10 Movies About Go-Getters To Get You Going

Or, Setting Goals For 2025

First, an announcement!

Something that I discovered while teaching for the Sundance Collab program this past fall is that I really enjoy talking to people about their stories.

So, starting this January, I will be offering a monthly online screenwriting workshop for Paid Subscribers!

Each month we’ll meet online to informally discuss a screenwriting topic as well as share things that have helped us lately in our process or that’s tripping us up.

This month’s topic will be: BRAINSTORMING

The workshop will be held on: Saturday, January 25, at 11am PST and will last for approximately 1 hour.

A recording of the discussion will be made available to all Paid Subscribers afterwards, regardless of whether you attended.

Don’t want to miss it? Upgrade now!

Are you a Paid Subscriber but not that interested in screenwriting? What are you interested in hearing more about? Let me know!

And, now… on with the show.

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Goal Setting

I’ve always been a pretty goal-oriented person. Give me a task, and wow, just watch me finish it! Any task. Really. Just tell me what to do. Please.

See, I had thought it was a pretty cool trait to have - I mean, I was always finishing things. Who doesn’t want to be a finisher?

It wasn’t until recently, when I started to dig a little deeper to find out where are all this ‘productiveness’ was coming from, that I realized that maybe this behavior of mine wasn’t as healthy as I thought.

1. Without a goal, I was lost. It gave me a purpose. Something to focus on. A right way to ‘be’. It’s a little hard to explain but, it’s like if I was always working on something then I must be doing what I’m supposed to do. The periods between goals were a frightening time. I was scared I was messing up, doing life wrong, drifting aimlessly, bound to end up living in a ditch somewhere. (For some reason, all of my greatest fears always end with me living in a ditch. I don’t know why. I have nothing against ditches.)

2. When I had a goal, it became EVERYTHING. I could do nothing else until I completed it. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it’s all I thought about until I could get it done. Examples of this: staying up for 2 days straight to finish reading a book I started in one sitting, moving into a new apartment and not going to sleep or leaving or eating until absolutely everything was unpacked and necessary items were procured. Oh, I don’t have a spatula, you say? It’s 2am, you say? I will go to Home Depot. They are open and they will have something resembling a spatula and then I can cross that off my list and be ‘done’ with moving.

Sounds super healthy, right?

Once I realized that this wasn’t an awesome way to live, I started looking into how I came to be this way. It’s only now that I can see that it was a combination of my ADHD that I didn’t know I had and anxiety. The thing was, I had to do something until it was done because I didn’t trust that I would finish it otherwise. I was afraid if I stopped, I would get distracted or forget and then never achieve my goal. And I kept making goals in the first place because without any structure my anxiety overwhelmed me.

So, now, I’m more careful with my goals. More thoughtful. More flexible.

One thing that’s really helped me is Bullet Journaling. I experimented with it for almost a year, trying different approaches and apps and have finally landed on a method that works best for me. (if anyone has any interest in learning more about this process, let me know and I can do a post).

Now that I have a place where I keep track of everything, the part of me that is afraid I’ll never finish something is less freaked out. I mean, it’s written down, right there. I can’t forget it. And if I schedule time to do it, I can’t get distracted. And if I create a schedule for all of my goals, I have enough structure to keep me from floating into the abyss.

Now that you’ve learned more than I’m sure you ever wanted to know about me and goals, here are a bunch of movies to get you fired up to go tackle those projects that seem too big, make those deadlines that seem too ambitious. If the characters in these movies can do it, so can you, dammit!

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1. Moneyball - I read the book first and was so perplexed when I heard it was being adapted into a movie. The book is like a lot of Michael Lewis’ books in that it’s non-fiction and it’s about analysis and patterns and how to think about things. The movie is classic underdog awesomeness. It helped that my hometown baseball team was the Oakland A’s and actually remembered a lot of the players that are featured. Also, it has Jonah Hill proving that he was the real deal when it came to being an actor and not just a funny guy.

2. Legally Blonde - Wait! Don’t go! Come back! This movie is actually very fun and holy shit is it satisfying when she gives everybody the comeuppance they deserve. It is the modern Hollywood version of another Harvard Law movie that’s on this list and sometimes Hollywood isn’t all that bad.

3. La La Land - Two artists trying so hard to not just be successful, but be GOOD. The ending guts me, but it also underlines something important - that sometimes satisfying that thing inside you is the right move. It’s not always about another person.

4. Slumdog Millionaire - I got so excited remembering this movie that I went ahead and rewatched it last night and it’s just SOOOO GOOOD. Dev Patel is great (have you seen The Green Knight? If not, you should) and the whole thing makes you believe that if you just keep trying… everything will work out. Ish.

5. Working Girl. “You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you're trying to get there. And if you're someone like me, you can't get there without bending the rules.” That’s the movie in a nutshell, and meOW is there chemistry between Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford.

6. The Paper Chase - Okay, here’s the less-Hollywood version of someone going through their first year of Harvard Law. It’s a classic for a reason. And it has John Houseman at his John Houseman-iest.

7. Hoosiers - This one’s a family favorite and a classic underdog tale. If you don’t get choked up at the end then I question whether you would pass the Turing Test.

8. Baby Boom - Dammit, women CAN have it all! If they’re allowed to do it on their terms! I loved this movie as a kid and I’m sure it had a hand in shaping my views about women in the workforce.

9. Adaptation - An unconventional pick, but it’s one of my favorite movies of all time and I’ll be damned if I don’t feel inspired by the end. It’s about how you can’t make good art if you don’t know what it is to be human.

10. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington - The O.G. underdog. The guy doesn’t give up. Won’t quit. Remember him when you hit obstacles on the way to your goals and channel his guts and grit.