Rob Summers

Film Maker. Pop Culture Consumer. Searcher. Reader. Tweeter. Follow my director account: @brotherssummers for more cool stuff.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@Dropbox what’s up with 14 hour plus times to still not upload 5 gigs? customer service only sends to advanced team who email days later. this is my second time doing this dance.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

my vote for best documentary of that year.

[Stephen Gibbons @Gibboanxious]

Tom Cruise is losing sleep over motion smoothing. In a PSA video, the Mission Impossible star, alongside director Christopher McQuarrie, urges viewers to turn off this default TV setting, which makes movies look like high-speed video.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

You know what James Cameron is underrated at? Naming characters and things. He has a gift for memorable nonmeclature: The Terminator, Skynet, Bishop, Pulse Rifles, colonial marines, Harry Tasker, Na’vi, Sarah Conner, deep core, Newt, T-1000, Toruk, etc.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

Our new demo reel and website. Please check all out. Thanks so much!!

[Summers Brothers @BrothersSummers]

Our new demo reel of narrative and commercial work. Please check out our revamped website and give us a follow on YouTube. Everything is linked in bio. All your support means the world

https://t.co/ub7aqdiDeY

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@Scotterybarn In THE HOT ROCK when Redford and Moses Gunn are having a clandestine meeting on two parallel benches in the park and an oblivious old lady sits between them and doesn’t leave.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

😍

[Vashi Nedomansky, ACE @vashikoo]

Spielberg shot staging ❤️

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@EvilArchEnemy @BrothersSummers Uncertainty is the natural state

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

Wondering why no one has cast me and @EvilArchEnemy in a new revival of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. Think @BrothersSummers might be a good fit despite our limited range

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

I’ve finally started my bucket list goal of finishing the unabridged COUNT OF MONTE CHRISTO.

Forces have begun to align against an unsuspecting and innocent Edmund Dantes.

Stay tuned.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@dklineii Great list. I’d add that most managers are middle Managers. They have all the responsibility with none of the authority. Those in charge above them demand they produce more with less but also do it in specific useless way. So managers wont make choices. Pass it stress to workers

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@QueenKatalina_ @EvilArchEnemy Awww. WOW. That’s so kind of you. We’re working on it! Grateful we met you too! Happy bday! Hope all your wishes come true. 🖤

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

The secret to real creative success is in here.

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

On December 11, 2021, I picked Robert Greene up from the airport, and we drove forty-five minutes to Bastrop, TX.

At one point, Robert told me he’s had more than 20 research assistants since Ryan Holiday and none have been any good.

Why weren’t they any good? I asked.

He said,

“Some didn’t grasp the spirit of the material I look for. Some couldn’t discern what's interesting from what isn't. Some melted like an ice cube in the sun at the first piece of constructive criticism. Some...”

He paused here and thought.

As he was thinking, I understood the implication was that those first three reasons didn't really cut to the core of his troubles with research assistants.

“Without exception,” Robert realized, “they weren’t interested in boredom. It’s a dividing line between people who are successful and people who are not.”

Takeaway 1:

Mastery, Robert said, requires boredom and tedium.

It requires doing the same things over and over and over.

It requires sitting with the frustration of putting in work that doesn't immediately pay off.

It requires sitting with the uncertainty of, am I going to spend sixteen hours reading this biography only to discover there’s nothing in it I can use?

You have to be able to sit with boredom, Robert said.

Takeaway 2:

In another conversation, Robert told me he believes one of the reasons people struggle to sit with boredom is that they have a false idea about the word “creativity.”

“People have all sorts of illusions about the word that aren’t the reality,” he said.

“The reality is that creativity is a function of the previous work you put in. If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you…It comes to you, but only after hours and hours of tedious work.”

I like this definition because it means creativity is not some mysterious form of magic. It’s something that is rewarded to those who put in hours and hours of boring, tedious work.

- - -

“One sign that you're suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious.” — Paul Graham

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@GAltringham Thank you for selecting my list.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@milessebastian1 @GAltringham Haha. This has not occurred to me. I think it’s like ebert said: “no good movie is long enough and no bad movie is short enough”

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

Very cool the great filmmaker Hal Hartley @PossibleFilms regained rights to his cool and unique filmography and placed them for rent/purchase through his own web site. Wish more filmmakers would or could do this. The rights to Trust (my favorite) took 30 years to get back.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

Do your thing like there’s no tomorrow.

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

In 1967, Otis Redding finished recording the song "Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay" in Memphis, TN. Tragically, 72 hours later he died in a plane crash at the age of 26.

When the phone rang at the Stax/Volt studios in Memphis in late November of 1967, guitarist Steve Cropper was surprised to hear Otis Redding on the other end, calling from the airport. "Usually Otis would check into the Holiday Inn or whatever hotel he was staying at and then he'd call for me to come over and do some writing," Cropper recalls.

But this time Redding was too excited to wait. "I've got a hit," he told Cropper, so he wanted to come straight to the studio to flesh his idea out into a full-fledged song.

Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song in Memphis with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G's.

Redding was right. When "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" was released less than two months later, it became the singer's first million-seller and first 'Billboard' Number One single. But the legendary soul singer never got to hear the finished version of his breakthrough single: He had died in a plane crash on December 10th at the age of 26.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

(This is not a statement of the good or bad of Oppenheimer’s impact. That’s for smarter people than me to debate. I’m using this as an analogy for realizing your ambitions. )

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

There are many lessons from OPPENHEIMER. Many more important than this one. But here’s the applicable lesson for my filmmakers.

Oppenheimer was genius scientist. But they hired him to be project manager for Manhattan Project. Not genius in residence.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

He could do the boring, tedious work to realize the goal. You can see the universe in a new way. But if you can't organize offices and administrate people and deal with logistics, your art and skills can’t make the same impact.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

@QueenKatalina_ Awww!! Thank you! Working on it.

[Rob Summers @SomeVagueIdea]

Exactly my thoughts. Movie theaters just bounce back after the post maverick boom. And this. All I can I hope is it gives indie films that wouldn’t get seen a chance.

[Kyle Buchanan @kylebuchanan]

Studios will literally push big films to 2024, fritter away the momentum from Barbenheimer, imperil theaters still recovering from the pandemic, and take on countless millions in delay-related costs instead of just reopening negotiations to end the strike. https://t.co/uhEU750bBV