Pablo F. Fenjves - How I Broke into Hollywood: Success Stories from the Trenches

Success Stories from the Trenches

For my son, Nick.

For my dad, Jennings Lang,
who broke me into Hollywood.

Introduction

AMRITRAJ, ASHOK

Producer

BEAVERS, SUSAN

Writer/Producer

BERMAN, BRUCE

CEO, Village Roadshow

BIRNBAUM, ROGER

CEO, Spyglass Entertainment

CHRISTENSEN, ERIKA

Actor

COLLISTER, PETER LYONS

Cinematographer

CORMAN, ROGER

Producer/Director

DUTTON, CHARLES

Actor/Director/Producer

EPPS JR., JACK

Writer

FRANKEL, DAVID

Writer/Director

GALE, DAVID

Executive Vice President, MTV Films

GALLAGHER, PETER

Actor

GARDOS, EVA

Editor/Director

GASMER, ALAN

Agent, William Morris Agency

GERMANN, GREG

Actor

GLOTZER, LIZ

President, Castle Rock Entertainment

GREEN, BRUCE

Film Editor

GREENBERG, BONNIE

Music Supervisor

HAYTER, DAVID

Actor/Writer/Director

HURD, GALE ANNE

Producer

JOSSEN, BARRY

Producer/Studio Executive

JURINKO, MARK

Creature Effects Artist, Puppeteer

KANTER, JAY

Agent/Producer/Studio Executive

KELLERMAN, SALLY

Actor/Singer

LANDIS, DEBORAH NADOOLMAN

Costume Designer

LANDIS, JOHN

Writer/Director

LONDON, MICHAEL

Producer

MAC, BERNIE

Actor/Comedian

MANDABACH, CARYN

Producer

NABATOFF, DIANE

Producer

OCONNELL, KEVIN

Sound Mixer

OPPEWALL, JEANNINE

Production Designer

ORR, JAMES & JIM CRUICKSHANK

Writers/Producers

PAYMER, DAVID

Actor/Director

PLATT, MARC

Producer

POLLACK, SYDNEY

Director/Producer/Actor

POLONE, GAVIN

Producer

RISHER, SARA

Producer

ROBINSON, TODD

Writer/Director

ROSMAN, MARK

Writer/Director

SCHIFF, ROBIN

Writer/Producer

SCHIFRIN, LALO

Composer

SCHWARTZ, ROBERT M.

Attorney

SCHWARTZ, WILLIAM A.

Writer/Producer

SULLIVAN, KEVIN RODNEY

Writer/Director

WARREN, DIANE

Songwriter

ZUCKER, JERRY

Writer/Director/Producer

Acknowledgments

Searchable Terms

About the Authors

Credits

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

If you want to break into Hollywood, if you really, truly want to break into Hollywood, youre already a little damaged. But dont worry. That helps. The odds of making it in this town are so slim that you cant think about them. In fact, you shouldnt think about them. Among the legions of people who arrive in Los Angeles every day, desperately hoping to find jobs in the entertainment industry, a few actually succeed. So why not you?

The men and women you are about to meet in these pagesactors, writers, editors, technicians, directors, producers, designers, executiveswere once outsiders themselves. Some of them arrived knowing absolutely nothing about the business. Others came out of film school. Still others were self-taught, or thought they were self-taught, and showed up brandishing screenplays and low-budget moviesor what they described as movies.

Still, all of them made it.

Some of them will be familiar to you, notably the actors, but most of the others work behind the scenes, andunless youre in the business alreadyyou probably wont recognize their names. On the other hand, you will know their work. The men and women in this book lent their talents to some of the most successful feature films ever made, from Star Wars and The Terminator to My Best Friends Wedding and Out of Africa . They have also left their mark on television: The Cosby Show , Two and a Half Men , The O.C. , Sex and the City , Curb Your Enthusiasm , Scrubs , and Desperate Housewives , to name just a few.

Now, in their own words, theyre going to tell you how they did it.

Youll meet the kid who was answering phones on the set of X-Men , and ended up with sole screenwriting credit on a film that grossed more than $300 million.

Youll hear from a director who started as a production assistant on Apocalypse Now and whose first job was to hike into the mountains, locate a tribe of headhunters, and convince them to play extras in the movie.

Theres the talent agent-turned-producer who applied for a job with the Central Intelligence Agency, certain hed be happier in Langley, Virginia, than he was in Hollywood, only to be informed that he had none of the qualifications they were looking for. And theres the eleven-year-old girl who was told by her music teacher that she was tone deaf and wholly without talent, only to become the most successful songwriter of her generation.

Youll go back a few years to learn how Marlon Brando literally changed the life of an agent-trainee by tapping him as his representative. And youll read about the young man who was dissuaded from trying to make it as an actor and went on to win two Academy Awardsas a director.

Theres the producer whose very first job out of college involved getting lunch for the divine Robert Redford, and whose second job revolved around the needs of the less-divine Divine, a 300-pound transvestite. And theres the firefighter-turned-sound-mixer who has been nominated for an Academy Award an astonishing seventeen times, and is still polishing his acceptance speech.

Youll meet an athlete who gave up a successful career as a professional tennis player to make the kinds of movies he fell in love with as a child, in his native India, and a producer who had to choose between the William Morris mail room and the Harvard Business School, opting for the latter only because the agency had no openings.

Youll hear from an actor who spent seven years behind bars for manslaughter, discovered theater in prison, and went on to the Yale School of Drama and a brilliant careeron both stage and screen; from an Academy Award-winning producer who got his start by sneaking onto studio lots, pretending to be a messenger; and from a wide-eyed, fresh-faced college coed who parlayed her first jobgetting beer for the guys in the truckinto a partnership at one of the most successful TV production companies in entertainment history.

Youll also hear from plenty of people youll recognize, including Sydney Pollack, Bernie Mac, Peter Gallagher, Greg Germann, and David Paymer, and youll find out how they paid their dues. Waiting tables. Cleaning apartments. Frying fish.

Beyond the personal stories, there is plenty of advice. Making it in Hollywood is about passion and originality and hard work. And its about not quitting. If you really want to break in, monomania and self-delusion are a good start.

Yes, we know and you know: Hollywood is a fiercely competitive town. There are almost as many film schools and acting classes in Los Angeles as there are restaurants, and the local colleges and universities have turned film-related courses into a cottage industry. But some of those students are going to succeed: Statistically, it couldnt be otherwise.

And as long as were talking statistics, heres a daunting one: The Writers Guild of America registers more than sixty thousand screenplays every year . Thats more than a thousand a week; two hundred every single day . Very few will ever become movies, but those that do have the power to transform the lives of the men and women who wrote them. Thats why they wrote them.