Very few things are as stressful as failure. I hate failure. Not in others… but in myself. Fear of failure sometimes gets the better of me and prevents me from taking chances at times. And yet… whenever I heard about partnerships or teams being driven apart, it usually doesn’t revolve around failure (which often brings teams closer together ironically enough) but rather around success. No one has an ego when you fail (except maybe a bruised one), but in success… personal glory becomes priority #1.
Take for example the sad situation between Babel creators director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. The two have been a creative team for 9 years, making some very good films. But along comes Babel, suddenly people start whispering “Oscar” about it, and each fall to the need for the spotlight. The folks at Yahoo News give us this:
(The two) have accused each other of trying to steal the spotlight amid the success of their latest film, “Babel.” Now Inarritu and other “Babel” collaborators, including actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Adriana Barraza and composer Gustavo Santaolalla, have signed a letter criticizing Arriaga for “claiming media attention.”
“It’s a shame that in your unjustified obsession to claim sole responsibility for the film, you seem not to recognize that movies are an art of deep collaboration,” said the letter, published in the latest edition of Mexico’s Chilanga magazine, released Monday. In a radio interview, Arriaga shot back that Inarritu was stealing credit for “Babel” by listing himself in the credits as the movie’s creator.
I’ll never understand this. Personally, if I can’t do what I love with the people I love (my friends), then I just don’t see the point in doing it. This should be a time that these two creators are celebrating together. Instead they each want the spotlight so bad it’s become a public feud firing at each other through the media and taking public shots. Sad.
