In order to thrive, albeit survive in the turmoil of Britain's "creative" landscape, you have to decide who you will emulate and surround yourself with. There are generally 2 types of people, in any creative industry, whether it is music, film or art:
The Creatives and the Gatekeepers.
The Creatives are holders of great phantasms, weavers of whims. We take something, ordinary or blande, and make it tremendous, a monolith amongst the drab and bore. Their lives become testaments to their craft. It was an Egyptian philosophy (and im transcribing here)that said the first thing a man must realise is that he will never truly master his craft, but his aiming to do so, even though he knows it is never truly going to happen, is the mantra of the Creative. Nihilistic yet triumphant all in the same breath.
The Gatekeepers are a whole other beast. They usually have high positions in your industry, an industry they have little or no knowledge of or attachment to. Sycophantics and socialites by nature, they usually have access to sh*t loads of money. Profligate and insidious. Money gives them power, and through their small minds they determine what gets made and which projects get overturned.
So essentially the Gatekeeper is really a wall of mortar and ignorance, creating a barrier between the Creative and his or her artistic expression.
But there are hybrids that come from these two influences. There is the Quasi-types, that blend the best of both, and usually have a strong creative background.And there are the Pseudo- Creatives (Creatives who arent really creative) and Pseudo-Gatekeepers (even more pretentious, the ones that play the part, but arent good either at art or handling money). I would call names... but the list would be too long for this blog and they arent worth the sweat under my ball sac. Want to see an example of this dynamic? Read this article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/may/16/british-film-industry-fund-women?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
So the only question that remains:
Who do you represent?
Sum up,
Being a boss is more about direction than it is about control. Wake up you dumb bastards.
The article from the Guardian was originally entitled "British film industry will not fund women, say female directors." They changed it, what a bunch pusillanimous bastards.
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