Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Peter Cannon. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Peter, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
To start, I don’t think creativity is something some people have and others don’t.
In my experience, people put too much stock in this amorphous idea of ‘creativity’. I think it exists woven into other concrete skills that are able to be practiced. Writing, directing, music composition, and acting are all things that are known as ‘creative’ trades, but those skills don’t develop because one person has more ‘creative juice’ than another.
If you practice the craft, over time you’ll be able to access all the tools you need more easily and intelligently. One of these tools could be called ‘creativity’, but I think an equally important one is ‘discipline’, and maybe even ‘objectivity’. To produce something in the real world, you need a blend of things all working together, and I don’t think that’s so different from a physical craft or trade.
All these individual things do fluctuate, though. Sometimes it’s frustrating – I’ve had the discipline to sit down and write pages of story I didn’t feel particularly excited about, and separately I’ve had moments where I thought of a scene that really gets me going, but I didn’t end up putting down the Playstation controller.
That being said, the bottom line is that if you practice enough to produce work that pushes both quality and efficiency ever-so-slightly beyond what you’re used to, I feel like the doldrums will start to shrink on their own.
This didn’t sound very artsy, did it…
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Hi. I’m Peter. I’m somewhere in between a screenwriter and a movie director.
Recently I wrote & directed a full length psychological thriller movie, called Exposure. At the time of writing this, it’s not quite released yet – but we had a great premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival a couple months ago.
The movie is about OCD, which must be the most misunderstood mental illness out there. The average person’s understanding of the disorder is shaped by decades of media that either plays it for laughs, or paints it like it’s some kind of superpower. Despite what network TV might tell you, OCD did not make me able to solve murders.
What it does do is paralyze a person with an endless loop of hijacked fear responses and nonsensical rituals. I guess that wasn’t as catchy.
We’re wading through the distribution pool right now, and we can’t wait to get the film out there so that the average person might see OCD how many of us experience it – a waking nightmare.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Honorable mention goes to luck. Can’t talk about “how I got here” without mentioning that it takes a gigantic amount of physical, financial, and geographical luck to be able to pursue something like this successfully. I think it’s a disservice to young artists to suggest that making film, among the most expensive art forms out there, is purely a meritocracy. It just isn’t.
Now that the band-aid is ripped off, there are circumstances within someone’s control that are also vital to getting anywhere in this kind of journey, and I’ll give you three of them.
The first one’s tenacity, and it’s the one I personally struggle with the most. Getting relentlessly stonewalled at every turn over the years instills a deep-seated exhaustion within you, and it turns into an endless boxing match of dealing with it. I’m not saying that “don’t stop, keep going” automatically means you’re going to get to where you want to be. What I am saying is that the precious few who got there shouldered this emotion for longer than they thought they could. Take that as you will.
The second one is the willingness to adapt. So much of this is being aware of what will connect with the world, and how you’ll have to change strategies to match it. The decision on how much you want to change to meet it is up to you. I don’t particularly want to start hopping on TikTok trends to promote a broody psychological thriller, but I’ve seen artists and films embrace it – and they made it a lot further.
The final one is confidence in yourself. As I write this, I realize I don’t have any of these all the way locked down. But if you’re going to put all your chips in this one area, and be trusted with the labor of dozens of people and investors’ money, there isn’t a whole lot of space for doubt. Take some solace with this next point though – if you’ve put in enough practice to prove yourself to the people around you and are tenacious enough to land a project, it means you’re probably better suited for it than the vast majority of other people.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always interested in meeting new folks, but as I get older, I’m also realizing I’m looking for long-term collaborators.
With long term projects and high stakes, there often isn’t much room for “feeling out a new person”. Granted, indie productions often create situations where it happens anyway, but ideally I’d like to keep the variables to a minimum when a project is green lit. God knows there’s enough chaos.
I want to meet producers, production designers, DPs, composers, editors, executive producers, folks in development, anyone with whom I can work and learn and develop ties.
And I want them to be passionate too – able to withstand all the aforementioned stonewalling and adapting, and still be giddy about a project by the end of it. Everyone always says “nobody’s going to be as passionate about your project as you,” but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m looking for collaborators that are this passionate about their own projects.
Because a group of people with this kind of sentiment will undoubtedly be greater than the sum of its parts.
Contact Info:
- Website: discomfortsthepoint.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exposure_movie/
