- Who are we asking for permission
to do what we want to do?
That should be eradicated.
So if you are not paying attention to your intention,
then your life is just kind of is a bit of a hot mess.
You get in the elevator after an interview,
and they're just bitching and moaning, or you're ...
This bad thing that's happening is not happening to you,
it's happening for you.
If your dream only includes you, it's too small.
I've been crew, so I know how it feels to be on a set
where there's not warmth emanating from behind the camera.
I look at each year that's past, and all I've tried to do
is continue to make work.
Favorite thing that say my mom is,
treat others like you'd like to be treated.
She always, always says that.
The last film that I had in theaters,
I distributed myself on 22 screens.
Now it's on 2,300 screens.
When you're a creative person,
and you're nurturing that within yourself,
you open yourself up to a lot of discovery
that comes from unexpected places,
which is really wonderful.
- She's an American director,
screenwriter, film marketer and film distributor.
At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival she won Best Director
for her feature film Middle of Nowhere.
She's the first black, female director to be nominated for
a Golden Globe Award.
She's Ava DuVernay,
and here are her top 10 rules for success.
(jet engine)
- You know we have to work without permission,
especially as women in this industry.
Who are we asking for permission to do what we want to do?
That should be eradicated.
You need to set a path, and start walking.
And that is what I've tried to do,
and what I try to encourage folks to do.
Walk with me, let me walk with you.
Let's walk with each other.
I think, you know, so much of the industry
is very permission-based.
And once you get out of your mind
that you have to ask anyone to do what you want to do,
you'll be better for it.
The intention of our attention.
It's so big for everyone,
but especially for artists and creative-types like us.
It's the cause that produces the effect,
and the effect is our life.
So whether you're conscious of it or not,
your intention is the cause
that produces the effect which is your life.
So if you are not paying attention to your intention,
then your life is just kind of is a bit of a hot mess.
That's what I've found.
Each decision we make and action we take
is born out of intention.
So every thought, person, experience
that we give our attention to, is motivated by intention.
- [Interviewer] You've been in this room before
as an employee, I think, before you ...
- Yeah, no, I did work for Paramount.
A lot of work for Paramount
when I had my agency and my PR firm.
- [Interviewer] So you know what the business side
of all of this is.
You know what the machinery of all of this is.
- Mmhmm, mmhmm.
- [Interviewer] You really do seem to be having
a great time going through this experience at this point.
Is that fair?
- Yeah, I think having done the publicity for so many years,
and been a part of that machine,
I really would always watch filmmakers and just wonder --
they were just so entrenched in it in a way that was,
they were missing the joy of it.
I would see it, you know, when you're
standing off to the side and you see someone
just so bogged down in press,
and in numbers,
and in deals,
that they were missing the fact
that they were living their dream.
You know truly, they were ... you know,
you get in the elevator with someone after an interview,
and they're just bitchin' and moanin'.
They're trying on beautiful dresses,
but they're upset because
they didn't get the dress that they wanted.
Or, you know what I mean?
They're sitting in an award show,
but they're not sitting where the other person was sitting.
I just always remember, it's like,
"Dude, you've got to make a film."
You know what I mean?
Everyone's talking about it,
or everyone's not, or whatever.
But you made something.
You did it.
So I just never want to be that way.
I really, really don't.
And I just don't feel that way.
I just literally ... I'm just happy
that I get to make films.
But one thing she said to me that really sunk in deep,
and really changed my life.
She said ... I was going through a challenge,
really tough challenge, and she said,
"This is not happening to you, this is happening for you.
"This bad thing that's happening, is not happening to you,
"it's happening for you.
"You're not the victim of it, you're the beneficiary of it."
And to think about anything that's going,
any struggle, any issue, any personal crisis
from the point of view of, this is in my path for a reason
changes the dynamic of the way
that you are in the situation
and allows you to see there is going to be
a light there somewhere.
And also, it's not just everything's going to work out.
You know what I mean?
It is, challenge yourself to analyze this moment,
and figure out what is really going on.
That's, you know, requires a stamina,
and a dignity, and a presence of mind
that takes you out of the woe is me moment,
and empowers you.
(piano music)
Every day I say to myself in some instance,
at some level or another,
"This isn't happening to me, it's happening for me."
And you know, I think back to times
when I was nursing my aunt, in the last days of her life
with breast cancer, and just being a caregiver,
and thinking at that time, "Why is this happening to us?"
To be able to look back at those hard times
and reassess them from the point of view of
"This wasn't happening to us, it was happening for us."
I see the beautiful moments we were able to share.
The things we were able to say to each other
in her last days that we had never said before.
The gifts that we were able to give each other
through bonding, through connection, through reflection.
To embrace cancer and a long dying
as a blessing in that, it wasn't quick
and we were able to say everything we wanted to say.
To be able to look at any instance
from a place of education and nourishment
as opposed to a deficit is one of the things
that Oprah taught me and gave me and was a huge gift.
If your dream only includes you, it's too small.
If that dream is just about the thing you want
to accomplish and you don't even know why you want it,
I mean it's too small.
It may take your attention, but you're not really winning.
You may achieve it, but you're not growing from it.
You're just going from thing to thing.
It may look like success from the outside,
but if you don't even truly know why you're doing it,
then your cause and effect will be off,
and you're not going to be fully, truly living your dream.
So, I feel a little weird to tell you
that when you win awards and a light is on you
that it's not going to be enough.
But that's what I'm telling you.
And I wish that someone would have told me that early.
If we limit our visions to those things
outside of us to validate us,
we're making an intentional error that might very well
bring the outside thing you want,
but it'll ring hollow in the end.
Why, because none of that shit really matters.
Am I like a consensus builder?
I try to be.
I mean, I've been crew, so I know how it feels
to be on a set where there's not, you know,
warmth emanating from behind the camera.
When crew is kind of just walked past,
and no one knows your name,
and no one really cares what you're doing
even though you're working damn hard.
And so that's something that also, I can't abide.
I can't have it.
So for me, I guess what some of what you hear,
or how people might feel is just because
I'm treating them like human beings.
You know what I mean?
Treating people the way I wanted to be treated
when I was working on these pictures.
Working my ass off on these pictures, you know?
- [Interviewer] Mmhmm.
- And you know, sometimes often feeling
like I was invisible.
And so I just try to bear witness
to everyone who's doing anything on behalf of these movies.
- I find it quite inspiring you were
in film publicity originally.
And then at a certain point you decided
that you wanted to direct.
Can you tell us how you got from there to here?
- Well I was one of those ladies standing on the side.
And they work hard and no one ever really
gives them a shout out.
I thank you all, the publicists in the corner.
And as a person who loved film and wanted to make film,
you're standing there supporting filmmakers
telling their stories,
and it's something that I loved doing.
But for me, there was always a little bit of, I don't know,
not jealousy, but just like,
"Wow that's great what they're doing."
And so at the moment when I actually started to write
and tried to direct my own stuff,
I was still doing publicity for other peoples' films.
I was trying to make my own films.
I was asking for permission, pitching people,
trying to get contacts and network
and do all the things that don't matter.
Because the only thing that matters is your work.
And so, when I finally realized that
and started to make small things,
and try to move them around festivals,
and just you know, just share my work,
you know the energy behind that positive intention
started the ball rolling.
And I've only been making films for five years.
And I only quit my job full-time three years ago.
Because I was still holding onto publicity
as a security blanket.
And so, yeah, I look at each year that's past
and all I've tried to do is continue to make work
whether I have the money to make a film, a narrative, a doc,
a commercial, a TV show, directed an episode of Scandal,
a documentary about Venus Williams.
Whatever story I want to tell through whatever medium.
Short medium, TV medium, commercial medium,
full length, documentary, feature.
That's something that I really learned from Spike.
Lee, not Jones.
I'm sure Jones is nice.
I was talking to a lady, she was like Spike Jones.
No lady, Spike Lee.
But you know, remember he did commercials with Jordan.
He's done almost as many docs as he's done narratives.
He's made a film every year for the past 20 years.
He's really the blueprint of just not even
a black filmmaker, a filmmaker who has
just continued to make work.
And so that's how we're here now.
Favorite thing to say my mom
is treat others like you'd like to be treated.
She always, always says that.
Since I was a little girl.
So that was just something that,
you know I carry onto my sets with me,
carry into my corporate life, certainly my personal life.
You know, my love life, in my life.
Always trying to put the person that I'm relating to
ahead of myself, in a way that doesn't diminish me.
In a way that actually enlarges me.
And so that's a fine balance.
It's something that you have to learn.
Because you can be taken advantage of.
But there's a way to do it where you're actually
getting more than you're giving
when you allow another person to kind of be first.
And so, that's a direct lesson from my mom.
- [Interviewer] Do you have time to even think about
like where you are in the award season at this point?
- No, I don't have a dress for the Golden Globes.
And it's two days before Globes.
- [Interviewer] It's two days from now!
- I don't, I don't.
- [Interviewer] Who's going to come to your house
and give you a dress?
Somebody has to be doing that.
- It'll work out, it'll work out.
It always works out. It always works out.
But no, I mean, I think it's only because
I was a publicist before, and for whatever thoughts
I used to have about how much that was a waste of time.
I should have been making films, I started too late.
You know, I should have gone to NYU or Howard Film School
and learned all this, and I should have realized
what I wanted to do earlier.
I started making films in my early, mid-30s.
I was a publicist, you know.
I mean the odds that that was ever going to work,
and I'd ever be sitting here with you.
That I'd be here on opening day.
Today's opening day.
- [Interviewer] Amazing.
- The last film that I had in theaters,
I distributed myself on 22 screens.
Now it's on 2,300 screens with Paramount Pictures,
who used to be my client.
Like that, that stuff only just puts me in a place
of just being grateful that I got to make the film.
And that I continue to be able to make films.
So the dresses and the numbers,
all that stuff is just less important to me.
- [Ava DuVernay] It's interesting to talk to
creative people about the way their minds work.
Sometimes it sounds kind of freaky.
When you're a creative person,
and you're nurturing that within yourself,
you open yourself up to a lot of discovery
that comes from unexpected places.
Which is really wonderful.
(piano music)
I mean for me, the writing process is very much about
when I have a really, really good idea of what I'm writing.
I need to have notes, a good outline,
thought it through, have some dialogue.
Like, really be clear about what I'm doing.
And all that comes from being out in the world.
My films are low budget, independent films.
Very specifically focused around communities of color,
and people of color, and families of color,
and finding the universality in the specificity
of those stories.
When you're making a low budget film, a film for
$50,000 or $200,000, there's nowhere to hide.
It's just people.
Usually people talking, or not talking.
But you're on these spaces.
You're on behavior.
And so you really have to be able to understand that.
And so that comes from living.
Being a black woman walking around.
It comes from observing people.
It comes from asking questions.
And so I find that, you know, I've got to get out.
You know, and you got to be around people.
And in Los Angeles it's such a sprawl.
It's such a huge place.
And downtown, you could actually rub shoulders with people.
You can actually see faces that are not behind a car window.
You know what I mean?
The best thing is when you see people and you're wondering,
"What's their story?
"How do they fit together?
"Where did they come from?
"Where are they going?
"What's their connection?
Sometimes I'll even ask, and people want to talk.
You know, and it may not be anything
that's directly related to the work
that you're writing that day,
but that energy from people, that stuff is kind of like,
you know, seeds on fertile ground
that helps with the writing.
For example, one of these great places to kind of just
find a good corner is a spot called The Last Bookstore.
It's such a great space.
That density that I talked about,
it's dense with books and people
and it's not too busy, but it's just enough.
The right flow of the odd character that comes in and out.
You know, it's part of what I prefer
to have around me when I'm writing.
I'm outlining, I'm playing with dialogue,
I'm figuring out what the beginning, middle,
and end of the scene is.
Is it moving the film forward?
Really trying to pin down those big questions.
I consider movie watching people watching,
because you're watching people.
You're watching behavior,
actors kind of mimic human behavior.
We're here at the Downtown Independent,
which is one of my favorite places to be inspired.
It's a great one-house movie theater in downtown L.A.
I really love it here.
I love coming down and watching other peoples' films.
I love coming in here and watching my own films.
Wherever I find myself these spaces that inspire,
it leads to the sparking of my imagination.
I definitely am recognizing when I'm being hit and inspired
and then making sure that I'm logging that,
or documenting that in some way.
I take pictures a lot, and then yeah, I take a lot of notes,
and I find that I used to just scribble on scraps of paper,
but now more and more I rely on the phone.
I'll put in the subject header, "XO".
I don't know, that's my code.
Hugs and kisses to myself of inspiration.
It's so corny.
And so, whenever I'm ready to sit down
or I need to pull in something that I've seen,
I just search XO and everything comes up.
Whether it's a picture or a thought.
A lot of my director's work is happening
during the screenwriting process.
Questions about character,
and being able to answer those questions for actors.
A lot of that stuff I'm answering for myself
as I'm collecting my material to write.
I have a special exercise that I hold
very close to my heart,
for when I am in a rough patch.
It's called procrastination.
I will put it off until something else strikes me.
I wish I had a magic talisman
to pull me back into the space.
I just don't.
I've got to be in the right head space
or else you're just forcing it
and it just never comes out right.
I know there were times when, you know,
I wasn't working in a creative way,
that I felt very unhappy that I wasn't living my best life.
And so for me, to be creating, to be around creative people,
is something that's really necessary
for my own personal happiness.
And I'm just really fortunate
that I get the opportunity to do it,
because everyone that needs that,
doesn't get the opportunity to do it.
And I was one of those people for a long time.
So I'm happy to be in this place.
- Thank you so much for watching.
I made this video because Ella Franklin asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules
you heard today had the biggest impact on you.
Leave it in the comments below.
I'll join the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching.
Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.
(jet engine)