Aspiring filmmakers with no interest in no budget movies

I've met a number of would-be or aspiring filmmakers, some of them unemployed and completely broke with no source of funds and no connection of any kind to the movie industry. They live a thousand miles from Hollywood and, as far as I know, have no plans to go there. Which is all fine. In spite of these handicaps, they're committed to their dreams of becoming movie filmmakers. Which is also fine.

But also they have no interest in any movie that cost less that $100 million to make. I'd bring up the extreme low budget filmmakers and get blank stares. They have no interest in watching or making a low budget movie.

I was working as a dishwasher and I asked the dishwasher from the other shift what he was majoring in. He was in the film department. I asked him what sort of work he hoped to do.

"I'm going to go to Hollywood and direct movies," he said.

I was impressed by his confidence. But I brought up some impressive work people had done with hardly any money and he was uninterested. Maybe he knew all about it and had good reason for his disinterest and didn't feel like explaining it to me. But he never went to Hollywood and never made a film.

I was talking to a musician who was looking to make a movie and he was reading some books about it. I suggested he look at Rick Schmidt's book. He said he had looked at it and thought Schmidt was more of a hobbyist. This was based on the book---he hadn't seen Schmidt's movies. And I can see how Schmidt's advice at one point in the book that you buy a keyboard and compose your own music might have made a bad impression. That was stupid advice.

I went to a performance a while back. A drummer I was slightly acquainted with was in town so I went to hear him. He played in a little art gallery co-op downtown. There were other "musicians" there. One was a man with a medieval hairstyle and heavy eye makeup. These other musicians each performed alone, they each had an electronic device. One had a toy guitar she played a few notes on that she sampled on some device and played over and over. A couple of the others had devices that made motor-like noises. The performance consisted of their adjusting the volume and speed at which they played.

I don't know if those guys felt any shame when the real musicians took the stage.

But this might explain why a musician looking to make a movie would shun any hint of amateurism. They don't want to be like these weirdos pretending to be musicians.

Another musician talked with me about working at a community access TV station. I mentioned that they had made some music videos there. I didn't think it would impress him and I wasn't surprised when he smirked slightly at that. But, later, I watched a crew of well-equipped, professional looking videomakers setting up to film a performance of the musician's jazz band. I was consumed with feelings of inferiority. They only dissipated a few weeks later when I learned that they forgot to plug the camcorder into the sound board. They were recording the music from across the room with the lousy built-in mic on the camcorder. The results were terrible. It was a mistake I wouldn't have made.

It just seems like the all-or-nothing approach these people take----Hollywood or bust; a $100 million special effects movie with an all-star cast or nothing----is obviously going to leave them with nothing. If you make an ultra-cheap movie, nothing may come if it, it may not lead to bigger things, but at least you end up with something to show for it.