Passion and awesome

One of the most used words these days is "passion". The Webster dictionary offer these choices:

- any compelling emotion
- strong amorous feeling
- a strong fondness

I hear this word often from actors and actresses and writers and directors. They all have passion for their work or at least think they have. 

I really don't think I have passion. I like what I do but I don't go overboard.

After all, it's only a movie.

I do like traveling the highways of Canada and USA, but I'm not crazy about it, I just enjoy the solitude of travel and seeing how other people live, what they do, what they talk about. I like that. 

I also like In 'n Out hamburgers (#3 with grilled onions) but I'm not passionate about it. And

I don't think it's awesome either.


People tell me I must have passion to enter a world of writing words that will translate to movies. But I really don't. I like it and sometimes I hate it when I have to write something for a producer that doesn't know very much.

My biggest problem is that I never really wanted to do anything, I hardly ever lasted at any kind of normal job and was thinking I might be a psychologist. I even majored in Psych for two years before I got a summer job at a TV station.

One word I could use for my so-called career is "luck."

If anything I had a combination of luck and knowing someone else who had talent. That's the best way to get into this business and without it, you're dead.

My first piece of luck was getting the job at a TV station and that took me across the country, I worked in five different TV stations over a period of fifteen years and then won a lottery to the U.S. That was luck. And I almost lost it because I moved and a friend found the letter that admitted me to the U.S.

Another piece of luck was knowing my friend Phil, we met at a film school where both of us failed. But he had talent and I knew how to shoot film and we did a short film that ended up

as a finalist in the 1976 Academy Awards.  Phil's the one on the right with brief case, I'm the geeky one. 1975.

See what I mean. Luck and knowing someone who was talented.  Phil was passionate about filmmaking, he lived it and fought to get movies made and finally burned out at age 41 leaving a wife and two great boys. Phil was the only person I know who was truly passionate, so much that it destroyed him.

But all these actors who say they're passionate doing a remake of some zombie movie or any movie with Jeniffer Aniston aren't really passionate, it's just a word they heard somewhere and it sounds cool.

Passion is dangerous, and that's probably why I wasn't passionate. I never took it seriously anymore than I took Catholic religion. 

Awesome, on the other hand, is true when it appears, and it's not a hamburger or a new iPad, it's something that makes you lessor than it is, like a rainbow over the Grand Canyon or looking at Earth from the international space station.

That's awesome.