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The saddest reality of a Hollywood struggle isn't so much that you start from the bottom - it is that there may be times that, even after pulling yourself up from the bottom, you return to the bottom. It could be for almost any reason, and it could happen more than once. It's that way in the real world, too. Many people are three paychecks away from living in the street. Maybe one day when you're rich and famous you'll pride yourself on having lived in your car and made it this far (Jim Carrey did it). In Hollywood, it seems more glamourous to live in your car parked off Sunset Blvd. than it does if you're a factory worker living in your car parked by a New Jersey overpass. I've even heard Keifer Sutherland tell the story about how he lived in his car. That must have been difficult for him with his father being Donald Sutherland, one of the biggest actors of his time. I wonder if living in a Rolls Royce parked in the driveway of daddy's mansion makes that kind of life easier.
I want you struggling people out there to be aware of the things you do to bring yourself down. I see an alarming trend these days, where people who don't have enough money to pay rent will use what little money they have to treat themselves to something silly. If you don't have the $800 for your rent, and you only have $300, then you use that $300 towards your rent so that you may continue to live indoors. You do not shrug your shoulders and declare "I don't have the rent, but I do have $300, so I'm going to have a lobster dinner and buy a new hat." People who cannot pay their rent cannot afford lobster and hats. People who can't pay their rent eat Ramen noodles and rinse out shampoo bottles in order to get one more wash from them.
There will be many opportunities for you to screw up out here. Oddly enough, people will provide you with these opportunities just to watch you screw up. It's a form of cheap entertainment, and it makes them feel better about their own failed lives.
DON'T SCREW UP SO BAD THAT YOU CAN'T GO BACK!!
You ever tell a smelly homeless guy to "Get a job"? How is he gonna get a job? He's filthy and he reeks, has no transportation and has no phone to even get a phone call for work. He has fallen below that line where you can still pull yourself up from the bottom. He's gone too far. If you have pain, and you seek things that will make you feel better artificially, you risk the chance that these things will in turn ruin your life. You are so desperate to "make contacts" that you bring all these idiots into your life and thereby create a shield that will keep out any sensible person that sees you with these nuts. Don't take an acting job that's so revolting no one will ever hire you for something serious. Have you seen those new Pepto Bismal commercials? Who's going to hire the pretty girl holding her butt while the announcer SINGS about diarrhea? She probably thinks she's going to be the new Jennifer Aniston.
Don't let the solutions to your problems become bigger problems.
Keep up the struggle.
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