Film Courage: Does the film industry make people crazy? And if not, why that perception?
Shane Stanley, Filmmaker/Author/Instructor: Yes, I think there’s a lot of crazy that comes
hand-in-hand with being an artist anyway. There is eccentricity with
creative beings, we’re dreamers. I think any time you live your life on kind of playing
the odds of the lottery, how does it not make you crazy. Because I talk about it in my book,
what other business do you know of really…music, film, dance, art, where you could literally be
homeless living on a friend’s couch and get an audition for that one role and become
the next Gal Gadot, you can become the next Jason Bateman, you can be anybody. And you
know where you think about doctors, lawyers, successful business people, they have a path,
they still might be able to figure out that path, but they usually go to college.
They will often figure out a plan and a road, get their eye on a prize and work their way to it.
Medical school being six years and then residency, that’s a game plan. For artists
the game plan is what we do is bust your behind to make it. You can fake it until you make it, it’s
never give up, it’s I can’t quit because my break may come tomorrow and I think a lot of people
coming up that way and trying find their path (their place) it can make you crazy. I’ve found
trying to find my path has made me a little nuts sometimes as I say a little south of sanity.
I also find once we get into a position of authority I think no other industry is as
unkind as our’s. And I know everybody says there’s horrible people in every industry. I’ve
been around every industry you can imagine because of what I do and the things that I’ve experienced
and shot and it’s mind-boggling how people are treated and yes I think the me too movement
and then the aftermath of that and people and how we talk to one another was so long overdue
but it’s amazing what people can get away with and I still think they get away with it
and how they talk to each other or treat people and that can make people crazy. I think it does.
Film Courage: Sure. What about people’s reactions to artists? There are all of these stigmas that
artists are selfish or whatever. Can we talk about other people’s reactions?
Shane: Can I swear?
Film Courage: Uh…okay. One swear word.
Shane: Okay one bad word. I have a brother that I love more than anything. He’s very successful
and he has a motto that he’s always kind of looked at what we do and he’s always
said look you want to be an artist? Go paint in the freakin park on Saturday. Get a job,
life is a business…don’t…don’t…life goes by fast. You don’t want to look back when you are 40 or 50
and wonder what happened. He is the smart squirrel that always stashed away during the winter
(for the winter months) and I see that. My mother was from Manhattan (from New York).
A very successful lawyer was her father. She was a very successful real estate agent. Her brother was
the director of primary care and the fact that I didn’t go to college and the fact that I just
wanted to be a dreamer, figure out what I’m going to want to do with myself and the three choices I
picked were music, dirt bikes and films. You don’t need a college education for either and
all of them are pretty big shots in the dark. I think people look at artists and as I call us
people who express themselves for a living, a lot of people don’t understand it. I
find when I talk with different schools (different institutions), a lot of parents
are more supportive now than when I was growing up because you have things like you know somebody
like Mark Zuckerberg coming along and creating Facebook. You have somebody who created Twitter
or Pinterest. All these things that one day they wrote a code for something and that made them a
billionaire overnight. So I think we have a little more leeway and a little more grace from people
who look down at the dreamers and the creative beings. But I still get sad when I talk to a
lot of the youngsters coming up and they don’t have the support from their family especially
the ones who are going to community college because they don’t have the financial means
to put themselves through a good school and they certainly don’t have the support of parents. I
actually encountered some very well-to-do in the community colleges whose parents are like I’ll
writ the check to go to USC tomorrow. You want to to go to Yale? We will make it happen but
you’re going to go down this path, you’re on your own. And I think that’s unfortunate. So I think
there’s a little bit of a stigma still but I don’t think it’s as bad as it was when I was coming up.
Film Courage: Do you think people in community colleges are less competitive (I’m going off on
a little bit of a tangent) with one another? I mean I went to a community college and at that
time the internet was just starting up so you couldn’t look somebody up and say
“What’s this person’s deal?” So you could be more anonymous. I felt it wasn’t
uber competitive and I was able to enjoy myself there.
Shane: I’ve gotten to the point where whenever a community college says
“would you…could you…can you…” The answer is “yes,” because there’s a purity, there’s a drive,
there’s a determination without prejudice. I find a lot of people at community colleges now are on
their second wave of life. They are often parents, they take buses and public modes of transportation
to get to school and they are putting themselves through and paying a few hundred dollars a unit
to try to get to something and I enjoy that crowd a lot. I do work with a lot of universities and I
appreciate and cherish that time too but the mindset is different. I can tell you that (without
naming names) there are universities that accept the fact that their students will not finish their
thesis film after having three years to do it and they still get a beautiful diploma and march down
the stage and I don’t understand that. Our business will not hire you if you don’t finish
a task. If you don’t show up and you don’t deliver, you don’t work. So I don’t know why
you’d reward them and I had a chair at a very prominent film school university tell me once
we don’t want to deal with the lawsuits, so we pass them and if I’m breaking protocol by coming
out and saying that I don’t care. That’s how it is and that doesn’t happen at community college.
You have guys like Dan Watanabe and Chris Rossiter and some wonderful teachers who have been that and
done that and spent more time on the set than most university professors have and they are
very happy to fail you if you don’t do the work and I appreciate that because that’s how it.
Film Courage: Remember Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties [played by Michael J. Fox]?
Shane: Love him! Marty McFly!
Film Courage: He was always throwing community colleges under the bus. That was his go to thing.
Shane: Hey I think they are salt of the earth and it’s funny I will tell you when I first wrote
my book [WHAT YOU DON’T LEARN IN FILM SCHOOL: A Complete Guide To (Independent) Filmmaking] and
a few of the universities were getting excited and a few blacklisted me
just by the title of the book because I used to be welcome to give lectures and workshops
and speak and then as soon as they read the manuscript it was Oh well the title of your book,
you’re out. It’s like I have no problem with film school. If you didn’t grow up around it, you need
to learn these things. All I want to do is teach you the things they don’t teach you. There is the
business of the business of distribution, how to get financing. You know not French New Wave or
what angle to put the camera and the lights at. There is so much more to learn, doing your own
deals, production deals, distribution agreements, actor agreements, how to approach talent, how to
approach money. You don’t talk about that in film school. That’s what I teach. And when I first
got people excited about the book and well there’s these nine community colleges where you are and
we’d really like to get you roped in with them I was first a little bit like what am I getting
into here? I went and spoke for the first time at a community college and I never looked back. I
love the passion these people had and they are not kids. We have people our age there. I go
to these workshops, there are people in their 60’s and 70’s trying to figure out their next
chapter and I love that because they’ve been that, done that and they’re old souls that have lived.
They’ve scrapped for everything they’ve had, they’ve fought for every piece of real estate they
own usually and I just think that makes for better artists. I think it makes for better human beings.
Question
for the Viewers: Does the film industry make people crazy?