RAAFI’S FAVORITES • Film director Quentin Tarantino, known for Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained: “The man combines kitschy ’70’s cinema with Hong Kong gangster flicks and his own sensibilities to create something entirely unique.”
• Acclaimed American jazz musician and trumpeter Miles Davis: “He’s such a technically strong, talented musician—he plays a perfect A-flat—and still he was constantly reinventing himself.”
• London-based disc jockey Gilles Peterson, known for his crate-digging style: “The man goes everywhere in the world. He’ll find this Tibetan yurt music, and when you hear it, it blows your mind. He has extremely eclectic taste; he’s one of my favorite cultural icons.”
• Blogger John Gruber, Apple-enthusiast and writer: “He writes about Apple the best of anyone I know. His Web site—daringfireball.net—is clean. I appreciate people who are the best at what they do, and he is.”
• Film director and actor Spike Lee, best known for films Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever: “Spike Lee is a visionary. Whether you like his movies or not, they’re fun to watch. He packs so much visual information into his films, and his perspective is so unique.”
• Director and screenwriter Michael Mann, known for The Last of the Mohicans, Collateral and Public Enemies: “He treats the subject of masculinity in a deeper way. He goes past the testosterone of the action and into the drama of the characters. His storytelling is so precise. His films are an education.”
• Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, known for his visually unique and highly stylized work: “Wong Kar-wai makes the most romantic films out there. I could watch In the Mood for Love every day. I’ve read that he often works improvisationally, which can make the actors mad, but what you get in his films is emotional authenticity.”
• Shepard Fairey, graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene, best known for creating President Obama’s “Hope” campaign poster: “He started with a simple perspective on street culture, and over the years he’s developed his work into art that is so rich, so thick and sticky. I like when street art rises to the level of high art, and he’s done that.”
Raafi believes in two models of creativity: One he calls the Mozart model, where the boy genius writes the notes in his head because he innately knows how. The second model, and the one to which Raafi subscribes, he calls the Miles Davis model: “These people are still extremely talented, but the magic comes from putting Miles in the same room with John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley, and together they come up with Kind of Blue. From that collaboration—of talented people who trust their abilities—greatness bubbles up.” Some of the creative process is instinctual, Raafi says: following an impulse that’s stronger than any other. However, he also depends upon his voracious appetite for information outside his own world. He purposefully consumes as much as possible each day—from culture, news, photography, technology, architecture, music, and the people in his life. Inspiration and ideas develop from those connections. “You ultimately have to go back to your cave and tune everything out and say, ‘What do I believe? What ideas resonate?’ You need that spine, or strength of vision, but when you find moments of true collaboration you can be pleasantly surprised by your own work.” Raafi recalls his early film work, when he was a college student with no money. Depending on limited resources and materials, he was forced to rely on what was abundant. “When adapting becomes your zone, you begin to break apart every idea, and you often find something truly original,” Raafi says. “Film production is unruly. You’re always planning, scheduling, coordinating, but something inevitably goes wrong. You have to be flexible to solve those problems. You have to adapt to succeed. “Some of my biggest failures came when I didn’t admit that something wasn’t working. Ultimately, I pushed a piece that wasn’t good. No one wants to fail, but it’s a critical part of the process. It’s how you grow. In film you watch your work a million times—you have to find the right cut, the right moment. You’re always dying a thousand tiny deaths trying to get the footage to live up to the picture in your head.” Leaving your comfort zone, Raafi says, is also key. “For a long time I was too focused on technique: how something looked,
“People have this notion that creative types can sit in a comfortable chair sipping tea, and inspiration just strikes them. I think the best ideas hit when you’re in the studio working, just showing up. When you put in long days, you have breakthroughs because you’re there and you’re open to it.” 16 Milton Magazine