Courage

Cowardly Lion: "What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?"

Dorothy & Gang: "Courage!"

Cowardly Lion: "You can say that again!"

My friend and colleague, Isaac Stambaugh, just finished production on a 90-minute feature film that he wrote, directed and produced. He did it (actual shooting) in roughly eight days and with a budget that couldn't even buy him a 1990 Honda Civic. On paper, what he accomplished makes no sense. If you were to tell him before he started that he's insane, doomed and downright silly, you would've been justified in saying so. Nobody can make a feature film from script-start to finished-production in a month for the money he had. But he did it. He had the courage to take a risk. He had the courage to disprove a lonnnnnnnnnng list of reasons to not even start. Then he had the courage to continue disproving the new lists that popped up at every stage of his process. And believe me, those lists were justified in content and encyclopedic in length. He didn't have money, time, staff or resources. I will say again for emphasis sake that he seriously had next to no money, time, staff or resources. All he had was courage to take a step and keep stepping. And now, as a result, he has a finished dream that makes naysayers and sayers alike shake their heads in wonder-filled admiration. I hope courage is contagious. I need some of what Isaac's got.