Don’t Start Feeding the Horses

What do Icelandic horses have to do with making films? A chance conversation with two tourists made me realize how easily we can kill an exciting idea by immediately thinking about all the work that comes with it. Sometimes you need to stop feeding the horses and just see where they run.

By the time I noticed what I was doing, I was already feeding the horses.

I didn’t own any horses.

Some years ago, I met a couple of tourists here in Iceland. We somehow got talking about Icelandic horses, and they asked me why Icelanders have so many of them.

I didn’t have a particularly clever answer.

They’ve simply been part of Iceland for such a long time that I don’t really think about it. You drive out of Reykjavík and there they are, standing in fields, apparently quite satisfied with whatever arrangement they’ve made with the country.

But the tourists kept asking questions.

Who feeds them?

Who cleans up after them?

Don’t you have to drive out there every day?

What happens during winter?

You need land. Fences. Hay. Equipment. You have to take care of them.

And, of course, somebody has to shovel all that shit.

The longer they talked, the more exhausting owning an Icelandic horse began to sound.

I remember looking at the horses and realizing there was something strange about our conversation.

I saw the horses.

They saw everything that came with them.

For some reason, I never forgot that.

A film can become exhausting before it exists

Years later, I realized I was doing exactly the same thing with films.

I’ll get an idea.

Usually it doesn’t arrive as a complete story. It’s something smaller.

An image.

A character.

A situation.

Maybe just a feeling that there is something there.

For a brief period, it’s exciting precisely because I don’t know what it is yet.

Then my brain becomes extremely helpful.

Okay. If I’m actually going to make this, I’ll have to write it.

Then I’ll have to rewrite it.

I’ll need financing.

Applications.

A producer.

Actors.

Locations.

A schedule.

Then we’ll have to shoot it.

Edit it.

Sound.

Music.

Color.

Delivery.

And somewhere around item seventeen on this imaginary list, something peculiar has happened.

The film has disappeared.

Nothing actually happened to it. The idea might still be good.

But I’m no longer thinking about the idea.

I’m thinking about all the work that will eventually be required because I had the idea.

I’m standing in a field with a shovel.

I’ve started feeding the horses.

The annoying thing is that I’m right

That’s what makes this particularly effective.

None of these thoughts are wrong.

If I make the film, somebody really will have to find the locations.

Somebody will have to raise the money.

The screenplay will need rewriting.

People will need contracts.

Eventually somebody will probably be sitting in front of an edit at two in the morning wondering why a scene that worked perfectly yesterday suddenly doesn’t work at all.

That’s filmmaking.

These aren’t imaginary problems.

They’re just problems from the future.

And I’ve invited all of them into the room at exactly the moment when the idea is at its weakest.

I’ve noticed myself doing this with writing as well.

I’ll think:

I need to work on the screenplay.

Immediately, I can feel the entire screenplay.

Ninety pages.

Structure.

Characters.

All the things I haven’t solved.

Months of work.

Suddenly writing one page feels exhausting.

But occasionally I manage to forget about the screenplay.

There’s just a scene I want to see.

So I write the scene.

Then perhaps another one.

And before I know it, I’m working on the screenplay anyway.

The work hasn’t disappeared.

I’ve just stopped doing all of it in my head before I’ve actually done any of it.

Taking the stupid pill

I’ve sometimes described another part of my process as taking the stupid pill.

It doesn’t mean doing something stupid.

It’s more like allowing myself to become temporarily naive.

When something excites me, I try not to immediately ask:

Can I make this?

Instead:

What is this?

That’s a completely different question.

Maybe the idea is too expensive.

Maybe I don’t know how to shoot it.

Maybe I don’t have the actors.

Maybe I don’t know where the money will come from.

Maybe I don’t even know what the ending is.

Fine.

For the moment, I have a horse.

I don’t need to calculate how much hay it’s going to consume over the next ten years.

I want to see where it runs.

Eventually, the horse gets hungry

Unfortunately, my beautiful philosophy has one fairly obvious flaw.

Horses actually need feeding.

Films do too.

Eventually I have to stop taking the stupid pill.

The screenplay needs rewriting.

The budget has to make sense.

Applications have deadlines.

Actors have schedules.

People need contracts.

The weather doesn’t care about my artistic intentions.

At some point, filmmaking becomes intensely practical.

I’ve been making films long enough to know there isn’t a magical way around that part.

But I’ve started to think there are two different moments.

There is the moment when I’m discovering the horse.

And there is the much longer period when I’m taking care of it.

The mistake I keep making is beginning with the second one.

Back to the horse

So now, when I’m working on something and suddenly feel exhausted by it, I sometimes try to figure out what I’m actually tired of.

Quite often, it isn’t the film.

It’s everything I’ve imagined I’ll eventually have to do because of the film.

I’ve mentally jumped six months, sometimes two years, into the future.

So I try to come back.

What interested me about this?

What was the image?

What was strange about the character?

What was the scene I wanted to see?

Sometimes that’s enough.

The film becomes small again.

Something I can touch.

And strangely, once that happens, I often end up doing the work anyway.

The screenplay gets written.

The applications get filled out.

The emails get sent.

The film slowly becomes real.

Eventually, the spreadsheets will arrive.

The schedules, budgets, contracts, hard drives and long days will arrive too.

I’ll deal with them when they do.

But they don’t all need to arrive on the same day as the idea.

So whenever I catch myself doing this now, I sometimes think back to those tourists standing beside an Icelandic field, looking at the horses and calculating all the work.

They weren’t wrong.

They were just already feeding them.

And sometimes, especially at the beginning of something, I don’t want to do that.

I just want to have a horse.