WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

The other day, while giving some of my backstory to an acting class I was teaching, it actually came out of my mouth. How many years I’ve been directing, that is. 40. Forty years. I said it out loud. And I heard a group reaction, an inhale from the class that meant, “Oh, that’s awful.” Together. They inhaled as they took that number in. That must mean I’m very old. Someone could assume I’m over 70. Don’t you dare – I’m only 68. I cling to my sixties now, like being blown out of a window and my fingernails are scraping the paint off the windowsill as I resist letting go and getting blown right into my seventies. 

I try to look at that number a different way. If I’ve been directing for 40 years, that means I might be kind of good at it. Well, that’s me being demure and humble. Okay. I’m fucking great at it. I think. Sometimes I think that I suck at it, and both of those things are true. That’s the way it is. It’s not like an assembly line where somebody does the same thing, every day, all day. No. Directing is different every day in every way. Sometimes it’s wonderful and exhilarating, when everything works – the actors are great, I am in tune with them and hopefully somewhat inspiring, and the story is well-told visually. There’s nothing better, it’s a beautiful adrenaline high and I feel like I’m on top of the world (here I see myself as Leo on the bow of the Titanic.) Then there’s the other days where things go wrong and I’m pedaling through the mud of a bad script, mediocre actors and my less-than stellar ideas, and the resulting film will be crap. 

But all of it is a learning experience – good days and bad, I always learn. So forty years in means that I’ve learned a lot. I take comfort in that. But it’s hard to say it out loud, because in our culture, getting older means getting less important. Less energetic. Less exciting. And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Because what I see now, as I look at the business, is the younger generations of directors stepping up, getting the jobs, making a name for themselves. And that’s what happens, isn’t it? Each generation goes through the stages of life, and mine is on the downward side of the peak, while the younger directors are just hitting their stride. And I guess I’m just supposed to just fade into the sunset.

But I don’t want to. (And here, I see myself as a toddler in a total fit, banging a wooden spoon on the floor, crying, “I don’t WANT TO!”) That’s how I feel. I’m not ready to fade away. I love what I do and want to keep doing it. And then I look at the reality – 40 years of directing – and I think, Where did the time go?? Inside, I feel like I’m 35, happy and excited and raring to go. But that’s not how the world sees me. I won’t forget that acting class, their intake of breath that signaled, “Oh, no!” when I actually said that number out loud. 

I’m going to keep going. I’m going to continue to do the thing I love to do, with the same energy - but perhaps with more wisdom. Yes. That’s what I’m going to do. I just won’t tell anyone how long I’ve been at it.