The Truth About Hollywood

...and all the ways it'll *try* and crush your soul

On my last day as an intern at a popular production company, I sat down with one of the producers for some “feedback” before I embarked on my brand-new Hollywood career. I had been a rockstar intern, which was repeated around me constantly. The producers in the office all clamored for my coverage because I could read a book in a day. In fact, during my time there, the company anticipated a bidding war over a new book, so even though it wasn’t my day in the office, I was called in and paid an assistant’s salary ($125 for the day… but back in ‘05, and considering I was working for free, this felt like a solid win!), because they knew I was the fastest reader in the office.

So, imagine my surprise when this producer leaned forward and told me, “Between you and me, I think you’re too nice for Hollywood.” He then proceeded to tell me that even though I had enough talent and skills, my personality wasn’t strong enough to succeed, and I needed to be more of a “shark.” He wished me well and I left that office with a new mission: I was going to prove that fucker wrong.

Photo by Vincentas Liskauskas on Unsplash

I get that same feeling of frustration, anytime one of those articles proclaiming "how bad things are in the industry” comes out. You would think we would have collectively learned by now that no matter how well-intentioned those articles are, all they really do is create panic and depression amongst the people who are living it. In fact, the only thing they do provide is tangible evidence for people outside of the industry to understand that things are bad, so they can get off our freaking cases about why we haven’t gotten a job yet.

If you’re a rank-and-file member like me, you know things are bad. Chances are you’ve either seen, heard, or felt the stories of the overspent savings accounts, repossessed cars, late bills, evictions, or leaving the industry altogether. It’s scary times! This is personally the longest I’ve gone without work in between gigs. Granted, I’ve also chosen to not go back to support staff work, which is what has sustained me for most of my career.

The problem with this post-strike world (other than the fact there aren’t jobs!), is we’ve accepted we will no longer be accepting scraps from our employers. The anecdote to that is to starve us out so we eventually feel grateful for the scraps being offered. Once people know you’ll start accepting scraps, that’s all they’ll feed you. To stick with this metaphor for a minute (thank you), I’ve been fed scraps my entire career, and guess what: scraps don’t sustain you! I’ve gotten to the point that I would rather starve than pretend I’m full. But here’s where the metaphor ends: hypothetical starvation is not actual starvation. Maybe that’s part of what fueled me to start and keep Green Envelope going for as long as I did, despite the burn-out and liability.

I spent a lot of time in therapy talking about Green Envelope— why I was doing it, why I kept doing it, why it was important to do it, the now-irrational fear I felt about going to jail, etc. I remember my therapist saying to me something along the lines of: “When most people are thirsty, they don’t necessarily go look for the river.” My response was, “I don’t know how to do that. I have to look for the river.” She reminded me that not only did I “look for the river,” I also found a way to take back “cups of water” to the people who didn’t know where to look. (Wow, again… thank you for sticking with me with all these metaphors today!) This is apparently a rare thing.

There are days that I think about my almost 20-year-long career and all the times I was promised a promotion, only to have it explained away with a confusing excuse; or the fact that I’ve been sexually harrassed and/or verbally abused on half the shows I’ve worked on; or all the times I thought people were my friends only to find out they were backstabbing me, or all the free work I’ve done; or taking on the liability of running a strike fund, and I wonder what the fuck am I still doing here. I think about that producer who said I was too kind and think maybe he’s right. Hollywood will really try to crush your soul, time and time again, even if you work hard and have all the talent in the world. And yet… despite every awful thing in this paragraph, I was the one who brought metaphorical cups of water to people who needed them.

What’s my point? Maybe we need people like me who are “too kind” to reshape Hollywood. For too long we have been used and abused because people take advantage of our kindness and passion. They see it as a weakness when in reality, it’s the only way to sustain anything in this world. Hollywood has been broken for a long time, but we’re at the crisis point. We shouldn’t have to choose between a paycheck and morals, and passion for abuse. I don’t have all the answers— I don’t even know if I have any. I do know I’m the kind of person who is going to *try* and figure it out, though.

In the meantime, for my fellow hopefuls, may this be our anthem until we start to see the change.

Hang in there, everyone! xx