When you’re just starting out, messing up can feel like the end of the world. It can seem like you’re disappointing your boss or co-workers, maybe even your friends and family, and worst of all, the version of yourself that was supposed to do everything right. But here’s the honest truth: You’re never going to get everything right.
Speaking to IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking for our new video series, “What No One Tells You,” filmmaker Justin Simien echoed this sentiment. In sharing his own journey to get his debut feature “Dear White People” to the big screen, Simien shared that it took a lot of failing and moving forward before he was actually able to make it happen.
‘Get Really Good at Failing’
While working in publicity, Simien spent his off-hours writing “Dear White People” and used his tax return to fund a short trailer used to entice financing. It worked, to a degree: Simien ended up promoting the film on CNN and raising $25,000, but as he shared on “What No One Tells You,” that wasn’t exactly enough to get him where he needed to be.
“I don’t know if anyone has told you, but films cost considerably more than $25,000 to make,” he said, “and so I had done CNN, we had raised $25,000 — still could not pay my rent, still could not figure out what to do next. I actually felt even worse than I felt before because it felt like I had had this moment in reality that told me this was not just in my head. This really has potential but there was still no viable path to make it and that felt like such a failure to me.”
However, he used the money he’d raised to hire casting director Kim Coleman, which led to attaching Tessa Thompson to the project. Once producers saw Simien wasn’t giving up, they realized their own money might be well spent.
“Eventually, some of the first financiers that were like, ‘We’re not ready to actually put our hat in the ring,’ they just saw that we were still surviving,” said Simien. “And they saw that our audience online was actually growing and that like, ‘Oh, the appetite for this thing hasn’t gone away.’”
Watch a clip from Simien’s “What No One Tells You” episode below and tune in later this week for more!
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