Losing Touch

July 30th, 2008Blog1 comment

One of my current favorite shows is Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. This is where Gordon Ramsay arrives at a failing restaurant, and like Pollyanna, makes the place a success.

Often the current leadership of the restaurant is resistant to Ramsay’s plans. However, his necessity is often self-evident. He’s there to save restaurants on the brink of closure, and despite the fact that the restaurant owners/chefs are facing failure head on, it takes his arrival to wake them up to reality.

What boggles my mind is when these guys serve Ramsay their food and he tells them to their face that it’s shit, they often don’t believe him. On an episode the other night, a chef/restauranteur said “I don’t care how many awards he has — they mean nothing to me.” What?! He has nine Michelin stars. If there’s anyone who truly knows what the fuck is going on, it’s him.

And often their success hinges upon whether they finally GET IT or not. And despite their empty restaurant and lack of customers, it takes Gordon Ramsay coming in to tell them the truth before they finally fucking get it.

Being bitch slapped by reality hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt. It’s a hurt that’s been waiting to happen, and the sooner it happens the sooner you can change course. Like the dude says in his last lecture, if they stop giving you criticism, you’re screwed because they’ve given up on you. They don’t care enough to criticize.

In regards to writing, every now and then someone will say, “Yeah, I’m hoping I won’t have to do any rewrites.” Saying this out loud means that in all likelihood you’re wrong — in fact, you have a TON of rewrites to do. Because it means that you’ve lost touch with your story. Like the chef that’s surprised that his food sucks — he’s lost touch with his food. He has settled for what it is, with all of its warts and problems.

Settling sucks.