The 50th Law - 50 Cent [54]
The greatest leaders in history all inevitably learned by experience the following lesson: it is much better to be feared and respected than to be loved. As a prime example, look at the film director John Ford, the man behind some of the greatest films in Hollywood history. The task of film directors can be particularly difficult. They have to deal with large crews, actors with their delicate egos, and dictatorial producers who want to meddle every step of the way, all the while being under extreme time limits and with large amounts of money at stake. The tendency for directors is to give ground on these various battlefields—to placate and cajole the actors, to let the producers have their way here and there, to gain some cooperation by being pleasant and likable.
Ford was by nature a sensitive and empathetic man, but he learned that if he revealed this side of his personality he quickly lost control over the final product. The actors and producers would begin to assert themselves and the film would lose any sense of cohesion. He noticed that the notoriously nice directors never really lasted very long—they were pushed around and their films were lousy. Early on in his career he decided he would have to forge a kind of mask for himself—that of a man who was implacable and even a bit frightening.
On the set, he made it clear he was not the usual prima donna director. He would work longer hours than anyone. If they were filming on some location with harsh conditions, he would sleep in a tent like everyone else and share their bad food. On occasion he would get into violent fistfights on the set, most often with his leading actors, such as John Wayne. These fights were not for show; they were bruising and he engaged in them with all his strength, making the actors fight back with equal force. This would set a tone—an actor would tend to feel embarrassed by engaging in his usual prissy behavior and ego tantrums. Everyone was treated the same. Even the archduke of Austria—trying to carve out a career as a Hollywood actor—was yelled at and pushed into a ditch by Ford himself.
He had a unique way of directing actors. He would say only a few, well-chosen words about what he wanted from them. Then, if they did the wrong thing on the set, he would brutally humiliate them in front of everyone. They quickly learned they had to pay attention to the few words he spoke and to his body language on the set, which would often tell more. They had to raise their levels of concentration and bring even more of themselves into the part. Once, when the famous producer Samuel Goldwyn visited the set, he told Ford he just wanted to watch him work (a producer’s way of spying and applying pressure). Ford didn’t say a word. The next day, however, he visited Goldwyn in his office and just sat silently in the chair by Goldwyn’s desk, glaring at him. After a while Goldwyn, exasperated, asked him what he was doing. He just wanted to watch Goldwyn work, Ford answered. Goldwyn never visited him again on the set and quickly learned to give him his space.
All of this had a strange and paradoxical effect on the cast and crew. They came to love working for John Ford and would die to gain a place among his exclusive team of return staff. His standards were so high, it forced them to work harder—he made them superior actors and technicians. An occasional nice gesture or compliment on his part carried double the weight and would be remembered for a lifetime. The end results of his tough and unforgiving manner was that he managed to maintain a higher degree of control over the final product