In 2007 I saw the movie Hot Fuzz and proceeded to stumble, tumble, and otherwise crash into a slow-motion emotional breakdown that culminated in April of 2008 with a multi-day catastrophic withdrawal from life. Intensive therapy came later.
FTR, Hot Fuzz is a comedy about British policemen officers.*
It is, in and of itself, not much to start an emotional breakdown, I think you will agree. The thing is that it was not what the movie’s subject matter or who starred in it or anything that gut-punched me. It was the thought, insidious and cruel, that I kept on a loop in my head: “You should have made this movie.”
Now I’m not British nor am I Edgar Wright (the director), so even if I tried I would not have made that movie. But that’s not really the point I was making to myself with that refrain. What was plaguing me was the idea that I had not made anything. That after years and years of being an “adult” my life was pointless and completely lacking in accomplishments I valued for myself.
Once, a long time ago in a childhood far, far away, I decided to be film director. This was probably about 1980. Female film directors were thin on the ground, but I didn’t care, I had ideas and ambition. I was going to make movies.
By the time I went to college in 1988, that goal had become a day dream.
Many factors played into that; my mother’s discouragement of the idea, very significantly, but also my unwillingness to take a risk and my fear of rejection. I found out quickly that the movie industry is harsh and hard, and the idea of me — home-schooled, socially awkward, fat, female — trying to break into that was literally overwhelming.
In retrospect I can see it was a self-fulfilling prophecy: I suspected I would be broken by the industry, and I’m sure if I had gone ahead and tried anyway I would have definitely been broken by it. I was not strong enough as a young woman to take the kind of hits the ego has to take in a creative, competitive industry like movies and survive.
And yet.
Seeing the path Joss Whedon has taken brings up all these regrets for me. I’m only nominally a fan of his; I didn’t watch Buffy and the Dollhouse did nothing for me, but I am a huge fan of Firefly and (as you might have guessed *cough*cough*) the Avengers. I admire what he’s done and how he has done it. As I watched the trailer for his movie Much Ado About Nothing, I kept thinking, “You could have done something like that.”
Ego? Yes. Inflated sense of talent? Most likely. Completely unrealistic? Definitely.
And yet.
Sometimes I still revisit that dream. It was my first real “adult” goal, probably akin to most ten year old plans in being more of a fancy than an aspiration, but I really believed for a few years that I was going to be the next Spielberg, the next Lucas, the next Billy Wilder. Or something. That dream carved out a place in my heart and never died, just got boxed up and put away.
Sometimes I open that box and mourn over the loss.
It would not have happened the way I imagined it, then or now; I was not the person who could have pulled that off. But I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been that person, or if I had at least tried to be that person.
I have a lot of small regrets about life, but I think this failed dream is my greatest one. My goal now is to never have any more regrets that are as painful to me as this one still is.
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*It stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, with Edgar Wright directing. It’s hysterically funny and if by chance you have not seen it, I suggest you do so immediately.
