It’s a popular question in my circles. Does being a parent make it harder to be a filmmaker? Or harder, for that matter, to work in any type of profession where you’re a mixture of artist and entrepreneur? Do the constraints on your time (transporting kids back and forth from school) and energy (“Daddy, let’s play! Let’s play!”) sap those vital resources away from being able to be creative? More than once I’ve been up late at night in my office, editing, with a kid on my lap, feeling torn about sending him away so that I could concentrate, or letting him stay there so he could watch me work, and ask his precious questions.
On a recent frigid day I was pushing Max on a swing, standing beside a friend who was there pushing her son. Out of the blue, Max asked my friend if she had seen my new movie, The Jonestown Defense. The movie’s not done yet, and no one has seen it, so she said no. Max lit up with a sunny smile and said that he has seen some of the movie, and “It’s good,” he bragged about me, glowing. I think he was retooling the memory of watching me edit from my lap, and then he was almost bursting with pride. “It’s really good!”
Standing in a cold, barren Brooklyn playground, it was more meaningful encouragement for my work, for what I do, than I’d gotten from any important agent or professional in all the years before he’d been born.
