Which Is More Important, Brains or Balls?

When making a movie, which is more important: having brains or balls?

Clearly you don’t want to be a complete idiot when making a movie. But you don’t need to be all that smart either.

In fact, when I was a TA at NYU, I used to check out editing equipment to graduate students. Some of these folks were in the 5th, 6th, or even 7th year of graduate school.

And many of them were thousands of dollars deep in short films. Yes, short films that took many many years to complete.

These were people getting a Master’s Degree. Something that is supposed to represent intelligence. Right?

But does it?

To me, it seemed pretty stupid to blow a small fortune on a short film and spend years doing so, when other people were spending less money making longer movies with less school.

What about people like PT Anderson or Kevin Smith who dropped out of school, had no formal instruction and just said “Fuck it, I’m making a movie.”

Those guys might not even really be as “smart” as some of these grad students. They might have lower SAT scores and even lower grades.

But they had balls.

In fact, I’d take balls over brains any day of the week and twice on February. Wait, is that a day of the week or a month?

The point is, you don’t need to be terribly smart to make a movie. You’re better of being bold. It takes courage and a little nuttiness to want to make movies. But I know there are a lot of you out there who have the balls, but you’re cutting them off by thinking you need more brains.

You don’t.

You don’t need a degree, a grade, or any instruction from a so called “Professor” to make a movie. All of the great filmmakers we love from Cameron to Tarantino definitely had talent and smarts, but neither of those things define them as filmmakers. What defines them are their balls, their willingness to take action, take risks, and get shit done.

Look at James Cameron. Mofo just dove 7 miles into the ocean in a mini submarine. Sheeeeyiiit.

You don’t need to dive to the center of the Earth to make a movie. Just write a script, get a camera, inspire a crew, and shoot one. Film School Secrets will show you how. And we’ll even show you how to hire smarties with brains from film schools to work for you too.

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