Your Best Work Starts When You Stop Trying To Control It with Pen Densham

Cold Open On Failure And Why

Pen Densham 0:00

The things I didn't do are the ones at a hundred percent failure rate. They all said that's the stupidest idea. Our writing assistant, encouraging people can become so valuable. You have to have a why. I never knew I could be capable of the things I've achieved. Passion causes you to fight harder and longer because there's so much more of you.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Speaker 1 0:20

The most powerful work comes when we stop trying to control it and start listening to it. Welcome to the Heart of Show Business. I am your host, Alexia Melocchi. I believe in great storytelling and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart to create a ripple effect in our society. Hello to all my listeners of The Heart of Show Business. I have a very special guest with me today on season eight, episode two. I can't believe I'm eight seasons in. But I have with me someone who has lived storytelling at the highest level. He's an acclaimed filmmaker with Oscar nominations, honored with a medal from the Queen Elizabeth of England. Not just the scale of his success, it's the evolution of his voice. His work lives in a completely different space today. Through photography, he invites us into what feels like visual music, sensory, emotional, almost meditative. His images don't just capture nature, but they reveal it. Welcome to my show, Penn.

Pen Densham 1:33

Thank you so much, Alexa. I'm excited to chat with you.

Alexia Melocchi 1:37

I'm so happy to be chatting with you because you've built a career telling stories on a massive scale. So, what pulled you towards something so intimate and there I say spiritual in the word of photography?

Errors Of Omission And Allies

The Robin Hood Pitch Nobody Wanted

Pen Densham 1:51

Well, my folks were, I was very young, were making short films, went into the movie theaters. The people would just gather around, and there was a fascination of it. And I was also taken when they went to the distributors, and the movies were being shown in this giant place and on this giant screen. And I fell in love with the magic of it. And I'd never lost that sense that I wanted to be involved in casting spells. If one could be in this world with cameras and storytelling. And my mom died when I was eight, and my life went into a very dark place. My father was not a very good custodian of us. He married a woman who was very troubled, and we were put in foster homes for a while. And I know what it's like to be in an orphanage. All that time I I would carry cameras. I was desperate to try and write. I was constantly trying to find a way of evolving my creativity and being put down by my stepmother, my father. And in some ways, some people were trying to help you and they put you down. Oh, don't have dreams that are above your abilities, then you won't be disappointed. Well, I don't believe in that. I believe that somehow or other one has to fulfill the things they are. And if you can get close to your voice, to your nature, you're more likely to succeed. I left school at 15 after winning the school photography prize, being the uh head the head the lead in the school play and being uh able to write some articles for the school magazine. It's never gonna get any better. So I I left and went to work in photography and uh managed to photograph the Rolling Stones when I was 17 for the BBC. And but a lot of the time I really felt like I was a failure. I was not David Bailey, I was not the Rolling Stones, I wasn't that kind of success that we saw in England at that time. And I literally fled to Canada thinking I was washed up and old at 19, and found a culture where people were sharing ideas and kids were 21-year-old people were exchanging cameras and helping each other make movies, and there was the government putting films into the theaters that were short films and paying people to make them. And I'm I'd never seen anything like this. And when when you describe me as a success, I want to describe myself as someone who won't quit, but not a success. Because I've got as many failures, and I when people say to me, What is your what's your biggest mistake? I say my errors of omission. The things I didn't do are the ones at 100% failure rate. And the things that I tried to do, once in a while, they actually worked. I say, surround yourself with good people. I managed to find a partner, a guy called John Watson, my wingman, and I would bounce my ideas off him, and he was always looking to find ways of getting things done that he believed in. And I think it's really important to choose your allies as a creative person. You're always going to come across the pragmatics and the people you have to sell to at some point. But before you deal it, you must deal with the people who are there to help you push through the pain of giving birth and understand spiritually what your goals are and try and guide you to the best version of what you're trying to achieve and not tell you that won't sell or that's not the right idea. Because ideas are so ephemeral at the beginning. And you don't shout at little children who can't walk yet. I'd had a son with my wife, and we'd had an emergency cesarean giving birth to him. I wanted to make a movie where helping people with altruistic heroism. And I pitched my Robin Hood with an Arab as a Muslim partner to three studios, and they all said that's the stupidest idea. And our writing assistant. I think it's a wonderful idea. If there's anything I can help you do, and it was because that person suggested it, I started writing it on spec. And that exists without that encouragement. So encouraging people can become so valuable. And that movie ended up one of the biggest movies of the year, one of the biggest movies. My partner John and I got to produce it, got to work with Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman. I saw killing people as being regressive. And here I wanted to make a statement where a rich son illustrates for us that it can become the person who's willing to die for his peasants' futures and their children. And um that that's what I see when I look at my Robin Hood. But we wrap it all up in adventure and fun and entertainment, but inside is a purpose.

Alexia Melocchi 6:19

Yeah, yeah. And you know what? I love it because your why is so clear. And I always say to filmmakers and creatives, you have to have a why. It's not just about making the next commercial thing or what the audience wants or what you feel the market or the studios are going to say yes to. Your why has to come through as you're pitching it in the room, as you said. You had a very strong why. Was it a familiar story? Yes, it was. Of course, everybody knows the tale of Robin Hood, but you had a very clear why and a very clear purpose as to why you wanted to tell the story your way on your own timing.

Life Scripts And Creative Risk

Pen Densham 6:55

And one film noticed by a gentleman called Norman Jewson, who did Russians are coming, the heat of the night, Oscar nominations for and his movies always had a why. And when we first came here, I didn't think I was good enough to write screenplays. I thought the Hollywood people knew how to write, and that I was just this church mouse that had been invited in by Norman. And I realized he could see in film potential that I didn't know I had. And that that that's something I want to share with people because I never knew I could be capable of the things I've achieved. They they came out of me out of fear sometimes, and you still struggle to get them out of you and you you fight to do it. Um, but when when they do, there is much more in you if you're pursuing your passion. And I learned that the scripts I wrote for myself, like Robin Hood, which I wrote on spec, no one paid me. I wrote a script called Mulflanders, which was the most powerful emotional experience I've ever had in my life. And it was a script that that I knew spiritually was in me after I wrote Robin Hood, because there was a gut instinct, literally this like I liken it to a story sausage in my gut, that I was gonna write this woman's historical adventure and the it was gonna be one of the most important emotional events of my life. And I and I searched for the opening of why and how, and I and it took a year before it suddenly came out of me. And when it did come out of me, it was like an emotional gusher. I wrote the thing in a in a in passion and joy. Uh, I didn't tell my my male partners I was writing a script because I knew with the best will in the world, they were trying to tell me not to do it. It's a historical movie, it's never gonna get made. How do you know you can even write a woman? Um, so I didn't ask them their permission, I just wrote it in in secret while doing my other work. And I call the scripts that I've written that way life scripts. Oh and they come out of me and they come out of other people, I think. And that's your voice. And that's the thing that passion causes you to fight harder and longer because there's so much more of you. And the message in it um was because I'd had a daughter, and I wanted to write a story about a woman who was flawed and made mistakes, but never lost her daughter's love. And um, there's a birth scene in that movie, as there is a birth scene in Robin Hood, and I cry when I see it because metaphorically it's our daughter being born, and in Robin Hood, there's an emergency cesarean where Kathy Morgan Freeman's character helps to um give give uh the the chief of the woodsman's wife uh get her baby out of using a cesarean, which the Arabs knew how to do. And our son was born with an emergency caesarean, and it was the first scene that the director didn't want to shoot. And uh I begged Kevin Costner to get it shot um because I felt even though we were writing an adventure, putting a child on the screen demonstrated what the woodsmen were fighting for, their futures. And um, you know, that that uh I wouldn't have had the passion to fight for it or to ask for Costner to go make sure he got shot unless it was incredibly meaningful to me.

Photographing What Nature Feels Like

Alexia Melocchi 10:17

Yeah, yeah. I love what you said. And I think, you know, I think that the thread that I'm getting from you as to the theme of your creativity and your pursuits that you call them life pursuits and not just creative pursuit. I think it has to do with the curiosity. And I think everybody has to stay curious in life, whether it is, you know, curious about other people, curious about themselves, which is so important, because that's how in the art of contemplation, that's when we get to know ourselves better. And like you said, the voice comes through, which brings me to your photography, because I obviously you've been photographing nature in in this last book. And I want to ask you do you believe that nature holds emotional truths uh that we have forgotten how to access? And does it have to do anything with your desire maybe to contemplate on that a little more?

Pen Densham 11:14

I think you're you're again you're touching something that's wonderful to explore. We forget who we are, and so we and forget what we're surrounded with is the beauty of life, the magic and mystery of it. Um, and I I when I say I want to cast spells, I want to give people an opportunity to feel themselves alive through the images that I make. And I'm saying that I'm taking images where it's what nature feels like and not what it looks like, because I've I've forced myself to break free of the dogmas of photography, which were with the best will in the world for teaching me how to take good photographs, which were copies of what other people had done. We're constantly being taught um, you know, what's a good performance? Well, it's it's we're using illustrations of other people's performances as opposed to expecting us to create something from that music inside us. Um and your your statement about your curiosity, what fires you up, why have you done all these podcasts? And that that drive is it's important to help um bring it out of you because again, uh we we don't know where we're going, but we have a certainty that there's something there. And and that imprecision isn't isn't supported by the education system. You know, when we're raised, we're not told, hey, you're gonna have dreams and they're not gonna be too easy to get to get to, but you know, if you keep trying and they'll get there. We're we're told, no, this guy walked into this room and he sold this project, but he invented the the telephone and and and if you can't do that in one step, you're not gonna succeed. Um, and so part of my process in trying to give back because of what Norman Jewson did to me and changing my life is to also try and share how to how I found ways to overcome self-doubt and to uh encourage people to discover what's in them that they don't know is there yet, but they have instincts that it should be, you know, which is the imprecision of creativity. And my photography, I take more sustenance from abstract painting, Monet, Jackson, Turner, and inside you. They're in your genes. You don't even know they're there because everybody's taught you that. And letting go, you feel this is stupid, this is foolish. And then after a while, it was because I saw my daughter using my cameras when I would sort of put them aside and was just concentration filmmaking. And no one had Twitter or anything, and photographs were naive and poetic and weren't focused on saying normal places and there was mystery and poetry to them. And I said, I've been doing this wrong. I gotta stop saying what's right, what if? And that journey has brought me immense pleasure. I'm taking images that I can't believe that I'm capable of. I'm still doubting that I can. I'm I go out every time with the camera, uncertain. But what I do is I say, what does my body want to do? And sometimes it wants to make trees dance by moving the camera during the photography. Sometimes it wants to chase a coy across the stream by moving the camera with it, taking a long exposure, and it looks like streaks of joy. What you've never seen before, to discover its beauty. Because along the way, you say, Well, this is pretty stupid. No one's ever going to want to see this stuff. But the idea of casting spells for me is still in me, even from being a child.

Alexia Melocchi 14:30

Oh, words and images, words have power, images have power, and many times we do not know that we are casting spells without knowing. We're all magicians, people think magic is but like you said, magic is in the simplest things in showing an image that is going to touch someone, in saying a word of encouragement that is going to change someone else's life trajectory. I know that we spoke about this when we were like not recording, but you you like me, you want to

Free Books And The Gift Of Encouragement

Pen Densham 15:04

give back. You had written a book called Writing the Alligator, which I presume was about screenwriting and the process of creativity. And then after that, you went on to write a simple book that you want to give away to the creatives. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, writing the alligator was the book I wanted to read as a screenwriter, but I also wanted to try and help people understand the complexity of being a creative person and the imprecision of being creative. The if it's coming out of you out of your genes, if it's coming out of your zeitgeist, if it's coming out of your cultural existence, that's your voice and that's your nature. Yeah. And how you get it. I've got a coffee table book that's in the form of a PDF of my work called qualia. And qualia is a term, philosophical term for things that can't be described in words. And that was what I wanted my photographs to be so that you as a viewer could feel like a Rosash test almost. How does nature impact you when you see it through fresh ways of it being experienced? And qualia seemed to be the way to and and do that. So at pendentium photography.com, there's a section in there called Books, and both of those books are downloadable for free. Um, and um, my my joy would be that if they help you discover your own creativity or encourage you to take risks and to and to also to be patient with yourself, not to put deadlines on, because just waiting a year to discover if a story would come out of me is normal. And making films is luck more than success. Yeah. I've got some beautiful scripts that will never get made, and they're heartfelt and they're full of passion. In selling, one actually has to put as much effort into selling what you create. But really, what you're doing is selling them something new, but putting handles on it so that they paint how to pick it up.

What Makes Art Timeless

Alexia Melocchi 17:01

Yeah, no, that is so true. Don't do this just for the money. I mean, know that it is a business. And I have one last question for you before we get to the quiz. Um, because this is important. Whether it's film or photography or writing, what do you think makes art timeless?

Pen Densham 17:20

Well, I think uh, you know, biology. Stories were built into us because we evolved to share communication with each other. Tribes of human beings needed to be cohesive so that we could get our young into the future. Tribes then needed storytelling because storytelling made morality normal. And if you can't you can't raise your children in an immoral immoral society because the everybody would steal from you, no one would have a future. So the beauty of human beings is they're mostly moral, where the problem is that some people then pretend that the other people are immoral and it's moral to attack them. And we have to somehow try and fix that.

Alexia Melocchi 18:01

Yeah, that is so true. I always say, you know, the word open and hopeful, I think, would be the things that everybody needs to not.

Gratitude For The People Behind You

Pen Densham 18:08

That would be so difficult for me because I'm usually quite verbose. Um three words. Oh my gosh. Um, I think that's what keeps me going. Um, because that that um, you know, the possibilities are out there. Um even putting my photography out, I have no idea where it's going. I don't quite know why I'm putting it out. An instinctual thing is I must share it, which is why I want to give away the book. And no one knows that I'm here unlike Van Gogh. Um, you know, and I'm I'm I I think that would be a waste of the effort and the energy. So I I want to see if people find something in it that they can enjoy. Um, what was the other question that I should focus

Speaker 18:48

on?

Alexia Melocchi 18:48

Life mantra. If you have a life mantra, any like something, somebody's quote, somebody's sentence, something you created yourself, or you tell yourself in moments of challenge or gosh, that's so interesting.

Pen Densham 19:03

Um, you know, that there's this um when when I made my movie Houdini, it was about a husband and wife, and he and he was constantly looking for adulation by doing these very dangerous things. And I wrote a line for his wife which said, Harry, I could clap to my hands bled before and it would be enough for you. And even though I'm on these journeys and they're selfish in some ways, I must also make sure that I'm serving those people because without them, I wouldn't have the freedom to do this. And I said jokingly say she kept me because um she's been through starting off a company, no money, no funds, holes in our shoes, trying to get money, begging for funds, um, and coming to uh uh Hollywood, giving up her family and you know, leaving behind things. Um, she's been an immense supporter. I don't think it's easy to do this alone. I know there's some people that are very capable of doing it. I I like having allies. My wife doesn't support uh me in the same way that my business partner, John Watson, did different different skill sets. But I think it's important to try and be decent and and supportive of other people and to get back and to make sure that you one appreciates the people that um that that they're around you. I'm looking forward to going shopping with my daughter in a couple of days because it's spring break and it's it's magic there. There's a magic in just spending time with someone you love.

Alexia Melocchi 20:25

So true, so true. And you know what? I actually just recently leave that because my mother was hospitalized and she had life-saving surgery. She's doing well, God bless her little heart. But you know what I, you know, because for me, it was about the exploration of what is possible. A little bit like you, the exploration of hope. So instead of going, is it possible, like always in the negative? Because that's what we tend to do. You know, it's possible that this person will say, No, it's possible this loved one could die. It's possible, it's all like in the negative. I said, What if I try to spin it around? And I just looked at it, and I think what I love about this conversation, uh, Penn, is that I feel it challenges the idea that creativity, we feel it has a final destination, but it just does not. It is evolving. And sometimes the most powerful work comes when we stop trying to control it and start listening to it. And it seems that's exactly what you're doing, which is I am so happy and so blessed you came on my podcast. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

Pen Densham 21:29

Well, no, thank you for telling me I'm a similar part to you. That normalizes it. You know, we'll keep going. We'll both go myself down and keep keep leaping forward and hoping there's a uh something to land on when we get there.

Closing Thoughts And Listener Support

Alexia Melocchi 21:42

No, we will. And and of course, for everybody who's curious about Penn, you can access on his website. You can access his beautiful work of art, you can access his books, you can go see his movies. Because, you know, as we say, all these but goodies, you know, the best movies were not done in the last three. Years and we're down a little earlier than that. We're not gonna go dish on the industry right now, but it's a confused, let's call it out. So I think we made movies, so you made movies in a time where the industry was a little bit less confused, and so we need to keep supporting and watching this type of films and hopefully bringing our filmmakers to continue doing this type of films that have a purpose, that have a voice. Um I think we will because I don't think mankind changes. I think it'll just always be we just need to keep the emphasis on the kind part of man and not the mankind, you know, because it human beings need stories to learn how to love, to learn how to, you know, how to escape creatures, jaws, jurassic, you know, alien. We're not gonna stop telling each other stories because we can't grow, we can't change, we can't, we can't learn without the parables and the myths and the legends. So yeah, it's gonna keep keep going. And that and only the culture and the and the the time and the and the and the clothing will change. No, you're right. And we're all craving connection right now, which you know, in the darkness, yeah, that's when we all come together the most. And I think that's why it's important that you and I keep on doing what we're doing and hopefully keep the lights on while we are also trying to do what we do. And again, thank you for

Speaker 1 23:16

coming. For everybody listening, if you've enjoyed this specific episode, please subscribe, share, review. Again, I don't care if I ever make money on this, but I do want this to go out far and wide. And so if you want to support me and support Penn in our endeavor to be storytellers and championing storytellers, please do so. This is Alexia Melocchi of the Heart of Show Business. Over and out, and as we say in Italy, ciao! Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Heart of Show Business. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the show on your favorite podcast player. If you have any questions or comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at theheartofshowbusiness.com.