In 2017, three years ago, I decided that I’d had enough. I had been working as an independent documentary filmmaker for about ten years at that point, directing music videos, a few commercials, a feature length documentary, and all sorts of other edits, re-edits, re-writes, re-shoots, and everything in between. It’s a chaotic way to earn a living when you can make plenty of money in one month and then literally have no work, and I mean NO WORK, for 4-5 months. But beyond the erratic paychecks, what really broke me was the amount of energy you put into a job - whether that be a music video or a feature documentary - for it to never see the light of day. For music videos, I would spend three days writing a treatment, completely from scratch, then sending it off, and 9.9 times out of 10, never hear anything back - not even a “no thanks”. Other times, a video would get filmed and edited and re-edited, only to be shelved because the talent didn’t like her hair. It’s an exhausting system and why many directors only last about 2 years in the music video world. I’ve been at it for 14 years.
Simultaneously, I was pouring any free time I had into a feature documentary that seemed to have all the right things going for it: a budget, celebrity involvement, an exciting adventure story with environmental ties. It took me on the greatest adventure I’ve ever been on, four months crossing the Pacific Ocean on an experimental raft, and even missing the birth of my first born son. It premiered at a huge film festival to critical acclaim. But then, the bottom fell out and it got caught in red tape and diplomacy, and never saw the light of day. That was five years of my life, literally and creatively, that I don’t get back.
As you can tell, I’m either an optimist or a masochist.
So, in 2017, I decided to make my own show. I saw the writing on the wall that I couldn’t keep doing this for much longer without giving up completely. All I wanted was some sort of product to show for the amount of time, tears, thought, energy, money, and sacrifices that were poured into creating something. I had been working for people for so long that I forgot that there was an audience. For a storyteller, that’s messed up - because at that point, what’s the point? Here I am, so preoccupied with just getting some overlord to approve an edit/script/treatment/budget, that I totally forgot that there’s an audience out there that’s the actual reason I have a job.
So, I needed the show to be honest, open, and driven by real humans smarter than me - which is the opposite of Hollywood. A travel show seemed to be the best fit. Though I’d grown up rather poor, my mother was born in Poland and we traveled there almost every summer - so travel and diverse culture has always played an important role in my life. I love being the intermediary for story, carrying my American stories to Poland and my Polish stories back home; I had a captive audience at both ends. Making a travel show fit the bill, and with my track record of failures, I felt more confident in developing a creative project that was personal to me.
I could make a better travel show.
But life is complicated. I have 3 kids, a (very patient) wife that works full time, an unstable income, debt, various creative impulses, and a deep-rooted frustration with urban life in the concrete jungle. I’m always looking for an excuse to get out. It wouldn’t be for another three years before I developed enough insight into my own life to realize that what follows would be my greatest excuse to do something for myself. And I’m still not sure how I feel about that. There’s definitely some latent guilt floating around that I protect with layers of justification.
I asked three of my best friends, and fellow filmmakers, to join in. The pitch was “want a free trip to Scotland?” Worked pretty well. The team consisted of Martín Vielma, Steve Ryan, and my intern-turned-brother-in-law Ryan Ford. A Pole, a white Mexican, a hairy Irish man, and an in-over-his-head Millenial walk into a country… We all have, I think, great aesthetics so I knew the show would look great, but what’s the purpose of it? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself to great lengths regarding every job I do. There’s a lot of content being made out there that doesn’t NEED to be made - and I had to start drawing some lines in the sand.
But justifying travel can be harder than one thinks.
I love travel but at the same time am waving the “live local” flag really hard. So which is it?
Still not fully aware of why we were going to Scotland, we called in all the favors we could. My friend, who owns his own small production company, loaned us two Sony FS7 cameras and some beautiful, vintage prime lenses: Canon K35’s. We decided one creative decision we were going to stick to was filming the show exclusively with prime lenses; no zooms. When you can’t sit in the corner and zoom in across the room, but rather, as a camera operator, you need to physically move in closer to the subject, it changes the fundamental approach of the documentary process. We AREN’T flies on the wall. The people we meet know what we’re doing - they can see the camera on our shoulder and our faces behind the viewfinder. It’s a connection that most of Hollywood hides behind to maintain the illusion. I wanted that human connection to exist. We would need to be intentional and engaged in the entire filmmaking process; more vulnerable.
We’ve all heard it: It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong. That’s Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia. We wanted to lean waaaay into that. We would be underprepared and over-willing. But also Mark Twain and Brené Brown:
““Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” - Mark Twain”
““Somehow we’ve come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we’re very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It’s as if we’ve divided the world into “those who offer help” and “those who need help.” The truth is that we are both.” - Brené Brown
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So based on that formula of Patagonia + Mark Twain + Brené Brown, we created our travel show: The Great Excuse. We would go to a country for 10 days, with just a camera and some sleeping bags, and be as dependent on the people and culture as possible. It meant being as vulnerable as possible with others, each other, and ourselves, in hopes that we could become better.
Hollywood said, “You can’t sell a show without a celebrity involved.” WELL GUESS WHAT? Hollywood was right. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pour our hearts into this project and share it with the world. After spending 3 years, editing, pitching, taking notes, re-editing, re-pitching, taking meetings, arguing, polishing, and re-editing the show, and nobody wanting to pick it up, I found myself face-to-face with another failure. But if I stopped there, when there’s nobody telling me I can’t do something, I would’ve been a true failure.
So we decided to pick ourselves up, follow our gut, and release the show ourselves. Because this is the future. YouTube exists. And we’re not going to let the fact that we couldn’t “get a celebrity” deter us from finishing something we set out to do. Something that we’re pretty damn proud of.
In the comfort of our lives at home, we do all of this stuff: posturing, thinking, talking. I view this as a sort of training. And travel, to me, is when we step out into the arena. When I’m threatened by new things and ideas, things that make me feel vulnerable, that’s when I see what’s most important to me, and what I can let go of. You can take all the German courses you want, and read all the books on German culture, but until you’re face to face with a German, you have no idea if you can speak German.
We hope our show empowers others to start making positive excuses for themselves. We hope people learn through our mistakes. But most of all, I hope we all get better at allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, because I think that’s the greatest adventure.
There were a lot of reasons not to go on this trip. But sometimes we just need a good excuse. Mine was to make a travel show. What’s yours?
