Episode #53: “The Evolution of Ambition” w/ Director & Art of Documentary Co-Founder Mark Bone

This topic of ambition, I guess, first and foremost, I was kind of mentioning to Mark before the call.

I know for me personally was always in relationship to my work.

And so my life just kind of became this like blind arrow towards some unsolidified version of success.

And I was just always consider myself super ambitious.

ambitious as I was coming up in the industry and had some success early on but as many people in this community know where that led for me personally was burnout and clinical depression and just recently now I'm 38 and I've been starting to think about ambition a little differently more in relationship to my life and trying to be more ambitious with like life goals and the type of life that I want to have which is sort of a a big paradigm shift for me personally.

So again, when I was thinking about this topic, I was like, yeah, I think there's a lot here to unpack because there's so many pros and cons and I don't think there's one way to think about ambition.

But I also want to say, Mark, as well, like one of the reasons I wanted to connect with you is because I always love connecting with filmmakers who find ways to like give back and lift others up.

And yeah.

not only filmmakers who make films, but also have like other outlets to support their livelihoods and filmmaking efforts.

Cause like, it's just such a challenge sometimes to make a living purely from filmmaking.

And also you want to make like artistic films that represent your voice.

That can be extremely difficult if that's your only means of financial outlet.

And so connecting with you as well, I was just excited to hear kind of how you've navigated that in relationship to ambition.

So thanks for being here, dude.

Oh yeah, no, really appreciate you having me on John and really cool to see the community you're cultivating.

I love conversations when people will meet me, they'll find out.

I don't like to talk about the weather.

Like I immediately go deep probably to a fault, but maybe that's why I love documentary because it's like, it's a, it's an opportunity and it's a, a medium that allows you to explore the depths of the human experience and have an excuse to ask really prodding and personal questions to people.

Cause that's what I'd rather talk about.

But yeah, I appreciate that.

I'll say one thing there.

It was just reflecting what you were saying about the idea of the economics of being a filmmaker.

And I really feel lucky that I've been able to maneuver my career in the last few years, last eight years or so.

to take the financial burden off the films I'm creating and have that on other areas.

Albeit that takes up a lot of bandwidth, but it's allowed me to interact with my art in a way that I'm not thinking about it economically.