25 Rules for Surviving and Thriving In Hollywood

As an actor (my first career in entertainment) I came across a list of rules for making it in show business. I can’t remember who it was by, but it was funny, succinct and to the point.  That was a long time ago and I don’t remember the rules other than the mantra which I’ve repeated here in rules 3, 8, 16 & 25. Also, rule 1. came from an English blogger who’s blog I can’t find now (credit where credit is due… sort of.)

So, here we go.  My first rules for making it in Hollywood. Based on my experience, I wrote down  the 25 most common sense things I could think of. Why 25? I figured you could handle that many.  If I thought if the cast of Jersey Shore was reading, there would only have to be four and I’ll let you guess which ones they are. If you think there are some missing, feel free to chime in.  With no further ado, I bring you my 25 Rules:

1. Always carry a pen.

2. Have specific, time sensitive goals.  Use the pen to write them down. Keep them in a place where you can see them.

3. Save your money.

4. Don’t neglect your family and friends. When the bottom falls out, they are the net that will catch you.

5. Go easy on the cosmetic surgery. There’s a fine line between looking younger and like a surprised floatation device.

6. The best route between Hollywood and Beverly Hills is Fountain Avenue to La Cienega to Burton Way.

7. Always remember that youth and skill are no match for age and treachery.

8. Save your money.

9. There’s no such thing as overnight success.  There are only years of hard work that suddenly pay off.

10. There is a big difference between leaving your mark and marking your territory. Don’t confuse the two.

10. Failure is not an option, it is an inevitable and necessary ingredient of success.

12. Getting knocked down in Hollywood thins out the herd.  Always be sure to get back up.

13. If anyone ever says you’ll never work in this town again, realize it’s only until they need you again.

14. People don’t need a good reason to sue you, they just need a lawyer. Don’t take it personally, it’s just business.

15.  If you don’t love the movie business, find something you love and do that instead.  Love expands and so does bitterness.

16. Save your money.

17. Always make sure you’ve removed the lens cap before rolling.  Success is in the details.

18. The town can smell fear and desperation. Find a way to erase these emotions from your business life.

19. Be nice to waiters, valets and receptionists.  Someday they’ll be green lighting your projects.

20. When someone’s assistant says “actually he/she is in a meeting and can’t talk now.” They “actually” just don’t want to talk to you.

21. Know the difference between providing opportunity and mentoring.  It’s the difference between making someone opportunistic or loyal.

22. Movie making is problem solving. If there are problems, it means that you’re still in business.

23. Never say “to be honest with you” or “I’ll be totally honest.”  These phrases mean that you are not usually honest and your current honesty is an exception to your standard operating procedure.

24.  Anything positive you do or say is instantly forgotten.  Anything negative you do or say follows you forever and makes you a suspect in all the ills of humanity.

25. Save your money.

The Aztecs, Snooki and You

Artists tend to have a nasty habit.  Actually, many nasty habits, but one in particular that I want to talk about.  They stand out at the edge.  After all, the edge is the Artist’s perch.  Looking back towards the middle, you can observe life and society.  This helps you comment and express yourself.  Looking the other way, out towards the void. You can poke at it and push the edge out, establishing a new edge and evolving  art forms past anywhere they’ve been before.

However, the edge is also a curse.  Yes, as you look into the center it makes you face watered down, path of least resistance excuses for art.  It makes you face the culture of Snooki.   Facing the culture of Snooki can make you lose faith. It can make you feel isolated and unequipped to participate in the center where the business of art is done.

So, where’s the balance?  Unfortunately, there isn’t any real balance, it’s about committing yourself to being heard, and to be heard you have to pay attention to business as well as art. It’s also not about multi-tasking.  As Shawn Achor presents in his book; ‘The Happiness Advantage’ the human brain is not really capable of multi-tasking.  It IS capable of moving from one task to another very quickly, but can only focus on one thing at a time.

What I’m talking about is committing to action in business.  The Aztecs called it “Ollin.” When disaster struck, such as earthquake, flood etc. The word would spread from person to person to “Ollin” which means become active “now”.  Seek higher ground, prepare food stuffs, throw grandma over your shoulder and get moving.  I heard an interview with the author Kevin Hall whose message is the power of the words we use. He points out how close the expression “Ollin” is to the modern expression “All in.”

It seems everything in the Aztec language has an artistic rendering.  To the right is the one for Ollin. Interesting, though don’t give them too much credit, they were also into human sacrifice and bungie jumping without cords attached which of course is not bungie jumping, it’s just jumping.  They had their quirks, but some very useful concepts came from their culture and this is one of them.

This doesn’t mean that you have to interrupt your pursuit of craft go to every industry event, party and screening (though a few wouldn’t kill you)  or go for an MBA in artist management. But, it does mean you have to pay attention to finding new ways to interface with those who’s craft is making money in the arts and media.  They are, for better or worse, the ones building culture. Because, when they make money, you make money.  When you make money, you can pay the mortgage, go to the grocery store and buy finger paints for the kids.

This requires you to leave the edge and venture into the center, and no, it’s not selling out.  It’s curious, I have always found that artists who acuse others of selling out are the ones whose art is completely inaccesible or whose  talent is suspect.  In essence, there is no such thing as selling out.  There are finding ways to make a living while creating art.  In essence, there is only “all out” or “all in.”

So what’s my advice for going all in?  First and foremost, think about how you can take action on both an artistic level and a business level.  WRITE IT DOWN. Hold yourself to it.  Make a plan for artistic development and business development.  Not just a plan, a detailed plan. Once you make the plan, work the plan.  If business development is foreign to you, make a commitment to informing yourself as part of your plan.  You can start by reading some of the books from my resources page.

I know I’m being extreme in bringing up Snooki in a discussion about art and culture, but I’m illustrating a point.  Snooki is indeed an artist of some kind or other  from the center.  If I had to, I would label her a performance artist of happenstance. Right place, right time, right car wreck of a life. But, she will be here, then she will be gone when a better car wreck catches the media’s attention. Hers is not an artist’s career, it is the brief, bright light of celebrity.

The Aztecs on the other hand, stood on the edge and built culture through artistry.  Their edge became their center and culture.  They lived it every day.  My real question here is: in our polarized world can you build culture from the edge?  You can certainly build art at the edge.  But, if you don’t venture to the center to force art into our culture, it’s left to Snooki. Do you really want future generations to be scratching their heads as they watch “Jersey Shore,” wondering where we lost our grasp on beauty?

I suppose I’m not only giving you some tools here, but also a call to action. It is possible to sustain yourself while doing something bigger than yourself.  Are you ready to go Ollin?  The Aztecs did, Snooki does.  Oy, yes that’s the point.  If you don’t, there will be an endless procession of Snookies.  I think I speak for all of us in the center when I yell to the edge: show us what you’ve got!  save us, save us from Snooki!

Related Articles

• COLD SHOULDER: Snooki snubs O’Reilly (politico.com)
• Snooki almost ambushed by Bill O’Reilly’s crew (hollywoodnews.com)
• How Snooki’s Partying Became A Problem [Video] (jezebel.com)
• “Snooki Wants To Be Called Nicole From Now On” and related posts (anythinghollywood.com)
• ‘O’Reilly Factor’ Producer Tries to Ambush Snooki at Book Signing (VIDEO) (tvsquad.com)

It Takes A Village

“It takes a village.”  That old saying that everyone uses for everything from the success of a child to a business project gone completely awry. In my experience, I would say that it’s a very true metaphor. Even in art that appears to be a solo endeavor. Painters need someone to loom canvas and manufacture acrylic paints. You could argue that a dancer doing a solo might qualify. But, that would be a naked dancer with no training, and we’ve all seen that before, usually being dragged (still dancing) into a police car. Entertaining? Yes. Art? Not really.

So, what do we really need to be creative? Collaborators seen and unseen. But before that we need to be motivated to create something.  Where does that come from? Somewhere in the soul is my guess.  The Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi coined it “flow” (and yeah, that’s really the guy’s name.)  Flow he discovered is that place we all have been, where we are so intently engaged in something that we lose track of time and reach a level of focus so deep it is almost trance like.  We forego sleep, don’t feel fatigued and can ignore hunger. Based on the feeling of personal connectedness and engagement, we tend to come back to those activities again and again.

That’s where the concept of ‘opensource’ comes in.  It is a neighborhood in the new village of art, entertainment and hopefully collaborations well beyond.  In his book “Drive –  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” Daniel H. Pink cites numerous studies that determine:  the intrinsic value of our flow activities (that is, how they make us feel) far out weighs any extrinsic rewards like money that we might get for doing the activity.  You can want or need to be paid for your creativity, but according to the science, money will never be able to motivate you enough to enter flow and ‘true’ creativity.  You are far more likely to create your best work with like minded people regardless of whether or not you get paid for it at all.  So, money is one thing, but not the only thing.  Here is a version of Pink’s philosophy:

What is really interesting to me is the descriptions of Wikipedia and Firefox and how they came about.  Code wonks donating their talents (which they get paid for during the work day) build something together that not only is bigger than any one of them, but provides a space for those creating to gain mastery over their craft. They work for free, but they are free to work how they like, when they like without deadlines or the constraints of work for hire.  And that is the recipe for flow.

So what does this science mean to an agent that depends on 10% of my artistically gifted clients making a living?  It means I need to encourage my clients to recognize the concept of flow.  It means I need to encourage mastery. To realize that it’s my job, to get the issue of money off the table by striking fair deals, so they do not have to think about it. I believe that is the way I participate as a collaborator in their art.

I’m not a filmmaker, nor do I want to be or pretend to be. I’m a manager, a partner that can focus on the bigger picture of the business and find myself in “flow” by ways of listening, advising and negotiating.  Sounds strange, but flow exists in any talent you can think of and that’s where it exists for me.  But, more so my job is encouraging artists to create even when they are not working for money.  To take some down time to keep working for mastery and to open source with other like minded artists on projects of their choosing.

The definitions of success are changing.  In the wake of so much pain at the hands of economic collapse,  and the realization that consumerism as a social ideal merely trades flow for a quick endorphin rush, the next phase of human progress is upon us.  It may be Utopian to suggest, but there has never been a better time in modern history to be in the arts.  People are hungry again for beauty, for experience and open to the understanding the human potential is far more than survival and unlimited cheap gasoline.

So, lets see what we can create.  As artistic collaborators we can show the world that collaboration is exponential and born of compassion and empathy.  No doubt financial gain is important to sustain art and the artist, the business and the businessman. But, flow is the true goal to fixate on.  It may be too early to tell, but even science seems to be saying that flow, and it’s resulting mastery takes a village.

The Scariest Hill On Earth

Ellsworth Road, just mentioning the vast peak out loud brings back adrenaline fueled thrills and nightmares from my youth. It was named after Connecticut’s own Oliver Ellsworth (one of the writers of the US Constitution.) and the state’s first US Senator. This hill, for it was just that, although in my kid eyes it was impossibly large one, and the only one around,  so it might as well have been Pike’s Peak.  We would ride our bikes down in the summer and sled down in the winter before the plows came.  The evil part of this hill was this:  though the top of the hill was the end of the road in the middle of the neighborhood, meaning there was hardly any traffic on it, at the bottom there was a cross street named Riggs. There was no stop sign as it crossed Ellsworth, so cars coming through the neighborhood just barreled on by.  Riding your bike at top speed down the hill, as you approached Riggs, you had a choice:  try to be sure nothing is coming and charge through or hit the brakes and be safe.

More than once I laid down rubber on my bad ass Stingray banana bike right before ending up as a hood ornament.  More than once, my heart jumped into my throat.  Most memorably, the time a tough older kid named Dennis made me ride down on a skateboard.  Me, lying facedown on my belly, my nose inches above the pavement, and him on my back.  That time I forgot about the traffic, wondering how I was going to explain to my mother how my face got ripped off on Ellsworth Road.  But, I somehow survived that descent and many others.

Chief among our games on Ellsworth was to see how far you could coast without pedaling after crossing the dreaded Riggs.  We’d station a kid on the corner to make sure we could race through the intersection without braking. Then the rule was no pedaling, whoever went the farthest won.  As I was thinking about this week’s post, I thought about this game once again.

Momentum.  It’s hard to get it going, and much harder to keep it going.  Especially without pedaling.  When things are going well, the wind hits your face, all you hear is the whoosh in your ears and all you feel is speed.  The farther you go, you slow down almost inperceptably by degrees.  Before you know it, you’re moving quite slowly and not long after you’ve stopped.

Careers are like this.  Especially freelance careers in media and entertainment.  When you have a success or a series of successes, it’s easy to think the rush will never stop and the pace will never lessen.  But it does.  It’s the nature of gravity, friction and distance.  I heard the motivational speaker Brian Tracy once say: “You can only coast in one direction.”  Oh, too true.  I never once coasted UP Ellsworth Road.

The idea is to keep pedaling, even when times are good.  Find ways to keep the momentum going, even when you think you’re going fast enough already.  This is difficult when you are in the heat of one project, to be thinking of the next one, but it’s absolutely necessary!  You have to keep pedaling!

In my career as an agent, I’ve had far too many clients come to me after years of constant work and say, “I used to have momentum, but now it’s slowing down.”  When I ask who they’ve been in contact with lately, they reply:  “I’ve been working for years, I haven’t had time to keep contacts up, so now I don’t really know anyone. I’ve been too busy.”

Do you see why you have to keep pedaling now?  It doesn’t matter whether you are just starting out or have been making money as an artist for 30 years.  You have to do the work of getting work constantly, everyday, and let’s be real, having a freelance job today only means you have to find one for tomorrow.

Here’s my challenge to you.  Make a list of everyone you know in the business.  Make a list of every producer, director, studio, gallery, ad agency that you want to get to know.  Don’t stop until you have reached 50 contacts on each list. Now, find a way to retain or regain contact with those you already know, and ways to make contact with those you want to know.  These lists are the bike. Now you need to pedal a little everyday.

I heard a while back that NASA is proposing to send a spaceship light years away. They are suggesting what is called a perpetual motion rocket engine to power the craft.  This engine will use small thrusts of fuel, fired at timed intervals.  A seconds long burst of thrust from a nuclear engine once every day.  The idea is that over time, all these short bursts add up and the ship is going very far and very fast. The ship never coasts, it’s propelling itself a little each day.

That is pretty much the concept I’m proposing to you.  A small burst of thrust everyday to create huge momentum to gain speed and distance for your career.  Start doing this today, because I can tell you from experience that if you stop pedaling on Ellsworth, you can only coast to halfway between Newport Avenue and Four Mile Road.

Quote Of The Day

“The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.“

-Brian Tracy