I became a filmmaker at 24 when I wrote/directed and produced my first short film while living in Madrid. It had just the right balance between youthful pretentious profundity and Almodovarian inspired reflections of reflections. The cast was made up of English, Scottish and Irish expats, the crew mostly Spaniards, but all working shooting together from midnight to dawn, five days straight, for no pay and certainly no glory.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I was an idealistic kid with no film-school background and only a few production assistant stints to my credit  -- with no real idea how impossible it was to actually get a film made. Thankfully, my age blinded me enough that I somehow managed to recruit real professionals at the top of their game in the Spanish film industry.

While living in Spain, I barely eked out a living as an...