If you are really an artist at heart, think of all the other things you could do and get immediate artistic satisfaction from. Music, dance, painting, poetry and fiction all jump to mind. You see, if you write a poem, that poem EXISTS -- even if your best friend is the only person who reads it. Remember Emily Dickinson? You've made a work of art-- there it is, in your hands. Congratulations: you've expressed yourself! For a film to exist, it's not so easy. It means writing the screenplay, plus a dozen or so revisions, a business plan, budgets and spreadsheets galore, a couple thousand business lunches, fifty thousand or so phone calls and three hundred shouting matches. Then there's paperwork for miles -- secured loans, letters of credit, deal memos, contracts, completion bonds, chain of title, music clearances. And then there's "The Begging" -- begging agents, begging actors, begging deals, begging locations, begging crew not to walk after 16 hours on the set. Then there's the panic, the compromise, the scrambling for even more money... and early aging. Then -- MAYBE there's a film that MAYBE someone will see. Now, if none of this dissuades you... if you're sure you will absolutely CEASE TO BE AS A TRUE HUMAN BEING IF YOU DO NOT MAKE A MOVIE... well, okay. Read on.