Advice For Filmmakers Stuck In Between Projects by Jack Perez

Film Courage: Have you seen people who have supposedly “made it” (and we won’t mention any names) but they feel like they haven’t made it? And that with making it you never really assume you’ve arrived? That it’s one job to the next, dry spells, failures, a success. That there’s not…”Oh yes, this is textbook making it.”

Jack Perez, Filmmaker: That’s a great question. I don’t know about other people, but I know it in myself. I definitely know it in myself that I’m still thinking about making it. I don’t know about other people because I haven’t really spoken to…I have friends of mine who are classically big success filmmakers but I’ve never heard them talk about that they don’t think they’ve made it.

Maybe they have. I think if you’re ambitious and you’re shooting for something maybe you never really see what you have attained? And I think that for someone like myself I know that there have been plenty of times recently where I’ve been like jealous of someone else’s success or feeling like I got screwed and didn’t get to make enough movies or get the kind of budgets I think I deserved or things like that. And it really takes somebody on the outside like my wife going You know what are you whining about? Poor me. But think about how many people would like have given up their arms to have done what you did. Sometimes it takes that kind of bucket of cold water to go Yeah, you are right. I am the luckiest guy on earth.

I think that the ambitious person, they are already looking for the next thing anyway so if you are satisfied with what you’ve done maybe you’re not going to do the next thing anyway and you just go Well I did it.

But the thing that I think drives creative people is this need to keep doing it. In a way you keep kind of canceling out, you are forgetting what you did. But it’s not enough anyway…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

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Occurrence at Mills Creek is a psychological horror film that examines the dynamics of strong female characters against a supernatural backdrop through failing reality. Now on Indiegogo until April 17th, 2019.