I'd like to take this concept of finding the right people verses the best people just a touch farther. Film, like music and all other art forms requires a level of talent mixed with emotion and attitude, drive and the ability to compromise. This brings me to an interesting idea: does "the best people" even exist. Art is rather subjective and furthermore great artists have made poor decisions; so then, isn't the best person the one that meshes with all those involved with a project, lending and bending his talents to what is needed? I'd say yes. It is hard to quantitatively measure degrees of talent, but it is easy to recognize talent when face to face. Great films are like the pictures that make them up; they are snap-shots frozen in time defining a group of artists doing the best that they could together. This doesn't mean that they are the best talent in there respective fields or even in that genre of film; no, it simply means that for that moment in time, it was, and my words fall short, right. As a musician and an artist I simply cannot be so presumptious as to judge anothers talent against my own and I equally fall short of pinning a cohort against someone else. I'd much rather become familiar with an artists body of work and talk with the creator, find out what he/she likes, who they are, where their passions lie. Usually good ideas come when all the artists are comfortable with themselves and those around them. I want friends working on my pictures, not distant professional acquaintances.

"I'll pretty much hire the least qualified guy, if he has cool taste in music. We always get these guys who have great resumes, and they're all pricks. I don't wanna be around them when I'm filming."

- David Gordon Green

You guys have me in the mood to play a little Film Bingo, here. Along the idea of "good ideas come when we're comfortable with ourselves and those around us," David Gordon Green cast Zooey Deschanel for ALL THE REAL GIRLS when she walked in and asked him to excuse her awkward accent because she moved around a lot as a kid. Typically that's a bad combination: I'm self-concious and I talk weird. But, in this case, David Gordon Green saw something great in that.

And Zooey's father, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, was the rare exception on the crew of Cassavetes' film A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE because typically those crews were almost all actors doubling in some crew capacity. Cassavetes surrounded the actors in front of the camera with actors behind the camera so their performances would be genuinely appreciated by those standing around and, by osmosis, the performers would open up even more. Kind of like the way I get going as soon as somebody in the room laughs at anything I say.

Ok...looks like I'll be playing devils advocate on this one. I disagree with this statement:

"Drunkboat was a case study in a top notch crew too stubborn with 'how it's done' to set aside their experience and find a new way of working, the way that fit Bob Meyer and his film."

Before this crew started the process of making the film, they were challenged with a number of constraints - namely with a set budget (with investors that expected a return) and a limited timeframe (due to the tight schedules of the main stars, John Malkovich and John Goodman). I would argue that the experience of the crew was what made this film possible. Their additional challenge was to help Bob pull together all of the scenes that best told the story in his head...on time and on budget. Bob knew he had to tell the story, but didn't know the best way to put it together. In the end, even he conceded that he just didn't know what it took to align art and commerce.

At the end of the day, Drunkboat is more a case study of the natural push/pull between those who have a vision and those who are charged with bringing it to life.

I agree with you Bill, only if it is assumed that the story written on paper was the story Bob was trying to tell. But, as John Gardner once said, often you know the story you want to tell but can't tell it until you've tried over and over again to get it out.

I heard from that panel that Meyer was trying various ways to get it out, he was exploring various facets of what he was trying to tell so he could find the story he was really after. However, his crew did not strip down the production process to make room for his exploration. They remained married to the original words on paper and getting those done. When Bob grew frustrated with the process, they only responded with "reality," the reality truly was that they weren't going to change the way they worked to fit the way Meyer was trying to work.