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
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