Film Courage: I like that…that’s your next book. Jack Grapes, Artist, Writer, Author,
Instructor: Let’s see, first there is Dante Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here (that would
be one). The second would be Call Me Ishmael and the third would be Art Is Fraught With
Danger! Film Courage: By Jack Grapes. Jack: It’s good to remember. All of us who are
writers or actors or filmmakers or whatever, we should write that and put it in our room
to remind us Art Is Fraught With Danger! Film Courage: Is that a personal mission statement?
Jack: No I just said it and i said it and i thought oh that's fun should a writer have
their own personal mission statement um you mean if we asked writers if they had a mission
statement would they have one maybe it's not even in full if fully fleshed out there's
just something in them they know their own abilities yeah they probably do i don't have
to make one up because i i know what socrates said and that to me is good enough he said
know thyself. and then he said the unexamined life is not worth living so those are two
pretty good mission statements wouldn't you say the unexamined life is not worth living
and know thyself know thyself do people still live an unexamined life in this day and age
well we all to some extent i mean if i examined my life totally i'd be writhing on the floor
in agony but you know i think you can uh you know i've i've been in therapy i think a lot
of people have had therapy or they've read books on spirituality or uh whatever you know
gone on retreats and meditations and whatnot and i'm sure people have examined their life
to some extent of course i think you said though that good art is not about um and forgive
me uh it was it was something you said about good art is not about you know kind of like
getting all your issues out it's also about making the viewer feel something and forgive
me i'm no it's that's true you you know you're building a chair so people can sit in it i
mean i can be as creative as i want about making a chair uh i know my wife got a chair
the other day that she really liked and and we sat in it you know she looked great she
loved the way it looked and she said i'm gonna put that in my office and blah blah blah and
one day i sat and i went boy this chair is really uncomfortable so the artist on some
level they're making something that they hope will touch or astound or shock uh the the
viewer
i mean on one level you're doing it for yourself you're you're exploring your own uh technical
materials if you're a painter if you're a writer you're a sculptor a good friend of
mine who's a poet in a sculptures um she began experimenting with cardboard and made the
most amazing things but a lot of times she's just exploring the materials what if i do
this with the cardboard and i bend it this way and i glue it this way you you're experimenting
with the material same with the writer and other times perhaps you do care about what
the viewer will think or get from it if you write a story or a poem or something you're
you're saying okay uh what i wrote you know i'm it came out of me but it could be clearer
i'm i don't think my reader's gonna get it a hundred percent so what do i need to add
or cut to make it work better because a piece of writing works it's a piece of writing it's
like a machine it works you know you get a machine from the hardware store and you plug
it in and it doesn't work you take it back it might look good all the parts are put together
right way but something's wrong it's not working and that you bring they go oh there's a washer
here that needs to be put here ah well same thing with a piece of writing or a poem i'll
go oh that image there is not clear if the image is not clear then there's no payoff
at the end but so i've got to make that image clear and then the reader will get it when
i get to the end so you're you're trying to figure out whether it's a novel or a story
or a poem or play or screenplay whatever um is it working here in this spot so when you
edit you're not always just correcting grammar and punctuation you're you're thinking of
it as a device that has to do something to the viewer or the reader so hmm something's
not working here what is it what do i have to do do i have to cut something add something
maybe move this over here oh sometimes when someone reads a poem in my class i will say
to them read it backwards not word for word but line for line and it works better backwards
because when we write we either i mean it can work either way we go from an idea to
something specific or we start with some something specific and as we develop the poem we come
into possession of a big idea and sometimes it works better when you go from the idea
to the specific and sometimes it works better when you go from the specific to an idea so
someone will read something to me and i'll go oh okay they they started with an idea
and then they got specific if they flip it then the reader will get the specific first
and then as the poet comes into possession of the idea it will make more sense well that's
a kind of uh simplified version of that but when you're writing you you you're thinking
does this work it's a it's a machine it's a it's a it's a it's an object you know you
put a quarter in and it should do it what it's supposed to do and when it doesn't you
fiddle with it you think of how do i make this work better and um you know there's an
old saying writing is rewriting so first drafts are usually that's all their first drafts
i've never written anything that didn't go through more than one draft i in other words
i've never written anything that was perfect the first time out now you're supposed to
ask me why well okay i was actually thinking about you said the scene the ending scene
of saving private ryan was very emotional to you yeah so do you think that that scene
meant different things to different people well you you can't know how something is going
to affect someone uh people can be affected by something a hundred different ways all
you can do as an artist or a writer is to make a good guess and say in order for this
scene to work the line has to be different or i need to put the line over here or i need
to cut the line and say it this way you can only guess you can only imagine you know and
and ultimately you are satisfying yourself you're saying this works for me so hopefully
it'll work for others now with the first draft you'd said something previously i said that
i've never written uh a perfect first draft well there was also something you said in
another and you were supposed to say okay but that's not what i'm actually going to
say though so what i'm going to say is is give you the answer if you don't ask the question
how about i ask the question afterwards you can ask it any time let me ask a question
about genius you had talked about genius i know what you're referring to oh you do okay
yeah what is it i talk about the accidents of genius yes thank you right
everyone has genius in them they just don't know what it is what they do know is their
talent and your talent will never produce anything great it will only produce something
that's good your genius is what is capable of creating something great but because we
rely on our talent we often never get to our genius because talent is the obstacle to genius
it's when you don't know what you're doing sometime it's when you are falling and you
are you're just at the mercy of the gods that your genius wakes up and says this looks like
a job for genius man and genius comes through and you do something and it's amazing and
what do you think of the two things someone says when whether it's a painting or a story
or a poem or whatever when they get something that's utterly amazing what do you think of
the two things they say to themselves it's crap no they they know it's great oh i see
them what do you think they say to themselves i'm a genius i'm amazing no that's not what
they say okay have you ever had that experience where you did something and you go oh [ __
] i thought just a minute ago yeah yeah okay what do you what do you say to yourself i
thought i was going to ask a brilliant question and then i realized that it wasn't no you
asked a different question sure i wanted you to ask the question why okay that's all i
mean i've done things where i thought it was amazing and it and it didn't get that reception
and then vice versa but when you knew it was amazing what was the first thing you said
to yourself uh that it's powerful yeah but okay i mean you know i'm sorry my in my elementary
world i'm gonna say it i'm gonna say it and you're gonna go oh of course you're right
okay you write something or you do something as an actor maybe in the middle of a scene
and afterwards you go oh my god that was amazing and then you say to yourself where did that
come from oh okay yes because you don't know where it came from correct all the other stuff
you did you know it came from your talent you know that you know how to do that stuff
but this thing you go where did that come from then what's the next thing you ask yourself
how can i do that again exactly oh yeah i gotta write how how can i do that again right
and the point is there is no formula for that otherwise people would be accessing their
genius constantly but they're not they're they're usually depending on their talent
which is uh understandable that's okay but talent will only get what's good genius will
get what's great but your talent is your biggest obstacle and when you let go of your talent
sometime and are willing to fail because you have no idea what you're doing sometimes your
genius comes to the rescue and when it does you do something and it shocks you and your
first thought is how did i do that and your second thought is how can i do it again because
you want to do it again but you can't make it happen you can only be receptive to it
happening you can only be available for it happening and how do you make yourself available
and receptive by getting rid of your talent and if you think that's easy you have another
thought coming because you and your talent are in cahoots you say to your talent make
me look good and i'll keep you on the payroll and your talent says keep me on the payroll
and i'll make you look good so the two of you got a deal going here you're both gonna
make the artist look good but that's not what you want what you want is something great
and it's always unexpected and it's always an accident of your genius and the accident
happens when you're falling off a cliff and all of a sudden you fly you wouldn't fly if
you were on on earth you can't make it happen but you're falling you're in the unknown you
don't know what to do and you've got to do something because the moment is presenting
itself and when it does you write something or you do something with your paintbrush or
something or sculpting you put this here and you go
how did i do that how can i do it again so that's the the relationship between genius
and talent and guess what i went to a chinese restaurant one night and i got a fortune cookie
cracked it open and you know what it said i've kept it all these years it said talent
does what it can genius does what it must i like that and i want that's it talent does
what it can it's limited it does what it can but genius does what it has to do because
you're in trouble you're falling off a cliff you've come to a point in your art where you
have no idea what to do next and you blunder into something and you go [ __ ] where'd that
come from how do i do that again and is that where people get themselves in trouble is
they think that they can duplicate that over and over again well i don't know what you
know gets themselves in trouble i mean look yeah the whole idea of creating art is to
get yourself in trouble as much as you can but and in acting too my acting teacher always
used to say put yourself in danger he said that not not not get yourself in trouble he
said put yourself in danger what he meant was be in a place where your character is
in danger and things will happen um you know none of us want to be in trouble we do the
best we can and we will rely on our talent the more talented you are the more you will
rely on your talent the less talented you are the more likely you are to have creative
accidents because you have nothing to rely on you have no idea what the hell you're doing
and sometimes you know the amateur you know wins at poker the first night because they
you don't know what you're doing so that can happen but if you're going to do it long enough
at some point you can't say i'm an amateur anymore you have to say look i know what i'm
doing i have some talent i know i'm going to rely on it sometime but if i can once in
a while get rid of my talent my hopefully my hopefully because if your genius came up
every time you got rid of your talent then it would be simple it's the accidents of your
genius and when it doesn't come up what happens you you create [ __ ] i'm a failure uh not
i'm a failure i've this failed right now and that's how i get better by failing my attitude
toward failure is this doesn't define who i am just because i drop the ball when i'm
juggling doesn't mean i'm not a good juggle i can i can be a good juggler i just have
to keep doing it so how i interpret the failure is different from the willingness to have
that happen when you take a risk and most of the time when you take a risk genius doesn't
come see that's that's the point it's an accident of your genius it doesn't always come but
are you willing to lose a few times to get something great because when they give you
the nobel prize karen they are not going to take it away because someone went back to
your home and rooted through your trash can and found that you wrote 100 poems that were
[ __ ] they're not going to take it away that's what every artist does they write they write
crap they fail it happens all the time they're willing to take chances so no one's going
to take it away from you when you win the nobel prize but you got to be willing to fail
and when you do it may not end up being great but you got to keep at it because when you're
willing to face that unknown when you put yourself in danger not knowing where you're
going and you risk failure sometimes sometimes the accident of your genius comes up it's
like a mushroom-shaped cloud
Question For The Viewers: How would you define genius?