Willful Madness

"But I don't want to go where there are mad people!

You cannot help that my dear. You see, we're all a little mad here."
                                            - Alice & the Cheshire Cat

Hollywood is full of crazy fuckers.

You've heard that, right? Everyone has. The tales of irrational behavior bordering on sociopathic. The compulsions, the excess.  We're all a little mad here.

Yeah, well, you have to be. Really.

Willful Madness becomes a critical tool in any creative's box if you want to make it in this biz. This biz requires you to have a unbreakable belief in your abilities. That you, above all others, can do this, and that you above all others have something to add to the creative lexicon in a fashion that no one else can. Even as assponies and gadflys and naysayers all poke and deride and take swings at you and your work.

At the same time, however...

You have to be completely dispassionate and objective about your work, as if you are not the person who created it. If you get notes, you have to be able to compare them against the work in a purely analytical manner. "Does this scene suck? Why yes... yes it fucking does." and treat it as if you were editing the work of someone else.

You have to be able to do this, at the flip of a mental switch, every. Fucking. Day.

It is the hardest skill you will learn in this biz. The one that you will spend your entire career trying to master, and the one you will struggle to maintain constantly. But being able to do it? That means the difference between being a flash in the pan, and someone with tooth and fucking claw who is here for the long goddamn game.

So then...

Welcome.

We're all a little mad here.

An asspony by any other name...

This entire biz is built on "the balance". Having enough self-confidence & belief in yourself to be able to "sell" to anyone... execs, producers, actors, directors, your mailman, etc... that YOU are uniquely qualified to do this, AND that you have the steel in your fucking spine to pull it off.

Even when you really fucking DON'T.

"Fake it until you make it" is a well-worn and scuffed axiom in this town, and it's so fucking true. Very few of us start out with a golden ticket. We get lucky enough to find someone who will take a chance, a flyer, a RISK, that we will produce something of worth not only THIS time, but that we will grow and succeed (and remember THEM, they who gave you that big break, as you ascend).

This requires a bit of "selective truth" at times. You omit certain details, you carefully phrase others. Perception is fucking everything, and you want to be in this biz? Fucking LEARN how perception works, and how you can leverage it.

NOW...

Caveat #1: Do. Not. Fucking. Lie.
This town is really shockingly fucking small. Don't say you know director "X" if you do not. Don't say they "love your work" when you approached them in the bathroom at Fatburger when they were on a drunken coke-fueled bender. DON'T. This will bite you in the ass every single time, and hard as it may be to believe, people really do not want to do fucking business with people who are outright liars.  This leads to...

Caveat #2: Shut the fuck up about how awesome you are.
Because really, ya fucking AIN'T. If you're as awesome as you are saying, they wouldn't have to hear it from you... other people THEY work with would have ALREADY FUCKING TOLD THEM how "killer" you are.  I've run into this a shocking fucking number of times, and universally the people who act like this... who rattle off their credits to mind-numbing-levels of minutiae are like those fuckers in the "real world" who try for a management position at a corporate job by fudging how they phrase the fact that they waited tables "Human food consumption traffic manager".  It doesn't fool anyone there, it sure as fuck doesn't fool anyone in Hollywood. Moreover, people will not want to sign on to ANYTHING with you for fear you'll take undue credit, talk up your involvement while talking DOWN theirs.

Be reserved, be confident, be tight in your message. In other words, don't be a fucking asspony.

- MC, writing from the bowels of Southern California where SDCC looms

Beggings & Beginnings

So then...

It's been suggested by more than a few that a "longer than 140 character" outlet for my musings, insight and tirades might be a good thing.

Here's the thought.

I'll be doing longer form pieces as time allows. Maybe I'll get some of the other Mystery Hollywood posse to chime in from time to time on various subjects. Then, when it reaches "critical mass", and there's enough material, I'll publish it in a low-priced eBook form, with the proceeds going towards some manner of assisting new, upcoming, struggling writers.  Talking with the Black List and others on the logistics of that, but being as we are ages out from that still... there's time.

So then...

Welcome to hell. Strap the fuck in.

- MC, reporting from Orange County where I am car shopping.