Late spring of 2022. I’m trying to pick a button down shirt for dinner. One that is LA cool, whatever that means, but also says, I don’t care. But I do. Ash is meeting a veteran Hollywood screenwriter that she is collaborating with on a project, attached as the director. He’s written some heavy hitters, definitely a few you’ve heard of. Along with the formidable scribe is a decorated athlete and their manager. It’s a meeting between important people, and somehow I snuck in.
Or at least that's how I felt. You know, the old imposter syndrome. Turns out the more people I talk to, the more everyone has it. In fact, I’m starting to become suspicious of those who don’t. Sometimes I feel there is a bizarre correlation between success and those who have this feeling haunting them at every turn. Why did all the self-important mid-level marketing jerks never have it? I don’t know, I’ll save that for another rant.
But anyway, back to the shirt. It turns out, it was cold as shit and froze my ass off on the patio. The westside tends to turn on you like that. The sneaky pacific winds cut through when the sun goes down.
So I have my fancy shirt with enough material to hold in my tight shoulders, wrought with the prospect of being found out as a fraud. Basically, I was certain that at any moment, the TRUE writer across the table was going to recognize that I am in fact, not a real writer. I had this irrational feeling that I was going to be exposed by something I said, something I didn’t know, or something I got wrong. It’s a feeling that permeated many of my meetings, pitches, and networking events in the first couple of years of screenwriting professionally.
Whether it was zooms meetings from Canada or events here in LA, I always had this foreboding feeling that I was going to be discovered as a fraud. The one person pretending to be a writer, not actually a real one.
It’s a feeling that goes back to so many moments in my life.
I played in and toured in hardcore and punk rock bands for about a decade. For some reason that same feeling always persisted. We’d enter a new town, be on the line up. You’d look out at the other bands outside as you pulled up and thought; they are going to know I’m not one of them. I’m not as tough, hard, intense, authentic, well-versed, as scene-y as all of them. You’d fight uphill every show to try and prove something to them, or maybe to yourself.
Then came social work. Every job I’d think to myself, oh shit, here we go. I’m not going to have the right words at the right moment. I’m not going to be able to heal these wounds. I’m not going to be able to take this weight off this person’s shoulders. I’m not going to have the one answer that is needed to bring this person into a new stage of their life. So I’d work twice as hard or read twice as much, just because I knew deep down that I was an imposter, and to fake everyone out I had to work hard.
Then came the advertising and film business. I started making stuff with a Canon 5d camera lent to me by a good friend of mine. But I was the social worker pursuing law, not the filmmaker. I worked and worked and worked to collect images, learn to edit, learn to write, learn to direct, because of course, I was a fraud. I wasn’t a real filmmaker, I was the punk social worker with a decent camera.
In 2015 I stepped onto the Calgary Stampeders football field with a camera on my shoulder. I was in way over my head, about to embark on a commercial project for three months across Canada. Each shoot day required about 8 assets to be captured with the star player of each team. We had over-promised an uncompromising amount of media, and the imposter was about to take center stage. Everything happened so quickly that by the time the quarterback arrived three and a half hours late, there was no time to allow the imposter syndrome to take over, even though it was very much present. It was go-time, and I had to prove to everyone (The CFL and Shaw marketing folks) sitting in the stands that I was in fact the director, as someone had just introduced me to the group.
Wait. What?
I’M the director?
But what if something goes wrong and we need a real one? What director do I turn to when shit inevitably hits the fan? It always does.
But, by the grace of god, or luck, or the universe, or the sweat on our brows (or all of those combined) we did it. And we did it again. And again.
We kept showing up, day and after day and pretended the best we could, the imposters that we were.
And before you knew it, I was actually comfortable calling myself a director. I think it took about two years from that project before I could really settle in, shake a hand, and introduce myself as such. It took a lot of pretending. It took a lot of coffee. It took a lot of blasting aggressive hip hop in my Tuscon on the way to various shoots down the 407, across Toronto.
But then a new season hits, and you can no longer lean into the comfort of actually being secure in your identity. The ground you’ve covered. The wins. The growth. At any point, if you want to accomplish new things or expand your horizons, you have to risk the potential of feeling like a fraud, and this move and career change proved to hold the necessary ingredients to bring back that cumbersome cloak. The imposter came back.
Hollywood is obviously an intimidating place. It’s where dreams go to die, and some come true, only to also die in compromise and existential threats. But it also is a land where fellow weirdos, artists, dreamers and imposters show up to try and take a big swing. It means you might get a chance to paint with bigger brushes. You just may be able to participate in that wild alchemy where pain turns to purpose, where your voice can find an audience, and thoughts translate into a mysterious hybrid of images and sounds that move, inspire, entertain, challenge and grow.
And the price of admission is having to lay it all on the line, and claim to a room full of bored execs that you swear you can tell a story as well as the Oscar-winning creative they may have met 15 minutes before you. That can be a daunting task to say the least. I don’t think anyone can truly do it the first time without feeling like you’re shot out of a fucking cannon. But I’m sure a junior lawyer feels the same the first time in the courtroom, a surgeon the first time they slice someone open, an astronaut the moment they leave the atmosphere. You have to stare down your greatest foe, your imposter, and say, let’s get this over with. If it goes bad, you can always take both of you down to the bar after.
So we’re back at this dinner, which in many ways has been a defining relationship in my view of the business and my place in it. Because by some weird stroke of luck, he didn’t stand and proclaim that I was indeed a shit writer. He didn’t quiz me on my limited knowledge of Bresson, Kurosawa or Goldman, he was just… nice. And that niceness turned into shared meals and exchanges, phone calls and emails. He became a person to sit next to at union meetings, and someone to compare notes with. He was no longer a gatekeeper or threat, he was a friend.
He must be an idiot. This imposter fooled him.
Or, maybe I’m an idiot. That’s usually the story.
When I came here, every exchange was a replay of that dinner. A mind-game in a minefield of what could possibly go wrong here. Always scanning for the threat that would pull back the curtain on my proverbial wizard-in-hiding.
I was under this sort of belief that everyone, I mean literally everyone here, is some type of savant, genius, ‘mind-blowingly’ talented person and I would be lucky to even be in their presence. I thought, well, maybe there’s room for one hack in here. Maybe they’ll accept me because I’m an overly nice Canadian. I also make decent maple Old Fashioned. I’ll get them all drunk, and they won’t care about how bad my writing is.
But heading out of last year into this year, I discovered a really important lesson, very slowly. Sure there are a few geniuses and once-in-a-generation artists here. There has to be. It’s part of the mystique. It’s fun. It’s something to marvel at. But overall, most people are just typical people trying their best. They are showing up each day, feeling like imposters, but doing the work. And the more I get to know these people, like this gracious writer pal, the more I realize, hey, maybe I’m like him, just a little younger, with a few more ‘football fields’ and ‘late quarterbacks’ to deal with. I survived the sweaty stages of underground clubs and church basements. I survived the young offenders and broken souls. I survived the marketing maniacs and the bored business owners. Maybe I can deal with the people here and just keep showing up.
I used to think everyone here was a Paul Schrader, or a David Milch. I read Milch’s book, Life’s Work recently, and was astonished by his genius - his once-in-a-generation ‘je ne sais quoi’ that led to mind blowing work. There is an undeniable perspective and lens on the world that just seems to be almost transcendent in these men. I mean, Schrader literally wrote the book on it. But I’ve made peace with the fact that you can look up to these giants and not have to be them. That maybe letting go and allowing myself my own journey where I can just carve out my little space to try anything at all. What a gift it is to even try to do this and fail. It’s a privilege to be an artist pouring out their heart. I don’t need to be the best to ever do it. I don’t have to rake myself over the coals. I just have to try my best. Maybe they were on to something in those Kindergarten posters.
I had a friend around college time that went on to do his PhD. We used to razz him and always call him the smart guy, chirping his intelligence and making lame Good Will Hunting references. He eventually got fed up and just said, “you know the only thing that makes me different from you guys is I do my homework. I keep showing up and doing the work. Maybe if you guys actually tried to build something, you’d get somewhere too.” That really stuck with me.
I still feel that sinking feeling. I still question my shirt choice (I’m very boxy). But I know one day I’m going to wake up and go, oh wow, I’ve been doing this for a while now, and maybe I can call myself whatever it is I have to call myself.
Imposter syndrome may actually be a lighthouse. It could be the flashing lights on the landing strip for your dark vessel in the night sky. You’re up there alone, floating along in the storm. A thousand instruments barking and beeping out to you. You’re low on fuel, your hand shakes on the controls. But you catch a glimpse of the path set out for you. Imposter syndrome is a signal that says, you’re growing and stretching and brave enough to try something new. It’s the price of admission to new territories, new experiences. Without it as a trustworthy companion, you may find yourself too complacent, too comfortable, too scared to face yourself down.
Perhaps the imposter is an unrevealed friend. One that will walk with you into new lands.
Maybe he’ll help you pick the right shirt for your corny ass.