Matthew Toffolo Blog February 25th
The last WILDsound Events went off without a hitch as it was a wonderful couple of days. We had two writers fly in to hear their scripts read as they seemed to have a good time as they met a lot of people and gained a lot of connections. Our 2nd film festival was also well received as we had a lot of unique and interesting films showcased. And our two Moderators, Marguerite Pigott and John Moore did a fantastic job as they were a wealth of knowledge. You could sit back and hear them speak about storytelling for hours. So overall I was pretty happy. There are things I will improve to make it that much better, but we’re definitely moving in a upwards and forward direction. Each month the events have to get better for me. We need to always get better. Matthew Toffolo talks about Failure One of my favorite books is a semi-autobiographical novel called My Losing Season by Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides, The Great Santini). It’s about a basketball guard in his senior year of University who’s a part of a team who loses every game when they were hyped for a great year. He sees how much he can learn from failure and it propels him to understanding himself more and how that losing season kick started his successful career to become a successful novelist. Before reading this book I used to think that failing at something was the worst thing that could happen to someone. I related to this book because I has a similar experience in my last year in high school as the football team I played for lost every single game we played. It was really painful for me as I wasn’t used to it at all as every team I played before that was a successful and a championship team. I saw how losing destroyed a lot of our souls and how a lot of my teammates basically gave up long before the season ended. So looking back to that year I realized how much I learned from that season and all of the things I use from it in my everyday life. I saw the many mistakes that were made and all the things that could of been avoided and all the things that could of been done to make us successful. They were simple things caused by basic disorganization and laziness from the top that trickled down to the players. We were better than that but losing is a disease that spreads quickly. And if someone doesn’t have the will power to kill it, then everyone is doomed. I Produced this film a while back with a very sizable budget, a great script and a solid crew assembled to bring the script to life. With these elements it was a suppose to turn into a great film right? Unfortunately it didn’t because there were some major stumbling blocks at the top and the creative crew members all were making a different film. The Director wanted things his way of course, but he didn’t know how to express his emotions and idea for the script to the rest of his team. So the film turned into a failure in my eyes. It got distribution and played at some nice festivals, but this film could of been great and it should of propelled everyone’s career to the next level. As the Producer and the man driving the ship, I failed during pre-production and didn’t make sure that everyone on the team was on the same page. That film actually failed in the first 30 minutes of our first shooting day. The director walked onto set and complained and treated everyone like they were his workers. Everyone was working for him, not with him. The crew immediately began a common hatred for the director and would do their job because that was what they were being paid to do, but that was all they were going to do. They turned off all of their creativity and originality and worked like they were being treated by the boss, as just a hired hand. The director was inexperienced and needed the crew more than anything, but they were gone and weren’t coming back. It killed me to see this happen. I went into a depression for about 6 months after this film during post-production because when viewing the rushes, I realized that I could of helped a lot more to make a much better film. I found myself thinking that I was a failure and I wouldn’t succeed in this business. During that time everything else was falling apart around me too and I kept sinking lower and lower. I couldn’t stand the pain of failing. One day I woke up and suddenly realized that there will always be another film. I have to move on. I’ll take what I learned from that film and learn not to make the same mistakes twice. And actually in hindsight now, I’m so very glad that those failures happened on the film because it has made me a better filmmaker. Sometimes learning what not to do is better than learning what to do. Failure is a great thing. It’s something that all of us need in order to understand the big picture. It’s something we should embrace. People like to judge you when you fail. That’s okay because the ones who judge are usually the ones who are just judging themselves and have nothing better to do because they really aren’t doing anything themselves. So fuck those people, get back on the horse and ride again. You tend not to judge others when you’re busy doing things yourself.
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