Collaboration and Cronenberg

[przed]

I always used to say I could never see collaborating with anyone on a creative project.  I could only see the loss of control that such a working method would necessarily result in, without seeing the benefits.  Well, I'm currently working on a collaboration (about which, all will eventually be revealed) and I've found it to be a remarkable experience.  Together, we've produced something better than either of us would have produced by ourselves, and it's been an often exhilirating experience.  And then today, Salon published an interview with David Cronenberg where he talks about collaboration in terms that I can now completely identify with:

"There was a time when I was very arrogant about that -- you're not really an auteur if you don't do your own stuff. Then I realized with "The Dead Zone" that fusing your sensibility with someone else's -- in that case, Stephen King's -- can be quite interesting. You wind up making something that neither one of you would have come up with separately. It's like a marriage. It's like mating.

"The other thing is that you can bore yourself. Working alone, you can keep going back to the same routine, your own set of rails that might have been liberating initially and have now become a rut. All it takes is someone else to come at you sideways and you find yourself exhilarated and energized. If it feels that good, it can't be bad."

Now, I still don't know that I'll ever do a writing collaboration--my writing working method is a bit nebulous for me to consider that at the moment--but I'm far more open to the idea that I ever was before.

Comments

[przed.livejournal.com]

It is an amazing learning process. I'd say it helps to work with a collaborator with whom you share a complementary, though not identical, aesthetic. And that you both go into the venture open-minded and as ego-less as possible.

One of the great discoveries for me is how much of a joy it is when your collaborator comes up with something exceptionally cool that you would never have thought of.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I love that part. (: I try to collaborate on about one vid a year, if I can, and with a different person each time. So I'm always being blown away by something new that I couldn't have come up with on my own. I just hope I'm giving back as much as I'm getting!