Cute Haircut but... Goodbye Satan (It's Never Too Late to Fire a Partner No matter How Much Time You Think You Invested)
Perhaps calling your partner “satan” is a little harsh , not
inaccurate just a little extreme to say
out loud to other people but internally when you realize that your partner
truly has bad intentions it kind of feels good to say to oneself, ”Goddamn it,
I’ve been working with satin, no wonder my life stucks, what a dick.”
If you’re a great person, and have great intentions, and on
top of all that you’re a great artist, or professional in your field, you will
attract these blood sucking partners who will secretly sabotage your good
efforts. I don’t care if you’re child hood friends, or you’ve been “writing”
partners for 8 years, or for 2 months or two hours, or they have such great
credits it’s gonna really advance your career to develop a project with them,
or their your agent or manager who just “knows best” If that person I’m talking
about makes your stomach feel icky after you read their emails, or their
comments to you are digs at your integrity or work but are artfully covered up with
their “sound advice.” Really take a look
at what stats they have – what products have they actually delivered to you to
help advance your career, and that stat is usually zero or close to zero. But you
have gone to great lengths to help the
project you have with them – and they come back with invalidating comments and
criticisms, and you seem to be carrying all the weight, but their opinion is
very important, because of their big Hollywood credits. Fuck them. If they
haven’t helped you yet, they most likely won’t help you now or ever. It usually takes quite a bit of effort to get
to do one small thing for you. Someone who is critical of others has a terrible
ability to asess situations accurately.
Yet, they act like they know everything, and enforce on you that they
know best, but why? What make them know
best? A great partner, is not someone
with that kind of attitide. A successful
person only offers advice when asked, and usually have a disclaimer of, “This is just my experience but…” They will
tell you if they can help you or if they can’t help. A partner who is dead weight, is one that
stops things from happening. They squash
you, your project, or beingness, your willing to help, and your
capabilities. Not everyone has a ton of
credits, and not every person who has a ton of credits can do anything for you. If they are not helpful, they are not
helpful. I have seen movies happen, with
one guy, who is a director, and writer, and has never done anything, but he was
so driven to get his movie done so he did, he didn’t have any fancy partners on
baord. In the same token I’ve seen
producers with the hugest names on board their project and no one will touch
it. That is why it’s very valuable to
make sure your team is effective and good and there are no bad seeds in there.
It takes one bad seed to stop a project from moving forward. Just one.
You are better off with a very able person who can pick up the phone, be
charming, and likeable, and cold call a company to get a meeting. People like great people. People want to work with people who are easy
to work with, who are nice and respectful who have a good work ethic.
So when you realize that your writing partner, or business
partner, or life partner is squashing your ability to produce, and you fee
introverted a lot. It’s time to jump ship.
Some ships are easier to jump than others. But if this someone is emailing you passive
aggressive jabbing emails, and you keep catching them in lies. His intentions are bad. If they were valuable you will know, because if you tell him off,
he would appogiz and try and take action to make it right. But if their
intentions are bad, it’s ALWAYS ALL YOUR FAULT NO MATTER WHAT. And those people
are the deadliest ones to have around because they will find all manner to spin
the situation around to be your fault.
You cannot get around this. They
will not take responsibilities for their actions and their intentions are never for the best of the group,
it is solely for themselves, and they do not have your best interest in
hand. If all this sounds too familiar
than you have one in your court, and the only thing to do is fire the fucker. There is no scarcity of great people, or
great ideas, these blood suckers only make you think you need them but you
don’t. I had to get rid a writing partner
that I had been working on and off with for 8 years. He had great credits. He did nothing for the past 8 years to help
bring our two scripts into fruition with all his big connections, and his big
advice, all I did was help him get
more writing jobs. His opinions were very important and he always knew best. The one time he seemingly found a source to
fund our project, I knew the person, and also knew that person had no stats in
the area, and had a track record of being very unstable, and created many
snarled up situations. I knew that if I
directly went to this source I would for one, find that this person was lying
about their funding, and that two, they would react violently and would go
buzzerk for being asked a direct question of “So do you have the funds”. This was exactly what happened. One does get violently defensive when they
are caught in a lie. And in reality who
wants to work with someone psychotic and unstable even if they did have a
little cash to spend on a movie? I have
gone down that path. It sucks. I don’t
want to work with someone insane whether they have the money or not, the whole
process would be hell, and that’s not why I got into Hollywood, though it is
fun to write about it and joke about it as comic but has cost me a lot of tears
in the process. So when I reported back
the situation to the “I know best” partner,
all I got back were passive aggressive communication full of
generialized lies – anger, criticsm,
inaccurate accusations, in an attempt to pound me into submission to do
as he says. I saw that when this partner
was confronted with truth, in a friendly manner, the above was what I got in return. It was time to fire him. I wrote back.
“I have a good idea. Let’s throw our scripts in the bin, and part ways.”
You can always write another script. There no scarcity of awesome ideas out there. You can’t throw your soul in the bin, it makes
for a very unpleasant life.
Love Camille.
www.camillesolari.com
www.glaminlalaland.com
