We were lucky to catch up with SAM FOX recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi SAM, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Learning to accept my voice has been an ongoing practice in trust and self empathy but I’ve noticed that the truer I stay to myself and my vision, the more confident I feel about my work. It’s difficult to not be influenced by my desire to live up to and be like the directors who I so greatly admire, but I have to realize that once I start trying to be like Kubrick or Argento or Cronenberg, I start comparing myself to these legends who are incomparable. That’s where my insecurity lies, when I try to be like someone else because inevitably I’m going to fall short.
When I started making my own films I had zero confidence. Although I had been in the film industry for some time, I had no idea how to write, direct, or manage a team. I’m a perfectionist and a people pleaser, two things that make becoming a director quite challenging. The best way to overcome the debilitating anxiety that I had no idea what I was doing, was to do it, but on a small, unimposing scale. I had an iphone, got some cheap lights off Amazon and started writing one minute films composed of pun inspired sketches. I’d film them, act in them, light them, and edit them. The films were posted on instagram when video posts could only be one minute long, remember those days… Eventually friends asked me to make promotional videos for events they were throwing using this same style of wacky comedy. From there, I gained a little bit of confidence and the reassurance that people thought I was somewhat funny, but most importantly I learned the basic fundamentals of directing and editing.
I started to slowly build on each project. Increasing the budget, the crew, the concepts until finally I felt confident managing a 25 person crew and 40k budget. Each film I’ve made, I grow as a director, story teller, leader, and it’s been so fun and exciting. I’m still absolutely insane, over-thinking every single element, doubting myself constantly, going from extreme highs and lows of booming exhilaration to absolute debilitating despair. But I keep going and I make sure that each project is more ambitious than the last.
My latest self challenge on THE BLUE DIAMOND, my upcoming short which has just commenced pre-production, is to learn to let other people do their job. I hired these folks because I trust them and I can’t keep letting each project drive me into complete burn out. The BLUE DIAMOND will be my 5th collaboration with Actress/ Producer Desiree Staples and 2nd with Producer Geenah Krisht. I finally feel confident enough to trust myself, my judgement and others and I am beyond excited to see what happens when I let go, believe in myself, and work alongside a team that believes in me and my idea. I’m shocked that I’ve gotten to this point and I have my major moments of self doubt, about 5 times a day tbh, but I keep reminding myself that the proof is in the pudding, my previous films have done well and if I give the next one the same love and care that I did the last, people will appreciate it and *hopefully* enjoy it!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have always been an artist, maintaining a constant visual style of story telling through many different mediums. My early foray into the arts was as a fine artist with hopes of being a lauded surrealist painter. But when I turned 18, I realized that the career opportunities for a fine artist were quite limited. I had no desire to get into graphic design so I turned my creative eye toward filmmaking. I started as an actor, then producer, and ultimately found my way to my true calling, directing. In 2015 I started my production company, FOXY FILMS, which blends highly stylized imagery, music, and psychedelia with dark comedy, horror and genre cinema. Think Monty Python meets Twilight Zone with the colorful palette of Giallo films from the 1970s.
Through FOXY FILMS I have the opportunity to make the weird projects that truly light my fire. My previous short films UNAGI, BAD ACID, and FCK’N NUTS have premiered at top tier genre festivals (Beyond Fest, Fantastic, Fantasia, and Brooklyn Horror) and have garnered many awards such as Best Director, Best Short, and a few others to boot.
Currently I am in prep on my next project, THE BLUE DIAMOND, a short film based on my relationship with my deceased father who suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Through my films I have found that turning my childhood trauma into art has been the ultimate coping mechanism. THE BLUE DIAMOND centers around a grieving daughter seeking closure after the death of her toxic mother, all within the setting of an 80s apres ski club run by a cult of aliens. The goal is to continue off the momentum of my last 3 shorts, tour THE BLUE DIAMOND this upcoming festival circuit all while pitching my first feature script, MOONCHILD. Wish me luck!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
First and foremost, my resilience. I work in an industry where I am a glorified sales person whose number one product is me. I exploit my insecurities, my vulnerability, creating art, wrapping it up in a perfect bow and blindly handing it out on a silver platter to audiences, industry professionals, execs, etc in hopes that someone may respond and say “hey, I like this, this is cool”. I work 10-14 hours 6-7 days a week, making no money, selling, pitching, asking desperately for validation and approval, and 50% of the time I hear no, 48% of the time I get no response, yet I hold out for that meager 2% chance of a yes and that is due to my resilience. I grew up in a house where I had to constantly protect myself. Not only did that breed this resilience which has helped me survive show business, it also bred my courage. The courage to get back up, hold my head high and walk back into the room. The courage to expose myself to thousands of complete strangers. The courage to take one of my ideas and ask for other people’s valued time and money so I can turn it into art and entertainment. The courage to fly all over the world to support my films in their festival runs, go to countries where I don’t speak the language and I don’t know anyone, show up and make friends and future colleagues, pitch, pitch, pitch some more and endlessly self promote. Lastly, I believe my perfectionism is an asset rather than a hindrance. It allows me to put every bit of myself into my work, to strive to keep getting better, and make art that ultimately I’m proud of. I really truly care so much about what I put out there and I have the awareness that it is never going to be perfect and I will never be fully satisfied. But my perfectionism aids me through the process of making the best work I am capable of and at the end of the day, it may not be your cup of tea but at least I can say I gave it my all.
The best way to grow and maintain these qualities and skills, is to keep going despite the failures and mistakes. You are going to mess up, that is inevitable, but it’s about how you bounce back and learn from those mistakes. Every professional out there doesn’t know what they’re doing most of the time. We all fake it til we make it. You just have to keep making it and the skills, knowledge and experience will eventually come.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Phone a friend. Over the past few years I have built up a network of fellow filmmakers, many of them females, and we rack up hours and hours kvetching on phone calls, zooms, over desperation coffees and crying cocktails. There is nothing I love more than making indie films, that being said, it really depletes every single part of you emotionally, physically and mentally. There are so many challenges to overcome, starting with the script and the early creative development process. Every script I write, I send to 10 trusted filmmakers and ask for notes. Most of their notes I take. Then there’s the anxiety induced 6 weeks of prep where you can’t sleep, you have no idea what you’re doing and you’re preparing yourself for ultimate failure. My 7pm calls to my creative partners Nathalia Pizzaro and Desiree Staples really help me to find the light in those dark moments of self doubt. Next you have all the challenges on set, the ones you prepared for, the ones that catch you off guard (losing half of footage on your final day of shooting) and that’s when I turn to my team and ask them to hold me like a baby. Finally you have the edit, where you hate everything you’ve shot, you didn’t get what you need, you have zero idea what to do to save this film…that’s when I go back out to my trusted friends and colleagues and I send them the cut, I ask for notes and again, and I take most of them. In short, the answer is: ASK FOR HELP!
Contact Info:
- Website:www.samfoxyfilms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theothersamfox/
- Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user17224875
