Original subtitles

I always say ideas are everything.

So I go where the ideas lead.

It could be to the painting studio.

It could be to an office to work on a computer.

It could be a sound, you know, room to work on sound.

You go where the ideas are telling

you to go where you're fired up to do this or that.

And that leads you to those places.

We're nothing without an idea.

We don't know what to do without an idea.

And the idea tells us everything.

So it's common sense that ideas are super important.

And I love the idea of catching ideas.

And they're out there, millions and millions of ideas.

And we don't know them until they enter the conscious mind.

And then we know them.

And we see them and hear them and feel them.

We know the mood of them, even if it's just

a small fragment of what could be a whole film or a painting

or whatever.

We fall in love with it for some reason.

Something inside us says, this is a great idea for me.

And then you write that idea down

on a piece of paper in such a way

that when you read what you wrote,

the idea comes back in full.

Super important to write down your ideas

so you don't forget them.

I think I've forgotten three incredible ideas in my life.

So write down your ideas and save them because they're--

it's very important.

And then we can talk more about catching ideas.

But I do equate catching ideas with the thing of fishing.

You have to have patience.

And I say a desire for an idea is like a bait on a hook.

And it's like putting a little piece of bait on the hook

and lowering it into the water.

And then you don't know when they're going to come

or what will trigger them.

But lo and behold, on a lucky day, bingo.

You'll catch a fish.

You'll catch an idea.

And like I say, you don't see the fish down there.

But when you bring it up out of the water,

that's like the idea coming into the conscious mind.

You see the fish.

You see the details of it, you know,

the fish's eyes, the mouth, the fins,

all the shiny little scales.

You fall in love with this little fish.

And you write that idea down.

And now you have even more bait.

And you kind of lower that fish in.

And other fish will swim to it that are part of that school.

And you'll catch more and more fragments.

And a script will start emerging.

And it kind of goes like that for me.

Another analogy is there's someone

in the other room with a puzzle that's completely together.

And they flip little one piece at a time in to me.

So you can imagine, the first pieces of puzzle,

they don't relate to anything.

You might love the colors of them or the shape of them

or something about them.

But you just save those.

And then more come in, more come in.

And then you start seeing something emerge.

And finally, the puzzle is finished.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When we get an idea that we love, it feels very, very good.

You see it and feel it and know it all at once.

But it's all at once.

And it comes with, like, I always

say, like a spark of electricity,

a inspiration kind of thing.

But then you kind of calm down and more leisurely examine it.

And on examining it, it's like you turned on your TV.

And the first thing was like a white flash.

And then it kind of comes into--

it pops on a image.

And that's the image.

Then out comes a sound and a feeling, and you just see it.

And then you write down what you see and what you hear

and the mood.

And you feel very, very good.

You've got something.

If it's a cinema idea, I like them for two reasons.

One is the idea of itself.

And the other is the way cinema could say that idea.

And then you got something.

And all you have to do then is focus on that.

And that focusing means lowering it back

into the water on a hook and waiting.

I say intuition is the number one tool really

of the human being.

Intuition, the way I think about it,

is mind and emotion, intellect and emotion, together.

It's a feel thinking.

It's a knowingness, a knowingness.

And it is extremely important.

Everybody has this, but I don't think

everybody has the same amount.

It's like consciousness.

They say every human being has consciousness.

But not every human being has the same amount.

The potential, however, for every human being

is infinite consciousness, enlightenment,

supreme enlightenment.

And we could talk about that sometime too.

And intuition is tied tightly to consciousness.

You can't just wish for more intuition.

You can't just imagine you have more intuition.

Same way with consciousness.

You can't just wish for more.

You can't just imagine more.

You got to go where it is and get more.

It's like fishing.

You can put your hook on a desert

and lay it on a desert in the sand.

You wait for a long time for a fish.

Maybe it's huge, huge ages of time

before water and fish come.

Anyway, so you've got to go where the treasure is.

I guess the analogy is the chef doesn't make the fish.

The chef just cooks the fish.

And the chef can cook it really, really high end, fantastic.

Or they can cook it very poorly, maybe not even cook it

all the way through and people get sick.

But the chef doesn't make the fish.

Just like these ideas--

the person catching the idea doesn't make the idea.

It's crazy.

We really rely on these gifts to do anything.

A lot of ideas come from our world.

And our world holds a lot of violence--

violence in the homes, violence on the streets,

violence in the city, violence in the country,

violence in all the countries, a lot of violence,

a lot of corruption, a lot of suffering, a lot of tension,

anger, hate, fear, a lot of mistakes.

Prisons are full.

Hospitals are full.

It's a mess.

And it doesn't have to be this way, but it is the way it is.

And ideas come from our world.

Stories emerge from our world.

And stories involve things that are in the world.

You know, I always say have the suffering and the violence

and all the things of human nature

negative and positive in this script, in the film,

in this book, but not in your life,

and that you don't have to suffer to show suffering

on the screen or in a book.

You can be very happy showing suffering.

And that's the key to things.

Stories, all through time, have had conflict

and all these different things.

But the ideas come from the world.

They come from other places, it seems, also.

But a lot come from just our world and the feeling

of being in this world conjures these stories that come.

Many things from our childhoods stick with us,

from our world, our friends, experiences, feelings, dreams.

All these things go into the hopper.

And they swim around.

And new things come in.

All these new things come in.

And they swim around.

And if you have time to daydream,

they can conjure some things.

And it's a very beautiful story.

And everybody has these things swimming about.

And the possibility is there that they can trigger ideas.

Everyone's hopper is pretty full.

And they say that the window to the hopper

is wide open when we're growing up taking in all these things.

And for safety's sake, that window

starts closing at a certain point.

And you start working with what you've got in there.

There's a story.

When I lived in Boise, Idaho on Park Circle Drive, one night--

I think it was around 9:30--

you know, in the '50s, in small towns,

there were street lights.

But they were dimmer than the lights of today.

And it was near a street light near a street called

Shoshone Avenue.

And across the way--

I was with my younger brother--

out of the darkness came a woman completely naked.

And she had skin the color of milk.

And she wasn't walking quite properly.

I didn't understand exactly what was wrong.

And there might have been some blood on her mouth.

She was pretty much oblivious to me and my brother

as she came out of the darkness and walked

and sat down on a curb.

And I never seen an adult woman naked.

And it was quite a powerful experience.

And I knew that she was hurt in trouble.

And I wanted to help her.

But I didn't know what to do.

It's not every day that you see a battered, nude woman come out

of the bushes.

But these kind of things happen.

And then in this story, this happened.

Right in front of your own stupid house.

Get out of here!

Mike!

Mike, please.

Mike, stop it!

Shut up!

Just shut up, all right?

Nobody's talking to you.

Come on, Mike.

Look, I don't wanna cause any harm.

Who's that, huh?

Is that your mother?

Is that your mother, Jeffrey?

No, come here, you Ivy League shit.

I gotta take care of someone who's hurt,

if you didn't notice.

Dorothy Vallens?

Come on.

As far as people thinking, well,

I don't have anything to say, maybe you don't.

But on the other hand, that might be the wrong way

to look at it.

What might be better is to just daydream and catch

some things that start a flow of ideas

just to see if a story comes that you like.

And more ideas can come.

More ideas can come.

And there might be something that you find inside

that you really love.

And then you say, oh, wait a minute.

I do have something to say.

I could say this thing that came to me.

So it goes like that.

Having time, which is so difficult in today's world,

having time to daydream, to sit by yourself and daydream.

It's really, really important for catching ideas and going

over things just daydreaming.

From the outside, it looks like maybe you

should take this person not necessarily to a hospital

but to maybe a psychiatrist, or tell him to get a job.

But it's real important.

You're doing-- looks like you're doing nothing.

But what you're doing is so important for catching ideas

to have that time to sink into daydreaming because it

can go deeper and deeper.

And you can catch things that you

can't catch in any other way.

As I said, I think, that in this world today,

people don't have a lot of time to daydream.

But that's where-- one place where it can happen.

But it could also happen at any moment doing anything.

Because in the back of your mind, you've got that desire.

You just keep that desire going, you can catch ideas.

These fish can be flying fish.

They don't need water.

They fly right to you.

What scares fish away, or makes it more difficult,

is stress, depression, sorrow, anxieties, tension,

traumatic stress, hate, anger, and fear.

All these things are in the family of negativity.

And they restrict a lot of things.

They restrict happiness.

And they restrict, you know, sleep.

And you get fatigued.

Fatigue is not good for catching ideas.

And they, like I say, squeeze the tube

through which the ideas flow.

They cloud the mind, all these things.

So give yourself a chance to get those ideas.

And at the same time, bring all these positive things along

with them, things that you're going to need like energy

and like awareness, understanding.

And you know, it's real important.