Q&A with Ela Thier

  

Photo by Uri Thier

 

 

Ela Thier is the author of the new memoir How to Fail As an Artist, My Best Tips. She is also a filmmaker and actor, and she founded The Independent Film School. She is based in New York.

 

Q: What inspired you to write How to Fail As an Artist?

 

A: Twenty-five years ago, after spending 12 weeks working through The Artist’s Way, I kept thinking “I want to write my version of this book!” Twenty years later I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and I had the same thought: “I want to write my version of this book!”

 

I picked up Big Magic when I was in a funk, feeling utterly defeated and depressed about my career. I felt dried up, blocked, and hopeless. Any writer (or any artist) knows that these slumps are part of the journey. They come and go. They’re nothing to really worry about, they’re just really uncomfortable when they happen.

 

I always know that it’s a “cocoon phase” and that something really interesting will emerge from it. It’s my brain saying: time to grow. Take your time figuring out what growth looks like. You can’t rush it.

 

It was during my time in that very uncomfortable cocooning phase that I listened to Big Magic, and even before I was done listening to it, I picked up my laptop and randomly wrote chapter 1. Before I went to sleep, I was writing chapter 2.

 

What emerged on the page was a memoir spanning five decades as an artist, that doubles as a pep talk for all creatives.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I have no recollection of coming up with that title. It might have been the first thing I wrote, or I might have come up with it 30 chapters in. I really have no idea. At some point, it’s what I named the Google doc I was working in, and it stuck. It’s always been called that, and I can’t imagine this book being called anything else.

 

Q: In your book, you describe the concept of “Mr. Stop”--what role has it played in your life?

 

A: I can spend all day pointing fingers at clueless industry gatekeepers (and/or industry decision makers who despite the recommendations of gatekeepers) who stalled or slowed down my career. And I wouldn’t be wrong. I’ve gotten more pass letters than I could fit in a mac truck.

 

From not getting a speaking part in a high school play, to pass letter number 985 from Sundance, where my (amaaazing!) film was turned this year. It’s been over 40 years of walking down a path carpeted with pass letters.

 

While all that does, in very concrete ways, keep me from the resources needed to create work, the worst part of it isn’t the deprivation of opportunities. The worst part is absorbing it under your skin, even if you don’t realize that you absorb it.

 

Living in a society that dismisses the arts as a trivial extracurricular; that doesn’t fund artists; a society in which there is an entire profession designed to do nothing other than criticize someone’s creative work – it penetrates deep without your awareness until the gatekeeper is no longer something that sends you pass letters. The gatekeeper lives in your own head.

 

In my book, “Mr. Stop” is what I playfully name my inner critic, as I flow in and out of writing my memoir, to writing about what it’s like to try and write a memoir – or write anything.

 

It was a cool but unexpected ploy: Instead of letting Mr. Stop keep me from writing the book, or slow me down, I turned my inner critic into a co-writer, as I fully exposed what those inner dialogues feel like – what it’s like to try and get a single word down, while a voice in your head tells you that this very sentence is a run-on sentence and you really should quit writing (as it did just now!).

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: The book pushed me from a stage of cocooning to busting out as a butterfly. Since then I wrote several new feature scripts. 109 Billion Followers, with J.K. Simmons, was completed this year. Three other scripts have notable attachments in place and are being packaged as we speak!

 

So yeah – a lot happened after writing this book! It yanked me out of a major dry spell!

 

I hope it does the same to some of my readers? I’ve already seen it have that effect on a few of its very first readers.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A new script is brewing. And now that I caught the bug, a new book might be brewing too. Though most actively what I’m focused on day to day is the release of my new film and getting the next film made.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m intrigued by the short-form video medium, which often gets dismissed as “brain rot,” when in fact some of the freshest talent today is showing up through shorts and reels.

 

This weekend I’m getting together with my nephew to mess around and make a bunch of short videos to promote the book. I suspect I’ll have as much fun doing that as I had writing it. And as I always tell my students, and as this book proves: fun is the most efficient use of our time.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb