Fortress Film Quotes

In my fortress, in the Via Appia Antica in Rome, I wrote the first script for my film PAGANINI. It was not a script in the common sense. Not even a testament. And yet it was more than that: A shorthand note, which I had received on a wavelength of an earlier life over the distance of centuries away . For the time being, I did not require more. The structure of my film originated in the instinct: Notes. Notes of music. Notes of captured images (and dialogues). Notes of feelings. Everything else I would decide in the course of the actual shooting.

Worked quite satisfactorily. It's nice here, very cosy. There are lots of snakes in the woods, and blackberries which nobody picks. Yesterday we went to the upper part of Bagno-Vignoni. A 'village' consisting of a few houses, a fortress wall, a tower, a church. It'll be very cheap to live there while we are filming. It will cost us practically nothing. In fact one could evidently even buy a house there for very little. It is an amazing place, a kilometre from Bagno-Vignoni. About an hour and a half from Rome by car

Nowhere was this theme more trenchantly presented than in the last major film production of the Third Reich, Kolberg. This was an epic period drama set in the eponymous fortress, where Gneisenau and Schill collaborated with the civil authorities in the town to hold the numerically superior French at bay. Against all odds – and contrary to the historical record – the French are forced to fall back and the town is unexpectedly saved by a peace treaty. Here was the image of Prussia as a kingdom of the pure will, holding out by courage and fortitude alone. The film’s purpose was obvious enough; it was a call to mobilize every last resource against the enemies who were closing in around Germany. It was, as the director Veit Harlan put it, a ‘symbol of the present

Here we reach a favorite assertion of film nerds: Did you know Star Wars was based on Hidden Fortress? Except no, it really wasn’t.

I call this the Fortress Fallacy, because it’s as if we imagine that we will build a giant fortress when we’ve never laid a single brick in our lives. We want to open a Michelin-star restaurant, but we still haven’t gone past microwave nachos. We want to write a novel, but we’ve never written anything longer than a quick email. We want to direct a feature film, but we’ve never tried anything beyond posting a video of our cat on Facebook. As a result, one of two things happens: Either we do nothing more than fantasize, and never start, or we do start, but we lead ourselves into burnout. When we fantasize about the fortress in our mind, we can actually get pleasure out of it. This becomes a source of procrastination. If we believe we’re going to make a grand masterpiece, we can justify not starting. Our egos will fool us into thinking that we need to do more research, or that we just need to carve out a few months of free time to rent a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, we live inside the dangerous joy of our daydreams.

To overcome the Fortress Fallacy, all you have to do is recognize that you tend to dream beyond your current abilities. Don’t let your own dream intimidate you into not starting, or lead you into burnout when you do start. Instead, like Evel Knievel’s dream of jumping over the Grand Canyon, let your dream be a guide. Like Hugh MacLeod’s business-card doodles, start small, and over time, you’ll build closer and closer to that dream. Dream of a Michelin-star restaurant, but start with a dinner party. Dream of a novel, but start with a short story. Dream of a feature film, but start with a short film. Instead of building a fortress, start with a cottage.