Film Courage: The question is, what stands in most people’s way of achieving their
dreams? It sounds simplistic…we can achieve our dreams and there are a million books the
subject. What do you think is actually the block for most people?
Dr. Ken Atchity: I’ve written a book called Quit Your Day Job and Lead the Life of Your
Dreams based on my own experience and that of others.
One of my favorite stories…I was on Dr. Joyce Brothers television show years ago with
a couple of other people and one of them who was a man who was then in his 80’s and had
just received his law degree from The University of Chicago and he told her that he was standing
in line for registration four years earlier and one of the young people in line behind
him said “Sir, are you sure you’re in the right line?” And he said “And I turned
around and I said what line should I be in?”
And I thought that is America. That’s the essence of America, you are in whatever line
you want to be in this country and he fearlessly walked up and stood in the line and got his
law degree at the age of 86 or whatever he was and to me what stands in people’s way
is fear and their friends inflict it on them.
So one of the chapters in my book has to do with distinguishing between friends and friendly
associates because when I left the academic world I had a few friends and I had lots
of friendly associates and I learned the difference when I decided to leave because I retained
a few friends but most everybody I did not retain as friends because they thought I was
absolutely crazy. They either thought that that in kind of a benign way or they were
just extremely angry that I was leaving a tenured position.
They thought that was completely ungrateful and crazy. I can also say that they were fearful
about it and I knew them well enough to know that they were envious, they wished they could
do it but they wouldn’t do it because they were set in their ways and that’s one of
the reasons I didn’t like tenure because once you had tenure you didn’t have to publish
anymore, you didn’t have to do anything anymore. And of course if you were truly motivated
that’s not going to stop you and there were a few people who were unstoppable. But mostly
they weren’t unstoppable and they just stopped and to me that was a crime because I didn’t
understand anything other than the merit system as something that should rule an academy of
ideas.
So I think what makes people afraid is the fear of being out on the street. You know
it’s an image that I’ve had in the first 10 years of getting into a new world where
I realized I wasn’t going to get a paycheck every two weeks (regularly).
You have that image if you were raised by Depression-era parents. And you also have
the other image of wolves at the door. I remember that one because I found a quick way around
it. Go to the door, open the door and if you don’t see any wolves at the door then there
are no wolves at the door. But it is an image that pops into your mind in the middle of
the night as does the homeless image and many other things. But if you’re afraid of images
then you shouldn’t be in the world of images.
I mean that’s what I do, I create images and develop images and turn them into movies
so how can I let images that are in my brain control my actions. You have to learn to overcome
that. So I think people have to clearly understand themselves and decide on who to listen to.
If you truly are a friend and you love somebody you encourage them to fulfill their dreams
and I always did that to my students. I always felt like you have a dream and you are afraid
of accomplishing it. What if your dream is the most important dream that ever came along
in the human race and you don’t do anything about it. It’s your dream and you do nothing
about it. That’s a sacrilege. You had the dream for a reason, it’s in your mind for
a reason. Either God put it there or it was borne in your mind from some other source,
why are you going to do something about it? “Well because I’m afraid that my father
and mother would be really upset.” And so I go “Well this is a hypothetical fear about
something that hasn’t happened yet?” “Yes.” “Then why not just do it and deal with the
possibility that this may never happen at all?”
It’s a matter of knowing yourself. That’s one of the things I used to talk about first
in the book. I was raised on Greek philosophy and when it said over the Oracle of Delphi
was “Know Thyself.” That was the most important piece of knowledge that Plato and
Aristotle and Socrates taught and knowing yourself means know you are going to be haunted
by this dream if you don’t do it.
I mean I had a partner who said once when her movie was in trouble “Maybe this is
one of those dreams that should never have happened?” And I said “That is complete
blasphemy! You say that now but later you will see that it was some other voice talking
to you other than your own voice because you made this thing happen and you will be proud
of that.”
And simply fear is the number one impediment for people going for their dreams and it’s
fear and everyone knows the acronyms about fear is things that haven’t happened yet,
that may never happen (just like worry). And we all do it, we all have fears, we all have
worries. But overcoming your fear is what valiant people do. It’s what people that
you would like to be like do so why not do it yourself and not have to live with the
regret which is the big monster equal to fear that you have to live with if you are sitting
on that proverbial front porch in your rocking chair thinking about the dreams that you had
a didn’t do. To me that’s a terrible waste of life to have that happen.
Film Courage: Also, stripping away illusions. Can you talk about knowing thyself and being
comfortable enough to know that if you have to stand by yourself for awhile because you’ve
lost the illusion of some of the friendships or peer group that you thought was going to
be there with you, if for whatever reason socially they’ve gone the other way, know
that this is okay as well.
Dr. Atchity: That’s a very good point because I think as you get older you realize that
you cannot govern your life by what other people think. And I live on the 11th floor
and I look out on the millions of lights in Los Angeles and it’s a great comfort to
think that there are a few lights out there that love me. There are maybe fewer that hate
me but there are millions that have no idea that I exist. That’s comfortable and that’s
kind of the cosmic view of life when you think about it. You are just one tiny piece of the
massive cosmos that is going about its massive mechanism on its own without any need for
you to consult with it and for you to be worried about what some person somewhere else thinks
about you is a complete waste of your energy in every way. Your job is to do what your
dreams tell you to do and to do it with all of your might the way the cosmos does and
what other people are saying and thinking and doing first of all because most of them
are not spending any time thinking about you at all and could care less what you do or
don’t do. Most of them are thinking only about themselves, so that’s a natural condition
and why should you be any different? If you have a dream, just do it.
And if you’re the crazy painter that has been turning out paintings in the garage and
everyone thinks you’re a crackpot but then they learn that you sold one of your paintings
for a million dollars and now it’s going to be in The Louvre, suddenly they go “I
always knew that gal was a genius. She really had talent from the very beginning.” People
change instantly (which shows how much value their opinion really has).
That’s why I think you’ve got to really listen to yourself and not listen to everybody
else. And you can tell your true friends because the ones who support you in doing that are
your true friends and if the person who is not supporting you…I’ve had several clients
in my career whose spouses did not support them and my advice is divorce your spouse,
I’m sorry. I take this seriously. This is a profession, this is a vocation. And if someone
close to you is tell you don’t do it, it’s selfish, you’ve got to get someone else
close to you who will encourage you.
Because all of the monumental great things in life are done by people who I think go
for it and who are not afraid in taking a chance and who are therefore support by a
few true friends or loved ones who tell them to do it.
Many examples from my own life but when I decided to leave the tenured position my daughter
was a junior at Columbia University and one thing that would be jeopardized was her senior
year at Columbia. And I brought her up to Montreal where I was shooting a movie and
we had a long talk about it off set. And she said “Dad you absolutely have to do this.
You have to do it. Don’t worry about that.” And of course that problem got solved and
didn’t end up being a problem but it was a concern but she had no concern for it and
that’s how I know who my true friends are. And that’s how you would know too if you
decide you want to do something. Listen carefully to what the people around you say. Because
when people are telling you no they are expressing their own fears. And some of it may be goodhearted,
they are afraid that the things they fear may happen to you. But if you’re willing
to take the risk, don’t let them influence you because they’re not taking the risk
unless they depend on you and then you have to figure that out.
I did certain things when I left that career to make sure that those who depended on me
would not end up being left without resources so I did what I had to do to make sure that
happened and then once I did that my conscience was clear and I was able to embrace it fully
with all of the risks that it entailed. And no regrets even though there were some very
dark times and there are always ups and downs in a business like this one and in a career
that is bereft of security.
The other side of the coin is that as much as security is an illusion, rejection is also
an illusion because you can take as many chances as you want. I constantly hear people tell
me (even on the phone this morning) “You only get one shot.” (That was a distributor
telling me we only get one shot). And I thought “Well okay, maybe that is true for you but
I get as many shots as I want to take.” And Hollywood, first of all it doesn’t exist,
what is Hollywood? It’s just a concept. But in reality the business that I’m in
all you have to do is tell somebody I’ve got a great new story and they are all ears
immediately. They don’t care that it’s been ten years since you’ve talked to them.
You spend a a few seconds in chit chat and then they want to hear the story.
So you can take as many chances as you want to take unless your own psychology disallows
that because it wants you to get depressed and spend…go into a coma of unhappiness
and take rejection seriously, etc. I just don’t have time.
One of my essays is called The Waiting Room and it’s about what you do while you are
waiting for an answer on a creative project. Well you don’t wait, you do something else.
You make another creative project, you get it going. And if you keep doing that, every
project has it’s own clock, you can’t do much to control that clock but you can
be doing another project. And soon enough you have projects all around you that are
in various states of ripeness and they will happen in their own time and your biggest
problem will be what if two of them happen at the same time. I always say “Don’t
worry about that.” You don’t want to have the problem of nothing happening.
So no, you don’t wait at all and I think a lot of writers torture themselves because
they wait you know they send off a manuscript hypothetically into snail mail. No one does
that anymore but they send it off and then they wait for an answer. Why would they wait
for an answer? That’s a complete waste of time. Instead you instantly work on something
else and that way when something comes from the first thing, you’re just surprised and
you deal with it immediately without wasting any kind of psychological energy on it. You
just…if it’s a rejection…you just take it and you move on. And if it somebody offering
you a deal then you consider the deal.
But writers feel like they have to spend an additional 90% of their time fretting over
it all, analyzing it, soul searching over it and you do that when you’re younger and
it’s fine to do some of it because you may get a lot of creativity out of it. But once
you’ve gone through it and tortured yourself to your own satisfaction, you don’t have
to do that all of the time, you can just go back to work.
Ray Bradbury used to say that “Get back to work. It will get rid of all those moods
you’re having.” And I always thought that was the most brilliant advice. Work is the
solution.