Film Courage: Jocelyn how does imagination cultivate the life of our dreams?
Jocelyn Jones, Acting Teacher/Author: To have a dream to have a life of your dreams you have
to dream and dreaming is Imagination you use your imagination to dream you you use your imagination
Einstein talks about imagination I can't give you a bunch of clever ones but you should look them
up because Einstein and Imagination unbelievable another person that I admire and adore and and was
lucky enough to spend time with as a child this Buckminster Fuller talks about imagination look at
Buckminster Fuller's imagination he went against all great Bucky Fuller designed the geodesic dome
nobody had seen a shape like this this was an architecture that didn't exist before but he
dared to dream it's really that thing of dare to dream when you dare to dream you engage your
imagination your imagination is the most powerful thing you have one of the greatest problems with
young people today is that they're not reading reading is singularly the greatest exercise for
your imagination if you and I read the same book we make two completely different movies
in our heads you have to visualize the movie you have to imagine the movie from the book to your
head to your imagination to create a movie you create one I create another when we watch a movie
we are delivered the pictures and so we pretty much see the same movie when you read you have
to make pictures in your head and this is the problem with with today illiteracy today is all
the pictures are being delivered and they're being delivered on television they're being delivered on
your computer they're being delivered on your cell phone they're just all these and advertising it's
just all pictures delivered so we get lazy and we don't think we have to make any pictures in our
head well if we can't make pictures in our head if we can't if we don't read in order to engage
our imagination if we can't have a dream because our imagination is flaccid meaning it has not been
exercised we we become slaves we become pushed around by anything that comes in our viewpoint
we can be led by others with ill intentions I'm going to go out on a limb a little bit now and
tell you I think when we look back on this time in history we'll look at it as corporate terrorism
because it is really this kind of corporation the selling of everything under the sun
that is stripping away imagination you strip away imagination you strip away possibility
you strip away intelligence you strip away greatness imagination and greatness same
thing nothing great ever happened on the planet without first being imagined there is nothing
great about selling Nikes there is nothing great about buying every small mom and pop organization
just gobbling up that small business so you can have oh did you have another quarter that
I haven't gotten from you let me reach in there and get that quarter two it's just astounding and
if we don't do something about it's going to take take a take down the take down the human race
the planet will be fine because she doesn't care about time if it takes her another 200
000 years to grow those old beautiful trees again she knows what she's doing Bucky Fuller
said we should listen to nature because she knows exactly what she's doing and if we just studied
a scientist nature and we took that and rolled the same principles into our own sustainability
in life we would have no problems we would have no problems Bucky he was a mathematician he was
he was genius he was the Einstein of our time but people don't know him as well
Bucky Fuller designed he could put the entire planet on the island of Haiti in geodesic domes
and have every man woman and child a millionaire he'd proved these things mathematically it didn't
make him very popular with with corporate world but he he did that he designed two or three cars
but they never they were wonderful cars but now these people were making money on cars we're not
going to let you in that that playing field I saw him at the UN he there's a map they finally got
the map of the world correct a flat map because they couldn't do a map of the world flat without
it getting warped and this way or that way so of course Bucky Fuller came along and said oh I had
to do it and so he did it it's a flat map and you kind of see it it goes like that it it goes in
waves kind of like that and so to introduce this map they drew the map on the floor of the UN right
a giant version of this map with all the countries and everything and then they hired actors
and then Bucky did it mathematically so that this in relation to that so the United States had lots
of people and Africa but you could barely stay in the space in Africa because there were too
many people and then some countries only had two people and then he did the resources and he
did kind of coins and he did that mathematically and of course the United States was rolling piles
rolling and rolling in money and then there were countries that had like one chip this is this is
our resource and then being actors they started to improvise and so guys from the United States
are like throwing money into other countries and stuff but anyway this is all imagination this all
comes from his imagination he had one of the great imaginations of our time imagination is greatness
do you think most artists actors writers what have you come from a family situation where creativity
and Imagination were encouraged or discouraged and it was an act of rebellion you have your head
in the clouds all the time get your head out of that book I'm sure both of those things are true
I like to think of it as artists come in with a purpose then they just forget it so they have to
be reminded but I think both of those things are true some of them say I'm going to be an artist
and some of them say oh yeah art I should do art but I think it's a knowingness I think a lot of
times they come in knowing I'm different and very often you hear this thing that I had as a child
I feel different I don't belong I can't quite fit in these people don't seem authentic to me
they're not behaving honestly but I don't really understand that they they feel a little betwixt in
between and so it is the struggle to alleviate that that begins to stimulate the imagination
I would go into the garden one of the greatest gifts my mother gave me was her gardens I mean
she'd give them to me but she was an unbelievable gardener and she would have these gardens that
some of the flowers she'd walk by and they were eye high they were like hello and you would
so I would go in those gardens for four and five hours and take little things I'd build little
villages how was this imagination stimulated because I wasn't comfortable around people
so I think a lot of artists come in that way they come in a little different and they're not
comfortable around people and so they begin to use their imagination to alleviate that discomfort and
then what if an artist becomes a hit and now dance for us again and now they have to be on in front
of other people and wait a minute my comfort zone was creating this thing over here and I'm used
to being alone and what happens then wow that's that's tough that becomes very difficult I mean
there are two ways that that happens I I've worked I work as a creative consultant so I've worked for
a bunch of movie stars and many of them wanted to be a movie star that that's what they wanted
to do and some of them I think they came in to do that I mean it just is so apparent and then when
I would get there the big secret would be they're not trained they go on this desire and this work
ethic and this goal and this intention to to it's not to be the best it's to be the most popular
which often comes from not enough attention feeling so I'm going to get this massive
attention anyway the first thing usually when I meet them because I was raised with these painters
and dancers and actors and writers extraordinaire at the dinner table I don't really care who people
are I don't care if you have a big name which is makes me popular among those people because it's
very rare and then after she made some months it makes me unpopular because they're used to
a a certain thing that I'm not interested in anyway the first thing that happens is they
kind of admit that I'm not trained I don't know what I'm doing and I'm always impressed with them
telling me that being so honest but my answer is of course what you're doing look at your career
look at where you've brought yourself you did this this is no accident and so my first step
is to draw up all the things they're doing right so we go through all their films and
their process and and then they can see oh every film I do have a technique I do do these 10-20
things and then I go oh we go from what you're doing right into what else is there what other
opportunities are there and then I would go and do that work for them because they're very busy
and a movie star is promoting their last film working on the film they're going to shoot next
and bringing up the films of the future trying to find those so then I have a whole lot of time so
I would do that work then you have the person that you're you mentioned which is the person
who is in it for the love and they just love acting and suddenly they are a hit overnight
and that's very scary and and very difficult and movie stars love the attention they they
they're very comfortable in that light but not everybody is and not every actor is and we've
part of the problems that we have today is that people are so critical and they're so
your audience is so expanded because of social media so where you would do theater and maybe
some people would be in the back in the alley after you perform them it's you can have your
autograph and you go yeah and that was really nice now you have to have social media you have
to have Instagram you have to have I don't know TikTok and my luck and like it's crazy
to me but you have to have those things and that brings more more people this is really one of the
reasons I gave up acting is that I'm a shy by nature I want to be in the woods I don't want
all those people looking at me I mean that was one reason and and the other reasons I'm too Alpha
I'm too Alpha to take my hat in my hand and I was a trained actor so I would work really hard
on an audition Iowa bring the audition to the people of my little hat in my hand I would say
most of the time it's no I don't know a 19 out of 20 or no and I would have put that time in
and the hair and the makeup and the wardrobe and the driving and the thing this was a six
hours on this just to get there four hours and rehearsals maybe that's 10 hour 12 hours
and you and you're gonna no no I'm no I'm not gonna put myself in that position that's me
that's me I just too Alpha I'd rather run the show and be nice to people and have it go the
way that I want it to go but not everybody's that Alpha so you have to find your way and
what's intolerable to you and what's tolerable to you and what you can invent for yourself how do I
make it go the way that I want to go but lastly those those actors who hid it and then discover
I'm not doing well with all this attention that's a difficult road and they need support they need
to be heard we all need to be heard really they need to be heard and they need to spend real time
creating it the way they want it to go okay now you're hit now you can have anything you want in
the world career-wise what does that look like let's just take some time and breathe and say
what does that look like I introduce people to the concept of theater because theater actors can work
women particularly it expands their lifespan as an artist to do theater and there's nothing more
fun than doing theater in New York in in London so you kind of open up the possibilities and
really are sensitive to to the difficulty of that of getting fame when you didn't really want it
you didn't really ask for it you were just in it for the work.