If you need to persuade someone to take action, you’re doing marketing. As soon as we take responsibility for the marketing we do and the marketing that’s done to us, we have a chance to make things better (by making better things).
Aloha.
As an experiment, I’m inviting people to email me through my website, Darieuslegg.com, and share with me what makes them Stoked. Then I send you a gift I made. The animated short surf documentary, Stoker Machine. Becoming a subscriber of my Substack and leaving a comment below about what makes you Stoked also gets you the movie
Stoker Machine is more than a one off short film. It’s an entire brand of characters, stories, and most important - purpose. I’ve just begun to build. I’m seeking people to help me make it better. I write about the journey weekly and bi-weekly. This series will run until Dec 2023. Mahalo’s for joining me. As each essay progresses you will learn more about my personal life, including being raised on sailboat, Hawaii, pro surfing, and being an outsider everywhere I went.
Scene 1, Take 1, Audience of One
All of my twenties. Most of my thirties. My job and purpose in life was one vague explanation - filmmaking. My purpose in life now is super duper clear. Discovering this took me 39 years and six months and seven days to figure it out. You are invited to read this essay and learn what my purpose in life is. I was shocked to find out the answer was right in front of me the whole time.
While filmmaking is an amazing aim to have in life, the more I got into it, the more I was confused. The culture back home in Hawaii is rooted in being connected to Nature. All my film hero’s, like Scorsese, Coppolla, and Miyazaki made filmmaking sound like an incredible life altering magic trick that connects you to life. Which sounded like a great spring board for someone seeking a meaningful connection to their work, right?
Yet, my experience as a professional filmmaker in Los Angeles felt like the opposite of magic and deep connection. Super materialistic. Technical. Surface. Decision by committee. Impersonal. Phone it in if you can. Don’t over “do” it. This is the business of commerce, not making art.
I didn’t grow up in the entertainment “biz”. My younger brother and I grew up on sailboat and at Kahalu’u and Banyans beach on the big island of Hawaii. Surviving razor sharp knee deep reef breaks and learning how to swim with real sharks. How was I supposed to know the difference between commerce and art? Or the rules of show business? Our upbringing taught me to be an out of the box thinker and feeler. So Hollywood was a shock to my nervous system.
Commerce is the act of guessing what other people will like, and then creating something based on that. Art is the exploration of an idea, with zero regards to what an audience will think, and creating something blind. These are two entirely different ways of being creative. Neither is better than the other. I just didn’t know the difference or where I fit in.
Don’t get me wrong. I had a great time learning the ropes in Hollywood. Seriously. It taught me to swim with the metaphorical sharks and to see behind the industrialized art complex. I learned incredible techniques and saw what it really takes to be called a professional by your peers. There are millions of talented individuals who do amazing work behind the Hollywood curtain. However, the intersection of commerce and art gave me a stomach ache and my brain went numb every time I tried to reconcile the two. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. No matter how cool the project, location, or credit I’d be getting, there was a dark hole in my heart that none of this “Los Angeles filmmaking” was filling.
Which made me question; why am I here?
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