The Year of Archetype: Day 17

It's not hard to realize I co-exist on two polar opposite ends of a line. There's the insecurity and the doubt that ripples through most of these Archetype-related posts. So let me indulge in something opposite that: the pure, unrestrained ego that years of public schooling has taught me to repress.

Disclaimer: If you already think I'm an egotistical asshole, just stop here, lest The Haters hate a Hater.

Archetype is going to be a great film. Probably capital-G Great. People will watch it fifty years from now, and since I am a brilliant writer and director, they will find new things about it buried within its layers for decades to come. It's both a universal statement about human nature and a sharp critique of the modern times as filtered through the lens of allegory, of using The Future as a plot device. And I'm the only one who could've written it.

I'm going to make good on years of performing exceptionally well on standardized tests; of choosing art over science to study in school; of going to Columbia over MIT. I'm going to be the greatest director of my generation. I want my films to be Number One on year-end best lists; to win awards; to get referenced in pop culture like how even the high-brow 2001 is referenced.

Modesty, clearly, is an easy front. Like how I can talk down Transmissions when, really, it's severely misunderstood. Archetype will draw attention back to my debut, and it'll get the attention it deserves; that, like Archetype, it can stand up to the rigors of deep analysis while also, clearly, offering on the surface an entertaining narrative.

I know what I'm doing. I've known it for over ten years. It's how I can watch a film and know it's nothing; how I can watch Lost and, while entertained, know it isn't going to last much longer than ten to fifteen years. How every criticism I say about Avatar or Inglorious Basterds is something the director was too stupid to even consider. How they don't have the raw brainpower of someone like Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick or me.

I know I put up a disclaimer but those who have been disclaimed are reading anyways. Fine. I'm not going to apologize. This is the way I see things sometimes. This is the kind of attitude you need tucked away to embark on something like Archetype; the kind of attitude that makes it impossible for me to just shut up, forget all this, and rot away behind a desk in some office until I retire and die from old age, instead of realizing how untrue that is for me and how I'd rather shoot myself if it came to that.

And the beauty of all this, that I've downplayed for so long: if Archetype doesn't take off, it'll still be a great film, and it won't be the end of me. I'll make another film. And if that goes nowhere, take a guess what I'll do after that. A man doesn't spend fourteen years of his life plotting his future without coming up with ways to keep the dream alive no matter what.