Shekhar Kapur

The power of not knowing. Everyday when I go out to prepare a film, we prepare too much, we know too much, knowledge becomes a weight on wisdom. Simple words lost in the quicksand of experience. I come up and I say “What am I going to do today?” I’m not going to do what I planned to do. I’m going to put myself into an absolute panic—it’s my one way of getting rid of my mind. Getting rid of this mind that’s saying “Hey you know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you’re a director, you’ve done it for years.” So I gotta get there and be in complete panic. It’s a symbolic gesture, I tear up the script. I panic myself. I get scared. As you can see I’m doing it now, I’m getting nervous. I start to say “ I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to go there.” And as I go there they ask me, “Do you know what you’re going to do?” and I say “Of course I do.” I am allowing myself to go into chaos. Because out of chaos I’m hoping some moments of truth will come. All preparation is preparation, I don’t even know if it’s honest. I don’t even know if it’s truthful. The truth comes on the moment, organically, and if you get 5 great moments of organic storytelling, or on film, on your film, your audiences will get it. I’m looking for those moments…

The first thing I learned about storytelling was panic. Panic, panic. Panic is the great access to creativity. That’s the only way to get rid of your mind. Get rid of your mind. Get out of it and let’s go to the Universe because there’s something out there that’s more truthful than your mind. Find the emptiness, and then out of emptiness find the moment of creativity.

If someone doesn’t have a story, they don’t exist. I tell a story, therefore I exist. We create stories to define our existence.

The problem with storytelling in Hollywood is that we try to resolve a contradiction. Harmony is not resolution. It is a suggestion of a thing much larger than resolution. Harmony is something that is embracing and universal and off of eternity and off the moment. Resolution is limited, it is finite. Harmony is infinite. Storytelling is looking for harmony and infinity in moral resolutions, it is about resolving one and letting another one go, letting another one go, and asking questions is really important.