IS THERE EVER A GOOD TIME TO COME TO HOLLYWOOD?
February 19th 2009
One of the young girls in the entertainment industry recently received a query from a member of her university alumni group who wanted to know if it was a good time to come to Hollywood to look for work in the production end of reality television programs. So the recipient of the query posed the question to the 1200+ assistants on an entertainment industry tracking board. The question made me realize that in nearly 30 years of living and working in Hollywood it never occurred to me to wonder whether it was a good time for me to be doing it.
So, for any of you who may be wondering if having had a door close on you in one place is a sign from God and/or the universe to give Hollywood a try, I offer the meager wisdom of what I have learned in my many years on this planet, in this town, in this industry.
It is never “a good time” to do anything.
It’s never a good time to move here.
It’s never a good time to be looking for a job.
It’s never a good time in your career to get married.
It’s really never a good time in your career to get pregnant – especially if you do it more than once.
It’s never a good time to be coming into the work force and it’s always a terrible time to be returning to it after having babies (do you sense the recurring theme in MY life???).
But here’s the thing.
We all came here.
We all got work.
Some of us met our husbands here.
Some of us got married.
Some of us had a baby – or three.
Most of us are still looking for the next job.
Nothing stopped us and we’re still here.
So, if you are prone to taking advice from a total stranger, I believe it is a MUCH better time to come out and look for a job than it was in the days before tracking boards, networking events, expos, seminars and the UTA job list. And it’s certainly a much better time to get into the entertainment industry than it was when the fellas could still get away with saying, “I hired a girl once and it didn’t work out.” (Apparently, it always works out excellently when they hire a guy or the industry would come to a crashing halt – but I digress.)
One more thing – if you are really determined to be in the entertainment industry, you’ll find your way into some job that leads to a better job that leads to many other better jobs. But if you don’t have the innate drive and persistence to make it in the industry, you’ll find out soon enough to move on to a different goal and/or a different place.
That’s the great thing about Hollywood – they always let you come here and they always let you leave.
HOLLYWOOD GOES GREEN
December 10th 2008
When the hottest new event in the entertainment industry revolves around the color green, you might assume the topic is money. But when you have a mom at the helm of things, you wind up with a conference where the agenda focuses on the different ways Hollywood can help change the way the world thinks about…well, the world.
Zahava and Michael Stroud are the husband/wife team that created iHollywood Forum to enable the vastly different worlds of technology, commerce and media to come together for the sake of mutual support and enhanced development. Hollywood Goes Green is the next generation of this shared conversation. The first day of the conference began with a one-two punch keynote presentation from Matt Petersen, CEO of Global Green and award-winning documentary filmmaker Sebastian Copeland. Petersen made an impassioned call to action, punctuated by a simple and obvious truth, “the Earth can live without us, but we cannot live without the Earth.” On the other hand, Copeland acknowledged what is clearly a sea-change in the self-centered thought process of Hollywood: “We’re obviously out of the tree-hugging business when you get corporate executives to show up at 9am to talk about global warming.” But all was not a love fest as Copeland asked the very pointed (albeit hypothetical) question: “Do we want to be remembered for the past 150 years as the generation that wasted resources and destroyed a system that was sustainable for the 150 million years before?”
Moms will be pleased to hear that Larry Wilk (VP Worldwide Operations Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and Green Ambassador for the Digital Entertainment Group) is at the helm of transforming the massive waste from the home entertainment products we purchase for our kids. With 1.5 billion DVD’s hitting the market each year, Walmart (who sells an unbelievable 30% of them) has created a packaging score card that Disney – and most of the other studios – are eager to follow. The goal is a 5% reduction in the carbon footprint of home entertainment. “Standardization drives innovation and reduces costs, enables common measurement and methodology, and provides true, verifiable results – not green-washing,” Wilk explains. He also points out that you can put a used DVD case into the recycling bin, but most people don’t know this. Target and Best Buy have similar incentive programs to reduce, reuse and recycle – which is why we no longer have those long cardboard boxes around the little tiny CD jewel case. Other trends in DVD packaging include reduced paper weight and a change to vegetable based inks. Naturally, digital downloading of films from the Internet is the greenest solution of all – no ink, no paper, and no plastic = green for the environment and increased green for the studios and filmmakers.
When the conversation addressed the question of how studios can be sustainable in a competitive environment, Lisa Day of Fox Filmed Entertainment affirmed her belief that “if people know there is a better way to do something, they will do it.” Beth Colleton, VP of the Green is Universal Initiative at NBC/Universal added that, “It’s just a way of life, now.” The biggest complication that challenges the progress is the fact that every film and television product is different and requires a separate set of adaptations and learning curves.” Colleton suggests that “the idea is to form a united front of advocates who understand that this is the way the world is going. We can’t be perfect, but we can’t let that affect where we’re going. Even if we only get to 60% we’re going to keep trying until we get where we’re going.”
On the other hand, David Steuer, VP of Client Strategy for advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi S keeps his focus on how to spread the word to the consumer. “People don’t care about saving the planet,” he believes, so you have to frame the question in a way that will help them hear it. “How does sustainability help make your life easier or better?” is the approach he suggests.
Have you ever taken a look at the credits at the end of those wonderful animated projects our kids love so much? The creative process can be enormously complicated and the hundreds of names that crawl across the screen are all attached to computer hardware – much of it supplied by HP. William J. Kosik, Energy & Sustainability Director of HP made a strong case for how far his company is willing to go to help the cause: “Hewlett Packard will recycle ANY computer – not just our own brand.” (www.HP.com)
Another interesting development involves the increased quality in the vendors who have products designed for the green market. For more information about this event and others sponsored by iHollywood Forum, visit their website: www.ihollywoodforum.com
HALLMARK GOES TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS
December 5th 2008
We’re at a point in time when network television viewership is trending downward. The typical networks response is to give us more of the darker, edgier, false conflict filled drivel that we don’t want to watch. But this Sunday – December 7th 2008 – on CBS we have a chance to sit down with our kids and our spouses and a warm cup of tea or cocoa to spend two hours immersed in a hopeful and uplifting story with characters we can care about and root for and hope to find the courage to emulate.
FRONT OF THE CLASS is the inspiring true story of Brad Cohen, a likable young man who suffers from Tourettes Syndrome. Unlike the stereotypical (and extremely rare) form of the syndrome that is typically portrayed as the comically-timed shouting of invectives, Brad suffers from uncontrollable ticks and “barks.” The syndrome manifested at the age of 6 and was initially diagnosed as a defiant behavior that must be controlled by discipline. Those of us whose kids were on the front lines of the special ed wars understand the pain and frustration of the experience – which is one of the things that makes this story so inspiring. Unlike some of the previous (albeit rare) depictions of moms with special needs kids, Brad’s mom never dips into the well of being self-indulgent or pathetic – she merely does what needs to be done. She looks for help in all the right places, and when help can’t be found she hits the medical books and does it herself. Then she advocates for her son to get him what he needs and enable him to go where he needs to go.
As the story progresses – and the Individuals With Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) pressures school districts to finally do what’s right for disabled kids – Brad decides that he wants to become the teacher he never had. Naturally, this choice is met with skepticism from many sources – including Brad’s own father, who juggles the complex cornucopia of emotions that all parents of special needs kids carry in their back pocket 24/7. But after 24 schools turn him down, one team of administrators sees the potential that just walked through their door and agrees to give him a job teaching 2nd grade.
Once Brad finds the job of his dreams, his father is able to begin making the arduous emotional journey to acceptance and understanding of who his son has become in spite of the Tourettes. Along the way, Brad finds the courage to take one more step toward the life he wants – he tries online dating. When he finds the sweetest, prettiest girl we could hope for him to find, we get to fall in love with her as he does. You see, she doesn’t focus on the Tourettes – she sees through to the wonderful and powerful soul that has driven him so far and falls in love with him, too.
At the premier, I was blessed with an opportunity to meet Brad, his mother and his lovely wife. They have the same kind of charm and good looks as the fine actors who portray them. But in talking with them, I sensed their overwhelming joy at being able to tell their story to inspire others – which is exactly what will happen in at least one home this Sunday night when my husband and I sit down with our sons to watch this story again. Our 22 year old son who suffers from multiple disabilities has never seen a story that positively portrayed someone like him – and that makes FRONT OF THE CLASS landmark television.
As always, Hallmark cares enough to send the very best.
What Do We Have To Be Thankful For?
November 25th 2008
As we approach this Thanksgiving weekend, we are faced with more challenges than any of us expected we’d face in this lifetime. The stock market has lost more than 50% of its value in a matter of months. The subprime mortgage industry has caused the banking industry to collapse and the credit default crisis is exacerbating the problem. The automotive industry is struggling to emerge from beneath the weight of jumbo SUV’s that couldn’t be viable in the age of $4/gallon gas. Unemployment is reaching record highs in many areas. Nobody is offering a bailout package to small businesses, so they are struggling to survive.
Meanwhile, if you were able to block out the news broadcasts and just watch the rest of television, you’d think that everything in America was just business as usual. Grocery stores are advertising turkeys and all the necessary side dishes. Department stores are advertising “Day after Thanksgiving” sales starting at midnight. Everybody is jumping the gun and advertising Christmas before the pilgrim décor even has a chance to exit gracefully and make way for Santa Claus (but that’s been going on since before Halloween witches and goblins made their candy grab).
So when Oprah reminds us to take out our Gratitude Journals and count our blessings, where should we begin?
I am grateful for my husband who comes home to me every night with a smile and a kiss.
I am grateful for my children who do their best to maneuver through the temptations of life in the 21st century and manage to do the right thing in most situations.
I am grateful for my friends who love me at my best and support me through the worst.
I am grateful that we have a safe, clean (albeit occasionally cluttered) home.
I am grateful that we are healthy – because I know what life is like when health is at question.
When my first son was injured by medical malpractice at birth, the doctors gave him no chance of survival and told us to “go home and we’ll call you when he dies.” I am grateful for the Writers Guild Health Fund whose insurance gave the doctors an impetus to see if they could keep him alive. I am exceptionally grateful that this son – who had no chance of survival – will drive himself to college today.
I am grateful that Universal Health Care is FINALLY a topic on the national “to do” list!
I am grateful that I have been privileged to practice the craft of writing for my profession. In the B.C. (“Before Children”) years of my career, I was a successful television writer specializing in police procedural shows like HUNTER and JAKE and the FATMAN. Early on, I realized that “truth, justice and the American way” was the underlying theme that ran through every episode I wrote. Before beginning each script, I would ask myself the same question: If I have the privilege of talking to 50 million people for one hour of their life, what am I going to ask them to think about?
Back in the day, the only way a writer could get a chance to even ask that question was if a production company and a network would agree to spend upwards of $1 million to produce an episode of television – or if a publisher would agree to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish and promote a book. Now that we live in a digital world, we have so many more opportunities to speak to the world and to each other.
For those of you who believe it is important to tell stories that have an underlying moral message, Movieguide.com and The John Templeton Foundation offer an annual opportunity to strut your spiritual stuff. If you’re not already writing screenplays, think of this as motivation to get started on one for next year’s competition.
The 4TH Annual $50,000 Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays --
Deadline is December 1, 2008!
Sponsored by The John Templeton Foundation, MOVIEGUDE® announces the 4th Annual Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays. The primary purpose of the prize is to further the influence of moral and spiritual values within the film and television industries. Set up to help inspire first-time and beginning screenwriters to produce compelling, entertaining and spiritually uplifting scripts, the winning scripts are read by top execs in addition to the monetary awards.
PRIZES: Grand Prize: $25,000. 1st Runner Up: $15,000. 2nd Runner Up: $10,000.
FINAL DEADLINE: December 1st, 2008
For complete information please visit www.kairosprize.com
DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD GIVES US A LOOK AT THE FUTURE
OF OUR MEDIA CONSUMPUTION
November 3rd 2008
When digital media experts gather to discuss the state of technology and content at the point where they intersect with the delivery of entertainment media, you can expect that sparks are going to fly. But this week at Digital Hollywood, the sparks weren’t an indication of exciting discovery or advocacy of one technology over another – they were sparks of frustration over the fact that nearly every aspect of the digital media is in a period of stasis and the economic stagnation that has overtaken our country isn’t likely to help matters.
Branded Entertainment
For the past five years, the buzz words “branded content” have been hailed as the future funding source of most – if not all – entertainment media. But when you take a look at what has actually emerged, you find that it really doesn’t go much farther than “product placement” of branded items “embedded” into traditional entertainment media.
One of the few real “pioneers” of the field is Matti Leshem. As founder and CEO of Protagonist, he is responsible for taking a simple schoolyard game and turning it into the USA Rock Paper Scissors League Champions – and annual event broadcast on ESPN2. His online project – Dew Mocracy (http://www.dewmocracyvoltage.com) offered consumers an opportunity to combine entertainment with a chance to help create a new flavor of Mountain Dew. More important, the site was responsible for shipping an additional 15 million cases of the soft drink. According to every definition of the term, this is effective branded entertainment. Unfortunately for us, the competition is miles behind Leshem’s creative team. When asked what the one year and three year projections for the field are, Leshem predicts: “Next year will be exactly like this year, but three years from now will be exactly like next year.”
Mobile Entertainment
We can’t get around the fact that when it comes to using cell phones for anything beyond conversation and the most rudimentary computer/database functions, much of the world is way ahead of us. Third world countries that never had a land-line infrastructure have adopted cell phones at a surprising rate, while the rest of the developed world has been using entertainment applications for years. In the US, the development of entertainment apps has slowed to a crawl. The industry leader is Fun Little Movies (http://www.funlittlemovies.com) and Frank Chindamo, FLM’s President and Chief Creative Officer has been at the forefront of the movement to offer an array of short-form entertainment that can be viewed on the small screen.
The real news in this medium can be summed up with an adaptation of an old term to a new state of art – LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION! Everyone who is setting themselves into place to become a major player is focused on GPS. That’s right – the little thing we have in our cars to get us to where we’re going can also be used by the phone companies to tell them where we are. Mind you, they really don’t care where we’re going – they just want the ability to develop “location based targeted advertising.” You see, if they know that we’re in a mall that has a Gap – and their database can tell them we’ve previously purchased items from or searched for Gap online – we might want to know that there is a sale on spring jackets.
Guess how they’ll sell it to us? We’ll be able to use location apps to know exactly where our kids are at all times. Here’s my prediction: phone service providers will offer Find-A-Kid as a fully sponsored free application for moms – because, coincidentally, moms account for more than 60% of all purchasing decisions in American households.
Here’s the second big trend to watch for in the mobile space. If you buy something on a mobile phone, you have to pay for it some way. Rather than use a credit card, you can opt to have the payment processed through your phone bill – either land line or mobile. Right now, Payment One (http://paymentone.com) is the leader of the pack. While other companies will undoubtedly grab a significant market share of this area, I have a particular fondness for the fact that Payment One is a privately held company run by a dad. Rob Uhrich has a lot of kids, so he understands that the ability to track (and control) the media purchases our kids make is a major selling point for parents.
Media Piracy
In this respect, the news is good and getting even better. First of all, it seems that they’re going to stop suing our children for “theft” of music, movies and television. It’s still on us to teach them that stealing is not right – even when there is nothing more tangible than some digits that are flying through the Ethernet. But the industry has finally realized they if they price a product reasonably and make it easy to purchase and readily available, our kids – and the rest of us – will do the right thing and pay for the product.
Social Networking
Throughout the conference, it seemed as if everybody I talked to has a “new and exciting” social networking application they’re adding to the array of services they offer. The problem is, I can’t seem to find much that differs between them. If you look at the aspect of business networking, LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com) remains the top contender with Plaxo (http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse) and the rest bringing up the rear as somewhat annoying copycats. The problem they all share is that they maintain the position that you should only network online with people you already know. That seems to defeat the purpose of networking for business.
At the same time, Facebook (www.facebook.com) is the leader in real social networking by focusing on personal profiles. It’s no coincidence that its origins as a college campus tool has kept the IQ level a bit higher than the competition. MySpace seems to have slipped from grace given the overwhelming push to monetize corporate owned properties through it.
But the ultimate application that will allow social networking to make sense and be more user friendly has yet to materialize. There’s no indication when an effective tool that would enable you to create ONE social networking profile and ONE professional networking profile and then quickly upload it to fit all the sites – without any proprietary frames that have to be filled out in a specific sequence – will enable the impact of social networking to increase more rapidly. As a last note on the topic, shall we have a show of hands of all those moms who feel a compelling need to become involved in social networking around a specific product or service?
Breaking Trend – Moms Love Gaming
What a surprise it must have been to the gaming industry to discover that after our kids go to bed we frequently slip into the click-trance of our own gaming world. The industry has caught on and is reaching out to women (moms?) who want to develop more games with women in mind. Naturally, advertising is moving into this world, too. But, who would have thought that one of the presidential candidates (can you guess which one???) would have campaign ads embedded into online virtual worlds? Okay, so it was just a matter of time.
Digital Hollywood – The Future
If you’d like to become part of the excitement, Digital Hollywood hosts a number of conferences across the country. For more information, visit www.DigitalHollywood.com.
The menu is tiny and hard to read, but the quality of this event is well worth the effort. |
