You know, my film education really came from watching other movies, you know, and I think there's a scary mentality, I think, in film schools.

My small sort of dealing with them is something that's really terrifying.

I walked into a film class that was about screenwriting, and this guy, the first opening line was,

you know, if you're here to write Terminator 2, just leave now.

And I thought, well, that's terrible.

There could be a kid in the corner there that wants to write Terminator 2.

That's his vision. That's his movie. That's what he likes. Let him do it, you know.

And the mentality of film schools is we'll start out with, you know, Potemkin.

First day in class, here's Potemkin. You know, every kid in the class is going to just fall down.

You know, what do you do? It's like, they should do it backwards, you know what do you do it's like they should do it backwards you know start with terminator two and and work backwards and sort of and ease into this

and sort of you know trace the sort of trace the heritage you know trace it

back watch a Scorsese movie which everyone sort of loves in the class and is very

excited by and trace back and go okay here's who's who he was riffing off of.

Here's these patents that he is kind of built upon, you know, and study it that way.

If I've ever had a theme in mind, I mean, usually that's just like the worst.

You're kind of, then you're, then, you know, you feel yourself, you feel yourself writing.

And there's nothing worse than that feeling of kind of chasing after a theme.

I mean, that's always like writing and it's worse for me, you know.

The best things kind of become something and you're just happy it's there.

It's just, um, the better way to go in terms of getting better writing is having two characters that are more opposite. You know, that way you get more traction and stuff. But ultimately, if things are

going well and the characters are coming out of you, or, you know, they're going to guide you

how they're going to go. I remember at a certain point reading a great short story called, I believe it's called Bucket of Blood, John O'Hara, wrote a great story about a fella. It starts out, he's just, he wakes up in a hospital, and he comes to, and he's having this great conversation with the doctor he's just had his appendix removed

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