I have to say that I am having a problem with calling myself an author.  If somebody asks me to say a little bit about myself, I tell them that I am a filmmaker.  I write, direct, produce, and star in my own films.  This is my identity.

But since I have written a book, I have had to deal with the author label.  I'm a filmmaker.  I write movies.  Although I think what I am doing is an art, it is not a high art.  I don't get the intellectual prestige of an author.  I don't even get the dramatic prestige of a playwright.  I'm looked upon as an entertainer and part of the entertainment field.

I have always been fine with people dismissing me and my work.  It gives me a sort of freedom that is priceless.  As long as people think I am not part of the high art establishment, I can connect with the majority of the population without being over analyzed.  I can communicate ideas without the big words.  That makes me slightly dangerous as an artist.

That is one of the things I have enjoyed about talking to the people who have read my book.  They comment on how easy my book was to read.  I didn't use words that they didn't know.  I spoke their language and dealt with complex issues, thoughts, and emotions.  I was real and accessible.  People don't have to be afraid of my book or feel like they are stupid.  It does me no good to speak if I speak a language that the majority of people do not understand.  The purpose of language is to communicate ideas.  If what you say is not understood, then you have failed in a means of communication that every human being takes part in.

Some people might have a problem with the fact that I wrote my book as if it were an autobiography.  It's the 21st century.  I don't think there is a line of demarcation of where one artistic form ends and another begins.  I can cross-pollinate fiction so that it reads like non-fiction.  I can take my film background and have various characters tell this story in the first person.  I don't need to have a single narrator.  I can have the whole book be a dialogue.  You could take my book and have actors read the passages aloud on the stage.  It would still be successful.