand themselves and it and eventually be able to communicate that understanding to others. To do anything else is to waste your education, and ultimately to waste your life. It is to sell your soul to the devil. Life is not about making money or getting famous or being successful. In our brief time here we must try to understand who we are and what really matters, and try to bring our feelings of love and kindness and understanding to others to change the world for the better in some way. That's what school is about, or what it should be about - starting out on, or continuing, that great adventure of discovery and self-discovery.
"Seek out kindred spirits. Go to museums with them. Go to concerts. Go to plays. Attend artistic events together. Help them and encourage them with their art and ask them to help you. Having a few friends who care about art that you can go to films and museums and plays with, to keep you inspired, can make all the difference in the world. If you don't have the money or equipment to make a movie, do something else artistic: write a story or a poem, write an essay, read a book, or put on a play in your living room. Or do some volunteer work at a local soup kitchen or a hospital or an old folks' home. It really doesn't matter what you do. As long as it's not about making money, it can be a way of keeping your soul alive and spreading love in the world. There are many other ways to express spiritual truths and to keep alive the things of the spirit than to make a film." - Ray Carney
"There's no high art and low art. There's only good art and bad art. Pop art and mass culture are concepts invented by film professors to justify to their deans why they are screening junky movies in their classes. Pop art is a contradiction, just as pop science or pop mathematics would be. Art is an effort to explore, understand, and express human experience. Sometimes the understandings it arrives at are popular and you get rewarded; other times they are heretical and you get burnt at the stake; usually no one notices one way or the other and you are ignored. But whatever happens-whether your art is popular, unpopular, or neither-it doesn't change the value of what you did. It's interesting and enlightening, or it's not."
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/indievision/careerandlife.shtml
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/aboutrc/letters.shtml
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/
The Difference Between a Career and a Life
Making a Life
In this time of economic hardship, what do you recommend for people just entering a career in filmmaking?
I'm always uncomfortable with the notion of a "career" in anything. American society is structured so that it opulently rewards certain roles (lawyers, doctors, celebrity actors and athletes, wheeler-dealer businessmen, con-man stockbrokers, big-talking producers) and ignores or financially penalizes others (teachers, nurses, mothers, caregivers, ministers, artists). That never changes, in good times or bad.
We focus too much on the financial side; that's Hollywood thinking. If you are a real artist, you can make art with no money. Red Grooms used house paint and plywood to make his art. Paul Zaloom sets up a card table and moves toy soldiers around. Todd Haynes used Barbie dolls. I know a guy, Freddie Curchack, who made finger-shadows on a sheet as his art. An artist who complains about not having enough money is not an artist, but a businessman.
The only reason to make a movie, paint a painting, or write a poem is to try to understand something that matters to you that you don't understand. God knows, it's only the reason I write my books. If I were in it for the money, the fame, or the glory, I would have thrown in the towel and declared bankruptcy a long time ago! [Laughs] You do it for the challenge and fun of picking your way through a jungle of unresolved ideas and feelings. The filmmakers I know who don't have the twenty thousand dollars it takes to make a movie are busy writing short stories or putting on plays with their friends. The beauty of that is that when they are able to get things together to make a movie, they already have a head start on something to film. They have tested it by tinkering with it and writing it out. They have workshopped it and seen where it needs to be revised. I tell students who say they can't afford a digital camera and sound equipment to put on a play in their living rooms or hide out in their basements and write a novel. If they tell me they're not interested in doing that, then I know they're not artists. They are more interested in having a career than a life.
...but they have to make a living.
I know that, but all I can deal with is the education side of it and education is not about making a living, but making a life, a deep, spiritually meaningful life. It is a time for exploration and discovery. You're right. Every day after my students graduate, the world will be demanding its pound of flesh from them. There will be pressures placed on them to compromise, to put their values aside and do things the established way, the way that makes money, the way that makes for worldly success. That's why a university is such a special place. It is their one opportunity to do something for truth, not for money, not to get ahead, not to curry favor with someone, not to please anyone but themselves. It is a special time of life, a unique opportunity to go as far as they can, to dig as deep as they dare into the meaning of life. It is a time to study their hearts and souls and not worry about the ridiculous, wasteful, stupid things the world wants them to care about. To go to school to try to build a resume or to learn secrets about how to get rich or famous is to waste this glorious opportunity to break free from that oppressive system. The only right reason to go to school or to make art or to study art is to begin to understand truths the world suppresses and denies, and eventually to be able to share your understandings with others in acts of love and giving.
Just this afternoon I just spoke at a Boston U. open house "visiting day" for grad students who were visiting a number of different schools and told them if some teacher or Dean stood up in a meeting and told them that if they got a degree from their school they could be rich or famous some day, they should run for the door. I told them that the only reason to go to grad school was to have a chance to explore themselves and our crazy, messed up culture so that they might begin to understand themselves and it and eventually be able to communicate that understanding to others. To do anything else is to waste your education, and ultimately to waste your life. It is to sell your soul to the devil. Life is not about making money or getting famous or being successful. In our brief time here we must try to understand who we are and what really matters, and try to bring our feelings of love and kindness and understanding to others to change the world for the better in some way. That's what school is about, or what it should be about - starting out on, or continuing, that great adventure of discovery and self-discovery.
"Seek out kindred spirits. Go to museums with them. Go to concerts. Go to plays. Attend artistic events together. Help them and encourage them with their art and ask them to help you. Having a few friends who care about art that you can go to films and museums and plays with, to keep you inspired, can make all the difference in the world. If you don't have the money or equipment to make a movie, do something else artistic: write a story or a poem, write an essay, read a book, or put on a play in your living room. Or do some volunteer work at a local soup kitchen or a hospital or an old folks' home. It really doesn't matter what you do. As long as it's not about making money, it can be a way of keeping your soul alive and spreading love in the world. There are many other ways to express spiritual truths and to keep alive the things of the spirit than to make a film." - Ray Carney
"There's no high art and low art. There's only good art and bad art. Pop art and mass culture are concepts invented by film professors to justify to their deans why they are screening junky movies in their classes. Pop art is a contradiction, just as pop science or pop mathematics would be. Art is an effort to explore, understand, and express human experience. Sometimes the understandings it arrives at are popular and you get rewarded; other times they are heretical and you get burnt at the stake; usually no one notices one way or the other and you are ignored. But whatever happens-whether your art is popular, unpopular, or neither-it doesn't change the value of what you did. It's interesting and enlightening, or it's not."
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/indievision/careerandlife.shtml
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/aboutrc/letters.shtml
http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/