Last week, a young person sent me an email looking for advice about working in the entertainment industry.
“What do you know now,” he asked, “that you wish you knew when you were just starting out?”
It was a hard question to answer, mostly because when I started working in television, I was 24, and I knew precisely nothing about anything — life, money, work, taxes. The first 10 weeks of my employment as a staff writer were filled with illuminating moments.
For instance, I learned that sitting silently terrified on the sofa in the writer’s room is an excellent career move. Keeping your mouth shut is almost always smarter than opening it.
I learned that if you order two lunches, no one notices, and you can wrap one of them up and take it home for dinner.
And I learned that at Paramount Studios, where I was working, if you’re a low-level staff writer, even on a huge hit TV show, you don’t get to park on the studio lot like the big shots. You park in the parking structure across the street, on Gower Avenue.
This is where I learned the most important lesson of my life.
The Gower Avenue parking structure is about five stories tall. By the time I arrived for work in the morning at about 10:30 (writers are lazy) the only available spaces were on the top level.
The folks who came in early, often before 8 a.m. — small-part actors with early set calls, construction crews, electricians, that sort of thing — filled the lower level.
People slightly higher in rank, such as office workers and data entry types, came in a little later, at about 9 a.m., and filled up levels two and three. Level four was for the higher-level employees in hair and makeup, wardrobe, and casting, people who could set their own hours and come in during the late morning.
Which left level five for staff writers. So, I’d park on level five and walk down to the street level.
As I walked down the stairwell, a young writer, 24, just starting out, working on a monster hit of a TV show, feeling cocky and invincible and like the king of the world, I would see a certain car parked on level two. In the same general spot, too, which meant that the driver was required to keep regular hours, and early ones at that.
So, here’s the daily scene: me, skipping merrily and carefree to work, sure that the future before me was paved with riches and acclaim, that nothing could change my magnificent destiny. And each day as I passed down through level two, a level in which destiny had already been met, in which dreams had already been visited, in which the future had been used up, I saw this:
A dusty, silver DeLorean. The one-off car with gull-shaped doors that was made famous in the Back to the Future movies. A car that screamed, “I had lots of money. In 1986!”
But the lesson wasn’t the car. It was the license plate.
“Alf Ritr.”
That’s Alf, as in the hit NBC television show that ran from 1986 to 1990, and “writer,” spelled R-i-t-r.
And that’s really all you need to know about working in the entertainment industry. A DeLorean with an “Alf Ritr” license plate is the thing you buy when you’ve had a bit of good luck and you can’t imagine it won’t last. You spend the money and feel powerful and cool and then suddenly, the show is canceled and you’re out of work and, as you take different jobs in show business to stay afloat, such as casting, wardrobe, set design, or construction, you keep showing up earlier and earlier and parking lower and lower.
I would saunter down to my big-shot job on a hit TV show and be reminded, every morning, that we are only on level five for a short time.
The dusty DeLorean is everyone’s car because eventually, we all park on level two.
“So, um, I shouldn’t try to break into show business?” my young friend asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Go for it. Follow your dream. In a Subaru.”
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and a co-founder of Ricochet.com.
