Real-life resilience - Quentin Tarantino

Welcome to another weekend edition of The Resilience Brief. On Sundays I share real-life resilience stories of businesses and individuals. This week is all about the very first effort from one of the most prolific directors of modern cinema - Quentin Tarantino.

Let’s start with some feedback:

“Quentin, what you need to do with this tape is, you need to wrap it in the bloodiest steak you can find. You need to get a little boat, and you need to go out into the ocean and find the sharkiest waters you can find, and then drop this meat-covered tape into the ocean.”

Ouch!

This was what one Hollywood producer told Tarantino after the young director had given him a tape of his very first film, “My Best Friend’s Birthday”. At the time, Tarantino was in his early twenties and had invested every penny he’d earned into the film. It had been a labour of love too, as he’d worked on the film for three long years.

All of that effort, just to be ridiculed by the folks in Hollywood that he was trying to impress!

Needless to say, he was completely bummed.

However, Tarantino's response was EVERYTHING! In fact, his response to this epic failure is the thing that he is most proud of. It’s not the Academy Awards he’s won, or the millions of dollars he has earned. It’s the way he was able to move forward through that pain of rejection.

He has since discussed it in many interviews....

“Of all the accomplishments, the one I’m most proud of," he says, "is the two weeks after ‘My Best Friend’s Birthday’ failed. I was very depressed. And the fact that I didn’t quit is the number one thing I am most proud of.”

Tarantino decided to take that first film and use it as a lesson in how NOT to make a film. He reflected on the process he had gone through to create it, and realized that there were so many lessons from the experience. It was three years of his life invested rather than wasted and, although he didn’t go to film school, he used the experience of making a bad film his very own film school.

“I didn't go to film school. But this film was my film school. I learned how NOT to make a film."

It's a legendary moment of resilience and determination that has led to one of the all-time great careers in film. Imagine a world in which Tarantino gave up because of the criticism of others. We would have no “Pulp Fiction”, “Kill Bill”, “Inglourious Basterds” and none of the amazing characters he has produced over the decades! 

3 takeaways and practical applications.

1. Failure is part of the journey. Even if failure hurts, it’s often one of the quickest routes to success. Every mistake we make is an opportunity to improve. We can go back to the last time someone gave us some criticism and reflect on it a little. How did it make us feel? Did we get our back up and resist it, or did we think about it and use it to develop a new perspective? Just shifting our perspective a little can be extremely powerful.

2. Look for the good in every situation. Tarantino went back to the tape he had created and realized that the stuff he had filmed at the beginning of production was terrible, but the stuff he had filmed towards the end was decidedly improved. He understood that he was getting better, and so he focused on what had worked for those scenes. If we’re struggling to deliver a project on time, we can take a breath and remind ourselves of our strengths. Surely there are things that we know we are good at. Find those, and emphasize them. They can be a starting block to get back on track.

3. Don’t quit. So we get a bit of bad feedback about some work we created? Or the campaign flops. Ok, so even Apple has bad days (see Apple’s ‘Crush’). The important thing is to stay in the fight. When we have an urge to give up, we can remember Tarantino and his desire to persevere. If we don’t quit, we might just make it. But if we DO quit, we definitely won’t.

All of this is fuel for our fire. Life is not easy, and often that flows into the challenges we face every day in our professional lives. All we can do is focus on what we can control and find ways to move forward. That is what resilience is all about.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds

PS - if you like this story, please don’t be shy sending it along to someone who needs to be reminded that failing is a big part of the journey. And if we tell them our own interpretation of Tarantino’s story, it helps reinforces it into our own minds.