It’s very Hollywood to feel like everyone but you is selling, staffing, and succeeding, but this is a function of the availability bias. It just seems like everyone else is doing well because they only announce deals, not passes. Trust me, it’s mostly failure at every level. 🦨
This really struck a nerve and I can understand why so many people are feeling down on themselves. If you want a longer discussion of what I think happens to writers getting caught up in the hype of others’ success, here are my thoughts…
This industry is subjective, it’s not a math test, and you can’t say a script that sold for $125,000 is 25% better than one that got $100,000. Talent for sure plays a huge role, obviously, but so does luck!
People who get far in this business who think it’s all based on talent fall very hard emotionally when their career takes a dip.
You might sell a project because you walk into a room right after the boss said find more talking animal movies and guess what, that’s what you’re pitching! And you might finish a script only to find someone else sold something similar the very next day. The luck goes both ways.
Execs hear a lot of pitches and read a lot of scripts and most of them would make great movies and great shows but they pass on almost everything. Like I said in my original post, you just don’t hear about those failures.
Even writers at the top of their game sell only a fraction of their projects. And only a fraction of those get made! What’s ironic about this is that we’re literally in the business of make believe but for some reason we take publicity at face value!
Growing up I loved reading the questions in Parade Magazine. There was no internet so people would ask, “Settle a bet, Vic Tayback is my favorite actor but I say he’s from Syria and my husband says he’s from Iran. Who’s right? There’s a steak dinner riding on this!”
Parade would answer (Syrian but born in Brooklyn) and then throw in, “And good news, Vic is starring in his own one-man show starting next week!” People only seem to ask questions about actors who had something going on. And it was almost always something coming up really soon!
Only when I got to Hollywood years later did I realize that the questions were all fake. Everything was planted by publicists. Vic Tayback wants to promote his show and his publicist says I’ll send something over to Parade. Wow, disillusioned!
But that’s how it works! Daily Variety didn’t have a crack team of investigative reporters staking out Paramount asking, “What’s the word on the street?” Script sales, series orders, casting decisions… it all comes from the studio or network or agent or publicist.
I’ve literally written articles for THR announcing a sale and had my agent send it over. They don’t even edit it. They just print it.
The moral of that story is everyone is hustling. There is nothing wrong with promotion, even self-promotion, and there’s nothing wrong with taking a victory lap when something good happens. Just be aware of what it is.
But back to luck. I think we blame ourselves when good things happen to other people and bad things (or nothing) happens to us because luck offends our sense of justice. Well, not just that. It’s because success in entertainment is a mysterious combination of luck and talent.
If it was all (or mostly) talent, like sports, you might be jealous, but you can’t really complain about some allstar making 9-figures. And oddly, if it was all luck, like the Powerball, you might also be jealous but you can’t really *complain* about someone winning the lottery!
But for us, it’s some talent and some luck. So when you succeed, you overestimate how much talent was involved and when you fail you think it’s bad luck. (This is a cognitive bias that is difficult to overcome.)
Conversely, other people’s success is luck and other people’s failure—oh, wait, that doesn’t exist because that data is never reported.
So if you think you’re talented—and by the way, you are! If you have any doubts about that, ask yourself if someone who hasn’t made it as far as you would kill to be in your shoes!
Even a struggling writer looking for a big break is so far ahead of the dreamers who haven’t taken any steps at all!—you see reports of everyone making deals, selling shows, making their dreams come true while you keep getting passes. You think, I’m just as talented as them!
Aha! That’s the crux of the problem right there! Maybe you *are* just as talented. So they’re getting luckier than you and that’s not fair because luck is supposed to be evenly distributed in the universe or else that’s a cosmic injustice!
(Of course, if you think the successful person *is* more talented, then that should theoretically inspire you do try harder because you can always get better at what you do.)
But I think the key to overcoming this feeling of getting down on yourself is to acknowledge that luck *is* fairly distributed in the universe and that you’re just not seeing all the data.
You can only control what you can control but the good news is there are some things you can do to make more of that luck go your way.
First, write better. Talent is not irrelevant and better scripts, better pitching skills, better inter-personal skills in a room will all help your “batting average.” Read more scripts, read pitch documents, hell, take a Coursera on how to make friends and influence people.
These are all skills everyone at every level can work on and improve!
Two, write more. We’re in a low% business so more at bats means more success. I get that not everyone can write 12 hours a day but ABC, Always Be Creating. Write one thing, think about another. Have a dozen ideas ready to pitch because only one of them will sell! If you’re lucky!
Three, be kind to others. If I need to explain why you may be a psychopath. (Psychopaths, being kind to others can help you down the road—you never know who might be hiring you for your next job!)
And four, be kind to yourself. So much of this business is out of your control that the kindest thing you can do is to not blame yourself when things don’t go your way.
Vent for sure, build a support group of trusted people, but at the end of the day, you have to believe that good luck graces everyone equally and your turn will come.🦄
Oh, and if you do succeed, pay it forward. Hire underrepresented groups, fight for justice, speak out for positive change. #blacklivesmatter
(I have tried to tag these kinds of threads #writing so you can find them more easily.)
