This is the unedited version of an article I wrote for the Dec 18, 1996 NEW YORK PRESS

Why I make movies

Being seven years old was really hard... But there was this TV show called The Million Dollar Movie. They'd play the same film over and over again for a whole week. One time they showed this movie called YANKEE DOODLE DANDY. I couldn't get enough of it. I became Jimmy Cagney playing George M. Cohan for a week and being seven was a little easier.

When I was nine things were pretty tough. I was a Catholic school kid wrestling with guilt and confusion. But then I saw THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR. It was like watching myself. The story of my life made sense for a moment - I wasn't so alone. At fourteen, my loneliness became the LONELINESS OF A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER and at fifteen EAST OF EDEN and LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT helped me survive my own insane family drama. I remember living alone in Boston in my early twenties going to see MURMUR OF THE HEART. I saw people up on the screen who were so alive - my life was so pale and empty by comparison. When I got really desperate during that period I snuck into LAST TANGO IN PARIS every day until finally an usher finally caught me. I was so distraught when the theater manager threatened to ban me from the theater he relented and let me for free once in a while. Watching that movie was the only time I felt really alive.

I've thankfully moved past that particular low point in life. I'm in love with a great woman and have two great children... And life seems easier - but sometimes I think I've just managed more successful tactics for avoiding life - found more seamless ways of lying to the world and myself. Today I need movies now more than ever. But my God, what's happened to movies? Is it because I'm middle-aged that I don't see so few movies that make me feel anything vaguely authentic? True, I am awed and amazed and shocked and titillated by movies, but rarely am I touched. It's far too rare that the lights come up after a movie and I have to hide the tears in my eyes - it's rarer still that during a movie I feel a rush of love for my partner and my children the way I remember as a child feeling love for my parents during a movie, my chest heaving up into my throat with longing. That's why movies have always meant so much to me. They were a guiding force - a spiritual and emotional rebirth that rivaled any force in my life: religion, family, friends... even rock and roll.

And that's why I think most people go to the movies. They need to laugh and cry and feel the anger that eats at them. They need someone to put into words those things they can't articulate - they want a character in a movie to fall in love so they can believe it can happen to them. They need something to poke holes through their pretensions and denial. An audience comes to sit in the dark together to share laughter and isolation and yearning. I thought that was why, over the years, I gradually became involved in making movies.

When I first starting making movies all I wanted to do was move an audience the way I'd been moved. That was the be-all and end-all for me. But over time I realized that you can't make that happen any more than you can will yourself to fall in love. You can't truly contrive that kind of reaction in an audience. What I've discovered for myself is that the process of creating a film is the thing that makes me alive. I have to let go and just follow my heart. Making a decent movie is like falling in love or hitting a curve ball - it's beyond our control - it's all instinct.

I've realized that the experience of the moment on a film set that was of value - not the deal, not the press, not the power. Making a movie with that kind of understanding has made me a better person. That's why I make movies. I feel lucky that I found a way to be alive, if only for those brief moments. It's like they turn the lights on for a minute and I can see the world. And that's enough for me. Life's become that simple for me, and I pray to God it stays that simple.

But still too often when I watch movies these days I feel nothing. I sense nothing in the hearts of the people making the film - from the actors to the writers to the director to the person that makes the coffee on the set. It seems to have become an exercise in power and money and fame. That's not the reason to make a movie. Movies are too important to the audiences to be reduced to that. There are other ways to merchandize toys, theme parks, and fast food - there are other ways to be rich and famous and powerful that don't betray the hopes of an eager crowd sitting in the dark, waiting to be reminded what it is like to laugh and cry and love and hate.

If you're interested in becoming alive through the process of making a movie, then just do it. We so need people to do that. Contrary to what you hear, it doesn't take millions of dollars to make a movie. In many ways, with the emerging film technologies, it's cheaper now than it's ever been to make a movie. If you have a story you need to tell, than please do what you have to do to tell it. Like they say, just do it. Get together with your friends and share this amazing experience. If you have to shoot on video in your parents basement or on your friend's backyard then just do it. If you have something to say, just say it, whether it's ugly or pretty or wrong or stupid. If you need to do it, please do! There's nothing like making a movie if it's done in the spirit of fun and out of a need to communicate.

And if you love watching movies don't put up with films that don't make you feel anything. Boo and hiss - get up and walk out - write letters - complain. And recommend to friends movies that made you feel something. Ignore that big publicity machine out there - spreading what are basically lies about what it means to be alive, all this fueled by your ticket money - and through the advertising costs that are a huge percentage of everything you purchase. Movies were once made by people who loved the process - it was personal to them - men and women who loved the pure experience of making and watching movies.

Movies are too important to leave to these ever increasingly vertical corporate structures that don't make movies out of love. Unless you consider greed... Looking back over what I've written here, I'm embarrassed to have used words like 'love' and 'God' and 'feelings' and 'truth'. But the characters in movies like MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON or MEET JOHN DOE or NETWORK aren't afraid to use those words. And after you experience one of those movies you might find that you're not afraid to use those words - at least for little while. And I don't mean these words in a some Pollyanna bullshit way. Life is ugly and mean and vicious too. I've played many a killer and molester, creating mayhem and violence but hopefully I did this with truth and if I didn't then I suffer for it - not that I'm defending these characters (they hardly need me to apologize for them) but these are part of life. If I sound apologetic I suppose I am defensive about having played so many unhappy, negative people but more about that another time. I hate to admit it but the 'why' of what you do is really important. It may be the only thing that really matters in the end. Or maybe I'm totally wrong about all of this (and I should stop wondering why my movies are considered box office failures.)

But I don't think so. Have faith.

                                                                T.N.

For more of my thoughts on movie making click HERE

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