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So, are you ready to give up yet?
I've mentioned - in my first column, in fact - that many of the people I met in my early Hollywood days are long gone. Some of them, I know where they disappeared to, and some of them just disappeared. They all thought they were going to "make it" but I haven't heard a single mention of any of them. I can only assume that they gave up like the others.
When it comes to screenwriting, it looks too easy to the outside world. People watching a crappy movie think that it couldn't possibly be that hard to write something like this and collect a million dollar check. And, let's face it, we do like "easy" in today's society. We are so consumed with easy things that we now use EZ or E-Z because spelling out e-a-s-y is too hard. I was at a friend's house recently and saw that she had bough a pack of socks that were labelled "EZ Sort" because apparently sorting socks is now too much of a chore for our over-tasked brains.
Screenwriting isn't easy - it's hard. Get on a website where people list their scripts and ask yourself how many of these movies you would actually go to see. Screenwriters are the most disrespected people in Hollywood, yet the most is expected of them. If you are a musician and you put out an album of one hit and nine pieces of sludge, you're a success. If you are a screenwriter and put out one hit and then one piece of mediocrity, you are ruined. You'll never get the chance to show those other eight works. M. Night Shyamalan got hammered for "Signs", which was actually a good movie - it just wasn't "The Sixth Sense".
I like it when people in Hollywood give up. Less competition for me. It's too bad that sometimes it's talented people who give up because they can't navigate through the ocean of crap that's between them and success.
Nothing worth having is easy. Look at people who win the lottery. They're bankrupt in two years because they don't respect money. They don't respect it because they didn't earn it. The same goes for Hollywood success. You can readily tell the people who worked hard to get where they are and the people who were handed their lives. It's like the movies where the coach plucks an African out of the wild to become a super athlete in America, and the guy is completely out of place. We've all met Hollywood hotshots who had all the polish of Encino Man.
Don't be afraid to put in the work. Don't be afraid to realize that you have no talent and go away, either. If you really want something and it's worth having, it'll be worth the work you put into it. I promise you that you will appreciate it so much more. |
