Think Different
"Here's to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius."
— Steve Jobs
This is a little bit rambling, without the usual attention to prose detail — redundancies, etc. — as I'm wont to do, but I wanted to get it out.
I was saddened, as was practically everyone in the world, not so much that Jobs died, but that he died so young. I didn't know that much about him, other than the fact that he's the reason in 2002 that I threw my virus-plagued Dell laptop at the wall — literally hurled it in a fit of anger — marched down to the new Apple Superstore in Santa Monica and bought a MacBook. I never looked back. But in reading some of the many online panegyrics to Jobs it started to dawn on me what a visionary this guy was, and how much I had unwittingly modeled my life on his.
Don't worry, I'm not in a million years going to compare myself to Jobs. For one thing I actually graduated from college. For another, I'm terrible — but getting better at — marketing and business. My life has been one of words and images. His has been one of marketing genius and visionary product ideas. But somewhere for me the lines on the graph of our lives strangely converge, and I feel a kinship to how he achieved his stratospheric success.
I have always, from an early age, been drawn to the iconoclasts, the rebels, the transgressives, the people who envisioned another world, whether it be in politics or psychology or art. Most of my focus was on the arts — and, more specifically, literature and film. I was also deeply taken by the rebel thinking of the great psychologist C.G. Jung and, at age 19, dropped out of school for two quarters and read his entire Collected Works. That was as life-transformative an experience for me as when Jobs admitted dropping LSD a couple of times and how it had opened his mind to a world that, for the vast majority of people, is closed off. LSD didn't do the same thing for me as it did for Jobs — Jung was huge, as were the brilliant minds I met at my alma mater, UCSD — but I feel a real affinity for his not finding much inspiration in the standard form of education, the standard path to success in a given field.
From David Pogue's column in The New York Times:
"Steve Jobs refused to go with the flow. If he saw something that could be made better, smarter or more beautiful, nothing else mattered. Not internal politics, not economic convention, not social graces.
"Apple has attained its current astonishing levels of influence and success because it's nimble. It's incredibly focused. It's had stunningly few flops.
"And that's because Mr. Jobs didn't buy into focus groups, groupthink or decision by committee. At its core, Apple existed to execute the visions in his brain. "
These words — especially "groupthink" and "decision by committee" — really resonated with me and my writing and filmmaking life. They would resonate with any artist who intrepidly went against the grain to try to bring to life what they had conceived in the discrete intracranial theaters of their imagination.
The artists — writers and filmmakers — I was drawn to were the ones who mostly went unrecognized, and were wholly understood, in their time: the visionary poetry of Arthur Rimbaud; the black comic novels of Louis-Ferdinand Celine; the films of the great Luis Bunuel (who did find fame near the end). And many, many others. They dared to go where others wouldn't go, and they exacted a heavy price — in suffering, personal misery, bankruptcy, addiction, and suicide. It's extremely difficult to go against the current and, worse, to believe what you're envisioning is what everyone else should understand — and which they often come to understand years later (Van Gogh anyone?) — and then have to endure the rampant philistinism, the ignorance of the banal mind, or, even worse, the people who want to mollify your vision and somehow try to bring it more safely into the contemporary world, because now, they, see what your vision, could become. I call it the "pilot fish" mentality.
When I read that Jobs dropped out of school, I totally related. When I entered UCSD I felt the same way Jobs did: it wasn't supplying me with the education I wanted. Oh, sure, it's easy to think others know what's best for you and to tow the line, take the required classes and get your degree, but I was stubborn, rebellious. So, under a special university stipulation, I created my own major in the literature and visual arts departments. I didn't want to be forced to read Chaucer and the Brontes if I didn't want to. I didn't want to take art history courses on Etruscan art if I was more interested in, e.g., making films. I'm very proud of what's written on my diploma: B.A. in Special Projects, Specializing in Contemporary Literary and Film Criticism. (Summa Cum Laude, btw.)
I remember when I told my parents about my major they were appalled. They were paying good money for what? It was sort of assumed that a Special Projects major was tantamount to sunworshipping at the beach and smoking pot. Far from it. We were on the quarter system (11 weeks, including finals), and for one 4-unit Special Studies class I wrote the first draft of a novel. Often I would read at least 10 novels and show up with a 30-page paper — for 4 units! My major was, like Jobs's peregrinations in the tech world at an early age, hard work, but it was so filled with passion for seeing movies and reading difficult contemporary literature that not only was it not work, but I learned two, three times more than anyone else in a traditional major. Like Jobs, I was the ultimate autodidact. I learned what I wanted to learned, exposed myself to what I wanted to expose myself to because — and this is important — I was forging my own path, my own sensibility, and I needed to educate myself the way I saw fit in order to achieve what I wanted to achieve. Jobs did the same, against all conventional wisdom.
Many years later when I wrote Sideways I faced the same criticism that I faced with that Special Projects major. First there was incredulity that I could write a book as bawdy and personal as that. Just like with my filmmaking and writing career, people always thought someone as educated as me should have done something that would have vouchsafed me a safe and normal income. I had a family business that my father wanted me to captain, and if I had I'd be a multi-millionaire today — in the laundry and leasing business (Ugh!). My moving to L.A. and going to film school crushed his spirit. He had it all figured out for me, had the Mercedes and the house on the beach waiting. All I had to do was follow the script. I didn't, and he drank himself to an early grave. I had a passion for something that he saw wasn't going to guarantee me a nice living — and, for a long time, he was right — but I had to go my own way, risk the ignominy and impecuniousness that I would ultimately face. It wasn't easy. Many times I wished I had gotten into his laundry leasing business.
When you do show talent at something, when you do have a passion for something that is out of the norm, friends and family either want to talk you out of it, or, when you start to really produce stuff, co-opt it., tell you what to do with it. Everyone has a plan for you, everyone has an idea how you should go out to the world with your creations. But these are the same people who are too cowardly — yes, cowardly — to go out and do it themselves. But that doesn't stop their spate of criticism and, worse, career advice.
I remember when the iPad was released, David Pogue wrote an article in The New York Times. It was two separate reviews: one was a review for the techies, and the other was a review for the non-techie consumers. Predictably, the former was a pan and the latter was a rave. In other words, the techies had all kinds of criticisms, they hated it, they consigned it to failure before it was even launched. If Jobs had brought these techie critics into Apple Inc. and asked them — remember the word "groupthink" and "decision by committee" — what they thought about this new device that he was about to release because he was, God forbid, insecure about it, and if he was thin-skinned and listened to them, there would be no iPad … no iPhone … no iCloud or, at the very least they would have been released it in a very compromised way. Jobs didn't give a shit what they thought! He had a vision. And if he was tyrannical in seeing that vision to fruition, then I'll let others comment on that, but he didn't listen to his critics. Listen to your critics and you'll always end up compromising and following the low common denominator "groupthink" opinion. The resultant product — be a novel or a new radical smartphone will be half, or less, of what you imagined. It won't be innovative; at best, it'll be just okay; at worse, imitative. This explains why Apple made with their phones and tablets and other many companies like Hewlett-Packard were left in the dust. One man forged the vision, others pusillanimously waited to see if he would fail or not.
And the groupthink never stops for those who are forging new directions. When I showed early copies of Vertical around to close friends, even though it was now destined to be a self-imprint, even though I was coming off the huge success of a novel that no one wanted, that people told me to burn, there was still criticism, as if now that the creation were extant, if I just did this, or just tweaked that, I could make it that much better. Everyone had their own perception of what a Sideways sequel should be. Others looking at the small picture — as Jobs never did — were mildly offended by some of the language or a few graphic sex scenes — and seemed, at the time, to see the larger design of the book I had envision and spent years writing. Now that there was a sequel to the iconic Sideways, everyone had an idea what it should be, after the fact. Some criticism is good — especially if it hits home — and I take it well, so I consented to some minor changes, but, like Jobs, I had to go with my instinct, with my heart, which was the core theme of his now famous '05 Stanford graduation speech, in which he exhorted the graduating class to listen to their inner voice, and not to the cowardly naysayers — be they parents, or Hollywood agents, or nervous publishers or cold-feet venture capitalists. Hold true to your vision. I've been trying to do this all my life. It's not easy.
Why listen to anybody if you have a vision of something that nobody else does and want to will it into existence? I listen to people. When I hear something that makes sense, I'll make changes. Writers, unlike Jobs who could forge ahead with his ideas — especially as he became increasingly more powerful and successful — are more subject to groupthink and decision by committee. A lot of it has to do with money. A well-known producer told me recently: "When we buy your script, we feel like we own you." It's something that's bedeviled artists from time immemorial. In the end, of course, it's whether the finished product is a success or not. But, even then, a failure may one day turn out to be a success. In Jobs's world, success is measured by the reaction to a product. His Apple TV is clearly a tech disappointment, but the iPhone, iPad … huge successes. In my case, success is measured by numerous other factors, but the ideation, the creation are similar to what Jobs went through. And, then, ultimately we have to go to the world with our creation.
Going to the world with our creations is the hardest thing. Even the greats have weathered failure. Perseverance, belief in yourself, against whatever insuperable odds, are key. It's not easy. It never has been. Dreamers, visionaries, are, usually, at first, despised, vilified. Hemingway's own mother called The Sun Also Rises "despicable smut." His mother! Then, when — if they are — recognized, the flummery starts. Often by those who were the vilifiers. Maybe the dreamers need this push-back from the philistines and the idiots, the ones who can's see the future of a business or an art-form in order to break though in a new direction. Maybe that's part of what drives them. For me, I see something in my imagination, and I just want to go there, damn the consequences, and play it out, see what happens. Why should I censor myself because of what I think will be better for the market? But consequences I have paid, continue to pay. It's never-ending.
When Jobs died I truly believe the international outpouring of emotion for his passing had less to do with the fact that so many tens of millions — hell, billions — had so anthropomorphized his innovative products like the iPod and the iPhone and therefore felt a special kinship with the man who had created them — but more because Steve Jobs epitomized the type of dreamer who everyone wants to be, but whom few can emulate. I cannot tell you the number of people who come to me wanting to be writers or filmmakers or whatever, seeking my advice, seeking some words of wisdom that will inspire them to live their dreams. There's no way I can teach someone how to have ideas, how to write, how to make films. That they have to work hard and find on their own. What I can tell them is to have, like Jobs, the courage of their convictions, even though it flies in the face of everything they hear — from parents, from friends, from lovers, from future business people who get involved in their careers. They're going to hear so many things that absolutely don't jibe with their vision, and then it's just a question of how much courage they can muster to forge ahead and not sell out to these competing, and often conflicting and disparate, voices. Filmmakers, dating back to Orson Welles, have had to watch more powerful men destroy their films — The Magnificent Ambersons by William Randolph Hearst — writers have seen their works bowdlerized and rewritten because they were too transgressive, like Lawrence and Miller and even James Jones's From Here to Eternity. Every time, it seems, you try to forge a new direction, someone is out to compromise you, if not downright quash your vision. Even the venerable Alfred A. Knopf threatened not to publish Vertical if I demanded to keep my somewhat controversial ending — an ending which has readers in tears. I didn't cave. I've compromised many times before, and every time I rue the day. What I want to say to these people is: go suffer to write your own fucking novel. And the more successful you become, the more you have to weather. And in this digital day of the Internet, you have to weather from so many, now, uncredentialed quarters, it's frightening, increasingly difficult to train your ear to your own inner voice.
The tears for Jobs are not because he created a brilliant smartphone; the tears for Jobs are because he dared to live a life that others are too cowardly to live, but would like to, if only they didn't have to risk failure, critical opprobrium, personal embarrassment, financial hardship, corporate bankruptcy, and all the rest that comes with the territory of being an iconoclast, a visionary, in whatever field. Jobs will be remembered more because of the life he led and the way he led it, and less for the products he created. When my works touch someone in a special way that resonated with them in some personal manner, that's when I know all the suffering, all the naysayers I've had to listen to and try to block out, was worth it. My only wish is that it would one day cease. But it never does. I truly believe Jobs felt the same way: if only they would see that he is right and they are wrong and just leave him alone and do what he says. But, no doubt, his critics will follow him to the grave. But, in the end, he won, and those critics, those pissants, desperate for their little moment of ephemeral glory, will be forgotten like so much chaff in an October wind.
