Cheer Up
or Dance Instruction from the Dude
Adversity will come in this business: dunderheads who somehow finagled the position of Decision Maker, unrealistic demands in time, price or both, and for all those masochistic developers, browsers turning your impeccable code from a masterpiece on Safari into an experiment in cubism on Internet Explorer. The bevy of snarling problems and obstacles will turn you and your sanity into confetti, saving them up for the day you hobble out the door, shaking from the perpetual caffeine high and wishing death upon every person with Director in their title.
So what’s a creative type to do? Simply put: deal with it. Or as the masterful Jeff Bridges put it in GQ, dance the cha-cha.
“You prepare. You do your due diligence, and then you come in and it’s completely different. It’s rainy when it’s supposed to be sunny. The director’s pissed off. The other actor’s not doing it the way you imagined it. It’s like you’re all set to do a Viennese waltz and you show up to find a cha-cha band. You can spend your energy getting pissed or you can fucking dance the cha-cha.”
That’s about as good as it gets. I need The Heads of State to turn that quote into a 4’ x 7’ poster.