A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Home Last Night

It's really the strangest thing. After class tonight, I realized something very profound. I am unbelievably qualified to do whatever I want in the film industry. Having sat through four years of good ideas, bad ideas, passionate people, obsessed posers, teachers who took out their frustrations with their failed film careers on students much more creative than themselves, and lectures by people who were so unbelievably overqualified that each breath that left their mouth carried the words of the Gods of Hollywood themselves, it occured to me that I've learned not just a good bit, but rather a whole hell of a lot.

Examining those who will graduate with me, I see the people who will work in sales or acquisitions at a mini-major; I see the people who will go home and teach English at their local high school; I see the people who will become indie producers and lead very fulfilling careers making low-budget features in New York City; I see the pretentious directors that will snort lines of coke in a nightclub bathroom while bitching about how no one "gets" their unique vision of the world. I see all of these things, but what I don't see are the people who truly comprehend the vastness of the world into which we all pine to enter, the elusive realm of "the industry."

But - and this isn't meant to sound egotistical - but ... I DO. I don't know any other student who has spent time in writing classes AND sound classes; directing classes AND cinematography classes; film history classes AND producing classes. Unlike most of my peers, I want to know it all. I want to grasp it all. I want to know HOW IT WORKS. I want to feel it's pulse and measure every beat of my chosen industry's heart. I didn't understand why I felt so confident about leaving school, but it's because I truly have been armed with the knowledge that will help me succeed.

I will succeed. My name will be emblazoned across the tops of one-sheets. My films will break records. The industry itself will collapse before I fail. And you can take that to the bank.