Something I’ve been trying to articulate.

My favorite filmmakers had great training, were fortunate enough to be able to access resources, had the luck of opportunity, and have incredible technique.

But, all of that is in service of unearthing something profound inside of them.

I think that point gets lost a lot.

But, I think that’s the whole point.

If you have the best training, endless resources, every opportunity, and dazzling technique.

But, you don’t have anything profound to say.

What’s the point?

Here’s a take.

You can listen to someone talk, listen to how they think about the world, and immediately tell if they’d ultimately be an intriguing filmmaker.

In basketball, you can’t teach height.

I honestly believe you can’t teach wonder, thoughtfulness and profundity.

And those things have nothing to do with education or class.

AND education and class can’t give those things to you.

The most strikingly profound things I’ve ever heard in my life, the things that make your eyes widen, have always been from people society forgets about.

Curtis Snow could win an Oscar.

At the end of William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1968), Greaves and his crew encounter a man who sleeps in the park.

At the end of Tobias Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain, a condescending critic is shot in the head during a bank robbery.

His last memory as the bullet travels through his brain.

Representation is important because the unrepresented are often the most profound.

How could you possibly know more about fear than the feared?

How could you possibly know more about not being seen than the invisible?

How could you possibly know more about love than the unloved?

You just felt it or thought about it.

They lived it.

One hundred percent. https://twitter.com/cynfinite/status/1306409140844142592