[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What can you teach us about changing oneself midlife?
Paul Chitlik, Author/Screenwriter: Wow, well that’s what my new book is all about actually, Lies All Lies.
You have to be able to look at yourself and say:
–Am I happy where I am, doing the things that I wanted to do?
–Would the child that I was be proud of the adult that I’ve become?
If that is the case or if that isn’t the case, then you have to say I’ve got to make some changes and how do I make those changes?
Well that’s a product of research, investigation, looking into religion, looking into philosophy, looking into your friends and asking them you know I’ve got a problem. I’m drinking too much. What do I do about it? I can’t seem to stop, how do I deal with that? Especially that’s why people go to Alcoholics Anonymous to ask. I realize I have a problem. I don’t know how to stop it. Can you help me?
Asking for help is a good thing to do at that stage. Self-examination is a good thing to do. Research is a good thing to do because I believe (and that’s what I say in my book) you can change at any point in your life once you realize that you need to change, to be the person that you wanted to be, to be the person that the child that you were would be proud of. If you can do that then you can be a real person.
Film Courage: I watched a young woman with a YouTube video on becoming a better version of yourself and she wrote it as a character. I think she might have made it a video game character but she was saying that she wanted to become a better version of herself and so she thought it’d be easier if she wrote it from this point of view of a character.
Do you think some life stages are easier to change ourselves? I know you talked about midlife in your book Lies All Lies?
Paul: Right, a midlife crisis. He’s a little young for it. He is in mid-to-late-30s but still he’s in a position where he has to change.
I don’t know you. I’ve made major changes in my life, like standing at the backboard realizing I am not supposed to be here and making a change or moving from one country to another. I lived in Europe for six years. I left London after living there for four years. I made a major change. I made major changes in my relationships. When you come to that place where you think this relationship is not working out and it’s because of me or because of her or because of him, I mean whoever it is.
I had a major change in a…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM/UA’S “The New Twilight Zone,” and staff writer for Showtime’s sitcom “Brothers.” He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, Mainline Releasing, and others. He has directed episodes and been coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.” He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction,” the first network movie shot on digital video for UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel. (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.) Most recently he wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for his work on “The Twilight Zone” and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for “Los Beltrán,” a Telemundo show. He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. He has taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, the University of Barcelona’s film school ESCAC, Cuba’s film school EICTV, Chile’s film school UNIACC, The University of Zulia in Venezuela, The Panamerican University in Mexico City, The Story Academy of Sweden and as a clinical associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Now writing full time again and living near his grandson in Chapel Hill, NC, with wife, Beth McCauley.
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