Continuing my education: Casablanca

I didn't go to film school. I've stated my thoughts on film school many times -- though never on this blog, so I probably should do a post just to have it on the record -- but the short version is I think it's a vestigial concept that was useful once but is now generally a waste of money, at least in terms of writing or directing. (I think programs for the more technical skills like editing, cinematography, sound and VFX are still useful because there's an element of learning the technology hand-in-hand with the technique, but that's a caveat for another day.)

My point is, for better or worse, what I know about films and filmmaking is largely self-taught. I've always believed that in order to make movies, you have to watch movies, and if there's anything in my life about which I could be considered "religious," it's probably that. I'm fortunate to have been born in the age of the video rental, and my grandparents kept a membership to a Mom & Pop video store through the 80s and 90s, just for me. My late grandfather had two VCRs, so that he could dupe the rental to another tape, and I could watch the movies over and over without having to re-rent them.¹

Still, my movie-watching education has been a curriculum of my own devising, and I have many "classic" films yet to check off the list. See, for example, my being so late to the party re: The Godfather. So here's the latest in what I consider the lifelong continuation of my film education: Casablanca.

So what did I learn?

Well, just to have it said: I liked it a lot. A few re-watches and I might even love it. Well-structured, moved along at a good pace without feeling rushed. And my God, the dialogue! No wonder this movie is so oft-quoted. It's pretty theatrical, even corny sometimes -- and according to IMDB and Wikipedia, the screenwriters themselves acknowledged as much -- but somehow it just all works.

Some of the exchanges between Rick and the less scrupulous denizens of Casablanca are particularly sharp and witty, though like most of the Golden Age films, it has a certain quality to it that initially makes it feel like "very good writing" rather than "believable conversation." Part of it is no doubt the fact that every line had to be very carefully constructed to get approved under the Hays Code. Part of it is the fact that film was still fairly new, and most writers were playwrights first and had a more theatrical style.

But part of it, I think, is outside the writing and in the performance. I think part of it is the way that performers were essentially property, loaned out and traded like baseball cards, generally lacking any passion for the projects they did. They just showed up and read the lines for their day, and it has the (pleasantly) odd, workmanlike, even formal feel that I've frankly come to appreciate about the old films.

They're almost like feature-length demonstrations of the Kuleshov effect, in which you're presented with films which give you, as an audience member, very little in the way of emotional inflection; and yet by the things that the characters say and do, it stimulates your own emotions and even causes you to project emotions onto the characters who are otherwise not expressing them.²

There's not a lot of screaming, or sobbing, or contorting of faces, or even moving much faster than a brisk walk. But in that stark simplicity -- whether it was by design, or simply an inevitable result of the assembly-line nature of Golden Era filmmaking (and I suspect the latter) -- they created a canvas with strong outlines, leaving it to the audience to complete the picture. And engaging the audience, as I said just recently, is a crucial factor in whether or not they give a damn about the movie while they're sitting in their seats, to say nothing of when they leave the theatre. I can definitely see why people might prefer this style to the more raw, even if perhaps more "real," style of acting today.

A modern disciple of this style would be David Mamet, from whose book On Directing Films I apprehended "inflection" as a filmmaking term (though I don't know for certain if he coined it). He generally seems to allow a single character a single emotional outburst in his dialogue-heavy films; otherwise the performances are very calm, restrained, and straightforward. Yet in that calm, because of the situations he creates, there is somehow anger; or fear; or arrogance; uncertainty; desperation; triumph -- all created by juxtaposition of the words and images, rather than the actors actively emoting. And because the emotions are not expressed, they are breathtakingly potent, boiling beneath the surface. (I still need to do my review of last year's phenomenal Redbelt, in which I can get into this more deeply.)

This is also, I would venture a guess, why many people of my generation and younger find these kinds of movies "boring." They are not used to having to do part of the storytelling work, are used to taking emotional cues from the actors' faces and tone of voice rather than their choice of words. It is a different kind of movie, a more challenging kind of movie for both the audience and (if he's doing it intentionally) the filmmaker. It relies on both sides of the equation placing a certain degree of trust into the other, and a certain degree of effort into the creation of something that can become intensely personal to everyone who views it. And it keeps the movie alive and relevant, because part of its vibrancy comes from the viewer, not from the screen.

In short, I learned for myself why Casablanca is a classic. I'm glad that I watched this before many other films, because a less-quotable film may not have caught my attention and helped me understand my role in the filmmaking experience -- both expanding it as a viewer, and perhaps contracting it when I'm in the hot seat. I think I will appreciate films of the era more, having experienced Casablanca first, and I do think it will improve my own filmmaking. It deserves its place in the pantheon of great films.

Instead of closing out this post with one of the old standard quotes -- "looking at you, kid," "beautiful friendship," etc. -- I'll go with one that Peter Lorre's character says in his one scene in the film (though I bet they used his name prominently in the advertising).

I use it because I think it relates perfectly to the odd way that the actors' and filmmakers' dispassionate, occasionally even hostile relationship with Golden Age material could sometimes, somehow, produce films of profound, lasting truth and power:

You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca. But somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.

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1. That's right, my grandfather was pirating movies decades before it was cool. He even duplicated the FBI warning telling you not to do that, the deliciousness of which I appreciated when I got older.
   
   On a footnote side-note: despite my grandfather being perfectly capable of understanding how to daisy-chain two VCRs together and having one record to another, while still outputting the movie to the television so I could watch and dupe simultaneously, the clocks on both VCRs flashed 12:00 for the entirety of my formative years. ↩


2. The Kuleshov effect technically only refers to two images juxtaposed, via editing, without inflection, or any sort of visual "editorializing" telling you what to think; and yet their juxtaposition creates an implied statement or emotion. But I would say that this applies equally to two lines of dialogue presented in the same manner. ↩

Newsweek drops the ball

What the hell, Newsweek. You act like you want to be taken as a serious journalistic source for, you know, news. And yet you go publishing this utter nonsense about a supposed re-emergence of Lamarckist theory?

The short version of Lamarckist theory is that it is "evolution via acquired traits." The article gives a good example of the theory, which is that giraffe's necks got longer because short-necked giraffes stretched their necks to reach the trees, and their offspring were born with the longer necks. This is tantamount to claiming that if a very light-skinned person spends a lot of time in the sun and gets tan, he or she will have tan-skinned offspring. The theory is obviously absurd to us today, but before Darwin hit on natural selection, the jury was still out on how exactly evolution took place (although the fact that it did take place was not generally under dispute).

The explanation of Lamarckism is about the only thing this article gets right.

First of all, what the hell is this Sharon Begley character doing writing Newsweek's science articles? A glance at other articles to her credit include "Can God Love Darwin, Too?" and "Science Finds God." I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

She starts this article with the following:

Alas, poor Darwin. By all rights, 2009 should be his year, as books, museums and scholarly conclaves celebrate his 200th birthday (Feb. 12) and the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species" (Nov. 24), the book that changed forever how man views himself and the creation.

That's right. Not the universe. The "creation."

Oh, but it gets better. From Begley's biography:

Sharon Begley, widely known for her ability to break down complex scientific theories and write about them in simple prose, returned to Newsweek in March 2007 from the Wall Street Journal, where she wrote the "Science Journal" column for five years.

This woman is supposed to be an actual science writer. It would seem that by "breaking down complex scientific theories," the writer of this biography (no doubt Begley herself) means "completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting complex scientific theories, so that they can be explained simply and reach the conclusion she desires."

Though granted, I'm only going off one abysmal article. Maybe her others do better, but I haven't read them so I can't address them. Let's talk about the current article.

Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but their mothers' experiences. If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets, an effect one wag called "bite the mother, fight the daughter." If mom lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. Same DNA, different traits. Somehow, the experience of the mother, not only her DNA sequences, has been transmitted to her offspring.

Second paragraph in, and already she's got so much wrong. Only the mother's DNA sequences are transmitted to her offspring. Her experiences affect the expression of those DNA sequences. Ms. Begley, science writer extraordinaire, seems not to grasp the fundamental difference between a phenotype, and a genotype.

I'm not a programmer, so I can't put this into an actual programming language like a clever blogger, but the developmental process we're talking about basically works like this:

For TRAIT A:
-if CIRCUMSTANCE B is present, express TRAIT A
-if CIRCUMSTANCE B is not present, do not express TRAIT A

That's the very very very simplified version of what we're dealing with here. Begley's article makes it sound like if a water flea's mother is in threatening circumstances, the offspring is spontaneously born with a spiny helmet, apropo of nothing as far as the DNA is concerned.

But the truth of the matter is quite different: the gene for the spiny helmet (TRAIT A) exists in every water flea. It is part of the genotype of that organism. The ones whose mothers were not put in a threatening situation (CIRCUMSTANCE B) simply did not express the trait, meaning that the organisms of the same genotype are of a different phenotype.

It is a well-known principle of gestational development that chemical triggers cause genetic traits to be expressed, or not. For one example, a chemical trigger applied to a human fetus at the right time will cause the fetus to express male traits, i.e. it makes a boy; if that chemical trigger is not applied, the fetus will develop to be a baby girl.¹

It is also well-known that environmental factors can affect both the gametes of an organism, and the development of offspring even after the egg has been fertilized. That's why you shouldn't smoke or drink during pregnancy: it screws up the chemical processes of the body, and as the fetus develops, some important functions may never be triggered on; or some traits that ought to stay off get turned on.

I really shouldn't keep using code analogies since I'm not a programmer, but here goes: Since evolution has been a blind process, extraneous information has not necessarily been culled from the genome to keep things tidy. Each version of the software has added or altered code as needed, but not necessarily subtracted if not needed, only made it inactive. There's a lot of legacy code in our genes, some of which can be very harmful if it is re-activated.

All that to say that the existence of a life-threatening situation simply results in a particular chemical trigger that kicks in during some water fleas' gestational development, causing them to express different traits than water fleas without that chemical trigger.

It is not a level of science that is outside the understanding of a layperson, and certainly not an observation that gives those who accept Darwinian evolution "heart palpitations" as she claims. If a human woman experiences a great deal of stress during pregnancy it can affect the child's development, too. This is no different in principle, the only difference is that the water flea genome has a contingency trait should that situation arise (TRAIT A for CIRCUMSTANCE B).

Begley makes another example about the diets of pregnant mice affecting traits in their offspring, by altering the DNA of their eggs (gametes). Begley "emphasizes" that "this is not a mutation," and Begley is frankly stupid to do so. Of course this is a mutation. The alteration of DNA is the definition of genetic mutation.

Let me emphasize something in my own turn: what she is talking about are not acquired traits. The mother flea does not get a spiny helmet from somewhere else and pass that onto her kids. The mother rat does not turn brown and pass that onto her kids. They undergo experiences which alter the development of their offspring, either at the DNA level or during key stages in development, to express dormant or recessive traits. That is just standard genetics. Nothing new or revolutionary here at all.

So let's skip right to the end here:

The existence of this parallel means of inheritance, in which something a parent experiences alters the DNA he or she passes on to children, suggests that evolution might happen much faster than the Darwinian model implies. "Darwinian evolution is quite slow," says Whitelaw. But if children can inherit DNA that bears the physical marks of their parents' experiences, they are likely to be much better adapted to the world they're born into, all in a single generation. Water fleas pop out helmets immediately if mom lived in a world of predators; by Darwin's lights, a population of helmeted fleas would take many generations to emerge through random variation and natural selection.

It's true that natural selection usually moves fairly slowly. The point, which anyone with even a passing understanding of evolution would manage to grasp, is that those many generations to create the genetic code for helmeted fleas have already occurred, leaving us with the water fleas as we observe them today. The helmets are not a new trait, they are an existing trait that is either expressed or not.

It is certainly interesting that they developed in such a way that allows environmental factors to inform the expression of the trait, rather than just automatically having all water fleas be helmeted. But this is in no way an affront to the theory of evolution via natural selection, and is in fact easily accounted for as a positive survival adaptation. The fact that this article attempts to make it sound like it could invalidate or undermine the theory is not only sensationalism, it's just plain bad science, and Newsweek should be ashamed.

---

1. The human Y chromosome is a modified X chromosome. This throws something of a wrench into the arguments of those creationists who would claim that scientific discoveries are only proving information that has always been in the Bible. Gestational development indicates that Adam, in fact, comes from Eve. ↩

Let's be "Honest"...

A lot of people think I'm a jerk. In fact, probably more than a jerk. A "right prick" as British slang (my favorite type of slang) goes. In particular, the people who know me primarily via the internet.

For a while, especially looking back, I was pretty much a prick. I was young and brash and I was right about EEEEEVERYTHING. Now I'm older and I don't necessarily always feel that way -- I am still usually right, but I'm much more willing to consider the possibility that I'm not.

And now you ask yourself (or maybe you don't, which is part of the issue probably): "Is he being sarcastic, or is he serious?" I'll let you mull it over, because if it's sarcasm it's hardly as funny if I have to say so.

Certainly that's part of it. People who meet me online seem to think I'm a tremendous ass. People who meet me in person generally find me to be very funny and approachable. The problem people have with me, I think, is that I'm honest.

An example:

Recently, a new series came on ABC called Eli Stone. It's about a lawyer with a brain aneurysm who hallucinates musical performances of George Michael songs that also manage to show him the path he's to take in life, and his Chinese-American acupuncturist/spiritual guide has a tendency to insist that Eli may be a prophet. If the description feels cumbersome, then it's captured the show. The description of the show as a male Ally McBeal is about right, if a little less quirky.

We probably wouldn't have wound up watching the show, if not for the fact that Ryan is working on the show as part of the Stargate Digital team. I watched it several weeks late, having a lot to get done and not a lot of time to watch the show. When I watched it, I was struck by one sequence in particular. Eli is up on a mountain in the Himalayas, for reasons that are beyond the point of my story here, and it was SO OBVIOUSLY greenscreen. Like, it was pretty bad overall. But other parts of the show were quite good -- several parts I didn't even know were effects until Ryan told me.

So later that night, Ryan and I were out to dinner and I asked "So, are you involved with the team that does Eli Stone?"

"Yeah, I'm on the show."

"Did you do any of the work on the pilot?"

"Yeah, I did some shots for most of the episodes so far."

"What did you do on the pilot?"

"That stuff where he was up on the mountains."

"Oh...yeah, I thought that stuff was bad."

My other roommates, who were there at the time, were shocked at me. To be fair, it did kind of seem like entrapment where I was getting him to confess to the part I didn't like. But I was honestly hoping that he would say he'd done something else. Someone else might have changed their tune upon finding out what it was. Just veered away with a "Ah, just wondering. Good stuff overall." But that's not what I do. I don't blow smoke up peoples' asses, and at any rate Ryan isn't someone who wants smoke blown up his.

After that, I discussed with Ryan why I didn't think it worked. For example, the background was too sharp to be strictly "correct" as a composite. But that's what the client wanted ("We paid a lot of money for that shot, we want to see it in focus"). If I had just told him good job and patted him on the back, neither of us would have learned anything. In this case, I was the one who learned a lesson about being a good client and trusting the artisan to know the right thing to do.

I believe in being honest. For one thing, that's the best way to learn. For another, even if it means I'm often critical, it also means that if I'm praising someone for something, they know that I mean it, because I wouldn't say it if I didn't. I don't think that my opinion of something ranks too highly on anyone's scale right now, but I do think that people value it for what it is. If I don't like something, I'll say so, and I'll say why. If I say I like it, I really do like it, and no one ever has to wonder if I was "just being nice", because that's not how I roll.

The other benefit is that I engender the same honesty in return. If I was strongly critical of someone's work, then when I come out with my own work, they're more likely to be critical back at me. If they thought I was particularly harsh in my criticisms, they will themselves be harsh in judging my work. To an extent this can mean that the negative reviews I receive need to be parsed -- what part of this really didn't work, and what part of this is just this guy being an asshole because he doesn't like me? But by the same token as above, I know that the positive comments and reviews I receive are genuine. When someone wants to tear me a new one but has to grudgingly admit that I pulled something off, that has way more value than people who are going to tell me anything I do is great.

Honesty is one of the most important traits, and constructive criticism one of the most important skills, that I think anyone can develop, especially working as an "artist" in some form. Both giving it, and taking it.

Now, there's a difference between honest, constructive criticism, and just being an asshole who tears people down. I think that when I was younger, I was probably on the wrong side of that line. I delved into this a little bit in one of my earliest posts, regarding insecurity and what I called the Better-Than Fallacy.

Acknowledging that someone is good at what they do does not equate to denigrating your own talent, and trying to cut someone down or insult them probably just means that you think they make you look bad. Don't be that guy. If someone is good at what they do, you should be getting to know them. If they're better at it than you are, learn from them! Find out how they do what they do. Trade ideas, build a relationship. You can't do it all yourself anyway.

Likewise, realize that being honest doesn't automatically mean that you're right. One extremely important "spoonful of sugar" when giving criticism of some kind is to make it clear that it is coming from your perspective. "I didn't think this worked," "I didn't understand why the character would do something so stupid," "I don't like the color combination here," "I think it would have been better if you'd let someone else have a pass at the script." Whatever.

You can be as harsh as you need to, as long as you remember two things:

1) It is coming from you. You do not speak for everyone and should never make absolute statements like "You shouldn't break the 180-degree rule, you'll confuse the audience." Rather, it should be "When you jumped over the 180-degree line, it confused me. It may just be a guideline, but I find that outside of action scenes it's generally less distracting if it's followed."

Always remember the difference between "This is how it is" and "This is how I see it."

(You may notice that in my blog I sometimes fail to phrase it like this. For one thing, it's more important to do when your criticisms are addressed TO the person; for another, being that this is a personal blog, I'm just assuming that "this is just my perspective" is a given.)

2) Your criticism should be aimed at helping the other person improve what they're doing, to get better. The saying goes "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I disagree with that. Instead of "nice", I would amend it to say "If you can't say anything useful..." Many times you may see something that doesn't avail you to say much that's positive at all. But presumably the person has a passion for what they're doing.

If you're better at what you do than they are, then it's your job either to encourage them and help point them in the direction of where they went wrong, or for all our sakes, just keep your fucking mouth shut.

Now, you're going to come across people who don't actually want constructive criticism. They don't want criticism at all. They just want you to tell them how great they are.

I cannot abide these people. You go out of your way to give them a detailed critique, and they just turn around and start insulting you, or accusing you of being a jerk or trying to make them give up.

As I've always said, if anyone's critique can make you give up on something you supposedly want to do, you probably didn't really have a passion for it anyway, and it's better that you quit anyway. If you DO want to do it, then nothing anyone says will deter you. So don't ever let anyone tell you that you've killed their dream, and don't you DARE be someone who tries to put that shit on someone else.

I just thought of a third thing to keep in mind:

3) You're learning too. Whenever you critique someone, you're articulating why you feel the way you feel about what they've done. It helps you understand your own sensibilities and your own work better when you give an honest, informative critique.

Anyway, I usually like to wrap up my posts better than this, but my writing brain's attention is kind of split between this and the script that I've got to finish in the next seven days, and this wasn't the topic I originally set out to talk about when I started writing this entry. So I'll just say that's all I can think of right now, and if I think of more, I'll write another post about it (questions and comments always help!).

fxphd, continued

I just got an e-mail today containing a link to a preview video for the term. It's a torrent so it should download quickly.

This is the 0-Week "Background Fundamentals" course. The e-mail contained specific permission for me to include this here -- I can't post any other classes during the term.

Still, check it out if you're remotely interested, or even just kinda bored.

Get your learn on...

For those of you who may have made a New Year's resolution to learn something new, allow me to pimp my latest intellectual ride:

fxphd is a website that hold 10-week "terms", during which you sign up for three courses and take one class a week in each course, consisting of a video about 30-60 minutes in length. There are many different "Tracks". I signed up because they started a production track featuring the RED camera, and I really only wanted the one course but you have to do a minimum of three. So I took a Shake course and a Color course.

I have to say, it's the best value I think I've ever gotten from a training course. I did the whole nine with the college degree and all, 18 years of school from preschool to postgrad, and I've never been so interested in "going to class" as I am with fxphd.

They have the production track, as I mentioned, and they have a motion graphics track, a design track, and many software-specific courses. It's just a great resource and they are very passionate about making sure everyone gets the most out of their courses.

I've signed up for the new term and there's a bunch of very exciting classes that I'm going to have trouble choosing between. If you do sign up, make sure you put my username (DorkmanScott) as a referral. If you do, I get an extra class, and that makes choosing easier.

Next week is "Week 1", you can sign up any time until Week 6 for the term. It's not pocket money for most normal people ($330 for the basic tuition), but it's cheaper than a semester in a trade school and if you're serious about learning post-production skills it's totally worth your while.

Talent vs. Skill

I spend a lot of time on various internet message boards (way more than I ought to), and I see a lot of people asking, essentially, whether it is possible to teach talent. Often this is part of a discussion on film school (which I'll save for another post), but the question is general enough: can you teach talent?

To me, the answer is a definite no. I believe that, like many other things, talent is inborn. You have a certain amount of it and you can't get any more talented over time, because talent is a natural thing. One might APPEAR to become more talented in something, but that is in fact a development of skill.

As I see it, talent is your capacity to achieve something. In artistic endeavors, the word most frequently used is vision. In physical pursuits, like sports, a person is said to be or have "natural talent", which I'm arguing here is redundant -- although I think "raw talent" is still valid.

The example is most easily illustrated by continuing with a physical example. Pick a sport, any sport. If you take two people who have never played the sport before, and teach them both the same way at the same time, and chances are one of them is going to be better at it than the other. He will learn faster, understand more quickly, and surpass his "peer", sometimes almost effortlessly.

Another example. You take two people who can't draw, and you teach them. Or some other artistic pursuit -- painting, 3D animation, whatever. Teach them all the same information, and test them to ensure that they both possess the same knowledge with their tools and the attendant skillset. Then ask them to create something. One of them may bring back something absolutely astonishing, while the other will bring back something straight out of his lessons, or similar to it.

The one who made something astounding didn't gain talent from his training, he just learned the skills necessary to express his talent using the given tools. Talent is the ability to create art, skills are the physical or mental processes to facilitate that art.

In film, it is perfectly possible to be a highly-skilled filmmaker without being particularly talented. An example I always use is Chris Columbus. Columbus is a very skillful filmmaker. He knows where to put the camera, he knows how to cover a scene, he knows how to put the world of the film in front of the lens. He puts the page, on the screen. His productions are well-made technically, but they are not art. He's got all the skills a filmmaker needs, but not the talent/vision to make his films soar. They simply get the job done.

The reason I like to use Chris Columbus is because I can then compare him to Alfonso Cuaron, as they both made films in the Harry Potter series. Comparing the first two films to the third is completely night and day. Cuaron took more license with the story, but still got all the major beats across and managed to make the world feel like it existed, not like a storybook land. I could gush about Cuaron's use of the camera for hours (especially if we bring Children of Men into it), but the point is that I'm not sure that there's any technical knowledge Cuaron has that Columbus doesn't. Cuaron just has a vision of what he wants to do with it, whereas Columbus has a sense of where it's "supposed" to go.

Everyone has a talent, and everyone's talent is different. And even if you learn the skills for something, without talent you'll be mediocre; above-average at best.

Personal example: I enjoy music. I was in the band in high school and I think I have the capacity to learn all the skills I would need to be a composer. But the problem is, I lack the talent. I could learn HOW to write music, but no one could teach me WHAT to write. A true composer (several of which I have the good fortune to know and work with) hears music all the time, and the skills are merely employed to get it from his head into a form that others can understand and appreciate. I can't be a composer because I don't hear the music.

All that being said, I've left out one important component, the one I'll argue is MOST important: passion. Remember that vague sports analogy above? Well, no matter how much talent the one guy has, if the other guy has more passion, he might be a better player, because he cares more. It's the whole point of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. No matter how talented you are at something, it's worth nothing if you don't put your all into it.

I know a few people who I think are ridiculously talented, but they either lack the skills to fully explore their talent, or the passion to bother. It drives me up the wall, because if I had the talent they did, I'd never stop. It's difficult to be passionate about something, but not have the talent, and see someone with all the talent you wish you had and none of the passion.

On the flip side, even if you have the talent for something, why do it if it's going to make you miserable? Isn't it better to do something you may not be the best at, as long as you love it? Here's where I give the resounding yes. Because you know what? You'll never be the best at whatever you're doing. Someone will always be better. You might as well have a reason to get up in the morning.

So between the three, the most important thing to have is passion. Learn all the skills you'll need, and if you happen to be lucky enough to have talent, too, you'll rise to the top. And even if not, with the right passion and skills, you can have a long and satisfying career doing what you love.