FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

I keep coming back to a piece of advice given to me at the True Blood after-party. A well-meaning party-goer (who shall remain nameless), upon knowing that I was/am an aspiring actress/writer, took it upon himself to shell out the advice. In my little experience of the Industry so far, I've found most people are quick to offer advise and help, but there is rarely any follow-through ("The bigger the front, the bigger the back," as my grandmother would say). But this particular person said something different; simply; hang out with the right people, associate yourself with talent you believe in, and gain proximity to people with the most exposure. The message ran dangerously close to advising me to "sleep my way to the top," as people say, but putting that knee-jerk reaction aside, there's some truth to it. Historically, many filmmakers, directors, actors, artists, have had long-time collaborations with people who started out, or ended up being great friends. What I've discovered, in thinking about that statement, is that the goal is not to find people you perceive as powerful and brown-nose your way into their social circle, but rather to surround yourself with like-minded people who share your goals and whose friendship will be mutually beneficial. This doesn't necessarily mean the relationships are phony, or there are ulterior motives, or that anyone is "using" anyone else - it just builds a community of people who will do what the established, "powerful" Hollywood heavyweights  won't do: take a chance on your talent and help rise you to the top with them.

These people should offer some proof to the claim - proof, and inspiration.

Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren

"Marcello is a man who thinks like a man, talks like a man – is a man! He has so much magnetism, he brings out the very soul in a woman."

-Sophia Loren 

Alfred Hitchcock & Francois Truffaut

"If, in the era of Ingmar Bergman, one accepts the premise that cinema is an art form, on a par with literature, I suggest that Hitchcock belongs – and why classify him at all? – among such artists of anxiety as Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Poe."

-Francois Truffaut 

Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Igor Stravinsky

Salvador Dali, Moreno Villa, Luis Bunuel, Garcia Lorca, Jose Antonio Rubio Sacristan, in Madrid

"Salvador Dali seduced many ladies, particularly American ladies, but these seductions usually consisted of stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the woman's shoulders and, without a word, showing them the door."
-Luis Bunuel

Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Gunta Stolzl, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Walter Gropius, Herbert Bayer, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, & Hinnerk Scheper: Bauhaus Building, Dessau 1928

Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas

images VIA