The following (available at crichton-official.com) is Michael Crichton’s answer to the following question: How and why, having gotten your degree as a medical doctor, did you end up writing and directing films?
“Well, it does seem strange, but I think it’s what I always wanted to do. The only other doctor I know of who’s done the same thing, Jonathon Miller, has said something which I think if true — namely, that being a doctor is good preparation for this, because it teaches you to deal with the kind of life that you will inevitably have. It teaches you to work well when you haven’t had enough sleep. It teaches you to work well when you’re on your feet a lot. It teaches you to work well with technical problems and it teaches you to make decisions and then live by them. I think it also has advantages in working with actors, because one of the things a doctor has to learn is to be able to meet a patient whom he has never seen before and rapidly assess him in terms of what kind of person he is, and not merely whether he’s perforated his ulcer. You’ve got to be able to analyze just what kind of person you’re dealing with. Are you dealing with someone who will take medicines if you prescribe them — or is he the kind of person who says he will, but won’t? Those decisions get to be very important and training to be a doctor builds up that capability for assessing people rapidly which is necessary when it comes to working with actors. I’m not quite sure just how the transition from medicine to movies came about, except, as I’ve said, that I think I’ve always wanted to make movies. When I got into medicine, I was disappointed in a lot of ways, so it was a pull from one direction and a push from the other.”
