How to Find Joy in Filmmaking | Woody Allen Insights

And I give it my all. I mean, I practice every day and I try and stay authentic and uncompromising.

I could probably rob banks or burglarize jewelry stores and be very clever about it. Hello, Believe Nation.

My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So today we're going to learn from legendary director, actor, and comedian Woody Allen and my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below. Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. You might win a prize as well. And also, when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick for yourself as well. Enjoy!

The business has changed. Filmmaking is the same. I do the same thing now as I did on Take the Money and Run. I go in in the morning and instinctively, actually, you have a vision because you wrote the script, so you know what you want on the screen. And you execute to try and get as close to that vision as possible. You never really come that close to it, but you die trying to get as close as you can. The fun is in writing the film and then casting it and getting the costumes and working with, you know, talented people and sophisticated, gifted men and charming, beautiful women and Cole Porter's music. And, you know, you work for a year on something or 6 months on something and it's great and it's fun and you're solving solvable problems. So if I can't get my third act on the film right, it doesn't mean I die, you know, it just means that the film won't be good and maybe I can solve that problem and I think about it and it's a fun way to spend your life. And then it's over. If you're thinking of rewards, if you're thinking of box office or that critics have to like it or that public has to like it, you're dead. You're depending on things. You're getting your kicks in the wrong area. Your kicks have to be making the film, the actual joy of making the film and the disappointments and how you circumnavigate them and solve the problems and all that. And then when it's over, you look at it and you think, oh God, when I wrote it, it was so great and now it's so terrible. How did this happen?

What did I—

what went wrong?

Did I, did I, I made all the wrong choices. You know, and you, well, the next one will be better. And you put it aside and you go on to the next film. But if you're there and you're thinking, well, I can't wait till the critics see this. I can't wait till the public breaks the doors down and the box office records are, you know, then you're dependent for your enjoyment on other people's taste and other people's opinions. And I'm not interested in their opinion. I, my, the first film I ever worked on, What's New Pussycat, was a load awful film. I hated the experience. They took— I was only the scriptwriter. They took my script and mangled it. They put the film out. The film was a big hit. It made the most money of any comedy to its time at that time. And I got no joy out of it. I was embarrassed by it.

I hated it.

So you don't get joy from critical success or public success. You get joy from realizing the work of art that you were trying to make when you were laying on your bed writing the script, and then all of a sudden you visualize it and you've made it happen. You spent, you know, $15 million or something, or more sometimes, and made it happen.

And you say, "Gee, I'm proud of this." And I remember very clearly, I walked the streets. I walked and I walked. I didn't know what was going through my mind. It all seemed so violent and unreal to me. And I wandered for a long time on the Upper West Side, you know, and it must have been hours. You know, my feet hurt, my head was pounding, and I had to sit down. I went into a movie house. I didn't know what was playing or anything. I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and be logical and put the world back into rational perspective. Upstairs to the balcony and I sat down. And, you know, the movie was a film that I'd seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and I always loved it. And, you know, I'm watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film, you know? And I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself? I mean, isn't it so stupid? I mean, look at all the people up there on the screen, you know? They're real funny. And what if the worst is true? What if there's no God and you only go around once and that's it? Well, you know, don't you want to be part of the experience? You know, what the hell, it's not all a drag. And I'm thinking to myself, geez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never going to get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after, who knows? I mean, you know, maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have. And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.

Hello, predominia!

And I give it my all. I mean, I practice every day, and I try and stay authentic and uncompromising. We don't play any, you know, crowd-pleasing stuff. We don't, you know, get out there and play "When the Saints Go Marching In." And, you know, we played blues, hymns, ragtime, whorehouse music, uh, stuff that was authentically New Orleans. And we play it in the New Orleans style as best we can. And so I don't feel that I'm a sellout. I'm doing the best I can.

The trick is— and it sounds facetious sometimes, but it's not— you hire great people, great actors and actresses, and then you get out of their way. You don't play the director. You don't hover over them. You let them change your lines. You let them make up their own contributions and do things because the people that I've worked with have had careers and are famous and are great before they met me. And they're great in my movies and they're great after they leave me. So nothing special is happening. If you just hire wonderful people, that's all you have to do. Just don't mess them up. Don't ruin them. And, you know, it's really a very simple thing. Then you get credit for directing them and everyone says, "Well, you did such a great job." But it isn't. You're just not screwing them up. That's all.

Successful for me, in my terms, are when I'm home lying on my bed and I'm writing something, I have these incredible ideas. I think I'm going to write Citizen Kane every time out of the box and it's going to be great. And then I make the film, and I'm so humiliated by what I see afterward, I think, where did I go wrong? Was it— was it the editing? Was it my writing? Did I— was I lax in the directing? So when I finally get a film and I think, hey, this film is pretty close to what I was writing at home, I think this is a successful film. Husbands and Wives was a film like that. I thought that I brought that— that I had an idea and I brought it off. I could probably rob banks or burglarize jewelry stores and be very clever about it. You know, I'm imaginative, I've got a sense of humor, I've got an original approach. You know, maybe I could, you know, this could be an interesting thing for me. And I thought about it for a while and talked about certain conman schemes with my friends, but by that time some of my jokes were already being accepted by radio and television, and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and I thought, hey, I could probably make a living being a comic, um, a writer of comic, you know, material. And I succeeded at that very rapidly. Fortunately, as soon as I started doing it, I started succeeding. And I started getting paid for it. And so it saved me from, you know, a life of crime.

I do think in everybody's life there are times when there are turning points in your life when you suddenly realize that something momentous can possibly happen if you You make a choice, and if you make the right choice, great. In this case, the choice that Joaquin makes is irrational, but it's not so irrational given the comparison with the choices that we all make in our lives. You know, if you— If you look at, you know, people need something to— I hear bells. People need something to believe in in their lives. They have to choose whether their life is going to be meaningful for you or meaningless. And people will choose religions in their lives, for example, And they'll make an irrational choice. They'll think that if they live a very good life, they will die and go to heaven and live in heaven for the rest of their life. They— that's no less crazy a thought than Joaquin thinking that if he commits this act, his life will suddenly turn around for the better. As long as there's something dedicated that you can believe in, you make a choice and you go with it.

At that point in my life, I was, for whatever ridiculous reason, very taken with the films of Chaplin and Keaton in relation to myself. It's not ridiculous that I'd be taken with their films, they're great, but I was trying to, to learn from them, to, to see what I could. And I had the idea that they were working in a silent era, and that was easier. Most people think that silent films were harder, silent comedies were harder, because you didn't have a voice, you couldn't speak. But silent films were easier. When you added the voice, it became much more complicated, and it's really the difference between checkers and chess.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Saqib Nalkhanyan asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, check out the link in the description and you can go and cast your vote. I also love to know which clip resonated the most with you. What lesson are you gonna take from this video and immediately apply to your life or to your business somehow? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out what you have to say. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Simon Stanley. Simon, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. And making that awesome YouTube video on it as well. I really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed my book.

In this video, I'm doing a video review of Your One Word by Evan Carmichael.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

All the years you've been making movies, can you tell us what you've learned? And if you had a chance to remake any of your movies, or have you ever wanted to remake any of your movies, which ones would you do?

Well, you do learn stuff, but very little. You learn stuff after the first, the first 2 or 3 movies. You've learned all you're really gonna learn. Most of the stuff can't be learned. It's instinctive. So there are a few technical things that you learn about editing and adding music and, you know, little technical things, but you learn them very quickly. And the rest, you either rise or fail on the basis of your own talent or your own instinct, and it fails you sometimes, and sometimes it works for you. I would shoot them all over if I could. You know, Charlie Chaplin had the luxury of shooting a whole film all the time, and he could look at it and study it, then shoot it again, shoot it again if he wanted to. Films were not that costly at that time.

They had the effin'—

you know, the actors, the money. It was very simple. I can't do that. So when I make a film, I never ever look at it again once I put it out because if you look at it again, you can always see what you did wrong and how you can improve it and why it's as terrible as it is. So I would shoot them all again. I could very happily take any movie I have and improve it if I could get the cast back and the circumstances. Francis exact, roll back time, get the money. I could improve them all after seeing them start to finish up there.