learn to be bad at the thing for as long as it takes. the slow way. where you do it badly on a tuesday and again on a wednesday and again every day for three years. where you make a hundred things you would not show anyone. where you absorb the craft through your hands before your mind has any idea what is happening.
almost nobody stays in this room. the room of being bad is a room they cannot tolerate. they need the proof, the progress, the visible improvement - and the visible improvement does not come for a long time. it comes after enough mornings have passed that the badness has started to refine itself, quietly, without your supervision, into something else.
you have to fall in love with being bad at it.
nothing else will keep you in the room long enough.
a horror movie made for $750,000 is about to become one of the most profitable films ever made.
Obsession - shot in 20 days in Alabama by a 26-year-old YouTuber with no stars in the cast - is now eyeing a $250 million+ box office finish. that's a return north of 300 times its budget. it's already the highest-grossing release in Focus Features history.
now look at what the industry spent that same money on:
- Joker: Folie a Deux - ~$200 million budget. a punchline.
- Mickey 17 - ~$118 million. forgotten in a month.
- The Mandalorian & Grogu - $165 million, 7 years, the entire Lucasfilm machine. it's currently losing the weekday box office to... Obsession.
Hollywood keeps insisting you need $200 million, a pre-sold IP, and a marketing budget the size of a small country to make a hit. then a guy with a camera, a wish-granting toy, and three weeks in Alabama outearned all of them on a rounding error of their catering bill.
the most profitable movie of the year cost less than a single second of screen time in the average blockbuster. turns out audiences never wanted the budget. they wanted a good movie.
Today is Good Friday.
Thank you, Jesus for your amazing and unthinkable sacrifice. You died so that we would have life, and life in abundance.
“It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews … With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’”
Mark 15