"Ambition Is Not a Point Of View"

I take a lot of walks around my neighborhood and lately I've been listening to nothing but Marc Maron podcasts. He's very good at having conversations with vastly different celebrities and artists. A few he had on recently that stuck with me are:

Ariana Grande
James Mangold
Brady Corbett

All of them, of course were recently nominated for Oscars.

I was quite impressed with the conversations, as Maron has a distinct talent of getting his guests to talk deeply about their work and the meaning behind it, as well as the frustrations of the business side of art.

If you want to get into the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, the Mangold discussion is great. He's quite experienced and learned, obviously, and is also quite charming.

In his discussion with Corbett, it was fascinating to hear the writer/director talk about being a freelance, independent filmmaker, not making much money but dedicated to his art. He's also pretty charming and smart.

In the Grande discussion, it was fascinating to hear how Grande never really had a plan - all she wanted was to sing and write songs and make music - the success was merely a byproduct of her artistic goals. Maron was surprised when she claimed there was no long-term career goal or path she set out on. Instead, she got really excited talking about the process of making music, unlike a lot of her contemporaries (some of whom have risen and faded already) where the goal was always to "be successful." And that's why maybe their careers had stalled or not done as well as expected.

And that's when Maron said the quote, "ambition is not a point of view."

And Grande was like, "EXACTLY."

In the Corbett discussion, they were talking about the "too many cooks" syndrome in modern filmmaking and music, where you have 18 producers and 16 writers, and when you have a finished product that might be watchable or listenable, but what happens is the art is just...flat. The singular point of view of the artist has ben watered down, it's had to bow down at the alter of commerce and popularity.

And it made me think, THAT'S why so much modern music is boring to me - it's flat. There is no real point of view. It's an algorithm. It's a computer fixing the drum beat so it's perfect, or fixing the pitch on one note of a vocal...so that it becomes so perfect that there is no life left in it.

I remember listening to Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" for the first time and bopping my head to it...nice little song, catchy, but it didn't stay with me. Then I saw her perform it live, where her vocals weren't auto-tune to the nth degree, and the band behind here was tight but just a little messy, and the song just CAME ALIVE. It worked. Because there was human artistry behind it, not a bunch of nameless producers working the console to make it as clean and sterile as possible.

Some of my favorite moments in music and film are accidents. At the beginning of the song "Roxanne" by The Police, Sting famously accidently leans against an open piano and his butt plays an off-key note - and he laughs. Well, they were rolling so they just kept right on playing. And that mistake is in the song - and it makes it singular. It makes it memorable.

You couldn't do that today.

As Corbett kept implying - a movie needs a singular point of view. Hell, all art needs it. You need a Capitan of the ship who will sink or swim with the final artistic expression.

Wanting to be a successful artist is not enough. You need a voice, something you have to say, something unique to yourself that will satiate as an artist even when that art might not connect with others. It has to be about the art and not the success that may or may not come with it.

Ambition is not a point of view.

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any thoughts?