Useless

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again– nothing we do in Hollywood matters. We’re not doctors or soldiers or police or fire fighters. No one’s going to die if we make a bad TV show.

There are a few individual exceptions. People can get hurt if a grip or an electric or a stuntwoman doesn’t do her job right.  Interestingly, these are the same people who will survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

The face of inevitability.

Everyone else on the crew will be only so much fresh meat. Above the line? Dead. Camera department? Dead. Hair and make up? Dead and dead.  Almost nothing they do bears any resemblance to actual, necessary life skills.

The same goes for me. I don’t know how to fight or shoot a gun. I don’t even know first aid.

I went to film school for four years. What am I gonna do, dazzle them with a trenchant analysis of Michael Bay’s oeuvre? All that knowledge is just gonna make my brains tastier.

One might argue that writers will be necessary in the post-apocalypse. Someone must bear witness to the end of history, right?

Sure, but that’s a secondary skill. It’s what Michael Taylor will do while taking a break from building his zombie trebuchet.

No Pay

Above: The American economy

I received two different, but related, emails in the last few days.

Matt writes:

I’ve been combing Craigs List and Mandy.com for a while and I tend to notice that like, every single ad or call for a PA is indefinitely nonpaying. Is it as if there is some secret club you’re let into after you’ve done a few non paying gigs where you start to find paying gigs? Also, I’ve been roving the internet like crazy trying to find any other jobs that have anything to do with productions. It almost seems as if I made a huge mistake in getting my degree. The reason I say that is that every single entry level position for film or television production I can find is either A.) non paying or B.) an internship. So even if they were paying, they’re looking for college students. Whats a 5 years of experience television station production assistant with a bachelors degree to do?

And Chris asks:

PAing, as you’ve said, is a full-time job, and often the only way to get started is to get on a low/no-budget production before you move on to a paid position.  So how does someone in that position pay the bills (such as student loans that have suddenly come due) when they’re working full-time in an unpaid position?

The answer, in both cases, is suck it up.  This is that time in your (and my) life called, “Paying your dues.”

People survive in a number of ways.  They borrow off credit cards; they live off mommy and daddy (also unfair, I know); they get part time jobs on nights and weekends, filling the rest in with savings; they get married and sponge off their spouse, who has a real job.  (Hi, honey!)

Basically, you do whatever you can, until you actually do get paid.  There’s really just no way around it.  (Mostly.)

Unfortunately, we are paying our dues in a recession.  Everyone is taking pay cuts, from A-list actors to lowly PAs.  People who were getting paid millions are now settling for hundreds of thousands.  Departments heads are seeing their salaries and their budgets slashed.  Those of us who used to get paid next to nothing are now getting paid literally nothing.

It’s completely unfair, but if you decide to pack it up and move back to Michigan (or wherever), take comfort in the fact that no one will notice.  There’s always another PA, ready to take your place.

Do Me a Favor

Hollywood is built on favors, but some people don’t seem to realize that.

I’m making a short film. Just about the only way to make a decent short, without going broke, is to borrow equipment and get your friends to work for free.  In exchange, you offer them free food, their name in the credits, a copy of the movie, and the expectation that you will return the favor some day.

In quick succession, two of my friends violated this very simple barter system, much to my chagrin.

Tuesday, we needed a camera for about six hours at the beach.  A DP friend of mine owned the right kind of camera, but refused to let us borrow it; he insisted on charging us $150.  For six hours.

He said it was because he was afraid we’d get sand in it (we shot at the beach).  Now, first of all, I used to be an AC.  I ACed for this guy.  He knows I take care of cameras.  Plus, paying him money upfront doesn’t protect his camera.  Insurance (which our production has) does.

Worse than that, though, is the fact that I ACed for him as a favor.  He simply refused to do me a favor back.

Now, here’s the nutty part.  The producer found the same camera for $120.  So, we went back to my friend, and he still wouldn’t bring his price down.  The producer (who was also friends with this DP) called the next day, to ask if he rented is camera to anyone else.  He hadn’t.

Can you imagine that I would ever work with this DP again?

Two weeks earlier, the production was shorthanded.  I called around, and a buddy said he would grip for us, if I paid him a $50 kit fee.

Grips don’t have kits, by and large.  They have gloves and a diddy bag, maybe.  We were renting our gear from Castex.  So, basically, the guy wanted to get paid when no one else on the crew was.

What he didn’t seem to realize was, once I give him money, he’s no longer a friend doing me a favor; he’s an employee doing a job.  He knew we desperately needed people, and he exploited that fact.

Both of these guys used the excuse that they’re out of work, and they needed money.  The thing is, everyone is out of work.  Everyone needs money.  But if you can’t get money, you should at least get a favor in return.

These two have totally burned bridges.  They’ll need help in the future, and they won’t get it, from anyone involved in this production.  How do they not know this?

Titles

There’s a curious inconsistency I’ve noticed in the way film industry address each other.

No one is ever called “Mr. Spielberg,” or “Ms. Ephron.”  It’s “Steve” and “Nora.”  Even if you’ve just met the person, you’re instantly on a first-name basis.  This is particularly hard to get used to for a polite boy from the midwest who was always taught to address his elders and superiors as “Mister.”

However, on set, everyone calls each other “sir,” especially among the G&E, production, and camera crews.  And I don’t mean just the peons calling the department heads “sir.”  The 2nd AC hands the first a filter, the first will say, “Thank you, sir.”

I’ve actually had a director call me “sir,” when I brought him his coffee.  His coffee!

The Mr/Mrs thing I kinda get.  It makes you feel old, and no collection of people is more vain than Hollywood.  But what’s with this “sir” being thrown about?  It’s confusing.

Sympathy

I’ve found a distinct lack of sympathy for my current joblessness.

In the business, you’re in and out of work all the time.  You get used to it pretty quickly.  But when you’re friends and family hear that your show just got cancelled, you get barraged with, “Oh, I’m so sorry!  Do you have another job lined up?  It must be so hard to be looking for work all the time.”

Not so anymore.  Now, my friends with regular careers are finding themselves out on their asses, too.  I say I’m out of work, and all I get is, “Yeah, well, at least you’re used to it.”

It’s getting to the point where jobs like this are starting to look good:

$400 EASY FEMALE JOB (Santa Clarita)

Looking for a gorgeous female to walk around my house naked and/or in lingerie. 3 hours every evening Monday to Friday. Pay is $400 a week. We might go to dinner sometimes, sometimes watch movies, sometimes exchange business ideas and sometimes just hangout. Hours are 7 pm to 10 pm This is job is very real and will go fast so provide me with the following:

- a few pictures (2 minimum)
- body measurements such as height weight chest size waist size and hip size
- contact information such as cell number

If anything from the above list is missing or if you just ask questions without sending pics, you will NOT receive a reply

That’s actually worse pay than a PA gets.

By the way, what’s the motivation behind asking for measurements?  If she’s pretty, what difference does it make if she’s 36D or 36DD?

My Last Political Post, I Swear!

This week, anyway.

John Rogers has posted a clarification about the whole “self-pitying self-indulgent narcissist” thing.  He didn’t mean for it to apply to all conservatives who feel bullied around town.  Fair enough.

I think he was referring to me to me when he wrote, “There was one commenter who noted that in some jobs, as a low-level dude, you need to keep your mouth shut, or you’d be fired…  I sympathize.”

On a side note: it’s too bad he didn’t link to me; I could use the traffic, even if it is from his leftist, commie, pinko, hippie, pot-smoking, latte-sipping, Prius-driving, liberal readers.

How do you like them stereotypes, Scott? ;)

(To drift even farther afield of the point, Elana Frink thanked me for linking to her: “You mentioned me on your blog! I FEEL SO FAMOUS.”  What amazes me more than the fact that a couple hundred people read my thoughts daily is the idea that one of those people would be impressed that I linked to her.  The intertubes are weird.)

Anyway.  Back to the Kung Fu Monkey blog:

I once saw somebody fire a five year old. I’ve seen people fired because they didn’t go get their boss’s blow fast enough. Welcome to Hollywood. It’s awful. Politics will be the least of your worries in your hopefully long career.

I’m confused when people dismiss complaints with invocations of “That’s life!“  Is this supposed to make me feel better, or worse, or what?

So bad things happen.  The fact that I’m not the first (nor last) to suffer from them means I shouldn’t say anything about it?  What happened to the liberal credo, Speak Truth to Power?

It’s silly and irrelevant to tell me I’m young, and I haven’t seen the worst of it.  When I get fired for not getting the producer’s blow fast enough, I’ll complain about that, too.  That’s why I started this site.

Hollywood Conservatism

I should amend yesterday’s post.  I made Hollywood’s liberalism seem monolithic, when that’s not completely true.

I worked at a video production company where all the top people were conservative.  They went to church.  They had four or five kids each.  They were married to the same person for decades.

It was bizarre.

The staff was still mostly liberal, though.  When the bosses knocked off at 5:00, once again, everybody felt safe to assume everyone else was liberal.  (The company employed a lot of kids straight out of college, so it was a reasonable assumption.)

I do know that many of them felt compelled to shut up about their politics when the boss was around.  Empathizing with their position, I resisted the urge to say, “Oh, well, I guess you could get a job anywhere else in Hollywood.”

:)

- – -

On a side note, I found a mirror version of me, in Elana Frink’s blog, Girl on Girl Action. (She claims to be “kind of amazed to discover that many people Google this phrase looking for pornography.”  Come on, my blog gets porn searches!  How did you not see this coming, Frink?)

Anyway, it’s pretty funny, and well written.  For instance, here’s a post that involves the phrase, “I’m a PIRATE-THEMED HOOKER.” (Go ahead, try not to click that link.  I dare you.)

I like her idea about starting a new political party, “Libersocialism.” I think I’ll call mine “Conservatism.”  That’s “conservative” + “fascism.”

Look, you try it.

I’m a Self-Pitying, Self-Indulgent Narcissist With My Head So Far Up My Ass That I Equate “Occasional Discomfort During Cocktail Party Conversations” With “Being on the Fucking Blacklist.”

Allow me to explain.

There’s an article from the Hollywood Reporter making its way around the blogosphere, “Republicans in biz feel stifled, bullied.”  (Their headlines are so creative.)

Now, I don’t generally talk about politics, because that’s not what this blog is about.  (Unlike John Rogers, who, in the last two months, has posted maybe one article about writing.) But this is about how politics can affect your job, so I’m making an exception this time.

First off, I don’t want to claim there’s some sort of vast, left-wing conspiracy going on.

There isn’t a blacklist.  (As I stated in my comments on Rogers’s blog, I think Klavan’s statement that he didn’t want to be “the Dalton Trumbo of the right” is mere hyperbole.)

But I’m offended at the notion that this is all in our right-wing heads.  We are almost always the lone conservative in the room.  It’s not just that liberals are the majority, but they are such a majority that they don’t even consider the possibility that a conservative might be around.  And when I leave the room, they’re right!

People feel perfecly free to claim that Republicans are hateful, biggoted, war-mongering, stupid, and more.  Is there any other group you could so openly disdain, without any fear of repurcussion?  Oh, yeah, Catholics.

The thing I found most offensive, though, is Rogers’s claim that we conservatives are merely feeling “occasional discomfort during cocktail party conversations.”

I’m a PA.  I make six hundred a week, live in the Valley, drive a Corolla, and have never been to a cocktail party in my life.  If I were a producer, and the only person I had to answer to was my liberal showrunner, Rogers might have a point.

But there are five levels between me and the showrunner, and they’re all varying degrees of liberal, from a Joe Lieberman-type to someone who could be a Rush Limbaugh parody.

I do not feel free to discuss my views with almost any of them, except in the most veiled, indirect ways, and I defy anyone in my position to say otherwise.

A Map of Hollywood

The Industry, not the town.

I actually feel a little left out, since it refers to set PAs, but not us lowly office PAs.  Everyone forgets about us.  :(

(Hat tip: Script Goddess.)

Sneak Preview

I had a chance to see The Dark Knight last night, at a screening on the Warner Brothers lot. It was for employees, mostly executives and their assistants. Usually when I see movies ahead of time, it’s with LA Weekly or Campus Circle; the crowd is mostly wearing flip flops and t-shirts. Last night was a more staid affair, with most people in shirts and ties (or skirts and heels).

I won’t go much into what I thought, other than to say that the audience cheered, actually cheered, at a certain point in the movie. It’s quite a compliment to the filmmakers that this bunch of jaded studio folks could still get excited. (You’ll know the part I’m talking about when you see it.)

Screenings are free and plentiful in LA, which is why I went to a lot of them as a poor film student. Besides the movie itself, there are often guest speakers, too. I saw Kevin Spacey at a screening for American Beauty in my first month at school. I even got to ask him a question! If I recall correctly, it was something along the lines of, “Mr. Spacey, why are you so awesome?” (This was before 21, mind you.)

A couple years ago, I went to a screening of King Kong.  We weren’t expecting any special guests that time; just a big monkey, some dinosaurs, and maybe Naomi Watts in a skimpy white dress. But while we were waiting in line, I heard a voice I definitely recognized.  It took me a minute to place it, and then I realized it was Brad fucking Bird!

I pointed him out to my friend, who responded, “That’s not Brad Bird.”

“Yes, it is.  I recognize him from my Incredibles DVD.”

“I don’t think that’s him.”

“I’m sure it is.”

It went on like this for a while, until I finally went up and asked the guy, “Excuse me, are you Brad Bird?”

“Yes.”

“SEE?”

That’s pretty much the end of that story.  I said I liked his movies, he said thanks, the end.

In any case, my point is, if you start going to these screenings, you too can meet minor celebrities and prove to your friends that you listen to way too many commentary tracks.