The very first chapter of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside captivated me. If you've ever read any sort of memoir (including this blog), you'll know how rare it is for the writer to start off by instilling confidence in the reader. While many say that Kelly's honesty is brutal and 'mean', I find it to be a rare brand of authentic encouragement. "I advise you to stop sharing your dreams with people who try to hold you back, even if they're your parents. Because, if you're the kind of person who senses there's something out there for you beyond whatever it is you're expected to do - if you want to be extra-ordinary - you will not get there by hanging around a bunch of people who tell you you're not extraordinary."
That's special. No honestly, no one ever tells you this straight up. It's bold. It also made me realize how special my life had been to be surrounded by so few "nasty, negative naysayers." I describe my parents as liberal hippies who took the pragmatic route because they had a baby so early. They supported me in trying everything: space camp, karate, my first short film, French lessons,European travel, quitting my job, getting married to a guy outside of my culture whom I dated for eight months, writing/directing/producing a play and, now, having a baby. They ultimately set a standard for me to naturally weed out negative people in my life.
In high school, I became a film junkie. So when I told my parents that I had found a film production summer camp at 16, they were thrilled. Film camp at Toronto's Centre for the Arts was run by a man named John Boylan, an accomplished theatre director and acting coach, all around nice guy and probably the only person I will openly name on this blog. Film camp covered various facets of film production and was staffed by local actors, short film producers, editors and technical specialists who simultaneously worked on productions in the city. After film camp was over, I joined Centre for the Arts' Youth Group and that winter we filmed my only short film called Prey. I wrote the script based on Crime & Punishment, a novel I read for school that really impressed me. Once production was finished, I thought it was over reaching but it premiered at a screening to rave reviews.
One day, John and I were sitting around and he asked me what I had planned to do after graduation. I told him that I really loved film and I was thinking of going to the film studies program at Ryerson University. Although the rest of the university is fairly unknown internationally, the film studies program had a fair number of successful alumni - among them Vadim Perelman, the director of The House of Sand and Fog, a movie I had fallen in love with. But, I told John, it was a long shot. Film studies was a tiny program (something like 20) and highly competitive and the acceptance rate was around 5%.
His response was simple. "So what?" So what? So what if I don't get in? "Don't think like that. Just get in. Just be on the people who gets in. Get that in your head. Who cares about the acceptance rates? Just focus on being part of the 5%." He shrugged his shoulders. This was his solution. Problem solved.
To learn such an important lesson at 16 and to be reminded of it (almost exactly) 10 years later by Kelly's opening chapter, is probably one of my greatest blessings. I'm all for "doing the math" and keeping budgets, tracking spending, all the works. But fixating on how the odds are not in your favour will get you nowhere, very fast.
Since then, I've learned that the bigger the risk I take, the bigger my reward. I graduated in a recession and the attitude I adopted, to focus on the positive, helped me get not one, but two job offers in a quickly shrinking field. Odds were steeply against me and I just didn't care. I went for it and I got what I wanted. (My parents were not pleased with my decision to go into banking and considered it selling the freedom of youth for security and money.)
After I had quit my job, I ventured into theatre and three days before the debut of my play Happy Foods at the Toronto Fringe Festival this year, I fired my lead actor for not having memorized his lines. (I know, I know, I should've come down on him earlier but he was a friend and I was being nice.) The day before I let him go, I met another actor through a friend and he said he could have all his lines down pat in two days. Our mutual friend confirmed that this actor had what we considered to be a God given memorization gift.
He later explained to me that a healthy brain can retain anything repeated three times and that the only thing preventing this was the barrier we setup for ourselves (and others). Indeed, opening night went without a hitch. The rest of my cast was in awe. He actually memorized my entire play in 48 hours and we had a full day of rehearsals. (To boot, he told me that he can't do this with just anything, only scripts he finds interesting and exciting!) How about that for it being "all in your head"?
Thank you Kelly, for reminding me to ignore the negative words and disheartening numbers and that focusing on averages will only keep you average.
That's special. No honestly, no one ever tells you this straight up. It's bold. It also made me realize how special my life had been to be surrounded by so few "nasty, negative naysayers." I describe my parents as liberal hippies who took the pragmatic route because they had a baby so early. They supported me in trying everything: space camp, karate, my first short film, French lessons,European travel, quitting my job, getting married to a guy outside of my culture whom I dated for eight months, writing/directing/producing a play and, now, having a baby. They ultimately set a standard for me to naturally weed out negative people in my life.
In high school, I became a film junkie. So when I told my parents that I had found a film production summer camp at 16, they were thrilled. Film camp at Toronto's Centre for the Arts was run by a man named John Boylan, an accomplished theatre director and acting coach, all around nice guy and probably the only person I will openly name on this blog. Film camp covered various facets of film production and was staffed by local actors, short film producers, editors and technical specialists who simultaneously worked on productions in the city. After film camp was over, I joined Centre for the Arts' Youth Group and that winter we filmed my only short film called Prey. I wrote the script based on Crime & Punishment, a novel I read for school that really impressed me. Once production was finished, I thought it was over reaching but it premiered at a screening to rave reviews.
One day, John and I were sitting around and he asked me what I had planned to do after graduation. I told him that I really loved film and I was thinking of going to the film studies program at Ryerson University. Although the rest of the university is fairly unknown internationally, the film studies program had a fair number of successful alumni - among them Vadim Perelman, the director of The House of Sand and Fog, a movie I had fallen in love with. But, I told John, it was a long shot. Film studies was a tiny program (something like 20) and highly competitive and the acceptance rate was around 5%.
His response was simple. "So what?" So what? So what if I don't get in? "Don't think like that. Just get in. Just be on the people who gets in. Get that in your head. Who cares about the acceptance rates? Just focus on being part of the 5%." He shrugged his shoulders. This was his solution. Problem solved.
To learn such an important lesson at 16 and to be reminded of it (almost exactly) 10 years later by Kelly's opening chapter, is probably one of my greatest blessings. I'm all for "doing the math" and keeping budgets, tracking spending, all the works. But fixating on how the odds are not in your favour will get you nowhere, very fast.
Since then, I've learned that the bigger the risk I take, the bigger my reward. I graduated in a recession and the attitude I adopted, to focus on the positive, helped me get not one, but two job offers in a quickly shrinking field. Odds were steeply against me and I just didn't care. I went for it and I got what I wanted. (My parents were not pleased with my decision to go into banking and considered it selling the freedom of youth for security and money.)
After I had quit my job, I ventured into theatre and three days before the debut of my play Happy Foods at the Toronto Fringe Festival this year, I fired my lead actor for not having memorized his lines. (I know, I know, I should've come down on him earlier but he was a friend and I was being nice.) The day before I let him go, I met another actor through a friend and he said he could have all his lines down pat in two days. Our mutual friend confirmed that this actor had what we considered to be a God given memorization gift.
He later explained to me that a healthy brain can retain anything repeated three times and that the only thing preventing this was the barrier we setup for ourselves (and others). Indeed, opening night went without a hitch. The rest of my cast was in awe. He actually memorized my entire play in 48 hours and we had a full day of rehearsals. (To boot, he told me that he can't do this with just anything, only scripts he finds interesting and exciting!) How about that for it being "all in your head"?
Thank you Kelly, for reminding me to ignore the negative words and disheartening numbers and that focusing on averages will only keep you average.
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