World’s worst interview, ever…

aka “Don’t expect me to work with a moron”.

These and many other pearls of non­cha­lant con­ver­sa­tion came out of my mouth on a recent, quite impor­tant inter­view of mine. One has to say, that I have been try­ing to get into such kind of an inter­view ten times.

I am not kid­ding, I really applied TEN TIMES.

It is part of an film school appli­ca­tion process, on most schools the “round two” of your bare-​​knuckle fight to get in. So why on earth did I deliver such lines?

And more impor­tantly, how did they react?

Well, the day started out with a com­puter crash. Let’s just say, you should not install the  boot-​​loader Chameleon on a mac. If you do, do not reboot. It’s for hack­in­toshs, not macs. Seri­ously do not reboot! I did that mis­take four hours before the interview…

On top of that, my girlfriend’s note­book was just given away to a 10 day repair, so both our data were on the one I just made unbootable. With­out a sys­tem DVD, res­cue disc or spare par­ti­tion to boot from, there was not much I could do to fix it. And I have not writ­ten down the address of the inter­view either …

I headed to the Apple Store on Regent Street, and there nobody could really help me. No lend­ing of a sys­tem DVD or any­thing like that. They had no clue how to help me quickly with my destroyed boot loader. A tip: Apple Care does not help you much either, once you admit, that you screwed up the com­puter yourself.

In Bor­der’s Star­bucks, I waited for half an hour for my order, which they had com­pletely messed up. I have been ner­vous about the inter­view the last days, now I was get­ting exhausted from the per­spec­tive of both of us being cut off from all data, email and con­tacts for the next week.

I mat­tered my brain, to think of a fast solu­tion, except that there wasn’t any.

To jump out of the fry­ing pan into the fire, I only real­ized how low-​​sugared I was, not hav­ing eaten the whole day. Caf­fein surely does not calm you down, for that matter.

I munched what was should have been a relax­ing early after­noon tea and found myself in London’s SOHO look­ing for a build­ing that was sup­posed to look like an old brew­ery. Indeed, there it was.

A beam­ing red door set itself apart from the 19th cen­tury indus­trial colos­sus with dirty black win­dows. Some­one pinched in the code into the door, to let me in. I kinda under­stood, how Alice in Won­der­land must have felt. The big moment was dawn­ing on me.

One of the things I have observed in life, is that atten­tion to details is every­thing. It is also the most dif­fi­cult thing to achieve, as there are so many of those sneaky lit­tle details. But their close obser­va­tions can give you hints of how things will come along.

That being said, the inside of the build­ing was not impres­sive at all. There it was, one of the most respected insti­tu­tions of Europe — and it looked like it could use some house-​​cleaning. Acad­emism is one thing, but mess is one other. Maybe it was this artistry, flam­boy­ant, orig­i­nal, under­ground Unbear­able Light­ness of Being, though?

The Ger­man part of my soul said: “No man, that’s just one big mess.”

On the recep­tion, I was told to wait. So I did. For 20 minutes.

There was no place to sit, so I exam­ined the near­est floors and the post­ings on their walls, as I tried forge my first impres­sions of the place. The typ­i­cal stu­dent searches for rooms, some “award-​​winning” guys look­ing for other guys to help them on their “award win­ning” projects. For free, but for lot of expo­sure. I have seen that before, at very sim­i­lar places like this…

I saw 2 guys pho­tograph­ing, what seemed to be some back­ground plates for some VFX shots. The did it next to me on the stairs, under a lamp. No light­ing, hand­held, I would say about 3 stops under­ex­posed. Shaky. Use­less. But boy, did they had the right way to rat­tle about it. Those guys were even­tu­ally about to become my colleagues?

I started to get pissed. I made the trip here vol­un­tar­ily, vot­ing for a per­sonal meet­ing over a tele­phonic inter­view. The chose the me the date and time. So, why is it so hard to actu­ally be on time?

You might say, this is the typ­i­cal behav­ior of a state-​​institution or an employer, who want to clearly define who and where they think you are from the start. I would agree on that, but this was not the case. You are a client there. You pay a sig­nif­i­cant amount of money to that insti­tu­tion, it is a busi­ness deal, where both sides profit. And even that would not have been the case, it was unpro­fes­sional, as I made a 1200km trip and WAS on time!

When they finally came, I have calmed myself down, mostly just try­ing to swal­low my dis­ap­point­ment. The first impres­sion was really not the best of this place. But noth­ing com­pare to the one I was about to give …

Although we started calmly, warm­ing up for the first punches, soon the inter­viewer started to provoke:

Why do you think you are good for this? What do you like about film­mak­ing? Where do you take your inspi­ra­tion from? Why are you here? Aren’t you more of a writer, than a direc­tor? Every­one wants to be a director…

I love the whole process of cre­at­ing a film. I like to be in con­trol of the whole piece, not just a part of it. My things are very per­sonal. I am a guy who likes con­flicts, because con­flicts breed creativity.

How is your rela­tion­ship to the crew, to your camerman?

If some­one is not putting out, I chal­lenge him till he does. I want and expect only the best efforts. From myself and from any­one else. Any­thing else is intol­er­a­ble and hurts the project.

Can you work with other stu­dents, less expe­ri­enced than you? Can you work for some­body? Could you work for yourself?

I could, because I would know, that this guys knows what he is doing. If he respects the craft, if I love the script, then yes, I will do every­thing in my power to help him.

But what if you do not like the script, because for exam­ple the stu­dents come from other cultures?

I will try to adapt and under­stand a dif­fer­ent cul­ture. How­ever there is craft and rules to film­mak­ing, you have to fol­low them and mas­ter them, before you break them. If you don’t you, are just a Bohemian wannabe, hid­ing dilet­tan­tism behind what he calls art.

But still, can you work for such a guy?

Don’t expect me to be a mon­key for a moron. If this is a blither­ing idiot, I will not, I never can be at my best. If I hate him, if I hate his ideas, I will not work with him. I would lie, if I say oth­er­wise. How­ever, hav­ing not the worst rep­u­ta­tion in Europe, I trust you accept only peo­ple who are capable.

…

The thing went on and on for an hour. The good-​​by took around 10 sec­onds. Both par­ties were politely smil­ing, in an Eng­lish way. I dashed out of the building.

There was no way, this would work. There were things, that I should have never said. I never would, if this was a job. There, when worst comes to worst, you hang on to the fact, that you get a paycheque.

But not here, where appli­cants were about to drop tuition fees equiv­a­lent to a fam­ily estate car. Here I sub­con­sciously decided not to wear a mask. They have to put out as well. It is a busi­ness in the end.

Only slowly it dawned on me, that the per­for­mance I just gave, was one of the most hon­est of myself on a very, very bad day. Hor­ri­ble did not even start to describe it.

I started to feel doubt. Isn’t this dream is not rather a night­mare? There is no guar­an­tee for an MA to get hired in this busi­ness any­way. In a busi­ness, where con­tacts are the most impor­tant thing, where no path is the same, is this insti­tu­tion with its run-​​down appear­ance, the right investment?

It stroke me, that the answer for this ques­tion will lie in their deci­sion. They have seen the worst of me. Provoca­tive, chal­leng­ing, angry. I was an arro­gant ass, with high tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and money. Will­ing to learn, but not will­ing to swal­low every­thing he is told. One that will chal­lenge those who teach him and pushes back, when pushed.

Even if they accept me, they may just  lack appli­cants in the recent eco­nomic climate…

Or, they are not afraid of peo­ple with egos and opinions.

Only then they are the right peo­ple to teach me, who even­tu­ally will push my lim­its and I shall for­get all I knew about first impressions.

Guess what came three days later?

A yes.

Now hang on, there is some­one from LA calling …