A Reminder From Jean Pierre

On lazy Saturdays, I pick up books and read segments. Here is one from Jean Pierre, talking about one of Roman Polanski's student films:

Today that forty-year old student film begs us, with illuminating clarity, to look at our own society and carry on a similar investigation. Its modesty of means also puts to shame all those who, in film school, shoot 35mm productions with Dolby sound and spend in excess of $50,000 to do so. These films are produced in order to make their directors desirable in Hollywood's eyes. By doing so, these individuals have compromised their intregrity before even being approached. Is that what they really want? In the 1780s, there were also many apprentices willing to work for the French court's pastry chefs. They pleased Marie-Antoinette no end and made a nice living overall. In fact they were so busy whipping up creams and puffing up their lovely creations that they remained oblivious to the fact the country was running out of bread. In contrast, the young Polanski and his film make clear that, for the artist, there is no alternative. Indeed to compromise on these issues leads to creative impotence, to suffocating the very spirit that animates you in the first place. Identity is not given, Jean Paul Satre reminds us, it is only through acting in the world that we discover what we are made of. By engaging ourselves in specific situations, by choosing this way over that one, we literally create ourselves, we become this person rather than the other one, we literally free ourselves or we get mired in "bad faith."

Lofty talk. But true, isn't it? One question I've always had, but feels somehow beneath Jean Pierre is how to make a living? How does one devote their time to filmmaking without having means to pay the rent? Maybe his first advice is the wisest - leave los angeles. Live somewhere cheap, earn an honest living, and make cheap films on the side. Who knows? And am I the only one who distrusts this notion of an artist? Do artists view themselves as such? I know I don't. I view myself as a filmmaker. Did Van Gogh seem himself as an artist or a painter? When people refer to my pursuits as artistic, I cringe. I don't know why.

The other day I picked up Cavell's "Pursuits of Happiness," in the appendix he talks about Thoreau, who promised us one day "we might be able to become accomplished in any branch of labor we wished; to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, raise cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner?" he relates it to his role or life in the university, "isn't a university the place in our culture that enables us now to teach one thing today and learn another tomorrow, to hunt for time to write in the morning, fish for a free projector in the afternoon, try to raise money for projects in the evening, and after a seminar read criticism? To some this will not seem a Utopian set of activities, but in the meantime, and for those with a taste for this particular disunity, why not have it?"

But Thoreau did not only promise this for the scholar, surely. This is the life I should like to lead, where I can bounce around from interest to interest. I just need to figure out how to earn money doing so....write movies in the morning, raise money for movies in the afternoon, play tennis or soccer in the late afternoon, read and blog in the evening, design games in the evening.