"We're Artists!"

In Production Management class, we watched the obligatory Hearts of Darkness behind-the-scenes doc about the crazy-ass shit that went down on the set of Apocalypse Now. And Catrine made the comment that she thought it was kind of cool that everything/everyone went crazy because out of that craziness can come something brilliant. And then Kristian Bjerre and I laughed and looked at each other saying “I’d prefer to make something brilliant without going crazy.”

Which I think is fully completely 100% possible.

I always hear the tales of the “tortured artistic genius” or the brilliant musicians/writers who were on acid, coke, or weed when they wrote their masterpieces. Which I think is bullshit. I’ve tried weed and it only made me more incoherent and I’ve been through the whole depressed/tortured soul thing and it only made my mind blank. I personally am most creative and random when I have clarity of mind and in a thoughtful, reflective mood.

Take my roommate - Jacob Møller. His 10-minute is ridiculous artsy-fartsy, symbolic, metaphysical, random, creative crap. I love it (he showed me his rough cut). And was he on drugs when he did it? No. Is he a “tortured soul” like Lars von Trier or all those “method actor” types? No. Is he weird? Maybe. But not really. He just thinks about stuff. And then writes it down and proclaims, “It’s brilliant!” Because after all, “We’re artists! Let’s just experiment and shit.”

He says that a lot, too.