Let’s get a little impostor syndrome out of the way here.
I think directing, like a lot of our art forms in America, is the subject of so much love and hate. Much like actors, who are a joke (waiters) until they are adored (ohmygod the FRIENDS cast is getting back together!!!), directing in America is on a madly swinging pendulum of approval, disdain, adoration and disgust, when it comes to how people seem to look at you.
(how YOU, aspiring director, think people are looking at you)
But if you want to be an artist, that whole thing of “how most people look at you” must cease to matter. Because it’s not about you, it’s about what you make. How you are making.
Am I a Great Director, who has been given the laurels of Director by some grand committee, so now I’m approved to bloviate about Directing?
I highly recommend reading Finite and Infinite Games. It creates a really valuable distinction.
The game of titles is a limited game. The game of doing is unlimited.
I direct. That’s something I’ve done and will continue to do. And I think it’s worth writing about how it’s done well, and how it’s done poorly, and I’ll be wrong sometimes and right sometimes and that’s fine.
I direct. I write. I act. I choreograph fights and design action. I produce.
Whether someone else wishes to bestow the titles along with those actions isn’t up to me. What’s up to me is what to do with my time, my creativity, my effort, my heart.
So I direct. And I think it’s worth my time to write about that experience. I hope it might even be worth someone’s time to read about it.
So
Ben Cunis 