Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Letter
Insight and inspiration for your artistic career.

Dear Artist,

Ratatouille is the latest Disney Pixar extravaganza. It's about a country rat who finds himself in the kitchen of a high-end Paris restaurant where he helps a floor-cleaning kid become a gourmet cook. It seems the rat has a nose for sophisticated flavours and, while filled with self-doubt, he's able to engineer some amazing cookery. The film's theme, "Anybody can cook, but it takes passion to become a great cook," is refreshingly familiar.




Along with the DVD comes a remarkable interview with writer-director Brad Bird and Thomas Keller, a world-class cook who helped inspire the film. This short documentary explores the harmonics between cooking and film animation. It has valuable insights for all creative people.

Both Keller and Bird say you can't force creative ideas. You build the creative environments that produce a creative state of mind. Both cook and film director aim at spontaneity. While the cook has half a dozen co-workers, the director has a complex army of writers, story-boarders, animators, musicians and sound people he must inspire on a daily basis for more than two years. "It's a matter of coaching greatness out of people," says Bird.

It's all about commitment. Over and over you hear, "I love finding and exploring new tastes," "I love copying animal movements," "I love hitting new standards," and "I love finding that extra something that makes it more engaging." Bird admits he's "enthusiastically demanding."

What makes some of us better at our work than others? The answer lies not in over-control, or even trying to understand the mystery of the creative process. Each and every player needs to simply try to improve, a little bit here, a little bit there, as it comes. The secret is "tweak." Further, in both the professional kitchen and the animation theatre there's a sense of urgency. "Our films are never truly finished," says Bird. "We just get to stop at our deadline." Demanding connoisseurs wait in the dining room--just as kids wait at their folks' plasma TV. These two remarkable art forms, one ancient, one new and beautifully revolutionary, both derive their energy from a sense of urgency. Painters can profit from Ratatouille.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "I love my medium." (Brad Bird)

Esoterica: Greatest of all is the principle of the outtake. Both filmmaker and cook constantly sample work in progress and remove to the cutting-room floor or the soup. Repetitious, no point of view, no advancement of plot, boring, tasteless, "doesn't do anything for me," and "not quite good enough" are a few of the reasons for losing stuff. Great creators get excited about deletion. "It's not about perfection; it's about the joy of striving." (Thomas Keller)

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