Filmmaking / Directing : MAKE STUFF: Or watch your dream die by Douglas Glenn Clark

I know the headline sounds harsh. Get over it. ​To succeed in today's entertainment/biz market it is not enough to be beautiful, cool or young. You must make something. For actors this means make a video series, a movie, a screenplay that can be pitched to production companies. The screenplay includes a role that nails who you are. ​For filmmakers, the 'make stuff' edict means creating a project, which obviously begins with a screenplay. (Check out the HBO documentary "Becoming Mike Nichols." Listen as he describes how he developed THE GRADUATE screenplay.) ​YOU CANNOT WAIT TO BE HIRED. That's so 20th Century. ​You must create SOMETHING that makes people want to hire you. In the 1990s it was not so easy to put some money and equipment together to make a movie. ​Yet, that's what Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn did. They shot a film, and they are such wonderful , candid talents that they fully admit they did not know what they were doing. ​Regardless, "Swingers" made them. WIKIPEDIA: "Swingers is a 1996 American comedy-drama film about the lives of single, unemployed actors living on the 'eastside' of Hollywood, California during the 1990s swing revival. Written by Jon Favreau and directed by Doug Liman, the film starred Favreau and Vince Vaughn, and also featured performances by Ron Livingston and Heather Graham. a critical and commercial hit, the film helped propel Favreau, Livingston, and Vaughn to stardom while also launching Doug Liman's directing career as he won the MTV award for Best New Filmmaker." SPIKE LEE understood this concept decades ago. He made a film called SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT. Mostly recently he made CHI-RAQ. ​Has Spike been hired by Hollywood and many product brands to create movies and television commercials? OH YEAH. But he didn't wait to be wanted. He made his own stuff first.​ ​It doesn't stop with film. Bestselling author JOHN GRISHAM is a brand now, but his first novel could not find a publisher. Did he want to be discovered? ​No. He self-published his first book and sold it out of the trunk of his car. This was long before Amazon and Kindle made it so simple to create your own book. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ​— Henry David Thoreau NIKE prospered with the pointed question, "Is it in you?" WELL ... is it? ​Make Stuff. And then share your book, screenplay, song, dance, painting with an audience that may need you. Douglas Glenn Clark Multiplatform Artist