There are three kinds of people who come to Hollywood: dreamers, drifters, and the driven. Each has his/her own reasons for coming to Tinsel Town, and in the end, every path followed or blazed has a way of ending in a complex stew of disappointment, regret, and resignation. Good times are here to be had, careers and fortunes to be made, but nothing good seems to last long on this thin strip of sun-baked earth trapped hard between the desert and the sea. Time passes in a blur, melting into the haze of polluted air under the relentless Southern California sun. Then one day you wake up to find the years have slipped through your fingers, and where the heck did they go.
Dreamers, drifters, and the driven. These are not mutually exclusive types or personalities - most of us have elements of all three in varying degrees. Even drifters dream, and dreamers can be as ambitious as any hard-charging corporate CEO. There are as many reasons why they end up in Hollywood as there are people living in the shadow of that big white sign perched high in the dry hills at the crest of Los Angeles. Some had no choice in the matter: as their place of birth, "Hollywood" is a name they'll be scrawling on job applications and endless government forms for the rest of their lives. The rest came here on purpose - forty-two percent white, thirty-nine percent Latino, and the remainder a stew pot of Asians, Blacks, and a smattering of Native Americans. Many are recent arrivals, having forded the southern border one way or another to seek work in the homes, gardens, kitchens, and construction sites of Los Angeles. An entire generation arrived in the great westward migration after World War Two, including those whose intentful drive to make it in "the movies" doomed any hopes for a happy life behind the white picket fences and optionless small-town routines back home. Others were driven here by sheer desperation, fleeing the horrors of blighted lives and terminally crazy families, rolling the dice on a fresh start at the far edge of the country, on the very lip of darkness. Once in Hollywood, their choices eliminated, there was nothing else to do: one way or another, they had to make it here. Some turned out to be gritty survivors who succeeded despite - or because of - past failures, while others ended up victims of the myth, riding the death spiral of drugs and dissolution all the way down. But no matter how many the city eats up, however slim the odds of success, there are always more where they came from. The moths-to-the-flame magnetism of Hollywood ensures a steady stream of young talent from all over the Country and from around the planet.
It's this neon-lit face of the American Dream most folks want to hear about - the young Actors who come to Hollywood burning with desire to hit the lottery of wealth and fame, to be a star. Like the plurality of these American Idol wannabes, only the barest handful bring the talent and drive it takes to make it big - and even that's not always enough. The importance of luck, that fickle and mysterious confluence of skill and opportunity, cannot be overstated when it comes to making it in Hollywood. While a chosen few make the most of their chance, the rest - many just as talented and driven, if not quite so lucky - will eventually face the difficult choice of adapting to reality or heading back home. Those able to roll with the punches and stay balanced can usually find a niche somewhere in the Dream Machine. It's rarely easy, but people do it often.
There are others who arrive carrying equally ambitious (if quieter) agendas tucked under their arms: to become a hot, can't-miss director: the next Tarantino. Theirs is a difficult quest, but at least the challenge they face isn't as viciously insulting or denigrating as that suffered by aspiring performers - and the rip-cord options (Plans B through Z) are more numerous and somewhat less soul-crushing to accept. There's a very wide spectrum of "achievement" in The Biz. If nobody will hire you to direct blockbuster feature films, there's always the world of Television. If TV won't have you, there are commercials and music videos to be made. If those doors remain closed, maybe you can put together a nice little low-budget feature to haul around the Indy circuit. Should that tank, maybe it's time to beg, borrow, or steal enough cash for a decent video camera and start making a living making infomercials for late night Television, or educational and training videos for schools and business. At that point, you won't even be a blip on the Hollywood radar screen, but maybe it's better than becoming homeless - or getting a normal job. But navigating the currents can be tricky in a business where a smidge of success is often the most perilous thing of all. Once aloft, it's all too easy to catch an updraft and soar a little too high here in Hollywood, where sooner or later, everyone learns that even the most rare pair of custom wings are held together with nothing more substantial than wax.
Advancement doesn't come easy, but many people find a way: it's all a matter of shifting one's outlook and the skill to personally define "success." And really, what's the alternate? After coming this far - all the way to the very edge of the continent - crawling back home just might be the worst failing of all. At some point, the very essence and process of the odyssey itself seems to morph something inside, making it nearly impossible to give up. Besides, hope dies last, and there's no telling when those hallowed doors might swing wide. Yes, the system is rigged against outsiders right from the start, but opportunities occasionally manifest themselves - a long-suffering writer, performer, or would-be director plodding along in the dark corridors of obscurity finally catches that once-in-a-lifetime break and is thrust into the unblinking gaze of the spotlight. It doesn't happen much, but just enough to keep the rest from giving up hope.
I didn't come here with ambitions of being any kind of a star, above or below the line, but simply to give The Business a try. After falling in love with so many classic American films in college (and making a few decidedly non-classic student films of my own), I hoped to see what making genuine Hollywood movies was all about. At the time, anything else sounded far too much like a Real Job - the slow, throbbing pulse of the dead man walking. Work as a chump in a cubicle? Wear a suit and tie every morning to battle the twin nightmares of office politics and the white-collar status quo? No thank you. And so after a tremulous period of post-collegiate avoidance, I inhaled one last breath of clean Northern California air and plunged south into the hazy morass of Hollywood. The transition was difficult, the learning curve daunting, but in time I caught a break, worked a few low-level film production jobs, and met people who eventually hired me to work on lighting jobs. I worked my way up from juicer to best boy to gaffer - and then, like so many others before and since, I too sailed a bit close to the sun. Before I knew it, my own seemingly indestructable wings had come apart in mid-air, sending me on a deep plunge right back to where I began.
Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
But if the jail was only a metaphor, there was still no going home. Bent but not broken, I dusted myself off a lot older and maybe - just maybe - a little bit wiser.
I've been surviving in The Business for more than three decades now, through the trails and tribulations, all the while returning to the SF Bay Area often enough to claim it as my true home. In every way that matter, it is - family and the oldest of friends are still there, and I'll root for the Giants to my last dying breath - but after thirty years, LA has a way of seeping into your blood. One lesson you learn fast down here is that things are seldom as they first appear, and although Hollywood is in many ways a horrendously ugly stain, it's not All Bad, All the Time. There are pockets of interestingness here too, stowed away amid the vast urban mall. And although The Biz, as we call it, is nothing like the alluring playground so many civvies often think it is, there are occasional flares of insight and clarity here as well. Floating like smoothly sculpted pieces of driftwood amid the daily tidal surge of greed, ego-stoked absurdities, and staggering excess, are the occasional shining, un-expected, and oh-so-ephemeral moments of grace. The trick lies in keeping your soul open so you can realize those moments before they flit out of existence.
I'll do my best here to peel back the cover and offer a glimpse of film jobs as I've experienced them: the heavy-lifting side of the Business you don't read about in tabloids. What you won't find here is any sort of fluff. Most of us who work in the Industry see and hear items that would indeed make juicy media fodder, but only an idiot or trust-fund baby has the luxury of fouling his own nest by talking out of school. The Industry has big enough ears that a little gossip could easily put my so-called career in the field, and at this late hour, I don't have enough time to build another pair of wings. Accordingly, names will be changed to harbor the innocent and guilty alike. If you want to hear the straight skinny as I've enjoyed it, stay tuned.
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