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Maybe this will be helpful - maybe it won’t. Maybe it will just resonate with people who have received emails like this. I hope I don’t come off sounding like a jerk - I can’t control how you take this, but I’ll try to be compassionate in this blog.
I know that show business is hard to break in to. But I want anyone who isn’t in it - who wants in, to understand it’s ten times as hard to stay in. I mean it. If you do even the littlest thing - you run the risk of it failing, which is never good. Or even if it succeeds but doesn’t last long, people can forget you’re around and you have to re-invent yourself. You’re never “in” for good. This isn’t Skull and Bones.
Here’s my point. Don’t write letters to people you don’t know. Or do. I don’t know. But I know that for me, when I get random letters from complete strangers who want my help and are sort of…informing me of how the business works in their letters, it’s a turn-off but honestly I can’t do a thing for you anyway.
A lot of young people write me - I know I’m young too but I mean super young like just out of college. They write and say they want a job on the Daily Show or a sitcom or “they’ll take anything!” Oh good. Glad you’ll “take anything” - that’s what most of us do. So don’t get all “LOL” about your attitude because….it’s not charming. It shows how green you are and may even insult the reader.
Okay, hang on, I’m getting mean.
Why do these letters bother me? Inherently someone not knowing how things work doesn’t bother me. But it does tell me that when someone emails me because they want me to get them a job - they might have some entitlement issues. They might be part of a perfectly lovely comedy community already and not see it because they are not amongst famous people but they are amongst peers. Sorry. That’s who you have to come up with.
When someone writes to me that they want a job here’s a few things. I always need a job too. Secondly, I have friends who need jobs and I’ve known them for ten years or more and they will be first on my list to try to help. Thirdly, you can’t submit material without an agent or a manager and a stranger like me isn’t going to stick their neck out for you.
When I was starting out - I made friends with the other people starting out. Guess what? When good things happened to them, they shared the wealth. That’s how I got on the cartoon Home Movies. I was friends with those guys from the start and they knew what my voice sounded like.
I continued to be a newcomer when I moved to NYC - and I made friends with other various levels of newcomers there. We did stand-up and worked on our own projects and if someone got an agent - they’d recommend their other friends in the trenches to said agent, didn’t always work out….
So when you write me or others like me a letter saying, “Well…I’m writing this because it’s all who you know and it’s good to schmooze….” you’ve listened to your parents one too many times. The expression it’s “who you know” I believe means because you never know when your silly bearded friends are going to become movie stars. It doesn’t mean you contact people whom you don’t know - hoping to know them and then get something off them. Look around you - those are the major players of tomorrow. Don’t look to me - I’m stuck in my own outfield. We’re not on the same team. And I don’t mean that to be dismissive - or to say I’m better than you. I just mean, it’s not what you think it is - and hopefully enough people tell you that now so that you can calm down a little, enjoy it and do good work and rise up with your peers.
You may get lucky like a lot of my friends did and ‘make it’ right away but you have to be ready to not make it - and still love it and do it because you love it and if you’re really doing things out of love, the desperation subsides…and the form letters to people you’ve seen on TV stop. And your angry follow-up letter to the person you saw on TV who didn’t write you back won’t be sent. You owe yourself more than that…there is not quick track and maybe someone with a King-maker complex will help you, who knows? But beware of them too.
It’s not really “who you know” it’s that you should be who you are - however long that takes to find - and notice who the people are beside you the whole way.
