"BUILT IN OBSOLESCENCE"

As stated by Wikipedia, it's the decision on the part of a manufacturer to produce a consumer product that will become obsolete and/or non-functional in a defined time frame. As a digital filmmaker, this blog entry could easily be referring to the cameras and computers that become nearly obsolete within six months of purchase--something that can be both frustrating and exciting, because the next best thing promises to hand even more power to the DIY media artist. But in fact, I wanted to write about the built-in obsolescence in people in the film business. And that is NOT something I find exciting at all.

I've noted for years how a hot new director or writer often fades into the background within a few years of making it big in Hollywood. There are the rare exceptions--people with careers that span decades. And then there are the guys who never hit it huge, but work steadily but unnoticed through longer career trajectories. But there has always been something profoundly disheartening about the guy who directs some fresh, captivating movie one year and then spends the next decades tending his sprawling, entirely-paid-for garden in Santa Monica.

Orson Welles died a has-been. Despite his tremendous success, literally transforming the craft of movie-making, he hardly worked after the age of 50. D.W. Griffith is studied in every film history book as a founding father of modern cinema--he too died broke. And then there's the long list of contemporary where-are-they-now talents; women and men who did something profoundly special only to be passed over for the next "hot, new thing" a few years later. Hey, Eduardo Sanchez, one of the directors of 1999's "Blair Witch Project"--the most profitable independent film of all time, no less--didn't get the greenlight for another movie until 2006's blink-or-you-miss-it "Altered."

Point is, it depresses me. I don't do what I do, hoping to make it big only to fade into obscurity. I do what I do because I'm driven to do it, and I will not wait seven years for someone to tell me I can make a movie. Up until now, we didn't have much choice. Movies were too expensive. We needed big fat cheques and teams of specialists with rare equipment to practice our craft. Thankfully, I feel I can now do what I do regardless of the blessing of a studio exec. If I want to garden, I'll become a gardener. I became a filmmaker to make films. And now I'm going to make them whether anybody wants me to or not. Anyone who doesn't think they can do it without Hollywood's approval should listen to Stephen Soderbergh who says of the $17,500 Red Camera, "This is the camera I've been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. RED is going to change everything." I just have to believe that Orson Welles would have made a lot more films if he could have got his hands on a Red Camera and a Mac.