Your Personal Genius

Have you ever had one of those inspired, “genius moments”- a total gut reaction- and someone asked you how you knew how to do it… ?

And you said to yourself…

“I don’t know- I just knew!”…?

Two things that I love about life…

a) the inter-connectedness of all things; what you find to be true in one aspect of your world magically seems to apply to another.

b) Everything I need to understand about my own existence can be exemplified from my favorite movies.

Most of us have seen The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise goes Zen and takes down all the trained swordsmen around him, albeit, in Slow Mo. He does it by letting go and trusting his inner genius, essentially freeing his intuition to react to the situation.

Star Wars is all about this concept. The Karate Kid touches on something similar. This is not a new idea but I don’t see it practiced enough and I became very interested in how to produce it so it didn’t just strike me in random moments. Whether you wanna call it “trusting your instincts”, “unlocking your inner genius”, or “using the force”- its up to you.

When I studied at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, my late great teacher, Milton Katselas, used to refer to these kinds of things as your Personal Genius. He urged us actors to use our instincts and react in the moment based on our life experiences.

He often talked about when he knew Salvidor Dali, who I always knew as an artist who painted whatever popped into his mind- dripping clocks, tall elephants with spindly legs- and analyzed the significance of these images later…

That notion drove me crazy when I was younger. I was pissed that he wouldn’t intentionally use symbolism to convey his ideas. But over the years I’m finding many of my favorite artists keep coming back to Dali’s suggestion of…

“Paint to find out what the picture is”- Katselas would repeat this mantra he got from one of his favorite mentors until it stuck in our minds.

When Katselas was directing me in Hamlet that was our main area of attention. I found that task very difficult, especially since his directing style was, for lack of a better word, micro-managing. However, if I could “let go” as he wanted then I could use his well-crafted structure and instinctively react within those confines to create a freedom that cohesively told a story.

Of course, being the intellectual freak that I am- and going totally against the very nature of what he was teaching- I had to analyze how to manufacture this genius state whenever I needed it…

The way I see it, there are 3 steps. I’m going to call them the Three Rs because I got lucky and I found the correct synonyms to fit what I’m talking about.

STEP 1: Research.

In order to gain a base understanding of your craft, you need to fuel your brain with as much intellectual knowledge as you can. This is using your analytical mind- the left side- to acquire information and build a foundation.

STEP 2: Repetition

This can be synonymous with research, but there are many instances where studying it and practicing are a separate task. Its about training your mind and/or body through repetition- effectively transferring from the left brain to the right brain. (Let me be clear that I’m not a psychologist- I’m theorizing here)

STEP 3: Release

This is where you purposely let go of everything you’ve learned. Its a total reliance on the right side of your brain; trusting that your mind/body will instinctively know what to do.

Now lets take a couple examples…

I study Jeet Kune Do, this is Bruce Lee’s invented martial arts system that he felt was the most practical form of street-fighting; ultimately, it’s a combination of Wing Chung Kung Fu, American Boxing and French Fencing.

STEP 1 involves intellectually understanding the concepts Bruce Lee laid out. You can read his book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, or you can have a teacher demonstrate these conceptually. Without knowing these you wouldn’t understand what to do physically.

STEP 2 is the repetition of these movements. Lets say you punch a thousand times, carving out the motion Bruce Lee suggested, and you replicate this over and over and over again, until it becomes second nature. This process acts as transference from your intellectual mind to your body.

STEP 3 is about letting it all go. If you understood the concepts intellectually to begin with and repetition sank them into your body then your inner genius should know what to do for you. This is how Tom Cruise went Zen in The Last Samurai and Luke Skywalker was able to use the force in Star Wars. And that’s how Daniel Larusso was able to… execute a well-timed crane kick.

Then the question becomes, how do you let go…?

That’s where the money is. I’m not sure what the definitive answer is. That may be more particular to the discipline.

For Jeet Kune Do, I found that it helps to just focus on “making the hit”. And if an impulse comes to me, I go with it. If I judge the impulse, and I intellectualize “Well, is that really the best way to attack? What if—“

SMACK!! I’ll probably get hit first.

I have had about 2 instances in Jeet Kune Do where I was able to achieve this to an effective degree. I was sparring with a friend of mine from class. Every time I felt an opening I hit him. Every time he attacked me I was able to deflect and/or send one back first. After a couple minutes straight of him not being able to touch me my friend and opponent backed away, put down his dukes and smiled. “Jesus, Jess- how did you do that?!” Dumbfounded, I snapped out of it for a second,

“I don’t know. I just knew.” My Sifu was standing right next to us. We had a Karate Kid moment and my Mister Miyagi simply nodded at me:

“That’s how its done” and he walked off.

(Yes, it was very dramatic.)

I only came close to replicating this state one other time. That Zen experience made me love the martial arts and wonder how else it could apply to other aspects of my life. In art, in relationships, does it have to have a limitation? Can we ultimately live in a constant state of genius?

By the way, don't take this shameless self-promotion as my thinking I'm somehow more superior to my fellow artists. Quite the contrary. I believe this is something everyone has at their disposal but most people don't know- or don't care- enough to talk about.

But not me. I was so excited that I wanted to practice in other areas of my life…

I host a weekly home poker game and I constantly practice letting go and relying on my instincts. I try to remain open to whatever signals I get from my opponents.

If I’ve followed Step 1, then I understand the principles of “tells” that other players give off, unknowingly revealing what is under their cards. After researching a few books and professional articles, I should know about what starting hands are optimal to play in which situations. I should understand things like pot odds, etc. Through recognizing these concepts I should know how to play in a general poker game.

If I follow Step 2, then I’ve played enough hands to know that players do particular things in particular situations. I should be able to pick up on the rhythms that are established and use them to my advantage. Combining what I know about the game with trends I see over and over again, there will be times when patterns are broken and moments of inspiration may come to me.

Then if I’m fully operating on the level of Step 3, I should be able to stop analyzing and pick up instinctually on the unspoken game of poker. I sense what I often refer to as a “void of energy”. When I feel it I’ll look at the opponent from where I feel it coming from; and usually he’ll give it away with his apparent behavior. This can mean he’s bluffing’ or he’s got “the nuts”. Depending on the situation, it can become obvious which one it is. And looking back at the way the hand unfolded I’ve been able to call out someone’s exact hole cards. To which they flip them over, mouth agape, and ask how I knew what their cards were...

“I don’t know… I just knew.”

But how does this apply to film-making…?

In every way…!

Whether it’s acting- the obvious parallel- or the writing process, or even directing where you’re expected to operate on many different levels, this concept applies. I don’t see why it shouldn’t affect every discipline of filmmaking where any amount of creativity is involved: costume, cinematography, set design, editing, fluffing, etc.

As a budding screenwriter, I’ve read as many books as I could get my hands on over the years. I know how to structure a story. I know how to make a character more sympathetic to the audience if I so desire. I can say that I have a fairly solid, if not, ever-evolving craft. I trust that I always have these tools in my back pocket.

Knowing that I ultimately want to get myself into an intuitive state, I do this free-association exercise that a friend of mine introduced to me…

When I sit down to work on a scene I first write for 15 minutes on anything that comes to my mind. I don’t judge. I don’t edit. I don’t stop…

I just write…

When I’ve done that I have (hopefully) entered a state of intuitive freedom. There are times when I’ll work on a scene: I know the characters. I have an understanding of how they speak. I have a general structure to how I want the scene to play out. And I just go…

I write...

And the scene unfolds before me. I actually experience it as an audience member. In my ideal writing state, I will laugh, cry, or get angry as the scene un-folds. The characters say things that oftentimes surprise even me but I never judge it. Sometimes people ask me why a character would say something so obtuse in certain circumstances. I usually respond

“I just write what the demons tell me to write.” In some cases the line may be totally inappropriate and ultimately, useless (damn demons!); but in other cases, the lines just aren’t direct- but rather, very human because people don’t always speak so on the nose.

The legitimate fear with writing based on “things that just come to you” is they can be derivative of other ideas. That’s the beauty of the writing process though. When you’re done you can switch back to your analytical mind and judge from that perspective. Ideally, you’ll craft your story over a good period of time, constantly switching back and forth between these states.

It wasn’t until I started writing like this, combined with my Jeet Kune Do experience, and my home poker game, and other random instances that I was able to understand the potential genius in all of us that Dali spoke so fondly about, and that Katselas tried to ingrain in my life-style.

Nowadays, in whatever I do, I aim to let my instincts work their course. The analytical left brain is highly overrated- useless without the creative right brain. The same is true in reverse if the foundation isn’t there. I’m finding that this is one of the secrets to creating on a higher artistic level.

Ask me how I know.

~ JW