Cynematik on IndieWIRE

It's my father's birthday today so the quotes are for him. He and my grandmother (his mother) are certainly the two most influential people in my life. They were both teachers -- he in the military, she in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Wisconsin. I've always tried to please them, to be like them.

One of my favorite stories about my father occurred while I was in junior high school. He was putting a closet in our bedroom (my sister Sandy and I shared a room). It required knocking out a wall. While he was working, he noticed a flaw in one the original construction. Whomever had built the house had mismeasured one of the beams. There was at least a half inch gap that had been filled with a lathe shim. He pointed at the cobbled repair. "Do you see that?" he said. I nodded, waiting for a some sort of negative comment.

"That's a nice repair!" he said. "You know, Cyn, everyone makes mistakes. The question isn't whether or not you'll make mistakes in your work or your life. The question is, how will you fix them."

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there."

    Indira Gandhi (1917 - 1984)

    Indian Politician, granddaughter of Mahatma