I Cost My Friend $40,000 Because I Didn't Believe In Myself

It is not easy to write about failure. It is especially difficult when the failure was not borne of a mistake but a mistaken belief in myself that turned out to be, ironically, not enough belief in myself. And it is a hundred fold more difficult, or a million, when that failure cost a dear friend financially, emotionally, physically and mentally. Sigh…

One of my best friends is a dancer of extraordinary talent. A belly dancer, flamenco dancer, salsa dancer, Polynesian dancer. An expert in the musical and cultural origins of all of these dances. An award winning dancer hired by The Calgary Philharmonic to perform for their Arabian Nights series where she was lauded by the conductor during the post concert Q and A for her, ‘Amazing depth of knowledge of music.’

I will call her S. I have known her since way back in 1982 when I flew, with my sister Tracie, to Seattle to take a weekend workshop with her. She changed the way I danced. She changed my life.

Ten years later S had moved to Calgary where I lived. Tracie and I couldn’t believe our luck that one of the best dancers in the world would move to Calgary. We immediately began taking her classes.

I was not as dedicated to dance as Tracie who became such an accomplished dancer that if S were unable to teach a class she would call Tracie and ask her to teach it. I remember Tracie’s astonished voice when she called that first time to tell me that S had asked her to teach. What an incredible honour!

I enjoyed belly dancing but was passionate about writing and film, having just graduated with a two year diploma in film from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Calgary. I spent the next ten years working on productions including Legends of the Fall, Cool Runnings, The Edge etc.

In time S was looking for a new assistant. I was between film jobs in the quieter winter and was hired as her personal and office assistant. Working for S was a kick. I stayed at her Calgary home (a beautiful home she designed herself) three days a week. Her sweet cat Zoey would wake me in the morning with three gentle taps on my cheek.

S is a full-on personality: flamboyant, energetic, generous, warm, brutally frank, hilarious. Working for her involved writing radio commercials for her ‘Night of the Nile’ concert, picking up performers and herself at the airport (she has taught in over a hundred countries), managing her classes and running the office.

I love S. We had a lot of laughs. And then came the time she wanted to do an instructional belly dance video. She wanted it to be of exceptional quality so she hired a well known production company in Calgary. She secured a space to shoot the video and decorated it with beautiful Egyptian items loaned to her by her good friends at ‘Son of the Pharoh’ in Calgary.

And then she allowed me to write and direct it. Here’s what happened:

PRE-PRODUCTION

I spent days with S going over each section she was going to teach and envisioning the camera angles needed: wide shots, medium shots, close ups, extreme close-ups. I scripted it with designated camera angles at particular timings in the music and with emphasis on the finer points of S’s teaching.

During the meeting with the production company S told them she wanted me to direct it. I said, “I graduated from film at SAIT. Just to let you know where I’m at. I’m not a beginner.” I still cringe thinking of this sentence.

When legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa accepted his Lifetime Achievement Oscar he said, “I am a beginner.” The concept of the Beginner Mind keeps you on a lifetime learning curve and though I have believed in it for a long time, those idiotic words came out of my mouth at that meeting.

PRODUCTION

The first day S and I arrived at the space and the two camera operators were already set up. S went to change.

The camera guys, Older and Younger, I’ll call them, seemed friendly with big grins during introductions.

I handed them each a script. They looked at it for about ten seconds and then Older laughed and threw it on the floor. Younger followed suit and then I DID THE THING THAT SET THE COURSE FOR DISASTER.

I LAUGHED along with them while my stomach turned ice cold. They had no respect for me and I didn’t demand it right then and there. The Older One said, ‘Ya, we know what to do, it’s easy just to follow along.’

I felt myself shrink looking at my script on the floor. The hours and days spent working on it meant nothing now. I felt stupid. And broken. And angry. And angrier at myself. Say something for fuck’s sake!!!

I stood there blinking at them like an idiot. I wandered over to the coffee pot and poured a coffee, my hands shaking. I felt sick and the more the seconds ticked on the more difficult the idea of speaking up became until I was completely shut down.

These were professional camera operators. They knew what they were doing. They worked for a film company. Who did I think I was? I was nothing. I was somebody calling themselves a writer/director. I directed a couple of projects in film school that were very successful creatively. So what. Now, I worked as a gopher on movie sets. Or as an extra’s casting assistant. I was an aspiring screenwriter. Always aspiring. I was nobody.

What should I have done? I should have done the obvious. I should have said, ‘That’s the script. Let’s go through the beginning before we shoot this first segment. We need these shots. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to shoot a wide and medium master simultaneously while S goes through a segment and then S is going to do it again and we’re going to shoot the close-ups and extreme close-ups simultaneously where I’ve written them in the script.”

That didn’t happen. What did happen was a three day haze of sitting around watching these guys shoot god knew what and riding home in the car with Hadia every day where I assured her it was going to be great. Just great.

She asked every ride home, “Do you think it will be good? I hope it’s good. Am I okay? Am I doing a good job?” And I answered every day, praying it would be true, “It’s going to be great! So great!”

Fuck me. Inside my guts were churning. I just kept thinking, ‘It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.”

Worse. It got worse. On the final day of shooting S did a performance in front of a live audience of friends. We had an extra camera for that evening, one I had asked for, stationed high up in a sound booth, unmanned and locked off to a wide shot.

I went up to look at the shot. It was way too fucking wide. I meekly said to Older, “Do you think it should be closer?” Jesus Christ. ‘Do you think it should be closer?’ What the fuck? ‘Please sir can I have some more?’ ‘Please can I just get you to please maybe please just do one little tiny insignifigant itty bitty thing for me that might make this shot not completely un-fucking-useable? Pleeaasseee. Can you see me down here? Plleeaaaaaasssseeee?’

“Nah, it’s good there.” he barked and left the room. I should have zoomed the fucking thing in myself when he left but of course I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.

I didn’t do anything but shrivel up and why? What the hell was going on here? Why couldn’t I speak up? Did these guys really know so much more than me that I couldn’t see it and it would all be fine. It will be fine, because they know what they are doing, they are professionals, they know, right? Right?

Fuck no. Fuck no they knew nothing except how to do the least possible and they knew with whom they could get away with it. That would be me.

I got a phone call about a week later from S. She couldn’t get through to me the day before which she now told me was a good thing because she was too distraught the first attempt and now had time to cool down.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

She said, “I”m glad I didn’t get through yesterday because I could have said something really damaging and I don’t want to do that.”

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

S said, “The editor isn’t sure he can even cut it together properly.”

“What?” I said. It was one of the worst moments of my life.

“There just isn’t enough coverage, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to cut too.” Of course there isn’t. I knew that. I knew it I knew it I knew it.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

I don’t know what else she said except, “There’s not going to be any profit likely to cut you in for, it’s $40,000 it’s cost me and I don’t know if it can be finished or if it will be any good even if we do finish it. Of course I still appreciate all the work you did but I don’t know what to say.”

It makes my head swim just to write this. It was over 20 years ago now. S has largely retired from dancing and settled in Nova Scotia.

A week after the phone call, I wrote her a letter, apologizing profusely and explaining that it was my own lack of belief in myself that crippled a project she worked so hard on, a project that was the sum total of decades of dance and musical knowledge and that should have been a tremendous success.

She called Tracie and told her, “Diane didn’t have to write me a letter. I love her. That hasn’t changed.”

What has changed is myself. That was a huge lesson to me. Speak up. If you’re the boss, be the boss. I’m just shattered that it took this lesson, that it cost a dear friend, for me to get it.

Speak the hell up. Say what you know. You aren’t arrogant or uppity or a jerk for saying what you know.

The DVD was released and is still for sale and works because of S’s superior knowledge and teaching ability. I have seen it and it works beautifully as an instructional video. I just know what’s missing: the close ups and extreme close ups, the extra details, the wide shot of the performance…everything that would have brought it to the next level; everything that I envisioned and could not ask for.

No. Demand. As a professional.

I love my friend, S. She is still my friend.