C'est la Guerre
What is the true cost of making this movie? The hard numbers are easier to gauge: We’re running about $88,000 for a ‘finished’ feature. But that doesn’t include our festival run or sales agents or lawyers or not paying yourself or All The Other Things that speed bump your momentum and suck your wallet drier than dry. We’re about $120K in the hole right now with little hope of breaking even for at least a decade. So, what did we buy?
We realized that every limitation we’d ever thought about ourselves was self-imposed.
We learned we could do anything we set our minds to. That impossible was temporary.
But there was a high price for that awareness.
I've lost friends.
Tested the fault lines of my marriage.
Distanced myself from my children.
Chased away friends from asking one favor too many.
Come out looking like a buffoon to almost the entire cast and crew.
And, at the finish line, made a movie that no one knows exists nor cares about.
There is a theory called Laplace's Demon which states that if you can know the precise location and movement of every single atom in the universe that means you can calculate where it’s going and where it’s been. And that means you can know everything in the universe ever. Filmmakers want to believe in a concept like Laplace’s Demon because it empowers them to move forward. So you ramp into pre-production believing in causality as your creed. If we perform This Action then we will get That Result. It’s science, bitches! But the reality is imperfect. Sooner or later the Fog Of Production arrives and everything becomes about adjustments (the depression avoidant term for compromises). At no point did I foresee the repercussions of making "Clocking the T." If we'd known certain atoms would end up here instead of there we probably would have bailed making the show. Like everyone before us and after us, we’d hoped on a mathematical pre-production equation that, when enacted, would cough up the projected end result. Instead it was like the *krak!* of the break that starts a pool game and we played the balls where they rested. Sometimes we were behind the 8, other times a trick shot saved us, and once in a while we'd point out the window and say, "What the hell is that?!?!,” and while everyone else looked we surreptitiously moved the ball to a better position.
The emotional toll of making a movie is staggering. It’s so astronomically high that it's no wonder people eventually slip into User Mode and game everyone. Or maybe it’s the other way around: You start by gaming yourself. You’re so invested emotionally that it’s painful when others take potshots at your film. You slowly slip into Fuck You Mode at the hint of a slight. You’re building a wall faster than Pink between you and Them. And you lose your mind. Cast adrift in a sea of lies and bullshit and disdain, you start fishing with dynamite. I mean, how many times can you work around other people’s bullshit before you hate them? I think back to the unbridled loathing that producers I’d worked for had for cast & crew and I couldn’t understand how they’d become so full of bile and cynicism. Now I wonder if we do another movie, will that be our fate? I hope not. But it’s hard to Keep The Faith when everyone around you sneers back. Had Erika and I not had each other to rely and console I'm not sure we would have come out of this meat grinder in one piece.
Virtually every single thing I thought about What It Takes To Make A Movie was wrong. And I've been on sets and directed second unit many times over the last 38 years. But I realize now that was just doing a job. The actual Getting It Made, strategizing like a general on the hill overseeing his tanks rolling through Palermo, is a whole different level of chess more akin to the 3D version Kirk & Spock played. No one really understands What It Is You Do as an indie feature filmmaker until you're in the midst of doing it. Thinking you have an inkling of combat theater because you reached the boss level of "Call of Duty" is as mistaken as thinking a 15 minute short film that you and your pals made one week equals the titanic and sustained year-plus effort of a feature length movie. You don't know. Fuck, I sure as hell didn’t. I fell for that ‘Buy A Camera Off The Shelf And Make a Movie!’ mythology hook, line, and sinker. Hell, I practically jumped out of the water into the boat. And while it seems silly of me to describe this adventure as ‘mythology’ since, you know, I actually did make a movie, it’s obvious to us now that the sound bite for that achievement monstrously short-sheets The Process. A process whose highs and lows were as effervescent and dark as you could imagine.... and then a little bit more. Many times our abilities to juggle the needs of our production tested us, not just in what we could achieve as managers, but many times testing who we were as people. You want to know who you really are inside? Stand at the crossroad of Kindness Street and Budget Blvd. You'll find out quick. Then stand there again. And again. Will you still take the high road with people trying to fuck you over, knowing full well that your integrity will only make you look like a dope? Or realizing that the loyalty and trust you’re giving is not being returned, nor will it ever be. These are crushing disappointments, and they add up, like extra emotional barbells slipped onto your bar sleeve after every single rep.
Ironically, on every movie, the least amount of time is actually spent filming. Far more man hours are spent writing, seeking funding, pre-production, post production, seeking distribution, etc., etc. Hell, we spent more time casting or teching Media Composer than we did actually shooting. Looking back, shooting the movie turned out to be the easy part. The ramping up and the ramping down from principal photography was a Death March of Will This Ever End misery that took far more out of us than twenty-five days of production on four hours of sleep a night. At least all the setbacks during filming required immediate solutions, even if they were improvised on the spot. Quick pain, quick solution, moving on. Whereas every setback in pre and pro was a spinning bingo ball cage of random What Will We Do? show-stoppers with no obvious answer. Answers that sometimes wouldn’t reveal themselves for weeks.
And that gap between Answer and Solution is a Grand Canyon filled with doubt and disappointment and second guessing. As the filmmaker, you are smack dab in front of a judge's bench every minute of every day for the entire production. And I mean the entire production, right up to getting sneered at by colorists and festival directors and wannabes. Fucking strangers seem to have an opinion on How Badly You Failed. If you make a movie you're gonna go thru this. And not just with the production. My personal life became a category 5 whitewater river. Taxes, house maintenance, personal trips all fell by the wayside. The very lesson I wanted my kids to glean from this endeavor, believe in your dreams and if you work hard you can accomplish them, was replaced with ‘Daddy doesn’t love us as much as the movie he spends every day working on.’ As the weeks go on you notice that while everyone is still standing next you but somehow they feel farther away. And it slowly dawns that this movie that has required everything of you has left you with nothing left to give to the people closest to you. And the more time that passes, the less an apology will fill the growing chasm between achievement and connection. Honestly, it feels like the entire filmmaking process was designed to destroy relationships. Like a great big particle collider that, without fail, seems to flip everyone’s magnetic polarity to ‘repel.’ But nobody ever talks about it, afraid they'll come off crazed and paranoid and depressive and ill-equipped and whiney.
Just like I do now right now writing this.
It *is* a long road. Along the way I learned that you better be the advocate for your film because no one else will be. You have to believe in your movie. Because nobody else cares. They'll believe in any success but until that happens they'll keep it at arms length, thank you. Maybe it's just a defense mechanism against the grinding disappointments that most productions inevitably become. But it’s hard to be the advocate when the unending pummeling of rejection beats you down. You doubt your work. You doubt yourself. The overwhelming balancing act of pretending not to notice other people’s horseshit is as emotionally draining as it is physically exhausting getting the equipment dragged up and down flights of stairs for a long day of filming. And you experience that Every. Single. Goddamn. Day. Especially when your’e producing/directing/DPing/gaffing/location managing/whateverelse-position-required just trying to afford Making Your Movie.
All of this is just the price of admission. It says so on the proverbial price tag: No crybabies. All sales are final. The stress levels are at an altitude of 45,000 feet and the margin for error is catastrophic. You can’t survive in that atmosphere. Not for long, anyway. If making every fucking movie is like this then is an existential awareness even meaningful? If you swim the English Channel you might die. Or you might not. But probable catastrophe comes with the challenge.
So why do I feel it was worth it?
What is wrong with me?
The same thing that is wrong with every other feature filmmaker we’ve spoken to. Pull ‘em to the side, get a beer in their hand, and every one of ‘em will confide to the same cratering of their soul by the barrage of Filmmaking Dreams artillery. You wanna make art? It costs. When we show the movie to people they’re astonished at what we got for our budget. “That’s all you spent? It looks like a million dollars!” But it feels like we paid for the most expensive movie ever made. The true cost was staggering. Just not in money.
___
© Michael Thibault 2025, All Rights Reserved. May Not Be Printed, Published, Posted, Transferred, Or Duplicated Without Permission.
Banner painting "Prince Bagration at the Battle of Borodino," © Alexander Yuriyevich Averyanov
We learned we could do anything we set our minds to. That impossible was temporary.
But there was a high price for that awareness.
I've lost friends.
Tested the fault lines of my marriage.
Distanced myself from my children.
Chased away friends from asking one favor too many.
Come out looking like a buffoon to almost the entire cast and crew.
And, at the finish line, made a movie that no one knows exists nor cares about.
There is a theory called Laplace's Demon which states that if you can know the precise location and movement of every single atom in the universe that means you can calculate where it’s going and where it’s been. And that means you can know everything in the universe ever. Filmmakers want to believe in a concept like Laplace’s Demon because it empowers them to move forward. So you ramp into pre-production believing in causality as your creed. If we perform This Action then we will get That Result. It’s science, bitches! But the reality is imperfect. Sooner or later the Fog Of Production arrives and everything becomes about adjustments (the depression avoidant term for compromises). At no point did I foresee the repercussions of making "Clocking the T." If we'd known certain atoms would end up here instead of there we probably would have bailed making the show. Like everyone before us and after us, we’d hoped on a mathematical pre-production equation that, when enacted, would cough up the projected end result. Instead it was like the *krak!* of the break that starts a pool game and we played the balls where they rested. Sometimes we were behind the 8, other times a trick shot saved us, and once in a while we'd point out the window and say, "What the hell is that?!?!,” and while everyone else looked we surreptitiously moved the ball to a better position.
The emotional toll of making a movie is staggering. It’s so astronomically high that it's no wonder people eventually slip into User Mode and game everyone. Or maybe it’s the other way around: You start by gaming yourself. You’re so invested emotionally that it’s painful when others take potshots at your film. You slowly slip into Fuck You Mode at the hint of a slight. You’re building a wall faster than Pink between you and Them. And you lose your mind. Cast adrift in a sea of lies and bullshit and disdain, you start fishing with dynamite. I mean, how many times can you work around other people’s bullshit before you hate them? I think back to the unbridled loathing that producers I’d worked for had for cast & crew and I couldn’t understand how they’d become so full of bile and cynicism. Now I wonder if we do another movie, will that be our fate? I hope not. But it’s hard to Keep The Faith when everyone around you sneers back. Had Erika and I not had each other to rely and console I'm not sure we would have come out of this meat grinder in one piece.
Virtually every single thing I thought about What It Takes To Make A Movie was wrong. And I've been on sets and directed second unit many times over the last 38 years. But I realize now that was just doing a job. The actual Getting It Made, strategizing like a general on the hill overseeing his tanks rolling through Palermo, is a whole different level of chess more akin to the 3D version Kirk & Spock played. No one really understands What It Is You Do as an indie feature filmmaker until you're in the midst of doing it. Thinking you have an inkling of combat theater because you reached the boss level of "Call of Duty" is as mistaken as thinking a 15 minute short film that you and your pals made one week equals the titanic and sustained year-plus effort of a feature length movie. You don't know. Fuck, I sure as hell didn’t. I fell for that ‘Buy A Camera Off The Shelf And Make a Movie!’ mythology hook, line, and sinker. Hell, I practically jumped out of the water into the boat. And while it seems silly of me to describe this adventure as ‘mythology’ since, you know, I actually did make a movie, it’s obvious to us now that the sound bite for that achievement monstrously short-sheets The Process. A process whose highs and lows were as effervescent and dark as you could imagine.... and then a little bit more. Many times our abilities to juggle the needs of our production tested us, not just in what we could achieve as managers, but many times testing who we were as people. You want to know who you really are inside? Stand at the crossroad of Kindness Street and Budget Blvd. You'll find out quick. Then stand there again. And again. Will you still take the high road with people trying to fuck you over, knowing full well that your integrity will only make you look like a dope? Or realizing that the loyalty and trust you’re giving is not being returned, nor will it ever be. These are crushing disappointments, and they add up, like extra emotional barbells slipped onto your bar sleeve after every single rep.
Ironically, on every movie, the least amount of time is actually spent filming. Far more man hours are spent writing, seeking funding, pre-production, post production, seeking distribution, etc., etc. Hell, we spent more time casting or teching Media Composer than we did actually shooting. Looking back, shooting the movie turned out to be the easy part. The ramping up and the ramping down from principal photography was a Death March of Will This Ever End misery that took far more out of us than twenty-five days of production on four hours of sleep a night. At least all the setbacks during filming required immediate solutions, even if they were improvised on the spot. Quick pain, quick solution, moving on. Whereas every setback in pre and pro was a spinning bingo ball cage of random What Will We Do? show-stoppers with no obvious answer. Answers that sometimes wouldn’t reveal themselves for weeks.
And that gap between Answer and Solution is a Grand Canyon filled with doubt and disappointment and second guessing. As the filmmaker, you are smack dab in front of a judge's bench every minute of every day for the entire production. And I mean the entire production, right up to getting sneered at by colorists and festival directors and wannabes. Fucking strangers seem to have an opinion on How Badly You Failed. If you make a movie you're gonna go thru this. And not just with the production. My personal life became a category 5 whitewater river. Taxes, house maintenance, personal trips all fell by the wayside. The very lesson I wanted my kids to glean from this endeavor, believe in your dreams and if you work hard you can accomplish them, was replaced with ‘Daddy doesn’t love us as much as the movie he spends every day working on.’ As the weeks go on you notice that while everyone is still standing next you but somehow they feel farther away. And it slowly dawns that this movie that has required everything of you has left you with nothing left to give to the people closest to you. And the more time that passes, the less an apology will fill the growing chasm between achievement and connection. Honestly, it feels like the entire filmmaking process was designed to destroy relationships. Like a great big particle collider that, without fail, seems to flip everyone’s magnetic polarity to ‘repel.’ But nobody ever talks about it, afraid they'll come off crazed and paranoid and depressive and ill-equipped and whiney.
Just like I do now right now writing this.
It *is* a long road. Along the way I learned that you better be the advocate for your film because no one else will be. You have to believe in your movie. Because nobody else cares. They'll believe in any success but until that happens they'll keep it at arms length, thank you. Maybe it's just a defense mechanism against the grinding disappointments that most productions inevitably become. But it’s hard to be the advocate when the unending pummeling of rejection beats you down. You doubt your work. You doubt yourself. The overwhelming balancing act of pretending not to notice other people’s horseshit is as emotionally draining as it is physically exhausting getting the equipment dragged up and down flights of stairs for a long day of filming. And you experience that Every. Single. Goddamn. Day. Especially when your’e producing/directing/DPing/gaffing/location managing/whateverelse-position-required just trying to afford Making Your Movie.
All of this is just the price of admission. It says so on the proverbial price tag: No crybabies. All sales are final. The stress levels are at an altitude of 45,000 feet and the margin for error is catastrophic. You can’t survive in that atmosphere. Not for long, anyway. If making every fucking movie is like this then is an existential awareness even meaningful? If you swim the English Channel you might die. Or you might not. But probable catastrophe comes with the challenge.
So why do I feel it was worth it?
What is wrong with me?
The same thing that is wrong with every other feature filmmaker we’ve spoken to. Pull ‘em to the side, get a beer in their hand, and every one of ‘em will confide to the same cratering of their soul by the barrage of Filmmaking Dreams artillery. You wanna make art? It costs. When we show the movie to people they’re astonished at what we got for our budget. “That’s all you spent? It looks like a million dollars!” But it feels like we paid for the most expensive movie ever made. The true cost was staggering. Just not in money.
___
© Michael Thibault 2025, All Rights Reserved. May Not Be Printed, Published, Posted, Transferred, Or Duplicated Without Permission.
Banner painting "Prince Bagration at the Battle of Borodino," © Alexander Yuriyevich Averyanov