Twenty-three years ago, I was a 21-year-old budding filmmaker, fresh out of the Victorian College of the Arts, with the feature film rights to Mirka Mora’s memoir. I was all promise and no clue, with a graduate degree that had not remotely prepared me for the gruelling, disciplined rigour of making movies, let alone writing a proper screenplay.
You cannot read a book about writing – you must write. So where to start? With my ear to the ground about where I needed to be to get where I was going, I heard the script “doctor” Joan Scheckel was coming to Melbourne. Joan was known then as the script whisperer, a magician in the indie film world, whose gift was turning small films into ground-breaking ones. I got a ticket to the workshop and during a break, despite her lying exhausted on the floor, approached Joan and said something like, “I have a film to make, will you help me?” Joan said, “Well if you’re ever in LA give me a call and we’ll see.”Aged 21, I took that as an invitation. A few months later I called Joan, “I’m here”.
In the years since, Joan has refined her practice into something called The Technique: a process so profound and disciplined that you dare not do it if you are not committed to your craft. The premise of the work is this: that narrative can be (must be) driven by feeling and meaning. This is revolutionary. Every scriptwriter, actor, director, filmmaker at every film school is taught that conflict drives story. Working with Joan tears all those myths apart and cracks you open so there is nowhere to hide, only your own truth to reveal and in doing so challenges our cultural addiction to conflict and calls for a new storytelling paradigm. Joan has worked on hundreds of films: from Little Miss Sunshine and Whale Rider to Transparent. Her students have won dozens of major awards. I knew then and I know now that I was in the presence of a master. I have been profoundly shaped by my years working with Joan. It was an honour to speak with her about storytelling in troubled times.
Subject:
Joan Scheckel
Occupation:
Writer, director, producer, teacher
Interviewer:
Berry Liberman
Photographer:
Megan Cullen
Location:
Los Angeles
Date:
February 2023
BERRY LIBERMAN: This is the clearest you’ve been and I can see your expression.
JOAN SCHECKEL: You know, Berry, connection is worth the effort. Being able to hear one another and see one another is the work of being human. It’s the thing that we crave most deeply. And have the opportunity to express through the arts, which is how I met you all these many years ago. One of your first and most profound questions to me was, “If you’re not measuring yourself by money, as society tells us to do, then what has value?”
I had the opportunity to meet you early in your journey.
I’m still in that exploration.
I think it’s my life’s
work.
I came to Australia and I did a tour and I met you after a talk. I remember this incredibly passionate mind. You said, “I want to come study with you.” I hadn’t been teaching for long at that point. Then one day I got a phone call from you. You’re like, “Hi, it’s Berry!” You were in L.A., to study with me and I didn’t even have a lab going on at that time. You came with all of your openness and curiosity and passion for story and your ability to go out into the world. You said, “I’m here to work.”
Twenty-one years old. I had arrived in LA. No one knows this story. [laughs]
There’s this notion that a story is something outside of you. Like, I’m going to get some ideas together and make a story and make a concept. But that’s not story. Story is your inner life moving outward. It is what’s within you that craves to be seen, known and shared.
You’ve been a profound teacher in my life. One of my greatest mentors, and taught me everything I know about story and honouring my creative
life. It was a powerful
time of learning and
formed me as a human being.
You don’t have to know it. You’re going to encounter it in the process of making the art, or making the business, or making whatever it is that you’re making. A story is an encounter with the self and writing is a way of knowing.
I’m not a therapist, I’m a dramatist. It’s not my job, nor is it my skill or intention to get inside anybody’s head. That’s not where I belong. I do think that talent and tolerating are closely linked. How much can you tolerate revealing that which you have come to know about living? It’s hard to tolerate our own humanness. It has been deeply co-opted and corrupted by our entertainment industry via our impulse to tell a story. That’s why I do this work. I knew that I wasn’t going to work in the oil industry and be able to design an electric car, but I wanted to create a craft that would help 21st-century storytellers speak to their own truths. And make space for a multiplicity of stories, not just one or two points of view, which our industry is addicted to.
It was such big work and it began all my big work. Because the bigger the story that you want to tell, the more you have to know your own soul and story.
“Hope is in the truth. And in the feeling itself. It’s in the meaning. Just let it be what it is and go forward.”
“Imagination isn’t stuff you come up with, it’s the lens to your soul. Story is the means by which you express what is there. All of your deepest questions about who you are and what you want and how you feel, that is the story. There’s no separation.”
— Joan Scheckel
I’m having such a full body response to everything you’re saying. I was telling story through Dumbo Feather as the extension of our work together. It was, How can I go back in and work with financial capital and my creative capital? How can I do both? I knew the potency of storytelling as healing was the most obvious thing. The rest was confusing. [laughs] We had so many sessions together but I’ll never forget one of these moments, which is when you said, “Oh you didn’t know that you’re intense?”
I remember that! [laughs] I remember that! You were probably in sweats and a white t-shirt and drawings and writings all over the floor. You were looking at issues of art, family, the Holocaust, grief, hidden secrets. The unholy rampant mess of the inner life as it seeks to be known. There is an intensity to that, because feelings are big. It’s why we fear them so much.
I remember you saying to me, “Number one: you have permission to be intense because you don’t have a choice and that’s who you are.” Then you said, “You need to know that feelings won’t kill you.”
That’s a big one isn’t it? This notion that you can look at things not in terms of who’s going to win or lose, but what things mean and how they feel. If the pushback isn’t happening we’re probably not challenging as deeply as we might.
Yeah. And that was what we’re talking about. The ability to feel the big feelings, to tolerate them enough to share with the world.
Exactly. It’s not going to look like anybody else’s version.
We stayed in touch all these years and you’ve done so much wonderful work in film with those incredible storytellers. My path diverged, so it would seem, because I was working in business and the economy. And then we did a workshop during COVID and I remember I was on the screen with 50 filmmakers and you. And it still felt the same. What came up for me during the work was the economy as a story. I went into impact investing and to our work in the economy and business as a B Corp. All these attempts to open a crack in the universe where the light could get in and a new story could emerge of how we can live in this world, honouring life. The purpose of capital is to be in service to life.
One of the biggest issues in the 21st century is despair. The problems are so large. There are big issues that face us, that feel and seem beyond our present scope of mobility to help. To help heal our hearts towards a more connected humanity. It’s a rough time in that regard, no matter where you look. At the climate, at racism, poverty, water, education, human rights. We’re not seeing a lot of lust for forward thinking. [laughs.] Change is a long game. I’m lucky that I get to work with so many storytellers, but my business is very small. Our industry is addicted to conflict. There’s an antagonist on one side and there’s a protagonist on another side. They’re going to butt heads. That conflict is what gives any story its energy. And then that conflict itself is going to drive that story forward until the next point of conflict. It’s all about, “I want this, you want that, so we’re going to fight about it.” I don’t think that that helps us make change. In my work I’ve actively been saying, “Hey look, there’s another way to tell a story. It doesn’t just have to be through conflict.” You can centre the story on meaning – that’s what the nugget is, on whatever has meaning to you – and then look at the chains of actions, feelings and relationship that earn that truth. And that’s applicable to a business, a magazine, a big action movie.
This notion that you can look at things not in terms of who’s going to win or lose, but what things mean and how they feel. If the pushback isn’t happening we’re probably not challenging as deeply as we might.
You were teaching me at 21 how to protect that space for myself. I’ve waxed and waned in my ability to do it, with phones and distractions and I have a family and these businesses. I’ve felt like I can honestly say I have, with deepest love, authenticity and integrity, been leaning into that through business and through the economy. I didn’t realise how rough it was going to be!
As my own childhood circumstances were so rough, I had an early understanding that life is straight up. It’s steep and it just gets steeper. That’s one of the big benefits of having a childhood that’s hard in different ways. I have an intense need for truth and a love for reality and a yearning to contact reality before I die. As much as I work with story and imagination in all of its many forms, you want to have real contact with yourself. It’s not supposed to be easy from anything I’ve ever read or heard or experienced.
Interesting things are coming up for me when you’re talking about the industry and doing the work of staying connected to who you are. I was in the face of expectations and comparison.
Oh yeah. Needing to prove yourself. Wanting your parent to see you and love you and thinking you’re going to achieve that through fame, or anything external. Everybody a different value system. What value is to each individual and has not yet been defined. Throughout history that’s been a pretty dangerous place to be. We haven’t been inclusive, curious, able to hold space for a multiplicity of perspectives on what has value long enough to even figure out what value needs. (laughs) We all want to do the work. But the question is, what is the work? When you’re talking about storytelling, it is super simple things. Like saying, “Okay, for these four hours we will close the door, turn off phones, devices. You will have a pen, you will have a piece of paper. And that’s it. And your mind.” And so for that period of time, however long it is that you can muster, whether it’s five minutes or an hour, and gradually working your way up to three or four hours, you just sit there with yourself, your feelings and whatever it is that you want to do. If nothing happens then you’ve shown up for nothing. That has enormous value, just to show up for space itself. A lot happens when nothing happens. I’m curious about that, as change. Because we cram up space, we cram up any opportunity for change to occur because we’re trying to do so much all the time.
I’m reflecting on my inability to hold the space for nothing.
One thing that’s really important, while you’re reflecting, is not to make sweeping categorical statements against yourself. We’re then quick to attack ourselves. “Oh I don’t do that enough,” or, “I haven’t done that.” And that’s absolutely not true in your life work, it’s not true in this moment. We have to be careful about attacking ourselves in any way the moment that we feel need. And always to remember that a little bit goes a really long way. Any great thinker that we’ve had throughout human history, you remember one thing that they say that rings true for you. And that’s all you need.
I didn’t have a difficult childhood. And so in many ways I feel like I expected the embrace in return. Like, “Let’s do this! This is beautiful! People, planet, profit? Like all in favour say aye!” (laughs) I had these naive open-armed ideas. And then I experienced pushback, envy, jealousy, attack, betrayal, fraud. All these things that happened in the human space.
We all have a passionate impulse to go forward: into a love relationship, a business adventure or a story. You have that desire to change the world. But hidden underneath that is a desire to change your family. And then working with the planet, with the laws of gravity, envy, jealousy, pushback, of loneliness, fear, betrayal, failure, disappointment. Of helplessness, of greed. That’s the work. The tendency is to give up that open-heartedness, that childhood passion, that scope of vision that is innate to all of us. That can be crushed as we socialize or as we meet up with the world as it is right now. And so it is a dance to mature, to carry the vision in a realistic way, whatever it is that your vision is. For me it has to do with telling stories that that are meaningful.
I’ve been reading a lot about hell lately. In the Celtic myths, Nordic myths. I’m citing those two because I was reading about them this morning. Hell didn’t have a suffering component. I grew up Catholic and so that was the entire point of hell. (laughs). But it was a place of feeling all of the things that we just spoke to, where you burn with your own envy or grief, or whatever it is. It doesn’t mean to give up. Change is hard and slow, and resistance is natural. You wouldn’t get pushback if what you were saying or feeling wasn’t new. And for every single person in every way, it is always new. We just don’t know how to hang out with that in each other. And things get shut down really fast. It’s really incredibly hard and it’s incredibly painful, but somebody’s got to do the work. Somebody’s got to do it. When you encounter whatever resistance to that which you might want to do, or express, or feel, or share, what do you do?
Well that was my question to you! I have been at a crossroads.
This is a beautiful vision that you have Berry. A generous whole-hearted vision of how the world can be and is as you experience it. That’s an enormous gift. But you can’t throw out that gift because someone else can’t see it and instead make your work about fixing everybody else. That’s why I was so happy when we did Whale Rider. To sit in a screening and everyone was crying. That was my vision. I just want to sit in a room where everybody in suits feels one thing. Or everybody cries because they remember what it felt to be a little kid. Just wanting to connect with your dad and your grandpa and your mum. Which is what Whale Rider does.
So what’s the remedy for that impulse?
I get back with the helplessness that I felt as a child. The remedy is always going back to feeling the thing you don’t want to feel – helpless, lonely, confused. To your own emotional truth before you go back into the work of change-making, particularly in a leadership role.
This issue is about leadership. You said to me, “As a director, don’t ever take an actor somewhere you haven’t been.” There is an enormous amount of responsibility to have done work first, to have been where you’re taking other people. Can you speak to that? It was an incredibly powerful lesson for me very young. I didn’t quite understand it at the time.
It all comes down to what can you get up and do every day? What can you manage with yourself and anybody else? Leadership at the core also has to do with non-conflict, knowing that you’re in a team. That’s why I love movies and creative work. And business as well. You’re a group of people who are there to bring through an idea, which is a felt truth. Does the company or story have something with integrity at its core? That is what I’m interested in talking about, or investigating. It’s not like I know. There’s no such thing as an expert, but a lot to be said for curiosity and investigation.
A director is a leader, but a leader is a receiver, like a conductor. So here’s the five things that I will say to directors, and maybe they apply somehow to leadership. Number one, you must have the vision for the piece as a whole. Number two, you must have the ability to communicate that vision. Number three, you must have the ability to create and maintain an environment where people feel free to take risks. Number four, you must have the ability to discern what is needed to keep things on track and moving forward. Number five, you must have the ability to focus on the work and not the ego. And then number six. You must have the ability to say, “I don’t know.” And mean it. To claim, “I don't know.” And let that be true. Because that’s when space arrives. As leaders, no matter what we’re leading, we can get really trapped in any one of those six things. You can have that vision inside of you but you can’t articulate it. Or you don't have the words for it.
You taught me this and it’s always stayed with me. You said, “The characters will say one thing, but what is the feeling underneath?” What is actually happening? That’s real life. When you get a screenplay right it’s a moment where you reflect real life, real dialogue, where you’re going to go into rooms and most people will not know why they are in the room. The ability to discern what’s really going on as opposed to what’s being said. But discernment is really hard.
I think it’s natural to all of us but it has to be cultivated. I don’t know that we have as many opportunities as we crave and need to cultivate our innate ability to feel, connect and love. It has to be grown not just over days and weeks and months, but years and eons and millennia. It’s a long game, human evolution. We’re such a young species.
You say a lot of big things, Joan. The soul takes a while to catch up, and it’s gotten dark behind you, which is so beautiful. What I think I just heard you say, were you saying that cultivating love – our ability to connect and to love – has been the human project over eons?
Oh yeah.
I had that sense of what you’re talking about. That care is instantaneous and animal, but love is a cultivated sensibility. And that was my download in that moment. And obviously from learning with you all those years, that must be the emotional through line.
Human beings have a rich capacity to love, and that is where cultivation comes in. I feel that we’re born babies and we become human through our lifetime. We’re coming to be earth-dwellers. We’re coming to be human. If we don’t kill ourselves before we figure it out, (laughs). Conflict is not our only dance card. We also have awareness, cultivation, consciousness, of coming to be. The work of not knowing, which is a reclamation of the truths that we’re born with. Meeting up with feelings we don’t like as well: greed, envy, confusion, pain. I think about that every day. How old is this cerebral cortex? You know, this part of my brain that can come up with words and put them together as thoughts? 30,000 years, maybe? But the brain stem, the part of our brains that can feel? Hundreds of millions. It’s as old as life itself. We have a rich ability to feel. And we’re only very slowly evolving how to articulate that, know it and share it. Story is critical in order to do that. We don’t know what the new money models are and we’re letting go of old ideas about money and value and lack and abandonment and terror and withholding. We’re investigating ways to create value through connection and beauty and abundance and meaning. It has to do with how much we open ourselves up to being human with each other. Any act we take is an investigation of that. Healing comes in every act of creativity. A business is a story.
As is the economy itself.
Exactly. Everything’s a story we tell ourselves. So what stories are we telling ourselves? And what do we believe? We’re telling ourselves so many stories every day that come from before we could think we were telling stories, to make sense of the world around us. And other people tell us what to believe and what stories are. I’m simply saying questioning is a form of leadership. To ask a real question and to stay present for the unfolding response. And make it actionable step by step. Don’t just leave it in a dream, put it on a piece of paper. Get up and do it.
That’s the bit of your workshops that I think everyone really struggles with. Pen and paper is often really comfortable for writers and anyone in ideation phase. But that bit where you say, “And now, up.” Move the feeling.
You have to have it in your body. Especially in the dramatic arts because when we’re writing, we’re not writing for the page. It’s not a poem, which will come into being in the inner life of another human being. If you’re writing a movie or writing a play, the actor is going to have to get up and do it.
It’s the same as business. You’ve got to get up and do it. There is so much more for us to talk about. And just to know that all of it is the story we tell ourselves. And the built environment’s so powerful, the spaces that we create. So architects, property developers, please: know that you are determining how we feel and live.
That made me think about my own house that was this little cottage that was built in 1915. It has to work so hard because the windows don’t fit and it wasn’t built with consciousness. Buildings and places of work. What are they supposed to be? They’re supposed to be tall. (laughs) Right? And rectangular, with horrible lights. So that we can reach the sky and focus. The building is definitely telling us a story of how we need to win. But that is not the only story. How can I love when I’ve been taught that what I need to do is to win and to gain and to go higher and to acquire. It’s just a bunch of crap really.
Joan Scheckel everyone. You’re welcome. I’ve had some incredible moments in my life, not least of which was studying at your feet for many years.
We were both on the floor I want to say. It wasn’t at my feet. (laughs) I do want to say in closing that we are here and the work is happening. It’s like the sun. You don’t need to stare straight at it 24/7 and have sunbeams pummelled all the time. It’s too much for human eyes to take. But just a little bit of your own light and sharing it with another person goes a long way. And it is happening. Can I say one thing about hope?
Yes please!
In Hollywood we have this big thing about hopeful endings. It’s got to have a likeable character and a hopeful ending. How, when you have an antagonist and a protagonist that are only hellbent on winning or losing and destroying each other the entire time? Then at the end of all that you’re supposed to feel hopeful. There’s a misuse of this word hope, that any time we feel something that’s real, we confront anything that’s challenging, we immediately want to say, “Oh, we want to have hope.” When we say we want to hope, underneath that we’re really feeling is, “I want to hop to safety!”
Hope is in the truth. And in the feeling itself. It’s in the meaning. Just let it be what it is and go forward. Thank you. Love you very much.
