22
23
Summer
2013
Film
Nimer
Rashed
Nimer Rashed
(1991-1998) is an award-winningwriter/director. His
FilmCouncil-funded short film
BaghdadExpress
starringGeorgina
Leonidas andRiz Ahmed premiered at the London FilmFestival and
has gone on to screen at festivals worldwide. Hewas the Royal Court
Theatre’s filmmaker-in-residence in the summer of 2012. His plays
include
WildHorsesand ItchycooPark
(winner of SohoTheatre’s
Westminster Prize) and his TV scripts include
TheGreatMcGinty
(winner of the Sir Peter Ustinov Television ScriptwritingAward)
HOWTO BE CREATIVEAND GET
PAID FOR ITAND BE HAPPYAND
LIVE FOREVER
So it’s a late Thursday afternoon in 1996
and you’re walking down the Long Drive
and talking with your friends about the
latest Tarantino flick, quoting lines and
acting out scenes, and at the back of your
mind you’re thinking I wish life could be
this cool.
On the train home you’re reading a
David Mamet play and buzzing off its
staccato electricity, then the next day
you’re sitting through a Mr Roseblade
peroration about A Perfect Day For
Bananafish trying to avoid the classmate
flicking rubber bands at your face when
you suddenly realise what it’s all for, this
cavalcade of words and learning and ideas,
which for some reason no one’s bothered to
explain: you’re building your inner life. It’s
the wit of Wilde and the wisdom of Forster,
the distillation of other people’s lives
mainlined into your nervous system and
it is more real and vibrant and interesting
than anything around you.
Which is tricky, because the world
makes its demands. There’s homework, and
deadlines, and rules, and exams. Monies
owed and people to be nice to: the cost of
doing business.
Time goes by. You ace your exams, tick
all the right boxes, but realise that your
inner life means more to you than the outer
world of telegrams and anger. That there
are people out there – curious, demented
strangers – who spend their days squeezing
their dreams into images and ideas. They
call themselves writers, and you’d like to be
one of them.
Your journey kicks off in Cannes,
where you work for a famous New York
film company, and discover that these
moustachioed tyrants in sleek suits
are businessmen, nothing more. They
mispronounce French words and summon
and abandon plates of food between puffs
of their cigars. Some call themselves
executives, others producers. Like you,
they value the imagination, but unlike you,
their language is power. You attend their
parties, sip champagne through straws,
are surrounded by movie stars – and feel
strangely deflated. The glamour of the
pageants is seductive, but when the lights
have dimmed, you realise your mistake:
you’ve been looking for the source of
the wellspring, but have ended up at the
bottling plant, surrounded by plastic.
Although everyone wants to be an
“artist”, to transmit their ideas into the
mind of another, to paint their feelings in
colours so thick and bold that others gape
at their intensity, the work doesn’t begin
on a red carpet: it begins alone at home, in
a dusty corner, when you dip your brush
into a colour called honesty. So far, you’ve
been honest about your love of storytelling,
but you haven’t been able to sit in front of
a blank page and confront your flaws and
your fears. And this is where the real work
begins. And it turns out it is very hard.
Eventually, you head away from the
distracting glare of the outer world, and
retreat to your imagination, the world of
the inner life. You start to write. And slowly,
you get a little better. You write plays,
and short stories. You make films and
television. And every day, you still feel like
you’re just getting started.
*
Many years later, you’re asked to write
an article for your old school magazine,
and you use it as an opportunity to go
back in time and teach your sixteen-year-
old self the wisdom of the saying: “be kind,
for everyone you meet is fighting a hard
battle”. One day you’ll understand this
phrase, and quoting it will impress girls,
but when you look back now, it makes
think about the people at school you might
have once dismissed.
Many collaborators are required to bring
books, plays, and films to life. You’ll meet
all these people along the way, and realise
you’ve met them all before. They were the
ones on Young Enterprise schemes, the
hockey stars, the jokers flicking rubber
bands. They weren’t your friends back
then, but they knew things you didn’t. Like
you, they were fighting their own battles,
but you didn’t realise this until much later.
Later, when you meet them again, you’ll
forgive them everything, for the truth is
that artists and businessmen are in an
eternal dance, clinging to each other’s
lapels: the foolish think they are in the lead,
while the smart ones know how much they
need the other.
Be kind, and keep on wishing that life
could be cool.
One day it will be.
