TEN THINGS YOUR MOTHER NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT FILMMAKING:

1. You can’t learn to make movies. Talent is enough, be proud of it.
2. Distributors will always rip you off.
3. Actors are your enemies and so is everybody else.
4. Genre movies are B movies.
5. The film is about the director.
6. Editing can save your movie.
7. Nudity is wonderful, violence is bad.
8. It’s all about who you know.
9. The internet is your friend.
10. It’s all about being famous. Or being bitter because you deserve to be.

And number 11, because any list of 10 things always has a number 11.

11. You are great, and a great filmmaker if you love great movies that everybody else loves and you watch and make movies as much like those as possible.

So there you go. Now I don’t know about your mother, but my mother would never tell me any of these things because they are all lies. I think any filmmaker will within some amount of time think or believe any or all of the above things. I list them here to remind them, and maybe even myself at times, of what’s what, or what can be what amid the not so merry mayhem of movie making.