#05: What’s the biggest barrier to entry in entertainment?
When I talk to people who are just starting out, they think that their biggest obstacle will be successful people holding them back or not helping them up. WRONG. Your biggest barrier is your attitude! Are you here to learn, earn and return…or do you want to get as much as you can for as little effort as you can expend?
So many people want to start at the top or rocket there after only a few gigs. They have such fantastic talent and ambition, but they open by founding a production company or looking for a three-picture deal. Based on what experience and contacts? Don’t do it! Not just because it’s extraordinarily entitled, which is horrifying to the industry people you meet who have invested years in learning their craft (and might otherwise have happily helped you), but also because if you get a big break too soon, you’ll have no skills or contacts to make it pay off for you (”Grand Opening…Grand Closing” - thanks Chris Rock).
No, you don’t have to start at the bottom if you know the right people. But there’s no point in anyone taking a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest just to get to the top as fast as you can. You’ll have no idea how to survive in that brutal climate. And what’s really interesting to anyone who meets a mountain climber is the actual story of how they got to the top. That’s where you’re going to learn all you need to know to work the heck out of that mountaintop when you get there. The people who created “Amazing Race” and “CSI” didn’t start as the show runners! They entered at their level of knowledge and worked their way up inside of their own hit shows! Where do you think they are now? Running their own hit shows, with the well-earned respect of their staffs.
Not everyone registers the “work your way to the top” approach when I say it. A screenwriter friend goes nuts when people argue back with examples of the “exceptions” - about some crappy movie that still got made, about someone who didn’t know what they were doing but got handed a deal, etc. Unless you have the same deep industry connection or demographic desirability those “exceptions” had, plan on making it on talent and hard work instead - it’s more fun anyway! Besides, if you are invested in making it by breaking all of the rules of the game, you are missing out on all the great opportunities to enjoy tremendous success by playing the game exactly how nearly everyone else is playing it. Why miss out on the great big Hollywood party by hoping to bypass gaining experience and meeting mentors and shaping a creative project from the floor up and passing your experience on to the next group of talented filmmakers? All of that is the good part!