Have you made your New Year's resolution yet? I have not. Maybe I need
advice on what to resolute this year.
Everybody has some advice to give to everyone else. Sometimes we listen to the
advice and some we don't.
I figured this being my first column of 2007, I wanted to try something
different. I figure you hear my advice in this column monthly. So I decided to be diverse in my thinking and let others talk about
success, growth, experience and failure...ideals I feel writers need to
think about. Here are a few chestnuts of wisdom you may want to use...think
about these words and see if they make you think and inspire you. I truly hope
they do .
I dream for a living...What I'm saying is that I believe in
showmanship...We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to
get close to the edge and, when filmmakers or writers can take them to
the edge, it feels like a dream where you're falling, but you wake up
just before you hit the ground.
~ Steven Spielberg
I think to be a well-rounded person, you have to experience good
and bad, wonderful moments and pain. You need to meet people who have no
exposure to kindness, who lack any opportunity and have no way out--like
the homeless, the mentally ill--and you've got to learn empathy for
them. Everything is harder than you would imagine, including success.
You might think it's lovely to be famous, but if your process is to
constantly observe people and human behavior and yet everyone is
observing you all the time, how do you do what you do? I never saw that
coming as an obstacle. ~ Adrien Brody
The secret is to know what you're doing. And then every other
person will notice that you know. ~ Sienna Miller
Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are
the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.
~ George
Carlin
I just feel like sometimes I'm a force to be dealt with. My
talents are sometimes overused and also sometimes underused. It's not
easy being me. ~ Ben Affleck
You put one foot out in front of the other and you say, 'OK, this
is what I believe, this is what I'm seeing in the Word.' It's a
struggle. But what have I got to lose? ~ Jay Bakker
[on critics] You have to have a thick enough skin to cope with the
criticism. I'm very self-critical and I have a lot of friends that I
trust who are film directors and writers and people in my profession. I
trust them to be extremely critical but I trust their opinion; their
opinion is thoughtful, knowledgeable. I also know them personally so I
know the psychological slant they are putting on it. I know what their
tastes are and I can say, "Well that's great for them but that's not
great for me." Technical criticism is extremely helpful but you are only
going to get that from your peers... There are a few critics overseas,
and occasionally a critic will write an astute analysis of the movie.
There is value in reading critics that actually have something
intelligent to say, but the journalistic community lives in a world of
sound bites and literary commerce: selling newspapers, selling books,
and they do that simply by trashing things. They don't criticize or
analyze them. They simply trash them for the sake of a headline, or to
shock people to get them to buy whatever it is they're selling. ~
George Lucas
There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you
feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints.
You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's
where I like to be. People like to set the bar high. I like to put the
bar on the ground and barely step over it. I like to keep the
expectations really low. ~ Kevin Smith
You can make them laugh, but you can't make them happy.
~ Maurice LaMarche (the voice of Brain in Pinky & The Brain)
If you're not willing to risk, there are no rewards. ..There have
been times when it's been hard for me to find work. I'm still a young
man and I have a lot to give. If I don't get any more chances on a major
level, there's not much I can do about it. ~ David Caruso
The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't
passionate about what they're doing. ~ Willem Defoe
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away
from. ~ Jodie Foster
I have a healthy fear of it. I'm not into the celebrity culture
aspect of being an artist. To me it represents extinction. The more
people know about you, the less they want to try to figure out what you
have to say. ~ John Cusack
Anything you throw at me, I'll try to tackle. ~ Michelle
Trachtenberg
People like it when you're topical. ~ George Carlin
Anything I am and anything I hope to be, I have my mom to thank.
~Colin Farrell
Reach for the Stars ~ Bennet Pomerantz (well I
wanted to see how it looked)
