Everyone wants to know how Hollywood “works,” as if they teach that in film school.  “What’s a best boy?” a non-film friend will ask as the credits roll.  To sound educated, I make something up: “Oh, he’s the guy who grips the apple box when the foley artist is busy line producing the second unit…”  But the truth is—I don’t know! 

I’ve looked it up and forgotten, probably several times.  It’s not pertinent.  The best boy is “below the line,” which on the Tinsel town totem is about as prestigious as it sounds (read: scarcely worth the air they breathe).  Even so, a recent film school graduate such as myself can’t just get a job as best boy, because I don’t rank high enough to be below the line.  I’m nowhere near the line.  I can’t even see the frickin’ line from here.  Best boys, whoever they are, are a vital part of the moviemaking process…and I’m not.  People say they’ll “watch the credits for me,” not realizing that each of those jobs is a highly specialized field that takes years to get credit for.  The odds of success are not unlike those in a jewel heist; Hollywood is the impenetrable steel vault, your film degree is a toothpick.

Snap.  Nice try—what else ya got?

Unlike most career paths, there are no entry-level positions for an aspiring writer or director—they don’t start you on minimum wage to shoot a TV spot with Jenny McCarthy, and if you do well bump you up to $10 an hour and Carmen Electra.  Sure,

there are jobs like office assistant and production assistant (read: “My Bitch”) that have little to do with actual filmmaking…and yes, this is a common entry-level dilemma.  But dammit, I went to film school specifically to avoid these icky wear-a-tie, show-up-on-time, actually-do-work jobs!  When people said, “Everyone starts at the bottom,” I assumed it was so I’d be sure to wave them on encouragingly as I zoomed on up to the top.

Not so.  Screenwriting is the only job I know where you work for, say, a year on a script, and at the end of that year the boss reviews your work—if he likes what he sees, he gives you a million dollars; if he doesn’t, he gives you zero dollars.  Is this acceptable in other professions?  “Well Chuck, ya demonstrated some real creativity on that drug bust and ya clearly know your way around a crime scene…but overall I hafta pass on your salary this year.  Keep at it!”  Writing is a nice gig in theory, maybe the only respectable profession where it’s okay not to wear clothes while you work, but as the weeks roll on you start to miss that most beloved of motivators, the paycheck.  When the landlord comes a-knockin’, no amount of “But I am working!!” protests will satisfy.  (Not even the promise of a walk-on in your first feature—I’ve tried.)

Is it too much to ask to do something interesting or important?  I get my own coffee, and I don’t really mind.  Sometimes I brew it with the help of my platonic life-partner, Mr. Coffee, and when I feel adventurous I go to Starbucks, a cute local coffee shop around the corner (I hear they’re expanding).  I also answer my own phone, ‘cause hey—it’s for me!  It’s just easier that way.  Why are these the only jobs the entertainment industry is willing to offer me?  I’m a reasonably intelligent, capable person…I just can’t prove it on a résumé.

Fortunately, there’s a loophole.  The film business doesn’t so much “work.”  It exists, but it doesn’t work.  It’s more like an anomaly mad scientists bred in a laboratory using the DNA of regular businesses, and then there was a nuclear accident and they tried to discard it in the desert, but it mutated, headed for the nearest water source, and nested in a place called Hollywood where it’s terrorized the locals ever since.  Now it breathes movies like fire from atop the hills, unstoppable, gorging itself on looky-loos who step too close.  Breaking into this freakish monstrosity’s lair is a gamble: if you make it, untold riches are yours; if not, the beast feasts on your flesh and uses your bones as a tripod.  You break in at the risk of going broke and getting broken.

The Hollywood ladder is missing its bottom rungs—you can’t just grab on and start climbing.  You jump and shimmy and scratch and claw to no avail and then you go home…or you learn some fierce acrobatics.  There’s no guarantee of survival, no way to play it safe.  Rules don’t apply…but that can be used to your advantage. 

You want up?  Find your own way up.  That’s the only way there is.

‘Til then…coffee?