The Artist's Way

trailer cave.
Over the past two decades, I have watched many directors
at work. I was married to a profoundly gifted director, and I
have directed a feature myself I have often remarked how
closely a film crew resembles an extended family. In the
case of this Crazymaker King, the crew resembled nothing
so much as an alcoholic family: the alcoholic drinker
(thinker) surrounded by his tiptoeing enablers, all
pretending that his outsized ego and its concomitant
demands were normal.
On that crazymaker’s set, the production lurched off
schedule and over budget from king baby’s unreasonable
demands. A film crew is essentially a crew of experts, and to
watch these estimable experts become disheartened was a
strong lesson for me in the poisonous power of
crazymaking. Brilliant set designers, costume designers,
sound engineers—not to mention actors—became
increasingly injured as the production ran its devastating
course. It was against the crazymaking director’s personal
dramas that they struggled to create the drama that was
meant to go onscreen. Like all good movie people, this crew
was willing to work long hours for good work. What
discouraged them was working those hours in the service of
ego instead of art.
The crazymaking dynamic is grounded in power, and so
any group of people can function as an energy system to be
exploited and drained. Crazymakers can be found in almost
any setting, in almost any art form. Fame may help to create