The Check-Your-Ego Checklist

I thought I'd start from the beginning, since this is my first post. So you've decided you want to move to Los Angeles and start a career in the film industry. Congratulations! Now read the following list, and if you can't imagine yourself preforming any of these tasks on a daily basis, abandon your dream immediately and become the lawyer your parents always wanted you to be.

1. Carrying 6 coffees in one hand, your $95,000 college degree in the other.
2. Getting yelled at or criticized for something you didn't do.
3. Preforming tasks that make you think "I got a college degree to do THIS??"
4. Asking your parents for money.
5. Having a roommate (or three).
6. Taking a second job, or doing temp work to pay bills.
7. Working at night.
8. Socializing and schmoozing. With people you don't like.
9. Recognize that a 12 hour shift is considered a short day.
10. Try not to bitch about #1-9; nobody likes a whiner.

When I came out to Los Angeles, armed with my Sallie Mae owned college degree, I thought I owned the world. I'd been editing films in college for four years, and for a year prior in high school. This meant I had five years of experience! I had friends who wrote and directed, I was an editor, and together we were going to make some unknown actor skyrocket to celebrity stardom by making Clerks II. I swore then and there I would never work in reality television, or on anything that compromised my extremely high moral standards. We were the new faces of Hollywood. Move over Kevin Smith. [Spoiler Alert!] Turns out Kevin Smith went on to make Clerks II without any help from us, which directly impacted our plans for having a stockpile of residual checks to start our own studio and revolutionize the film industry.

Having to grovel for living subsidies (i.e. cash) from my parents month after month got me off my high horse real quick. Fast forward to a year later and I was working my butt off at an entry level 12 hour night shift on a reality show, taking the fall for a smorgasbord of my boss' shortcomings and using a fraction of the massive brain power I'd garnered back in film school. Armed with the fierce desire to ween myself off my parent's dole, I kept my head down and just tried to do my best. (Future posting: Knowing when to be and not to be a doormat). In this case it was the right thing to do. Other people in the office began to notice what was going on, how hard I was working, and how above all I just did the best I could. At the end of that season I had a half dozen connections, a handful of friends, and a job offer on an HBO show. That particular nasty individual... hmm, oh wait, I haven't heard from or of them since.

Moral of the story is, none of the jobs we do out here are rocket science. Of course you COULD be a producer, an editor, a writer. What people want to find out is, do they want to work with you? Why should they take you under their wing when there are 5,000 other perfectly qualified individuals right behind you willing to do more for less? Check your ego at the door, and realize people aren't freaking out that you put Raw sugar in their coffee instead of Splenda because they don't think you can do what's written on your diploma. Of course you are brilliant! But until people know you well enough to want to give you a chance, you'll be working the night shift sustaining yourself solely on Ramen and craft services, wishing you'd stayed in your Minnesota town of 500 because spending all day shoveling out your mile long driveway is preferable to spending an hour in 405 traffic. And until you continually prove yourself day in and day out, don't expect much more.

If you've set yourself up a ladder to climb, it probably means you're still at the bottom and want to get to the top. Well start movin', that ladder ain't going to climb its self.

Stay tuned for more helpful articles on how to start out, survive and move up in the Hollywood entertainment industry. I will be interviewing people who have managed to make it to the top, as well as people who are still on their journeys, and sharing those interviews here. I'm also interested to hear about things you had to do to survive your first year or so in Los Angeles. Everyone has a horror story or two, a favorite word of advice, or at least a good adventure to tell, so spill it! I feel as though I might have gotten a head start if someone had given me a list of things I should have been prepared for, and thus I have created this blog to help those who are now where I once was. Anything you can add to the list?