While trying to organize the haphazard mess that is my Windows-default "My Documents" folder I came across this little gem which I was too self-concious to post when I wrote it. Considering that I am in the midst of making a serious (and seriously good) Ohio Jones film and, more immediately, moving out of the house, this one is interesting.

Some of the worst things about living at home without a future are the periodic reports from my father about my faults and my need to "get real" and start wanting to have the sort of jobs and go to the sort of graduate programs that he thinks are good, rather, than, say, ones that are of any interest to me.

Inevitably, this results in him saying that he regrets encouraging me to persue "my dream" which was -- and theoretically is -- to be a filmmaker. The other day, he insinuated that I am talentless and that I couldn't possibly have a film in me that anyone would want to buy. He'd formed this opinion on Ohio Jones which was not exactly intended to be a showcase for any sort of talent.

All this, because I suggested that maybe, you know, maybe, in the future, I would get off my ass and take a few thousand dollars (this would be an imaginary future in which I have access to a few thousand dollars) and make a movie. He got really incensed by this suggestion, despite my assurances that if you want to be a filmmaker, that's how you do it. He said that was unrealistic, that I'd be better putting all that money into lottery tickets, but I don't think he understands how much easier it is to sell a good film than it is to sell a bad script.

Of course, what I don't think he (or anyone else, since I've never mentioned it) fully understands is that being a filmmaker wasn't originally my dream; it wss his. When I was nine years old, he told me I wanted to be "a screenplay director," and, despite there not being anything called that, he assured me, "that's where the money is." People would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I parroted "screenplay director." After all, that's what my dad told me I should want to be. (I used to take directions really well.) People ask you that question a lot when you're younger, so I ended up telling quite a few people that's what I wanted to do. All this naturally informed my developing self-image, and I eventually began to see myself in that light. At some point, someone told me which college I should go to for that sort of thing, and, many years later, I even went there for a little while.

But if that day in the kitchen 15 years ago my father had told me that I wanted to be a politician or a computer programmer or something, that's probably what I would have wanted to do with my life, and thus what he could be telling me to forget all about today.

Why do you, dear reader, want to do what it is that you want to do?