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Pulling Back
These days I find I'm particularly tugged around by everyone's favorite set of duties: work and family and even though I know I'm so not alone in this as to be a cliche, it is still very tricky. (And arranging things results in the weird waking hours I've been keeping and peculiar sense of guilt and the occasional spasm of rage, usually inspired by pedestrians I don't know and will never see again.)
So it was with interest and sadness that I saw this comment from Jane Campion, a filmmaker whose work is not my all time favorite but whose work is usually intriguing and somehow remarkable. She hasn't produced much for quite a while and was asked about her low output at the Cannes film festival this year (where she was showing a movie, Bright Star, about the romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne-- coming out in September they say).
What she said (reported by IndieWIRE): "The real reason is that I have a daughter [and] I was beginning to wonder if she knew she had a mother... I was determined to have some time with her while she was young... Alice is my reason, she’s my best film yet."
How annoying that it isn't people like me who get stuck and find themselves frantic and semi brain dead. And here's hoping Campion can do more and more now that her daughter is a teenager.
This particular issue doesn't explain why Kathryn Bigelow, another interesting filmmaker, who happens to be a woman can't seem to make more than three movies a decade. Here's hoping her latest, The Hurt Locker, will change that.
posted by Elise at 9:39 AM
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said...
In the '80s, I was a hard-charging lawyer who left the law for five-plus years when my older boy was 3 years old. When I went back to work, it's like the old expression goes, it was like riding a bike and I quickly picked up where I'd left off.
Since it appears that your spouse can support you and your boys during the early wonder years, why not just write for the joy of writing and jettison all those artificial deadlines that have you waking up at weird hours and suffering from guilt trips? Your husband and your boys, not to mention you, might benefit from a diminution of your self-imposed angst.
It sounds like you question whether your voice will ever be acknowledged again if you take off some time from producing published manuscripts. If I'm right, I would humbly suggest that there's a deeper issue here beyond demonstrating that you have a positive work ethic and a notable skill.
Have you seen "In Treatment" on HBO? It's a potent guide to personal evolution.
5/17/2009 8:43 PM
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