Can I Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Power Point?

We were deep into minute 7 of my allotted 10 with Mr. Film Publicist and Ms. Associate Film Publicist at the South by Southwest Film Festival mentor sessions. Ms. Associate took the bull by the horns and reeled off the names of three LA production companies she’d thought would be good fits for the project (an interactive online game about acting) I’d been describing to them.

She then turned to her boss and said, “Her next step is a deck, right?”

“Oh, yes, definitely,” said Mr. Boss. “Ok, so you need a deck…”

I had a deck once. I was 5. My mother planted geraniums on it. Minute 8. Geraniums? What? How would geraniums get my project done? I looked to Mr. Publicist. I looked to Ms. Associate. I searched their kind faces. They searched mine. Finally, I surrendered.

“What’s a deck?” I asked.

One of the kick-assest things – of many – about my trip to South By Southwest were these rushed mini-meetings – the film festival’s ‘mentor sessions’. About a week before heading to Texas, I got an email saying that as a holder of a film badge I could sign up for 10-minute one-on-one meetings with the industry pros for each of the first four days of the festival.

And so there I found myself, a week later, sitting across a top film publicist and his associate, and (very quickly) pitching the acting game/project that takes players through creating the character of themselves (‘self’), a character based on their desires for their identity (‘doppelganger’) and then a narrative that contains both. Some people got it, some people didn’t, and I was feeling very lucky that Mr. Publicist and Ms. Associate sounded like they fell in the former camp.

“Oooh, a deck is a Power Point,” said Mr. Publicist, soothingly. “About the project. And for this one it has to be visually amazing – pictures of people playing, their ‘doppelgangers,’ everything. And it can be!”

“And then call the business affairs departments of those companies and get meetings!” ordered Ms. Associate as a volunteer ushered in the next mentee.

Ten minutes worth the price of admission! Ten minutes that revealed destination, procedure, possibility! Ten minutes of people I respect telling me that Power Point is THE KEY TO MY PROFESSIONAL SELF-ACTUALIZATION?!

***

And so here I sit at my kitchen table attempting to squeeze my grand vision – a year of work, more video than I like to admit, essays revealing my deepest thoughts and feelings about acting and its ability to affect social change – into 10 pages of the one Microsoft program I’d refused to learn in my myriad office jobs because doing so would have meant that The Day Job Terrorists had won.

But it’s not the ins and outs of the program that’s now the source of my anxiety. If only. Instead, I’m at a frustrating cross roads I’ve visited before when writing about the work. For my life in acting this has meant filling out grant applications, applying for fellowships, and, uh, writing blog posts about projects. But even for more traditional ‘acting-for-hire’ careers, writing skills are more and more valuable as we’re asked to take our marketing into our own hands – creating one-sheets to get meetings, crafting stellar bios, even developing business plans for films and series. Whatever the endeavor, the challenge when writing about our creative work is the same: how to do it in a way that makes the heart of the project beat faster, that doesn’t slow it down with explanations, data, projections…

Pardon, I dozed off for a minute.

And so I push on, experimenting with forms and sentences that balance clarity and feeling. I try to pay closer attention to what I’m feeling, or not feeling, in my body when I realize I’m writing only from the safety of intellectual concepts. I try to pay closer attention to what I’m thinking when I notice my breath drop deeper and my heart beat faster – the clear signals that I’m looking into the barrel of what I want and have something on the line.

I make progress. I get scared. I check email. I have a breakthrough. I get overwhelmed. I eat potato chips. I fantasize about pulling a “Twyla Tharp.” The story goes something like this: Tharp, arguably the late 20^th century’s most influential choreographer, got frustrated with the time that the New York Foundation for the Arts’ grant application was taking away from her work in the studio. She took a marker, drew a big X on the application cover and wrote, “I don’t make grants…I make dances!” She was awarded the grant.Apparently, the committee found her Sharpie art charming…that, and her already established body of Super Work. But where I’m at in my career, I need to make dances and grants. And, ideally, grants that dance.

When I’ve done this in the past – this writing about the work, applying for this, that and the other – I’ve often felt like the inner-technician won out. My need to be ‘acceptable’ beat out my need to express the mess, and it was the mess that drove me to create the work in the first place.

***

Another of the kick-ass SXSW experiences was attending the Catherine Hardwicke Directing Workshop. The director of Twilight, Thirteen & The Lords of Dogtown fielded questions from the audience, explaining how she brought complicated shots and concepts to life. And she did this with the aid of a serious (yes, you guessed it!) Power Point presentation – videos, sketches, story boards – and her indomitable spirit guiding the show. The Day Job Terrorists, it turns out, can be beaten at their own game. Often, she said, her ideas weren’t at first understood by her collaborators. She had to keep finding new ways of communicating what she wanted – drawings, reports, research, shooting spec videos on the fly. Getting her point across is the director’s burden. It’s the job.

When I recently showed my first draft of the Deck to my writing group – people who know the history of the work and its personal velocity – they saw me veering down the too-technical path again. They pointed out the missing steps, the moments that were unclear, but they also warned me not to lose the desire behind them. Structure and heart. Both are needed. The scaffolding is not enough. Nor is it useful to throw up my hands if I’m not understood on my terms only, thus cutting off chances for collaboration, and for my work to have as far a reach as possible.

This week, taking the advice of the writing group, combing over the last year’s notes and images, and listening more closely to the rumblings in my head, I’ve plugged away. The next draft is becoming more immediate, idiosyncratic, and, I hope, clearer.

I’ve set a new Deck Draft deadline for next Tuesday. And if you have any tips and tricks on how you’ve created your best work about the work, I’d love to hear them. Inspired by the passion of Ms. Tharp and the fortitude of Ms. Hardwicke, let’s rise to the challenge of making the most effective work about the work that we can.

Drawing by Bixentro