When you meet someone for the first time, the worst thing you can hear is, “Actually, we’ve met before.”
Well, maybe not the worst. The worst thing you can hear is probably, “Since we’re on this plane together, let me tell you about my vegan lifestyle.” But, “Actually, we’ve met before,” is right up there.
I heard those words recently at a meeting with the president of one of the biggest studios in Hollywood.
I didn’t remember meeting him. At all. Maybe when we met, I was rude or jerky or memorably unpleasant. I searched my memory and came up empty. But even if I’ve buried those memories deep in some unconscious well, they’re preserved in someone’s memory.
The great thing about working in the entertainment industry, in any of its many branches and tributaries, is that in this business, they’ll pretty much hire anyone. But it’s also the not-so-great thing about the business too. Because hiring and firing and success and failure are such wildly unpredictable events, you never really know if the assistant you just barked at, the actor you just fired, or the waiter you just stiffed might turn out to be, you know, somebody. Somebody important. Somebody who can eventually say to you, when you’re sitting on his suede sofa in his big office at the studio he runs, “Actually, we’ve met before.”
So that’s rule one: Be nice to everybody.
I’m old enough now to have friends with children who are just leaving college and beginning their careers, which means I’m old enough now to have friends send me emails and texts asking if there’s some way I can help their newly graduated offspring get a job in the entertainment industry. College students all want to work in Hollywood, I’ve discovered, probably because it offers the most attractive combination of making a lot of money and doing zero work.
I don’t have children of my own, and my understanding of the parenting process is admittedly foggy, but I do know this: Children are really expensive. I know this because, for the last 18 years, I’ve noticed the snippy and bitter tone in my friends’ voices whenever I talk about some weirdly indulgent thing I just did. I spent three weeks crossing the Pacific on a container ship. I went to Paris for a month one winter. I traveled overland from China to Istanbul. I had some fancy shoes made.
“Must be nice,” a friend of mine said to me once, when I told him about the shaman I visited in Costa Rica. He didn’t say it like he was happy for me. He said it like he wanted to punch me in the mouth. He said it like a guy with three college tuitions to pay.
Whenever my friends ask me if I can help their children out, even the friend who wanted to knock my teeth down my throat because I bought a new iPad Pro I didn’t really need, I always say yes. I always do whatever I can. I read resumes and have mentoring sessions and make calls and try to open as many doors as I can.
My strategy here is simple: If I help enough young people get a foothold in the entertainment business, it’s a statistical near-certainty that at least a few of them will rise quickly in the ranks at various networks and studios. They will all remember who helped them onto the success ladder. They will all feel a sense of obligation to toss me a script assignment, buy my TV series pitch, hire the old coot, and discharge the debt.
Rule two: If you help enough young people on their career paths, you may not need a retirement plan.
Back to my meeting with the studio president: It turned out that he had me confused with someone else. Someone, apparently early in his career, had opened a door or made a phone call on his behalf, and he had spent the past decade or two thinking that it had been me. Which it wasn’t, but I didn’t let him know that. I smiled and shrugged and said it had been a pleasure, I was always happy to help someone out, and then started in on my pitch.
Which he had no choice but to buy.
And that’s rule three: Memories get hazy, so always take credit.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
