Your Taste Knows Who You Are Before You Do

There’s a room I go to when I’m lost.

It doesn’t exist physically.

But I could walk you through it blindfolded.

There’s a sword in there that belonged to Hamlet.

A hat from one of my favorite actors, José Ferrer.

Ancient books. Letters. Jewels. A medieval cloak.

And Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.

None of these things have ever belonged to me.

Some of them never existed at all.

And yet they carry more weight for me than half the things I actually own.

For years, I thought of this room as simply an exercise in imagination.

Now I think it’s something else.

I think it’s evidence.

The Cave of Your Ancestors

Years ago, my teacher Ivan Kronenfeld taught me an exercise he had inherited from his teacher, Stella Adler.

He called it The Actor’s Dressing Room.

You created a room entirely in your imagination and filled it with objects that carried meaning for you.

Not valuable objects.

Meaningful ones.

Over the years, I adapted the exercise for my students and started calling it The Cave of Your Ancestors.

Imagine a room that belongs entirely to you.

Then fill it with the things that somehow feel like they belong there.

A book.

A photograph.

Your grandfather’s watch.

The guitar from your favorite album.

A prop from a movie.

Anything.

The only rule is that it has to mean something to you.

And that last part is more important than it sounds.

Stop Choosing the Impressive Answer

If I asked you to put ten objects in a room that represented who you are, there’s a good chance you'd immediately start editing yourself.

We choose things that make sense.

Things that make us look sophisticated.

The profound novel.

The important painting.

The great work of cinema.

But what if the thing that actually belongs there is a plastic lightsaber?

Put the damn lightsaber in there.

Nobody's grading your cave.

There is no audience.

And that's precisely what makes the exercise useful.

Taste becomes interesting when nobody is watching.

Think about the movies you love.

Not the ones you think are the greatest.

The ones that somehow belong to you.

The movie you've seen thirty times.

The scene you can recite.

The character you've carried around since childhood.

Why that one?

We rarely ask.

But I think there's information hiding inside that love.

Something in that movie recognized something in you.

Maybe it gave form to something you couldn't articulate yet.

Maybe a character embodied the person you wanted to become.

Maybe its world offered something yours didn't.

Adventure.

Belonging.

Courage.

When I put Luke Skywalker's lightsaber inside my imaginary room, the important thing isn't the lightsaber.

It's why it's there.

That's the excavation.

Your Taste Leaves Fingerprints

We spend a lot of time trying to figure ourselves out by thinking.

Who am I?

What's my voice?

What's my purpose?

Sometimes those questions are so big that we give ourselves the answers we think we're supposed to give.

So instead of asking who you are, look at the evidence.

What have you loved?

What stories have stayed with you?

What objects have you kept even though they're worthless?

What makes you inexplicably emotional?

Follow those things long enough and patterns begin to emerge.

Your taste leaves fingerprints.

And those fingerprints belong to you.

This Is Where Voice Comes From

Artists spend an enormous amount of time trying to "find their voice."

I hear it constantly.

How do I find my voice as a filmmaker?

I don't think you find it by trying to be original.

You find it by becoming more honest about what has already marked you.

The filmmakers you love.

The stories that still make you cry.

Your obsessions.

Your contradictions.

Your wounds.

Your sense of humor.

The things you find beautiful that somebody else doesn't understand.

That's the raw material.

Your artistic voice isn't something you manufacture.

It's what begins to appear when you stop filtering out the things that are genuinely yours.

Whose Room Are You Living In?

There's another reason I think this exercise matters.

Because if you're not careful, the world starts furnishing your room for you.

Success belongs here.

Money belongs here.

Followers belong here.

This job title belongs here.

This is what a serious filmmaker likes.

This is what a successful person looks like.

Eventually, you can build an entire life out of things you never chose.

Then one day you look around and wonder:

Whose room is this?

I think that's one of the great dangers of adulthood.

We become very good at constructing lives and very bad at asking whether the life we're constructing still resembles us.

That's why your Cave of Your Ancestors isn't really a place to escape.

It's a place to investigate.

Go inside and look around.

Why that photograph?

Why that book?

Why that movie?

Why did something you haven't thought about in twenty years immediately appear the moment you imagined the room?

Don't judge the answers.

Study them.

Somewhere underneath all of it, you may begin finding what I call your Core.

The things that remain true beneath the career, the résumé, the successes and failures.

Look at the Evidence

The world is constantly offering its opinion about who you should be.

Eventually, the world's version of you can become louder than your own.

That's when you go back to the cave.

Sit with the sword.

Pick up the book.

Look at the photograph.

Turn on the lightsaber.

And ask:

Why did I choose this?

Not what it says about you to somebody else.

What it says to you.

That's part of what I mean when I talk about The Director Within.

Directing your life doesn't mean controlling everything that happens to you.

Sometimes it means learning where to point your attention.

So build the room.

Fill it honestly.

Then look around.

You may discover you've been leaving yourself clues your entire life.

Don't just direct your movies.

Direct your life.