Excellence.

“Excellence can be obtained if you:
...care more than others think is wise;
...risk more than others think is safe;
...dream more than others think is practical;
...expect more than others think is possible.”

“Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.” -Perry Paxton

All You Need Is a Little Cash

It was not lost on me that Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook on a random night in his dorm room and the first chunk of cash was a couple thousand dollars from a friend.
That the thing that pushed it over the hurdle was about $18,000 - which they didn't even use in one fell swoop (as evidenced by the fact that his friend later froze the account.)

All you need is a little cash and - literally I mean a little cash - to get something big started.

And the other moral of the story?
You have to be first.

Quentin Tarantino on “the complete utter payoff of perseverance.”

This is an excerpt from an article in the Telegraph.co.uk by Benjamin Secher Here's the link to the full original article.

"Tarantino’s success as a film-maker did not come easily. “Before Reservoir Dogs, everything was constantly a big build up to a huge let down,” he says. “[Venerated US film critic] Pauline Kael used to say that Hollywood is the only town where people 'can die of encouragement’ and that kind of was my situation.” Tarantino quit school – “the worst institution ever imposed on me” – at 16 and took a job as an usher at “a full-on triple-X porno cinema” called the Pussycat Theatre. He then spent most of his twenties working for the minimum wage at a video rental shop in Manhattan Beach, California, watching obscure films, writing speculative screenplays and figuring out how to become a famous director. “I have always considered that with all the setbacks I had, the fact that I didn’t give up is maybe the one thing in my life that I am most proud of,” he says. “I just knew I would live a life of unfulfilment if I didn’t keep trying.
“So I just kept at it and by the time I wrote Reservoir Dogs it was time. It was time. And then as much as everything else was just this huge build-up to this tremendous let-down, this was…” He pauses, holding the next word in his mouth, relishing the feel of it, “…easy! I wrote the script quickly and we were making the film in, like, seven months.” The movie premiered to acclaim at the 1992 Sundance film festival, securing Tarantino’s reputation, at the age of 29, as one of the most exciting new talents in the business. “It was,” he says, “the complete utter payoff of perseverance.”

And on the flip side to straight up perseverance, here's an article by Richard Walter regarding trying to hit a target by aiming at it. Check it out here.

Terry Rossio on No Permission Filmmaking

"You can not in this town wait for permission. This is the wild wild west. This is a town where if you want to be something you say that you are and you make it happen and then you are that thing."








Among Terry Rossio's credits:
Shrek
Pirates of the Carribean
Men in Black
The Mask of Zorro
National Treasure

"The shell must break before the bird can fly" -Tennyson

"A simple farm boy teams up with a mysterious hermit to rescue a princess before joining a group of interstellar resistance fighters in conflict with an evil gallactic empire that has recently completed construction of a devestating superweapon."

I rest my case.

Now we can see why so many people turned George Lucas down. But if he could get things going with that log line, I can get a Mexican Wonder Woman going!

There are two ways to handle being in the ocean.
On one hand, there can be wave after wave after wave. You're in it. Cold, endless waves washing over you. You're drowning.
Or you can surf. Ride the waves, guide that surfboard down the smoothest path to the beach.
I wanna learn how to surf.

It's a Long Way to the Top if you Want to Rock and Roll!

This just about sums it all up-- and there are bagpipes, too!

How's this for a spiffy quote?

"I am going to Granada, señor," said the gentleman, "to my own country."
" And a goodly country!" said Don Quixote.





The Court of Lions: Coming Sooner and Sooner to a Theater Near You!

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
~ Alexander Graham Bell

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place."
~ Unknown

Never Give a Damn About Your Bad Reputation!

After 23 rejections from every record label in town -- and this is after already playing in The Runaways -- Joan Jett started her own damn record label and recorded "I Love Rock and Roll." It was a hit!

Check out her video to "Bad Reputation." It's essentially Joan Jett rubbing this fact into the face of everyone that ever rejected her or told her she couldn't sing.

African Queen...

"All appears lost when Charlie and Rose "lose the channel" and the boat becomes mired in the mud amid dense reeds near the mouth of the river. First, they try to tow the boat through the muck, only to have Charlie come out of the water covered with leeches. All their efforts to free the African Queen fail. With no supplies left and short of potable water, Rose and Charlie (the latter suffering from a feverish attack of malaria) turn in, convinced they have no hope of survival. Before going to sleep Rose prays that she and Charlie be admitted into Heaven. As they sleep, exhausted and beaten, heavy rains raise the river's level and float the Queen off of the mud and into the lake which, it turns out, is just a short distance from their location..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_African_Queen_(film)

Take the advice of a Pixar dude!

Michael Giacchino's Oscar acceptance speech. (He's the composer from Up-- Pixar people always give the best speeches!)


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