Patton Oswalt Wrestles with the Fear of Filmmaking

Patton Oswalt loves cinema, and would love to write and direct a film some day, but he struggles to overcome the fear of not living up to his own expectations.

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[kimnkal]

Classic creative resistance (see The War of Art). He needs to allow himself to be a beginner again and make a low budget short film that no one has to see. He can build from there. I'd love to see a film by him.

[gammelgarten]

I like him a lot because I feel a little bit related to him. What I always find good is when you don't turn your own anxieties, constraints and restrictions into a permanent passive-aggressive stance, masked as irony and sarcasm. I don't like that, for example, about Zach Galifianakis, who doesn't manage to leave his protective shell of sarcasm even in serious moments, and where honesty cannot be easily distinguished from a joke. That makes such interviews kind of exhausting, because the listener has to check again and again whether a statement contains some meta-irony. Here, even if Patton should only play his openness and vulnerability (which I don't believe), it would be played extremely well. Thank you for that.

[andreaandrea]

Oswalt, it IS in you. It IS!!! You just need to get out of your own way. (You know this!) And then relax into it. Also, you need a story that simply won't leave you alone. One that keeps nagging & nagging and is louder than your own fears. You are going to do it! So just relax.

[robertdavis]

Team up with Odenkirk and write something together, like maybe you'll be the Simon&Garfunkle of early 21st century folk comedy

[GuanoLad]

Make a short film first. Then another. And another. Each time make them longer and more complex, both in content and behind the scenes. Then try out a feature. That can all happen within a year, and by then you'll know if it's your thing. Don't worry about the quality of the finished product, concentrate on telling a good story.

[douglaskalberg]

Charles Laughton debuted with The Night of the Hunter when he was in his mid fifties. Mind you, the critics at the time hated it and he never directed again.

[GlennDavey]

Oswalt has at least one outstanding movie in him, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's auto-biographical, along the lines of The Big Sick. But he needs to partner up with someone.

[thedigitalemotion]

I totally identify with this. Which is why I came across this video. I am not looking to be a director, but I do run a production company and am always thinking that I (we) are never good enough, or that were doing it wrong. I am my own biggest self-critic. I know I'm not as good as the better people out there but I look at it like a learning journey and believe that failure is a teacher. On the plus side every job we've done has yielded the return of the same clients for different projects, so maybe something is working. I recommend you watch the latest Apple video where all the world class directors share their stories of feeling the same inadequacy with every project they do, and this is from world class directors!! I would love to know if any others reading this feel any similarities?

[andreaandrea]

And that's what it feels like to be the child of a famous person; one is afraid to do anything for fear of being compared.

[StephenBittrich]

I enjoyed your thought process, and can relate. I'm going to give some advice and a pep talk to myself. You were in a film with frickin' Charlize Theron, so you don't need my advice...

SHORT FILM. A short film with less at stake is the way to go at first. You figure out pretty quickly what parts you love and what parts you don't. And if the love far outweighs the don't like, you know you have to keep going. (And you also know what areas -- the parts you dislike or feel overwhelmed with -- where you need to rely on expert help.)

I should take my own advice more. :) I did make some short films that I won't show people (cuz they sucked) and some that I will show people. And I worked on a webseries with episodes I thought worked well and ones where I felt I fell short. But I definitely learned something about storytelling (and about working in the medium) with each thing I created.

I think the thing that keeps me from doing more is that I realize (at least at my level) that I have to be the ENGINE for everything I want to do. And that takes a lot of energy (and money ... or energy to find money). You find plenty of talented people -- who are brilliant -- who are like, "Yeah, just let me know when to show up and be brilliant." Which is great. And you need those people. But what you really crave is that brilliant soul that says, "What can I do behind the scenes to support you to make sure this happens?"

[MrUndersolo]

Glad he mentioned Pauline Kael. A good lesson on knowing your role in life...

Keep writing, Patton! 📝

[alannavarra]

i kind of want to see a film about an 80 year old first time filmmaker!

[FrydaWolff]

Eleanor Coppola made her first movie at 80. It wasn't "a dude in a Rascal."

[bertruleshard]

Nothing was adder than playing Kingdom Hearts 3 and just seeing Ratatouille with no Paton VO. Why did they even put him in there when the magic of Paton isn't present. That game alone was a giant let down and no Paton was icing on the baby poop cake.

[robertdavis]

I really think the best approach is to use a 70's era camera, shoot simple scenes, look at Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, i loved the way that film looks. Every scene can be easily infused with emotion based color pallets, songs with lyrics which echo characters thinking in place of using voice over narrative. Focus your shots around the actors eyes, especially the main characters, you want to accentuate the power of their eye colors, it gives the scene emotional gravity when the eyes are glowing in the right lighting, the eye is pure magic, you can never go wrong if you start visualizing a scene as if you're air molecules, dust glimmering in the sun as they float passed the eye upclose, smoke from bongs, steam from cooking, wind blowing through the trees outside the window, fill the environment with little details, fill it with authenticity .

[anthonywheeler]

Quintessence. I loved the Voltron reference :)

[WillBravoNotEvil]

Well, I still have Harlan Sanders - I think he started KFC at like 70 or something.

[robertdavis]

Well imagine for a second, Oswalt plays the Greek comedian Aristophanes, historical fiction surrounding the creation of the Clouds, the best part is exploring the Ancient Greek Wit. Patton would be wonderful as the quickest wit in all of Greece, a bit of a troublemaker unafraid to lampoon and insult Greek society.

[tyro]

Sounds like Patton is about to become just like the real Adam Goldberg and try and discover what he is both good and bad at.

[Itstherealme-cnpt]

2:34 “Everyone Can’t Do Everything...”




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