Maybe it’s just in my character, but I always like to believe the best in people: that everyone has it inside them to be the best they can be and to produce the best that they can. Sometimes this strategy can lead to getting my fingers burnt, or almost burnt in the case of the guy who told us he’d sell us a dog only to call back not long before we were to pick him up to say that some women offered him full whack and had already taken the dog home. If I hadn’t been in the office, he’d have found out just why the Irish invented cursing.
Anyway [deep breath], nonsense like that tends to leave me feeling more disappointed than angry (trust me, when I’m mad I light up like the 4th of July (or Guy Fawkes Day for the folks in England). I also, for reasons still incomprehensible to myself, get rather diasppointed when a TV show or film fails to find its audience.
There are literally thousands of examples I could name, some deservedly failed (Battlefield Earth anyone?) but I tend to believe that everyone deserves an equal chance to entertain me.
There are too may examples from TV to name but being familiar with the nature of the industry, the nomadic, temporary nature of employment means that good times rarely last forever. For an animator or designer putting 6 months work into a show only to see it burn in flames must be a depressing enough experience. For a creator seeing the same thing happen it must be one of the worst feelings in the world. It’s bad enough when I design a road or intersection or whatever only to have some schmoe review it and send it back with more red ink than black.
Maybe it’s just that I like to see everyone succeed (this tendency I’m going to blame on my parents who were both teachers) regardless. Some creators work blindingly hard, such as Mr. Warburton whose dedication to Kids Next Door is still regaled years after it first began airing. The same goes for Pen Ward, who has sometimes been found sleeping in the studio after pulling an all-nighter.
It’s fair to say that most people bounce back after a failure. I mean look at John Travolta, he’s still making movies, right? Everyone deserves a second chance.
Sorry for the ramble, the dog situation has made me somewhat melancholy this evening.