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Hire collaborators, not subordinates
I’ve only directed two movies, and I’ve interviewed people for various jobs, for production design, for editing, for composition, for music composition, for costumes, for cinematography, who have done 40 movies in their position. And so I always wondered, “What the heck am I supposed to ask this person?” Because I have never done their job. They’re far better at their job than certainly I am at this stage in my job. So I would always ask my producers, you know, who are working with me on hiring, “What am I supposed to ask this person that could possibly let me evaluate them as a cinematographer, as a costume designer, when I’ve never been in my position?” And my producers would tell me the strangest thing. They just said, “See who you get along with. All the people who you’re interviewing with are all great. See the person you get along with.” And I thought, “This doesn’t sound right to me.” Because I felt, oh, so I’m just hiring a friend. I’m just hiring a buddy. This seems so self-centered, narcissistic that I should just go on a kind of expedition to hire a friend of mine. That seems crazy.
But I kind of went in with that approach. And what I discovered from that approach, which is not something I would’ve been able to articulate, is that collaboration is so much more than just kind of the talent of the two individuals working together. Collaboration is the kind of synthesis, the synergy, and what you can create by working together. And oftentimes that doesn’t come from just raw talent, that comes from what you create together. I am a person who very much wants to collaborate with somebody who has as good or better ideas than I do. I am not somebody who wants to be right. I’d rather be wrong. And that has motivated me to find people who are very collaborative. There are people who I have interviewed in my very limited position of leadership that want a team leader, that want to be told what to do and want to be kind of micromanaged. I would not be good at that, and they would not like me. They would probably see me as kind of weak and ambivalent. And so what I’ve discovered is I’ve kind of found the people that I work well with, and they’re often people like me, strongly opinionated, but not domineering.
Get to know your people
I realized pretty quickly I am not a great leader in the traditional sense of being able to kind of, you know, lead a group into battle. What I do excel in though, is I genuinely love and appreciate and respect everybody with whom I’m working. I started theater when I was like seven years old, and I just loved way more than the acting on stage thing, I love being part of a group. I was friends with this guy John, who did all the lighting, and this guy was so fascinating to me at seven years old to hear what his lights do. You know, he’s in the lighting booth while we’re on stage. And then there’s a stage manager who, you know, who does this other thing during the play. To me, it was always so fascinating to kind of meet people, to understand why they’re doing that job versus why I’m doing my job.
And then I started acting in movies. I’m with a crew of like 100, 150 people sometimes, and if I’m going to be emotional in front of all these people, I want to know who they are. So it kind of started from that, so I got to know everybody. I always know everybody with whom I’m working because I want to feel comfortable doing my job, but I also want to just know people. I’m just fascinated by people. So when I started directing, I noticed that my advantage was not so much in leading the team or kind of talking loudly about the thing we need to get and telling, screaming at people that the sun’s going down. What I am very good at is knowing what everybody does, how to make the crew feel like they can work to the best of their abilities, while also making them feel like they are collaborating with me, not working for me. And it’s what has worked.
Motivate from a quiet place
Probably most people assume that actors are very extroverted people and the loudest one at the party and the class clown. And in my experience, all the best actors were incredibly shy children. And so a lot of times they are acting to, you know, compensate for that childhood shyness. That’s certainly the case with me. And so being in this kind of new strange place of like, you know, being a manager of people so to speak, has not been the easiest transition for me because I’m not really the person who’s most likely to talk first in a group setting. So I have to just kind of remind myself that I have worked for so many amazing leaders who are that exact same way. And that my favorite leaders, the leaders that I wanted to work the hardest for, were kind of quiet, shy people who you felt were getting people on board to their vision and onboard to their system of working because they felt relatable, because they felt sensitive, because they felt like that person who’s a fly on the wall, who’s observing how everybody works and then coming in with a kind of concise, clear answer.
So I feel like that’s been a way for me to excel too. I started directing movies after I’d been on like, I don’t know, 40 different movie sets and seen 40 different directors work. You know, I was able to almost like synthesize that the yellers, the people who are the kind of, you know, drill sergeants don’t get like, the best work out of people, certainly not us actors. And you know, you can sit amongst actors on any set like that and we’ll be rolling our eyes and you know, miserable. Often we’ll work later, often we’ll be a little bit more efficient because you’re terrified, but it’s unsustainable. There’s burnout and no one is happy. When I am directing, I try to have the exact opposite experience. And the two movies that I directed were two of the happiest sets I’ve ever been on because I was focusing on making that a priority.