Film Courage: How has the release of the film and its success impacted your life Ken?
Dr. Ken Atchity, Producer/Author: Well, once answer would be not at all.
But that would not really be a good answer (a fun answer).
The real answer is it was disconcerting to be validated for something that I believed
22 years ago and that I got a lot of other people to believe 22 years ago.
Including Doubleday to the tune of 2 million dollars and Disney to the tune of a million
and New Line to the tune of a million plus and so on.
And then it didn’t happen and then suddenly all these years later it happened and people
go “You must feel good to be corroborated?”
And I said “Yes I do.”
But the truth is it taught me the most important lesson of all which is which I wrote into
an essay called The Waiting Room [from Ken’s blog].
If I had been waiting for THE MEG to happen or for any movie that I started 20 years ago
to happen, I’d probably be miserable (if not suicidal).
But what you do in the waiting room is you do something else, that’s how you manager
your time.
When you’re waiting for something, that can be annoying and a burden and what you
have to do is other things.
So what I did was 50 other things and as a result 30 movies have happened and hundreds
of books and a new publishing company and lots of other things.
Yes it’s satisfying to see that the world endorses what Steve Alten [Author of Meg:
A Novel of Deep Terror] and I believed in 22 years ago that this was a hugely popular
subject for a story.
And all the way along brave people especially Belle Avery who brought it home and Lorenzo
di Bonaventura and other producers, they made it happen too.
But I guess what it shows among other things is don’t waste time hoping for something
to happen.
Do your work and then put it out in the world and let the world take care of it, that’s
one thing.
And then part of it is to trust the work that happened.
When you create this baby (THE MEG in this case), if it’s a good baby it will survive
and it will show its muscles when the time comes.
Maybe it’s been in hiding for all these years but suddenly it comes out and everybody
knows it.
That’s great but what it tells the artist I think is to focus on what’s at hand, what’s
in your workshop right now and do it well and then don’t worry about things you can’t
control.
Focus on what you can control.
And I guess that’s my main feeling about it is that we did a lot of work on THE MEG
at the beginning, we created its shape and it finally came out and it did great and am
I surprised?
No, I’m pleased but not surprised because I always believed it but I’m so glad I didn’t
hang my own personal psychology on it because if I’d done that I’d have been locked
up by now.
Like myself, Steve went on to write eight more books on different subjects too.
And built another career around his talent and he’ll continue doing that.
He’s learned that lesson too that.
Was it disappointing that it didn’t come out back then?
Well it felt like it at the time but in retrospect, things are meant to be.
And I always say to writers that I manage that every project has its own clock and the
only problem is you can’t see the clock.
So what you do is you put in the work the best you can and then you screw the screws
on the cover and send it out into the world and wish it well and turn to your next project
which hopefully you’ve done before you finish this one project and that’s what the creator
does.
He keeps working on new projects.
So this world didn’t turn out perfectly.
God creates another world, maybe it is better?
Film Courage: How often do you create?
Ken: Do I create?
Well I am always involved in at least two creative projects.
I’ve just finished three screenplays in the last 12 months and one book that was already
published and a book that’s about to be published.
I never run out of creative things to do.
That’s what keeps me going is that creative juice.
That’s why I’m drawn to helping other people with that creative juice because I
understand it having spent my lifetime living it and kind of analyzing it.
Film Courage: If you could be remembered for one quote, what would it be?
Your own quote.
Ken: Oh my goodness, I don’t know?
I see my quotes on the Internet now and I go “Well that’s good that I said that.”
I think that I would probably hope to be remembered for Go For It!
And Never Give Up.
But neither of those are original.
My mother is the one who said Go For It all the time.
And Never Give Up was Churchill.
I think those are the things that make a creative writer sane is sticking to those two principles.
And don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it or that you shouldn’t do it or even
you shouldn’t do it this way.
Because if you have a clear vision of where you are going you should stick to that vision
until you can’t anymore.
Film Courage: Or Just Do It!
But Nike has that one.
Ken: Yes, Just Do It!
It’s funny how all these slogans are universal.
They are not just about the creative world.
You know athletes are extremely creative.
I mean people who break records are breaking them because of their creativity and because
they too have understood their mind and they too have this kind of managing editor inside
the mind that knows how to hold off the world on one side and their vision of it on another
side.
People say this particular high jump record can’t be broken but they believe it can
and maybe they believe it because they had a dream that they did it.
Or maybe they believe it because they calculated that if this and if that then I could do it.
And maybe they just believe that of sheer stubbornness.
But their only one way to test a belief in the creative world and that is to do it.
To just do it.
And every time it’s interesting, people say this three-minute-mile couldn’t be run,
this two-minute-mile whatever but when somebody breaks the record like that, within the next
12 months it is matched or broken by three other people.
What does that tell you?
It tells you that the role of creativity in human life is to keep us moving forward as
a species.
It’s the creative people who have the vision to say this could be done that hasn’t been
done before, this could be done better, this could be done differently and we listen to
that and we either belief it or we don’t believe it.
But at the end of the day if it works then suddenly everybody is doing it and the continent
of reason is is reshaped by this eccentric little island vision that came out of the
blue and suddenly people believe it.
I mean nobody would have know what to make of Tweets or Instagram or Facebook just a
few years ago.
2008 is when I think a lot of this really began or earlier slightly (2006)?
And now it’s hard to imagine the world without it and that’s how quickly the continent
gets changed by a creative change.
People looking at art after Picasso can no longer see things the same way because he
came along and changed our way of seeing.
And that’s the beauty of being involved in the creative world.