It’s a bit hard thinking through what actually constitutes “good” within an industry. A lot of our “job” is to make things better, to introduce people, to facilitate deals and stronger projects. Generosity is about going that extra step — doing the thing that is not expected and that truly helps.
It’s Thanksgiving here in America. It’s an odd holiday and even if it’s origins are not the greatest, I still dig the spirit. Today I try to examine those that helped me when they did not need to, or whose help was beyond the call of duty
Back in the day, back when indie film was a workable financial enterprise, back before I ran the San Francisco Film Society, back before there was a Double Hope, back before I was part of This is that, I had a production company called Good Machine. James Schamus and I founded it together, and we later partnered with David Linde. Mary Jane Skalski and Anthony Bregman were also partners, and we had the good fortune to work with a host of other talents including my later partners Anne Carey and Diana Victor, and Ross Katz, Glen Basner, Heta Paarte, Lamia Guelatti, Melinka Thompson-Gody, Jean Castelli, Kelly Miller, Dan Beers, Eric Papa, Jawal Nga, and many other later-legends to be.
As good as the films we made, as great as the individuals we got to collaborate with, we also had a genuine fondness for memos and how-to’s. Those were the days when you stored things in file cabinets. The 90’s are in boxes now in my garage. Once things went digital, it as if they are lost. I stumble through less. When they were paper I occasionally had the pleasure of sorting through the files, finding choice nuggets. My madeleines… like this.
